'You never let a serious crisis go to waste' – 'an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.' Rahm Emanuel

What Next?   Four Leadership, Effectiveness & Growth Experts Offer the Path Forward

1) Growing Your Business in These Tough Times – Alan Weiss

http://www.newsreleasewire.com/228970\

Growing Your Business in These Tough Times

Some ideas not just to sustain, but to grow your business, during the restrictions caused by the coronavirus:

• Reach out by phone to every buyer and ask what help you can provide. Don't talk about projects or fees or anything other than, "How can I best help you?"

• Suggest to business and trade publications articles on remote client service and support.

• Set up a "hot line" phone or email protocol where clients can call or write you for quick advice with a guarantee response time during business hours.

• Ask local clients if they would like to meet to discuss special needs.

• Offer to host an informal meeting of local buyers and prospects to discuss business contingency plans.

• Advertise and provide a teleconference, podcast, or video for free on conducting business in these times.

• If you have livestream capability or can get it, start offering both free and paid livestream sessions.

• If you are a speaker, offer livestream substitution for your appearance at events that are being otherwise cancelled.

• Use what colleges are now using, which are online courses for your workshops.

• Share best practices from your professional community with clients and prospects.

• Begin a regular five minute "report" by video or podcast every week at the same time.

• Go to work on the book, or video series, or new IP that you've never quite been able to get to.

Alan Weiss ---  alan@summitconsulting.com    401-884-2778

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2)   Leaders who stay calm in a crisis have superior results than those who get caught up in the anxiety. ---  Lisa Alderset

http://www.newsreleasewire.com/229020 

Leaders who stay calm in a crisis have superior results than those who get caught up in the anxiety. We're all being tested by this with the escalation of COVID-19 cases.

Whatever messages you're providing to your staff, it's important to create an emergency plan so that you aren't caught off guard.

If you haven't thought this through, now is the time. Being unprepared will only create a bigger crisis when it's time to execute.

Here are some of the key elements to consider:

+ What happens if someone in your office tests positive? You're most likely going to close your office temporarily. Yesterday, for example, CBS News shut its New York headquarters for two days after two employees tested positive.

+ Is your technology working? Have a plan to forward office phones to your cell phones if you aren't able to be in the office for a few days. Make sure you easily access your servers through remote internet access.

+ Do you have a communications plan? Create a plan for communicating with your staff so they don't feel left in the dark.

+ Don't forget your clients. Make sure you connect with them, especially if there will be delays in your service.

+ Find an industrial cleaning service. Prepare ahead of time for who you will call if your office needs to be deep cleaned and disinfected.

Finally, there are chronic shortages of hand sanitizers and disinfecting wipes. Know that if you're stuck, you can make your own hand sanitizer.

Being prepared will help you stay focused, which in turn will help you maintain calm during crisis. People are nervous, and your composure can go a long way to help others.

And remember: stay home if you're sick and keep washing your hands…

Dr. Lisa M. Aldisert    212-332-3242       lisa@pharosalliance.com

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3)  The 10 Most Effective Strategies for Staying Effective in The Face of Coronavirus Crisis  -- Michael J. Herman

http://www.newsreleasewire.com/229056

Michael J. Herman is the World's Most Ubiquitous Motivational Influencer and author of the globally syndicated column The Motivational Minute!®.

In times of stress and anxiety, it's easy to fall into patterns of despair and panic. However, the antidote to this and a simple recipe for regaining posture and poise is to continuously implement habits of reassurance and effectiveness.

The reason you have to continually maintain vigilance is because the id wants to find reasons for panic and disorder, but by intentionally taking command of one's thought processes and emotional intelligence, what seems enormous and all powerful soon appears what it really is, a temporary issue over which you possess ultimate control.

So try these formulas for transforming your distressings into blessings.

• Consume as much positive input as possible. If you're like me, you thrive on the inspiration and enthusiasm of others.

Nourish yourself not only on those around us, but those who have the keys to the kingdom. What kingdom? The realm of the Inspired. It's where kings of higher consciousness spend their time. The subconscious mind naturally defaults to "What's wrong?" instead of "What's right?" So exposing your intake systems (eyes, ears, touch, taste, and smell) to overwhelmingly positive input literally floods the mind with positivity and leaves no room for worry. And since the subconscious only knows what you tell it, it starts acting in a       positive fashion.

• Who should you check out? Anyone with a positive message. They're all around and most of the best of them are online and free.                         Dr. Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, T. Harv Eker, Dr. Wayne Dyer,  Les Brown, Steve Harvey, Oprah, Dr. Barbara DeAngelis, and of course    Ellen DeGeneres are popular purveyors of positivity. Ellen's brand is a constant torrent of humor and feel good stories.

"But Mike, not everyone can have a positive outlook, especially all     the time?"

Hogwash! In fact, in this life, your attitude and your level of optimism is perhaps one of the singular factors over which you do have total control. A lot of bad things can happen, but if you frame your life through a filter of "Yes" things get better. It's just the way things work. Ask Nelson Mandela who spent decades in a prison cell only to rise to Prime Minister of the country that imprisoned him.

There are millions of suggestions I can rattle off that can pump you up no matter what your circumstance. People like Tony Robbins, Tyrese Gibson, Dan Pena, and      Garrett J. White are gurus that pump me up. Nearly all these experts' works are easily accessible and in your public library.

• Like Napoleon Hill taught us throughout his life, surround yourself with positive like minded people and you too will be successful like them.

What more is there to say. If a salmon swims up stream against all other salmon swimming downstream eventually, the salmon will be turned in the wrong direction. So get people of influence and vision around you as soon as possible and go with them, or get them to join your journey.

• Create a Vision Board. It's a visual representation of where you want your life to go. If you want cars, houses, jobs, travel, toys, family, friends, health, community, ease, enlightenment, creativity, divinity, or even serenity, put pictures of these things on a board and position it in a way that your eyes will see it and your subconscious mind will find ways to act on achieving it.
• Move your body. Being sedentary for extended periods is an absolute sabotage for your inspired state of being. Raucous, agitated, hysterical aerobic exercise is not necessary. What is required though is moving.

Tony Robbins reminds us that "Motion is emotion, and emotion is motion" Move your body, if even from one place to another. Change your posture, or change your physiology. Move the fluids. Get the blood pumping. Get breath pumping through your lungs. One day you won't be able to do so, so do it now while you're still able.

• Stop listening to what others think and say. When I've interviewed top achievers in almost any field of specialization, almost everyone has said they persevered despite being told they were crazy.

The fact is that what others think about you is none of your business and your mission and responsibility is to be the most outstanding version of you that you can manifest. Yes, even in times of extreme stress. Anything that detracts from your stated ambition is merely fluff and not relevant. Listen to your inner voice that guides you to higher levels of excellence. Surely it will never let you down.

• Track your successes and not your failures. Even the smallest of victories must be celebrated and celebrated like returning heroes from war.           

T. Harv Eker, Author of Secrets of The Millionaire Mind tells us that even finding a single penny on the ground must be elevated to an event of great abundance. If you cannot be grateful for the small things, the Universe won't give you the big ones.

• TV talk show host and personality Steve Harvey extols the virtue of Gratitude. Without gratitude, good and great things cannot grow. Without gratitude the soil in which good and great things grow turns hard, dense, and unable to support living, abundant gifts.

The online greeting card and gifting company SendOutCards.com is predicated on the value of gratitude and the importance of saying thank you, you're important, and I love you. They make it easy and cheap to send a heartfelt greeting card, upload a photo, and even attach a gift from your mobile device or computer. And everyone likes getting a loving greeting card.

Get in the daily, if not hourly habit of saying "Y-E-S" Yes gives life and room to grow. Yes allows for possibility to happen. Yes creates miracles and opens new doors.

Unfortunately all too often we say no, even for no good reason. Saying no without reason is simply a learned behavior pattern. But what's it get us?

In my earlier career as a TV Writer, hearing "NO" on a fairly constant basis was at times debilitating to my psyche. However, when I started training myself to say and to listen for yes, literally everything changed. And almost immediately!

Saying yes is perhaps one of the most powerful and transformative words in any language on earth.  Try adding it more often and see how profoundly your world improves.

• Persevere. You may be smarter, stronger, taller, richer, more connected, more talented, or even more right than me, but you will never out last me. I will persevere and win, if only because I absolutely refuse under any circumstances to give up.

Even in the face of total annihilation and blundering loss, I will never quit. I will never give up. I will persevere. It is this quality, if no other that gets me, you, or anyone through tough times.

The alligator as a species survives because it perseveres through the harshest of conditions. Love it or hate it, the cockroach has transverse eons of evolution and change. Not because it's smart, not because it's creative, or even because it's lucky. It lasts because it perseveres.

• In summation, there are a zillion ways you can create better feelings and a more robust abundance in your life to conquer during setbacks and stresses. These were just a few. As you implement them your results will beckon even more techniques and strategies for optimistic outlooks.

Michael J. Herman is an expert on the topics of Inspiration, mental toughness, and overcoming insurmountable obstacles. His forthcoming book is How To Succeed in College with A Disability; The No BS Roadmap to Your Diploma due out May 5, 2020. Contact Michael J. Herman for review galleys and interviews, or just for a good word.

Michael J. Herman, Speaker-Writer-Author-Entrepreneur

(818) -894-4610  |  Cell: (818) 441-9288

mike@michaeljherman.com

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http://www.newsreleasewire.com/229050

Coronavirus Crisis an Ideal Time To Leverage an Underutilized Technology

Idea Management Systems: A Solution for Effective Innovation Remote Work

What if this Coronavirus crisis could be turned into a positive for your innovation program?

Who said "never let a good crisis go to waste?"

With innovation there definitely is an obvious opportunity at hand right now.

An Idea to Help You Maintain Momentum

Do a virtual idea campaign while your people are away from the office.

It is entirely possible to have the best idea generation session you've ever had, and done virtually.

A well-executed, carefully facilitated, virtual session, using a modern Idea Management System (IMS) could drive innovation projects for the next year or more.

Wouldn't this be the perfect time to generate ideas for digital integration? Or supply chain improvements? Or new services?

People are good at generating ideas alone, it's time to take advantage.

Feature rich and easy to use, virtual systems for idea generation are ready and waiting for this opportunity. The technology is well developed, having been tested, available, and perfected for over 15 years.

IMS products are installed at many big companies, although they tend to be underutilized. Smaller companies are less aware of the technology. It has always struck me as a missed opportunity that more organizations don't make greater use of them. It could be because they are easy to mis-use (see Keys below).

If you haven't used one before, this is an ideal time to begin.

There are several vendors that provide inexpensive, short-term, user-based, rentals. Make sure to get one that works on mobile phones and i-Pads. No install, they're cloud-based.

Do not do a virtual "suggestion box" campaign. That would be a waste of time. It needs to be more focused on problem solving for a specific challenge. What follows are four keys to success.

Four Keys to A Successful Virtual Idea Generation Session:

Focus: Have a highly focused challenge question ("How Might We…integrate IOT? How might we… reinvent our service offerings?"). This focused question is the most essential key. You want ideas for very specific challenges, otherwise it can devolve into an online gripe session.

Research & Context First: Provide background information and research to participants before getting started. Or, assign research before starting the idea sprint.

Actively Facilitate: Make sure the virtual session is actively facilitated on a day to day basis (or you'll not get maximum participation). Make it fun, keep providing guidance and stimuli for thinking. Get Management to show support for the effort.

Get Help: If you don't have the skill to manage this in-house, hire someone who has done it before. They are easy to use, but, they require set-up and that takes training. Contact GFi!

Case study

A client of GFi, an independent concert production company, did a highly successful virtual idea generation. Because of a shift in their industry, they were looking for new revenue ideas. Most of their staff works in remote cities, away from their headquarters. Flying them all in was impractical.

GFI worked with the client lead to define a focused challenge question. Then we communicated with the remote team of about 40 people via a conference call, and kicked off a two-week virtual ideation. By the way, the group could be much larger than 40, IBM has done sessions like this with thousands of people involved. We used a prominent software vendor in the Idea Management space. The session started with distributing some fresh research around their challenge that the client lead had developed.

Day to day, the client lead and GFI reviewed the ideas and further focusing and encouraging the team. We had fun with it, providing incentives and prizes, and attainable-but-stretchy goals. As ideas emerged people really got excited and the ideas got better and better.

Two weeks later we had 400 quality ideas in the IMS database. We also had a sense of what the team had energy for, as we used commenting, voting, and ranking features of the software. We organized a live convergence session at HQ and we selected a subset of ideas for further development. This was done with a small group and the ideas improved as they were discussed and developed into more fleshed-out solutions.

The best five idea/solutions were pitched to management and one was selected to take to market. One was scheduled for the next year.

The end result, six months later, was a highly profitable craft beer festival, incorporating local musicians. It was a smashing success. This became a yearly event, and, they replicated the festival idea across several regions. It's now one of their key revenue streams.

There has never been a better time to start using Idea Management Systems.