Over the years, I’ve noticed the subject of ‘strategy’ appears to raise more questions than answers with accounts.  It’s not the ‘need’ for strategy; everyone agrees a sound strategy is invaluable and key to a company’s success.

The question becomes, “Why do some companies and businesses seem to develop, follow and execute an effective business strategy while other seemingly similar companies fail?”

While strategy itself can be defined in many ways, poor execution tends to revolve around three areas: Lack of leadership commitment; Poor internal communication; Absence of an organizational monitoring process.

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I'm no sociologist, but I know that humans are social animals. It's a fact that in thousands of years of human history most people tended to live in small villages, towns or some other type of community. I can imagine that growing up and living in these communities people got to know each other pretty well. They talked on a regular basis, worked together, laughed together, disagreed together and in general, were a part of each other’s everyday lives.

Then the 20th century came and things started to change. With the industrial revolution came mass-produced items, then came the dawn of the automobile. The car made it much easier to commute farther distances and to live farther away from the community or town centers. And that’s just what they did. Mass-produced food and products distributed to local stores allowed us to be further away from food sources. In the 1950’s Mass produced communities were developed and people were firmly divided into their neat little boxes. The developments in technology and industry brought us to this place.

Next Mass media- Radio, and then television allowed us to be connected to people and events throughout the nation and eventually across the globe. So now you could watch things happening and feel like you were actually there. However this new “connector” was lacking one important way, there is no interaction. All messages sent via Radio or Television are implicitly one-way. You can talk, yell, or curse at your TV, (like I sometimes do when watching a good ball game) but our cries all falls on deaf ears. The one thing these devices did do was to get us off of our front porches, away from our town centers, and communities and plant us firmly on our living room sofa!

Ah, but there is one break-though device, that came out of this era of technology, the telephone, was and perhaps still is the single most powerful and immediate way to connect with those who are far away. But here the connection was with individuals- friends and family.

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So your company boss taps you on the shoulder and asks you to take on a new project: videotape your company awards show and make some DVDs.   And since there is no budget to hire a professional video production company, you get to do it yourself. What do you do? My best answer is the same phrase that I end every email that I send: “use the right tool for the right job.” 

But what IS the right tool?  What is the right camera for your company awards show? First consideration should be to get a decent video camera that will suit your needs. 

Let’s face it - there is a plethora of books, magazines and online articles about the latest and greatest video cameras to purchase.   The information can be overwhelming.   So what do your do?  The event deadline approaches!  The job becomes manageable when you begin with a list of camera features that match your objective.   My experience has told me that if you get all the features you want at the cost you can afford, the brand name rarely matters.

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I spend a great deal of time in the land of “New Marketing” aka, social media – both for my own personal brand identity and on behalf of my clients.  How I allocate my marketing effort today looks nothing like it did even a mere nine months ago.  What’s amazing is that I have a hard time remembering what in the world I did to spread my clients’ messages before drinking the social media Kool-Aid. 

However, does that mean we should throw-out our time-tested marketing ways?  Absolutely not.

It seems that the majority of vehicles available to marketers in the “Old – pre Social Media Days” were primarily “Push” – direct mail, email campaigns, advertising.  Of course we had “Pull” options – thought leadership strategies, but without the array of social media vehicles available today it was a long and arduous process filled with speaking engagements, customer user groups, and complicated and time consuming customer-reference programs.  Not that the advent of social media ‘expedites’ the process much – actually my contention is that it takes longer, but I think the results are much more powerful.

Social media, by default, polices our commitment to our brands and holds our feet to the fire to remain in integrity.  If you don’t – OUCH - it doesn’t take much to FaceBook, Twitter, Blog, GoogleWave or Buzz your reputation – permanently down the drain.  Companies can no longer hide behind the curtain.  There are way too many vehicles at our fingertips to catch the perpetrators.  The brands that will survive will be the ones who actually DO have the better product and service AND spend the time cultivating a respectful, mutually beneficial, relationship with its customers.

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With all the focus on layoffs and unemployment rates, it is sometimes hard to remember that the majority of Americans are still employed. Implement the advice below to give yourself the best shot at keeping your job, and not being on the top of your manager’s downsizing list if your company restructures.

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You have a position in the market place.  A position you have either carefully crafted after much consideration or one that you’ve defaulted into unwittingly. 

Let’s assume you have actually done the work; the soul searching of the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats); the research and analysis of your competition – and, let me say that even if you’re developing a PERSONAL brand there is de-facto ‘competition’; the interviews with your customers, team and advisors.  You’ve labored and examined every word in that 100 word statement and feel satisfied that you’ve found ‘it’ – a positioning statement of which you can be proud.  A position you can support and in turn, can support you.  Let’s not forget that positioning statements provide a solid foundation to guide our actions – to keep us on course.  They give back ten-fold for all that hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth.

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Martin Brossman, success coach, speaker, trainer and author incorporating social media training, (www.pronetworkingonline.com)uses my profile to demonstrate how to add video to your LinkedIn.com profile. To see this in action, head to my LinkedIn profile here and click on "View Full Profile".

For years I have been coaching sales professionals, discovering that they used to pay for similar information with less quality than the data that Linkedin is providing now at the free level.   More importantly, all sales professionals that I have personally coached have gained clear value and closed more sales when they began using Linkedin correctly.  However, I realize that there are many sales executives who are obviously not using Linkedin effectively, i.e., potentially leaving money on the table.  I hope this list of 5 Linkedin omissions gets the attention of all honest hardworking sales pros and spurs you into action.

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