Recycle Your Email into Blog Posts

You may be missing the chance to publish some great blog posts if you’re not directly tapping a great editorial resource – your work email.

A great source of posts are the emails I have to draft at work. After sending an email at work, I’m sometimes able to recycle that content into a blog post on the topic. Because this has been successful for me so far, I am constantly on the lookout for the next good email to peers that also happens to be a nice blog topic. The content is relevant, because if I’m facing a challenge at work, someone else out there is facing the same challenge. I find that repurposing content like this allows me to share ideas more efficiently.

You’re probably creating concise, thoughtful topical pieces every month – you just don’t realize it. That great idea you sent to the Marketing department last week? The response you sent in confidence to your boss, outlining your opinion against the latest company misdirection? You know, the one you wished you hadn’t sent, the moment you did? These emails can live a second life as insightful blog posts. They don’t have to be long. Two or three paragraphs. It’s the thought that counts. Get your idea out there.

Clean it up, and ship it out. With a few word changes to protect the identity of people and organizations, and generalizing the topic as opposed to personalizing it within the context of your company, you can probably find several blog topics lying around your Sent mail box today. Go ahead and check, and happy re-cycling!

England’s Capello – How Not To Lead!

A leader never throws his own team under the bus.

If you’ve been following the 2010 FIFA World Cup, you might have noticed that England Manager Fabio Capello has been doing just that, after two disappointing performances by his team to start the tournament. 

The “Three Lions” boss has so far delivered a fascinating case study in “how-not-to-lead.”  By publically contradicting his players’ own assessments, by heaping additional pressure on them, and by dodging blame for a lack of preparation, Capello is putting on a clinic of poor leadership.

The concepts of good leadership go beyond sports of course, and we can all draw lessons from Capello’s public misstatements thus far, paraphrased below:

Capello: There’s tremendous pressure on us to succeed.  This sentiment contradicted his own Captain’s public assessment only a day earlier, when Stephen Gerrard stated that pressure was not a factor in the team’s tepid start to the tournament.  Besides the direct contradiction, a good manager should never mention the “pressure” that the team is under.  Doing so just creates problems that might not actually exist for some team members.  Speaking of creating problems…

Capello: Our top players are in a scoring slump.  A leader’s job is to remove barriers standing in the way of his team’s performance; not to create imaginary barriers where none actually exist!   A better approach would have been to encourage his players to keep getting into position to score, and the goals will come; not to make up mental hurdles which the players must now overcome in their own minds.

Capello: Our preparation was great – we’re just not playing what we practiced.  Here, Capello subtlety dodges blame.  He had them ready to play!   Practice was great.   Then it all fell apart when the players were asked to execute and deliver.   Whether or not this is true, a good leader should take the blame for a poor game time performance, at least publically.

Here’s hoping you can avoid the same heavy-handed mistakes when leading your own team!

Working with Y

Generation Y workers are easy to label. And if you don’t believe me, just consult the abundance of recent business literature on the subject.

There’s plenty of over-generalizing, of course. Not every worker born after 1980 is a corporate-averse, thrill-seeking, socially generous rules-breaker. But whatever Generation Y “is”, it would be a mistake for older workers to simply label them as quirky kids and move on. Largely because of the Y Generation’s size – almost 50% more of them than their Generation X predecessors – they deserve the careful examination they’re getting in all those books.

Like the enormous Boomer generation before them, the Y’s will eventually overwhelm the old system. By sheer numbers, their “way” will become the right way. You can’t deny the growing importance of their attitudes and sensibilities in relation to your organization’s future.

The same could not be said for GenX (of which I am a proud member). Xers didn’t fit the old mold either, but lack the numbers to effectively displace the still-active Boomers within corporations and in society as a whole.

The Y’s are today’s customers and tomorrow’s leaders. If you want learn what the future of your company looks like, pick up one of those books linked above. Better yet, hire a Y into your organization this year. Then listen.