Sheri Betts

The article examines the decisions needed to make about creating and marketing corporate image. One way to represents the business to others is through developing a logo concept, taking into consideration on how it is to be used, the colors and the symbolism it conveyed. It is also significant to check if the developed mission and vision statements are coinciding with the company name and if it provide an insight of how the company is operating. Preparation of a marketing plan must also be made to direct marketing efforts of the company. Other elements that needed a great decision making are gaining visibility, building networks and partnerships and maintaining of an attitude of the entrepreneur.

From Employee to Entrepreneur

(From Forbes)—Today I had the great pleasure of speaking at The Innovation Enterprises’ 2013 Women in Strategy Summit, which brings together 75 high-level women in marketing and strategy, about the leadership secrets of the world’s most powerful women. With women comprising just 4 percent of corporate CEOs, 14 percent of executive officers, and 20 percent of America’s government officials, we’re facing a persistent leadership gap at the highest echelons. To move forward, we must first take stock of what is working. The following eight leadership lessons, synthesized and updated from a keynote I gave last year, come directly from the women who know what it takes to get to the top.Stay DeterminedThe world’s most successful women really want it–and remain determined even in the face of obstacles. They have the skills, and they put the time in. But more importantly, they have the desire to do something great. Beth Brooke, global vice chair of Ernst & Young, was diagnosed with a degenerative hip disease at age 13 and was told by doctors she may never walk again. Before going into surgery she promised herself she would walk—no, she would run—and aspired to become one of the best young athletes the world had seen. Not only did she walk, she went on to play several varsity sports at her high school, earned multiple MVP awards, and later played Division I basketball in college. She made up her mind, and she didn’t quit. She brought that same determination to her career and today ranks among the 100 most powerful women in the world.Be CourageousWomen at the top aren’t fearless. They move toward their fear to continually challenge themselves. That takes courage. In 2011, Beth Mooney, CEO of KeyCorp, became the first woman ever to lead a top-20 bank in the U.S. Mooney began her career as a secretary at a local Texas bank, making just $10,000 a year, but soon realized she wanted something more. In 1979, she knocked on the door of every big bank in Dallas and asked for a spot in their management training programs. At the Republic Bank of Dallas, she refused to leave the manager’s office until he offered her a job. After waiting for three hours, he finally agreed to give her a chance if she earned an MBA by night.That was a turning point in her career, one of many, powered by a courageous call to action—to champion herself and what she knew she was capable of. Later, she had the courage to move into roles she’d never done before, to pick up and move across the country, and to stick with it for three decades. If you’re not a little bit scared every day, you’re not learning. And when you’re not learning, you’re done.Think BiggerIn order to achieve big success, you have to have big impact. When Michelle Gass, who is now leading 33 countries for Starbucks, started at the coffee chain, she was asked to architect a growth strategy for a just-launched drink called the Frappuccino. Her mantra: “Let’s think of how big this can be.” After countless hours testing ideas, she decided to position it as an escapist treat and added ice cream parlor fixings and new flavors. What began as a two-flavor side item is now a $2 billion platform with tens of thousands of possible combinations. Gass repeated her go-big-or-go-home strategy when she took over Seattle’s Best Coffee. She decided to take the sleepy little-sister brand to new heights by partnering with Burger King, Delta, Subway, convenience stores and supermarkets. In one year, the brand exploded from 3,000 distribution points to over 50,000.Take Calculated RisksAs CEO of Kraft Foods and now Mondelez International, Irene Rosenfeld is very familiar with this one. A couple years ago she completed a hostile takeover of British candy company Cadbury. Not long after, she surprised the business community again with a plan to split Kraft into two separate companies, a North American foods company and a global snacks company. To move the needle, you have to make a big bets—but never rash—always based on a careful study of the outcomes. You have to know what you have to gain, and if you can afford to take the hit if it doesn’t go your way.Remain DisciplinedIt takes discipline to achieve and maintain success. You simply can’t do everything, and the world’s most powerful women stay focused on the areas that will have the biggest impact—from both a leadership perspective and a career management perspective. Sheri McCoy, the new CEO of struggling Avon Products, is currently implementing a huge turnaround at the century-old beauty company. Interestingly, when I asked what the biggest challenge would be, she said: “Making sure people stay focused on what’s important and what matters most.” It is very easy to get distracted by new trends, new markets, new projects—but when you extend yourself too far, the quality of your work suffers across the board.Read more.

Eight Leadership Lessons From Powerful Women

While preparing today for a future speech on learning trends at a Belgian government organization, I was interrupted by Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake's funny hashtag video. This prompted me to add hashtags to each trend during my speech, as if to say, "These are the things you should be talking about."Here are hashtags for 11 learning trends learning and development professionals should be thinking about today.#CharlesToldMeSoAccording to Charles Jennings and the Internet Time Alliance, most learning doesn't happen in a formal structured organized (training) way. Most thought leaders agree that some 70 percent of learning comes from unstructured experiential moments. If learning managers can encourage, capture, and share this learning to the benefit of the wider organization, they can really improve results.Watch the 70:20:10 video introduction by Charles Jennings on YouTube.Visit www.702010forum.com for an introduction and numerous resources.#WithALittleHelpFromMyFriendsEven if you don't buy into the 70:20:10 possibility (why wouldn't you?), you can't live in the learning world these days and not realise that both social media and social learning present massive opportunities to improve learning efficiency and results.Get more ideas on how to use social media for training.Check out 100 examples of social media for learning by Jane Hart.#KnowWhoYouKnowAndKnowWhoAndWhatTHEYKnowIf social learning is important, so are social networks—and the ability to evaluate them and create more influence from within them. Learning professionals must stop considering the organization as a bunch of functional hierarchies and seek to understand the informal learning networks at play and how to profit from them.Read Multipliers by Liz Wiseman.Read my ASTD2013 notes on “Analysing and Evaluating Informal Learning Networks” with Shari Yocum (lots of references and questions at the end).#WhoAreYouCallingImpatient?Real-time learning is becoming increasingly more important. People can’t wait six months for training when they have a problem today. In order to increase speed to learning, we need to think about quick and easy ways to get people the answers they need to improve their work. The range of tools, expertise and resources available is ever growing and L&D people must support usage, sharing, and effectiveness in order to help people get what they need quickly.Read Jane Hart’s blog post on learning trends and learning tools.#IFightForTheUser or #OneSizeDoesn’tFitAllEverything learning professionals do to support or structure learning has to be user-centric. This implies granularity and consumerization. Granularity is all about creating diverse chunks of learning content on different platforms and using different styles—the user can serve herself and take what seems suitable in the format she prefers. Consumerization is about letting people get their hands on learning information and content on whatever device they like.Read about the problems with BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device”) and five app solutions.Read my ASTD2013 notes about Google and MOOCs—a granular approach to learning.#SizeIsntEverythingBig data is getting a lot of press because of its apparent ability to give a better understanding of the reality, create better strategy and achieve more results. Applications within the consumer world are both various and scary. (Yes, they track everything you do on Facebook and use it to sell you stuff!) But the learning world may also be able to profit. If you can capture and assess all performance metrics in the organisation quickly, you will be able to see trends and create better approaches to improving performance through learning.Check out the conceptual example of big data for learning in a call center.#IMovedYourCheeseOkay, I stole the title of this hashtag from Deepak Malhotra’s great book of the same name L . In today’s VUCA business environment, things change all the time. Our learning approaches need to be equally adaptive. In training, although we may have designed for 12 people (and even if we may have a set plan of learning activities), to have real impact we need to be able to incorporate flexible strategies to account for different previously unknown needs that “appear out of nowhere.”In workplace-based learning, we need to be able to quickly identify need news and reply with relevant and timely adapted learning. Challenges to adaptive learning include “data-mining” and “scaling.” If we are going to continuously adapt to the environment, we need to be able to plough through massive amounts of available information in order to assess changes and trends and reply with the right answer for all the right people, right now!Read about Knewton’s Adaptive Learning Platform.#InAtTheDeepEndImmersive and authentic learning is likely to grow in importance, as learning professionals understand the needs of the business and how learners interact with content. Models and theories in classroom environments are good for the many things, but there are other ways to create a more engaging and authentic learning environment.Learning platforms that combine rich digital media with simulation and virtual reality may be one answer. Gamified learning is another. Augmented reality also has potetional.Join the Immersive Education Initiative and help define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems.Read about what to consider before starting with gamification.Have a look at Mashable’s posts on augmented reality.Check out five existing augmented reality apps for education.#ShowMeTheMoneyIf CEOs hate learning and development people, the mostly likely reason is lack of business acumen and poor marketing/sales skills. In many organizations, the learning function grew out of an administrative part of HR that managed sending people to training. The work and measurement of those people were based around how many people went to training and whether or not they liked it.Today, even if learning people all know that it’s the result that counts and not the method, many are unable to understand core business problems and articulate proposed learning solutions. L&D people must have good business acumen and marketing/sales skills.Read more about business acumen and the five things everyone in a business needs to understand to have impact.Learn what are the only three questions that count and how to be FAB when you pitch a learning initiative.#InYouWeTrustL&D people need to stop doing things for themselves and get people from within and around the organization more involved in learning design, support, and delivery. And sometimes, we need to realize that not everything has to be designed and structured for the learner—he can do some things himself!Find out why it’s also very important to make sure people are competent to learn by themselves.#WishIWorkedInAMuseumGiven the massive amount of information and resources available for our people to learn, it can be helpful to have someone filtering, contextualising and sharing information for different target groups. The skill of curation is becoming more and more important in the learning world.Read about the importance of curation and different approaches, according to David Kelly.Other hashtags that didn’t make the list today—but may be used in the future include:#SpoonfulOfSugarHelpsTheMedicineGoDown for gamification#MyThirdHand for mobile + iPad#7BillionLearningStyles because “learning styles” is a myth#BlokeInThePubSaidItSoItMustBeTrue for 70:20:10#AustralianEducation for “flipped-classroom”

Sheri Betts

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