Grind

Yesterday on his Blog Maverick blog, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban re-posted a piece he had orginally written in 2008 titled 'How to Get Rich'. While there isn't much in the way of specific or tactical advice in the piece - and as Cuban states in the article  - "This is not a short-term project. We aren’t talking days. We aren’t talking months. We are talking years. Lots of years and maybe decades. I didn’t say this was a get rich quick scheme. This is a get rich path." - the post does offer some solid advice not so much in the way of actually getting rich, but rather in positioning yourself to take advantage of opportunities by virtue of hard work and preparation. You should definitely pop over to Blog Maverick and check out the post.Patrick burning it late on a Friday night

For me, the money line was Cuban's take on how the commitment to outwork the other guy, and to grind away at night and on the weekends if need be to gain that critical edge that comes from better preparation, more complete study, and from simply knowing more about the industry, market, players - whatever than the competition. Again from the Cuban piece:

"Before or after work and on weekends, every single day, read everything there is to read about the business. Go to trade shows, read the trade magazines, spend a lot of time talking to the people you do business with about their business and the people they buy from."

Look, no one needs this blog to remind them of the obvious, that hard work and a real commitment to digging in, to putting in the long hours needed to achieve the kind of deep, and differentiating knowledge about whatever subject or line of work you're interested in truly is a prerequisite for sustained success these days. I think we all know it. But I also think sometimes we forget what it looks like, what it feels like to read white papers at 11PM on a Friday, or to cycle through thousands of unread posts in Google Reader on Saturday morning before the kids wake up, or to participate in industry events and online forums with energy and enthusiasm.

It's a grind to do those things for sure.

The picture on the right of this piece is my son Patrick, age 10. In what can possibly be seen as a testament to shoddy parenting, it was taken at about 11PM on a recent Friday night, as he was diligently battling away to get a post written for his 'Patrick's Investigations' blog, (stop by and drop him a comment if you like). Eleven at night, in the dark, grinding over a post because he wants his blog to succeed, he wants to be a good writer, and he has figured out (on his own), that those things are not at all easy.  Achieving those goals will be lots of hard work. 

Cuban re-ran his 'How to Get Rich' piece in response to the recent economic news in the US as a reminder that no matter how bad conditions get, that buckling in and simply out-working the competition still gives anyone the chance to perhaps not get rich, but to at least get ahead. I ran this piece today to share a small image of what the grind looks like, played out late on a Friday night, by a little kid.

Have a Great Weekend!

Please Retweet

I know, we are all overloaded.

Blogs, Facebook news feeds, Twitter streams, LinkedIn discussions.

Friend requests, new follower alerts, updated profiles, experiences, skills....

RSS feed reader absolutely overflowing.  That is until you (somewhat guiltily) proclaim 'Reader Bankruptcy' with a blanket 'mark all as read' click.  Don't worry, your friends will never know that the blog posts that they spent ages poring over and parsing every last word of to make sure they were just right were subjected to burial in the mass landfill of unread clutter.  At least they won't be lonely, I'll bet there are about 273 (about three days' worth) of 'Mashable' posts alongside them.

There is no time.  Or not enough time anyway. So folks that blog have to realize this.  So little time for the audience to read these posts, even less to comment on them, and certainly no time or tolerance to manually cut and paste an interesting post's URL into TweetDeck, or HootSuite, or whatever to actually share it with their networks (who are all likely too busy themselves).

Enter the 'Retweet' button.  Most all blog posts today carry the little green thingy.  A small, simple, and clever device meant to make the sharing of the post or article almost effortless.  One click, a quick permission to grant, one more click - and voila, the piece is shared on Twitter, and the little 'retweet' counter ratchets up by one, like a kind of dynamic tote board of popularity (or antipathy).  The retweet button is a kind of bailout for the reader, telling them effectively 'no need to work too hard to indicate you enjoyed the post by commenting', just spend 26 seconds on a few clicks and we as bloggers will get the idea.

I rarely check the traffic statistics of this blog.  I have no idea how many e-mail subscribers there are (although one nice lady subscriber in Kansas is 'out of the office' a lot).  But I can see that little 'retweet' button on all the posts.  So sure, it is a little dismaying after posting what you think was a solid piece to see that little counter sitting on 3 or 4 after a long day waiting patiently for just a bit of attention.

So here is the little experiment for today - will writing a post with 'Please Retweet' as the title actually help the promotion and sharing of the piece? Will it matter that the piece itself has about 400 words of nonsense all leading up the big payoff - the little green button?

Just be glad I went this route, the alternative was going with a post called 'Like me on Facebook', which is a little demented, creepy, and sad.

Please retweet!

Print Friendly

At the closing session of HRevolution 2010 - 'Breaking out of the Echo Chamber', Laurie Ruettimann and Lance Haun offered a number of suggestions to more effectively spread the power and reach of social and new media, technology, and new ways of viewing networks and collaboration beyond the so-called 'echo chamber' of HR bloggers and social media enthusiasts.

One of the specific recommendations was about sharing online content, specifically blogs and blog posts, with HR and other business leaders that are not aware of or inclined to be regular blog readers. In fact, Laurie specifically advised rather than simply forwarding links to interesting content, to cut and paste the actual content into the body of an email message, or even to printing a particularly good blog post to hand to your VP or CEO.

I think that is actually pretty good advice, and recently I posted about a free service called Tabbloid that can help facilitate making online content from blogs more easily accessible and consumable for those non blog reading executives.  I really like Tabbloid, it delivers a nicely formatted PDF of a week's worth of posts to me every Sunday. But it still requires going to Tabbloid and doing a bit of configuration to get up and running.  Not a big deal, but additional every step in a technical process raises the barrier just a bit more.

A potentially even simpler way to generate clean, printable content from a blog post or web page is from a site called Print Friendly - www.printfriendly.com. Print Friendly allows you to simply cut and paste a URL from a post or page into a dialog box, and with one click generate a PDF file that can be easily printed or shared via email. 

There is even a Print Friendly button that can be embedded inside blog posts to provide readers with access to this simple capability. 

Simply click on the little 'Print/PDF' button above and you will be taken to the Print Friendly version of this post.

This service is simple, useful, free - and an incredibly easy way to help share that great blog post you just read with your boss, her boss, and even that crusty old-timer on your team that just can't be bothered to set up Google Reader or thinks Feedburner is some kind of gasoline additive.

If you are a blogger, consider placing one of these little buttons on your posts to make it easier for your readers to distribute your content.

If you do give this a try, let me know how it works for you, and if you have any other tools or tricks for sharing content 'outside of the echo chamber', please share them as well.

 

Sorry in advance to all the trees that will have to go to support the thousands of folks that will want to print this post!

You're Great. Now What?

Yesterday at the Fistful of Talent, the FOT crew announced their latest Talent Management blog power rankings.

And in a shock that has to rival Villanova beating Georgetown for the NCAA title in 1985, or the Jets surprising the Colts in Super Bowl III, my blog, this little HR Technology blog, came out at number one on the rankings.

I don't believe it either.  From unranked to number one. Calls for a recount are clearly warranted.

I am still waiting for Tim Sackett or Kris Dunn to announce the mistake and tell me that I have just been punked.

Seriously, many thanks to Kris, Jessica Lee and everyone at the Fistful of Talent for the recognition, I am truly appreciative and humbled.

It is great to get positive feedback, whether it is for the blog, the HR Happy Hour show, or for a sweet smoked brisket.  But to me the real key is how you respond, what you do next.

After the USA hockey team shocked the world in the 1980 Olympic games by defeating the mighty and seemingly invincible Russian team the truth is they had not really accomplished much of anything. They had to come back in the next game and defeat Finland in order to win the gold medal and secure their place in sports history.

Had they lost the final game to Finland, we would still remember them, but not quite the same way, not with reverence and not as the legendary team they became.

So here is the lesson:  if someone says you're great, whether it's your boss, your colleagues, or friends, accept their compliments (even if, as is the case with my FOT ranking, secretly thinking they are crazy), be humble, and then figure out how you are going to be better tomorrow.

Rankings, accolades, etc. are all temporary.  But consistent, deliberate good work endures.

For me, I will try to live up to the high praise from the FOT team, and keep doing good work here and on the show.

Thanks to FOT and to everyone that stops by the blog.

A Great Big Blog Bundle

I am an absolute slacker in keeping up the blogroll on this site.

But, I am constantly finding and adding blogs to my subscriptions in Google Reader.  So while the 'links' on this site may list 10 or so blogs, I probably subscribe to 100 HR and Recruiting related blogs in Reader.

Thankfully, Google Reader now has an easy way to package feeds into a 'bundle' that can be easily shared in Reader, as well as emailed, or embedded in a blog or website.

This is also a great way to get co-workers, friends, or students started on reading blogs by creating for them an easy way to subscribe to a large number of blogs all at once.

The process is incredibly easy. 

1. In Google Reader, simply click on the link in the left sidebar titled 'Browse for Stuff'

2. Over on the right side of the screen click the 'Create a Bundle' button

3. Add a Title and Description for the Bundle

4. Then drag and drop feeds from your subscription pane over into the Bundle box, you can select individual feeds, or entire folders

5. When finished check 'Add to my Shared Items' to share this bundle inside Google Reader, then click 'Save'

6. Once saved, you can now share the bundle outside of Reader via e-mail, embedding, sharing the link directly, or via an OPML file.

7. To embed the file in your own blog, click the 'Create a Bundle Clip' link, then grab the embed code to copy/paste to your blog or website

Here is a Blog Bundle I set up from the Guests and Callers of the HR Happy Hour Show - Episode 10:

Anyone can now click on the 'Subscribe' link in the clip to be taken to Google Reader to subscribe to the bundle.

I have also set up a 'Great Big HR Blog Bundle' of all the HR Blogs in my Reader that can be found by clicking the 'Blogroll' link on the top of this site.  Now any time I add a new feed to the bundle in Reader, this site will also be automatically updated.

Feed Bundles are a great little feature in Reader and I hope you found this little tutorial helpful.