Monthly Archives: January 2012

January 30, 2012 · 5:14 pm

Is the Emergence of Benefit Corporations A Vestige of Old World Thinking?

Key Concept ~ The ability of companies to incorporate as  Benefit Corporations is spreading throughout the states.  On the surface it sounds noble enough, but, like most legislative moves, it’s bound to have unforeseen consequences.  The fact is, for benefit and for profit can coexist today, and be exercised as a significant advantage in the marketplace.  But that requires shift in consciousness, not the introduction of a new legal entity status.

I’m finally catching up on a bit of reading coming off a very busy week.  I read an article this morning by Angus Loton called “With New Law, Profits Take A Back Seat” on the Wall Street Journal’s Small Business site.  It explored the accelerating emergence of states (up to seven now, with New York and California coming aboard in the coming months) enabling companies to incorporate as For Benefit Corporations.  These will still be taxable organizations, as opposed to the current 501(c)(3) structure for nonprofits.  The key difference in the new entity structure is to allow directors to consider social or environmental objectives ahead of profits. It does so by shielding the members of the board of directors from shareholder litigation.

Obviously the need for a new approach to business as usual is long overdue, but is this the answer?  Whenever I encounter someone or something new, I always check in to how I feel about it as much as what I think about it.  For me, this immediately didn’t feel quite right.  The fact of the matter is, this reflects a perspective that being a good social citizen, caring for the environment, and being profitable are somehow at odds with one another, like throwing matter and anti-matter together to a destructive end.  In my book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Breakthrough Business Success” I proposed a new approach to business that can accelerate profits while being of service to one’s associates, community, customers and the environment.  This wasn’t an academic exercise.  It is evidence-based, and the concepts and approach I propose have a strong correlation and justification from the emerging research from applied behavioral economics, emotional intelligence, the neurosciences, and performance psychology.

I cannot help but think that once again, we, as Westerners, are looking out there for a quick fix, when the keys to authentic change are much closer to home…they lie within.  What’s required is a shift in consciousness, not a shift in legal entity status.  Once again I fear we are treating the symptoms instead of the cause.  And any time we legislate less accountability in corporate governance, by not allowing shareholders to bring suit against directors, I get nervous.  I can’t help but feel that somewhere in lower Manhattan there’s a group of very clever characters already figuring out a way to manipulate this to their advantage.  Having worked in the investor-driven startup community for more than a decade, I also envision very real challenges in securing equity financing for these types of companies.  I’m sorry but, investors are investors…they get in to get out with capital gains in hand.  It is a high-risk, high-reward game.  While some mindful Angel Investors may support this, I’m hard-pressed to see how this will drive substantive change in our business culture.

Wouldn’t we be better served to take an entirely new approach to how we go about doing business?  It is possible to do good and do well.  Companies that embrace a more mindful perspective, within the standard legal entity statuses that already exist, will attract and retain the brightest, most creative talent.  They will discover less hierarchical business structures capable of accelerating the flow of intellectual property into commercially viable products and services to emerge.  Through mindful business practice, from a position of higher consciousness, we can out-compete the old world business paradigm.  When enough companies do so, we’ll reach an inflection point and the vestiges of management from the Industrial Age will fade into the annals of history.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

1 Comment

Filed under Random Thoughts

January 26, 2012 · 7:50 pm

Still Swimming Against the Currents of Change?

Key Concept ~ Salmon will fight to swim against the most ferocious of currents to fulfill their life’s purpose.  In doing so, they inevitably exhaust their entire energy and die.  Sometimes we can feel like we’re swimming upstream against a torrent of unprecedented change.  For most of human history, change unfolded at a relatively modest pace.  Brief periods of upheaval, usually caused by our doing, were followed by languid periods of stability.  The Industrial Revolution catapulted us out of this historical pattern, but the pace of change over the past 150 years pales in comparison to what we’re experiencing today.  Here are some thoughts as to how we can turn the tables on our tumultuous times and create an abundant, rewarding life for ourselves.

Human beings evolved slowly over tens of thousands of years.  Research into our mitochondrial DNA actually points to roots that may go back some two million years.  Mother nature is a brilliant architect.  Where balance and successful life systems emerge, she builds upon them.  When systems fail to adapt to changing conditions, they fall by the wayside.  Our brains evolved in a wondrous sequence of survival.  Survival that enabled us the time for our brains to evolve to the complex mechanisms they are today.  Just ask the Neanderthals how much more adaptive we were than they…well, I guess that question must remain hypothetical.

The modern human brain evolved in four distinct phases, each building upon the success of the previous evolutionary structure.  It began with what many researchers call our reptilian brain.  The part of our brain that quietly controls the billions, if not trillions of microscopic interactions that keep us alive every day.  It is what allows our basic, biological functions to occur beneath our threshold of consciousness.  Occasionally, someone might have to “remind us to breathe”, but we don’t have to think about pumping our heart, filtering our blood, or fighting off minor infections.  This part of our brain can only process what is happening in the present moment.

Upon this scaffolding came our old mammalian brain, the limbic system.  This introduced our ability to experience emotions and cognition.  We began to think, and we now could learn, on a limited level, from our experiences.  This part of our brain also functions in the present, but now could remember the past.  Survival lessons often anchored to an emotional response of some sort of external stimuli.  Next came what is called our new mammalian brain.  With this advancement came verbal capabilities, and the emergence of our intellect.  We could now embrace the concepts of past, present, and future.  This part of our brain takes up five times more space in our cranium that the older two sections combined.

And this is the part of our brain that has gotten us into trouble.  With the concept of future comes the ease in which anxiety can enter our lives.  I love Temple Grandin’s comment about the difference between fear and anxiety.  To paraphrase her, fear is what occurs when we’re walking through the desert and step on a snake.  Anxiety emerges when we’re walking through the desert thinking about the possibility of stepping on a snake.*  Present versus future.  The other problem the new mammalian brain has introduced is our ability to create a technologically advanced society that has removed us from our natural setting, continuously thrusts us into volatile, highly complex environments, and has outpaced our emotional and psychological evolution.  Nothing over the millenia of human history and experience has prepared us for the world we live in today.

Thankfully, the most recent part of our brain to develop holds the key; the prefrontal cortex.  Right behind our foreheads lies an executive center.  It is the intersection of our entire neural network.  This is where, as Dr. Daniel Goleman’s brilliant research into Emotional Intelligence shows us, we can develop a higher level of consciousness that can orchestrate balance, mindful behavior, and compassion.  For our selves as well as for those around us.  Recent discoveries from the neurosciences demonstrates we have plasticity in our brain.  We can create entirely new neural networks that, by quite literally changing our thinking, we can change our being.  Research also shows us that 80% of our success in life can be attributed to how well we develop our prefrontal cortex through mindful practice.  The other 20% is rooted in our cognitive and intellectual abilities.

These skills can be learned throughout our lifetimes.  This learning can be accomplished through meditation, yogic practice, or other self-reflective activities.  Our firm happens to teach how to cultivate these abilities through experiential learning with horses by employing The Epona Approach™.  In fact, we have an upcoming open enrollment workshop called Transition as Transformation (you’re welcome to click on the link to learn more about it).

The specially designed, ground-based exercises with the horses help illuminate a path towards higher consciousness.  Horses act as emotional mirrors for humans, without judgement, opening a door to an infinite space of reflective learning.  From this place we can release the anxiety of tumultuous change, alleviate the pressures of modern life, and help each of us rediscover our authentic self.  In doing so, we resonate differently with others, be they business partners, customers, prospects, family members, or friends.  The horses demonstrate and model how we can be highly aware (they are prey animals, always on the alert for predators), yet at peace with ourselves and our hectic, noisy, often exhausting world.  As we like to say in our workshops, the horses can teach us how to return to grazing!

*From “Animals Make Us Human”, Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Orlando, FL, 2009.

Special thanks and acknowledgement for some of the concepts shared within this blog goes to Joseph Chilton Pearce from his book, “The Biology of Transcendence ~ A Blueprint of the Human Spirit”, Park Street Press, Rochester, VT, 2002.  You can find all of Dr. Daniel Goleman’s books on Emotional Intelligence on Amazon and most bookstores.  You can also watch his fascinating presentation at Google University thanks to YouTube. 

© 2012, Terry Murray.

1 Comment

Filed under Customer Engagement, Leadership, Random Thoughts

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

January 24, 2012 · 7:27 pm

There’s No Secret About it ~ There’s a Conscious Path for Success!

Key concept ~ I was participating on a LinkedIn discussion thread from the Leadership Think Tank group and a gentleman posted a pitch for his program for success using the Law of Attraction and “The Secret”.  Well, you can imagine how lively this discussion became!  Now, I’m a big believer in the role the human spirit plays in business success, but books and programs like this always feel a bit predatory to me, offer no real value (spiritually or otherwise) and take advantage of emotionally and financially vulnerable people.  We’ve invested more than three years canvasing the research from the neurosciences, Emotional Intelligence, Applied Behavioral Economics, consciousness studies, quantum physics and performance psychology to unearth what’s truly at play, just below the surface, that explains much about human behavior and relationships.  During the discussion, one woman confessed she’d been trying to follow this supposed secret, was still failing and asked for advice.  Here’s what I had to offer:

1.) Examine your vision within the context of your intention. What does your vision look like? Now what does your intention feel like? Are they in alignment? If they are, if your vision of where you want to go and want you want to do aligns with a positive intention of being of service to others, and resonates within you, it will resonate with others as well. Either way, other people will feel your intention.  Applied Behavioral Economics demonstrates 70% of economic decision making is emotionally-driven, with the remaining 30% based in rational thought.  How people feel about you is highly influenced by how you approach and engage them, which reflects your intention.

2.) Conduct a Self-Assessment from a position of elevated Self Awareness. This is the first step in cultivating Emotional Intelligence (self awareness helps build self management skills). Examine your strengths, weaknesses, and core competencies…your unique gifts and talents you were born to share with the world. This will help bring clarity of purposefulness and identify areas for personal and/or professional development.  Entrepreneur…know thyself!

3.) Conduct a Market Assessment (or needs assessment in the case of a nonprofit or personal life plan) by first following your intuition. Allow yourself the freedom to openly explore your possibilities and opportunities using lateral thinking as opposed to vertical thinking.  Creativity, by way of intuitive insight (that aha! moment) is non-linear in its very nature.  Linear thinking disengages us from the way our brain draws correlations between data, our experiences, and the environment.  At this stage, if we’re too attached to a projected outcome we might walk right past the greater opportunity without ever seeing it!

Allowing yourself to wander freely will engaged your higher functioning brain as well as the neural network of your heart (the heart has more than 5 million neurons just like the ones in your brain, and science is showing us they’re just as active). This will also engage your enteric nervous system, the neural network of the gut. Our enteric neural network has more neurons than our entire spinal column. These embodied neural networks connect to our basil ganglia through the vagus nerve. When we reconnect with our embodied intelligence centers we can begin to do, what Christian de Quincy says, “Feel our thinking”*. You see, the basal ganglia is an ancient part of our brain. Because it evolved so early, it has no direct neural pathways to our linguistic center. It speaks to us through feelings…through emotions (remember the Self-Assessment from a place of higher Self Awareness?  This is where it comes into play as well).

Now, validate your intuitive discoveries through concrete market research of the actual conditions that exist (or in the case of conducting a life plan, review your constraints). Are your intuitive assumptions validated by real world conditions?  Unleashing your intuitive abilities will bring you places you might not have thought of cognitively.  It can also reveal insights you may not have seen before (note the word “in-sights”).  Look inward before looking outward!

4.) From this higher place of awareness, state your Vision and Mission. Examine how you and others think and  feel about these statements. This will help you build competencies in social awareness and relationship management, the next steps in cultivating Emotional Intelligence. Ask yourself, does what I’m trying to accomplish resonate on a cognitive and emotional level with others? This is a fundamental principle from Applied Behavioral Economics. If you cultivate positive emotions in others you create engagement and build rapport. These are the first steps in developing authentic relationship.  When properly communicated through aligned language and congruent action, this will accelerate your journey towards success!

5.) Articulate your Goals, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics.  Now is the time to set your Goals (3-5 year visionary statements), Objectives (tangible achievements that you can measure this coming year), Strategies (the methods you will employ to achieve your Objectives), and Tactics (the daily steps you must take to implement your Strategies). This is a form of creative visualization that will help cultivate presence…focusing your energies and activities in the now, the only place we actually physically exist and can take action. While your Goals are over the horizon, each successive planning step pulls you and the manifestation of your vision closer to the present, where you can take little steps every day that contribute to a cumulative effect.  When this emerges within aligned teams, it is accretive, meaning the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  That builds momentum!

If you do this, with positive intention, I think you will see some remarkable progress in achieving your dreams. This is the essence of my book, which goes into much greater detail, includes planning exercises, and provides examples of where I’ve seen this done to create remarkable success. Success on your own, heart-centered terms.

Test drive it on a small item first, to see if it works for you. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Best of luck!

* From the book, “Radical Knowing – Understanding Consciousness Through Relationship”, Christian de Quincy, Park Street Press, Rochester, VT, 2005.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Customer Engagement, Leadership, Productivity, Strategic Planning

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

January 21, 2012 · 6:53 pm

Self-Awareness and Congruency ~ Fundamental Keys to Creating Value through Authentic Relationships

Key Concept ~ We all have blind spots.  Parts of our personalities that hide in the shadows of our subconscious mind.  But they are often revealed to others unknowingly.  When we’re unaware of this, we come across as incongruent.  Cultivating self-awareness can help us avoid this crucial misstep and is the key to cultivating authentic relationships with clients, prospects, partners, and the community.

Regardless of all the hoopla over the power of social media for small businesses, success still requires relationships to emerge.  Social media might connect us with new prospects, open the door for new partnerships, and get the word out, but it cannot engage and motive others to enter into meaningful, lasting, and valuable relationships.  That still requires human-to-human interaction on an authentic level.  In order to be authentic, we must also be congruent.  In order to be congruent, we must elevate our self-awareness.

It is a basic competency of Emotional Intelligence.  Self-awareness leads to self management.  Social awareness helps us build relationship skills.  As we cultivate these competencies, Self Mastery emerges.  While it takes some practice, you’d be amazed at the positive affect it has on our personal and business success.  The process is instantly sparked by becoming aware of the concept.  Yet this is only the first step.  Cultivating honest, self-awareness can be a bit uncomfortable at first.  We must take a hard, cold look into the mirror.  While we might not like the blemishes we see, we cannot address our shortcomings and grow as an authentic human being until we walk this path of self-assessment.

Failing to do so can leave us vulnerable to being perceived as incongruent and untrustworthy.  Taken to the extreme, we can end up coming across like this:

© 2012, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, Comedy Central.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Random Thoughts

January 19, 2012 · 3:00 am

Interview with Larry Whitler and Robin MacBlane on the AM Ocala Show

Key Concept ~ I was invited back to speak with Larry Whitler and Robin MacBlane on the radio program AM Ocala earlier this week.  Here’s a podcast of the interview.  

Larry and Robin are remarkably conscious and generous hosts.  They’ve been great advocates of my book and my philosophy towards creating a mindful approach for entrepreneurial success in the 21st century.

We explored the critical drivers of entrepreneurial success including:

~ Leading with positive intention.

~ Leading from a perspective of being of service; to your clients, prospects, and community.

~ The resonate value of embracing a mindful strategic planning process.

~ Value-based pricing strategies.

~ How one’s perspective towards their value proposition can redefine their entire market.

~  The critical nature of emotional and cognitive engagement in driving entrepreneurial success.

~ How we can define success on our own terms.

~ How the human spirit is the source of courage and resiliency with successful entrepreneurs.

~ The interplay between entrepreneurs and investors.

~ How we can all succeed in launching our own business…regardless of our age.

It’s a lively and fun discussion and I hope you’ll find some value in listening in!

You can listen to to interview by clicking the play button below:

© 2012, WOCA-AM Ocala.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Associate Engagement, Customer Engagement, Leadership, Marketing, Media & Interviews, Sales, Strategic Planning

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 17, 2012 · 4:54 pm

Transition as Transformation

Key Concept ~ Our lives are often marked by key transitions, periods of time when both things around us and within us begin to shift.  By understanding that growth requires a certain amount of space to take root, we can fully engage in these transitional phases of our lives and transform ourselves in ways we may not have thought possible!

A wise man said to me not too long ago that life is a continuous flow of transitions marked by brief periods of stability. Providing us with just enough time to prepare us for our next transitional journey.  His words have been ringing around my head (and my heart) for some time now. I can’t help but feel optimistic when I reflect on his wisdom.  What a fantastic, empowering perspective!  I came to realize that by embracing this viewpoint life’s little fears evaporate.  Fear of change, fear of loss, fear of displacement.  Like a river, we exist, yet the waters that flow are continuously changing.  We can stand on the banks of the Mississippi River view it as a fixed feature of the landscape, yet every molecule of water that is flowing by us is always on the move, immediately replaced by the next molecule coming along behind it.  The river is ever-present and eternal, yet in a continuous state of change.  In many ways, so are we.

Motivated by this perspective, I set about to create a workshop that would hold the space for people to experience this concept firsthand.  Not simply to hear about it, but to feel that continuous flow of wondrous possibilities that are forever refreshing us from within.  As many of you know, a core part of our business centers around creating and conducting Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning workshops.  Workshops conducted in mindful partnership with horses.  It is a powerful, reflective approach to personal and professional development I learned during my apprenticeship at The Epona Center studying under one of the true pioneers of the approach, Linda Kohanov.  We’ve gone on to create more than ten different programs, ranging from our pro bono, award-winning Warriors in Transition workshop to programs designed to cultivated leadership competencies, enhance team work, and support the emotional resiliency of nurses during these trying times.  We’re very pleased to announce our new, open enrollment workshop, Transition as Transformation!

The workshop is scheduled for February 25th and 26th and will be conducted in partnership with Barrett Farm in Orlando, Florida.  Barrett Farm is a world-class equestrian learning center located on forty-five idyllic acres of live oaks, whispering with Spanish Moss, swaying palms, and quiet nature trails.  A perfect place to take a break from the technological noise and pause, reflect, and reintroduce ourselves to the inner waters that continuously flow within us.

To learn more about the workshop, we’d like to invite you to visit http://transitionastransformation.com.  Please know, we limit attendance due to the high level of experiential learning each participant will encounter with the horses.  We look forward to meeting you in Orlando!

© 2012, Terry Murray.

1 Comment

Filed under Random Thoughts

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

January 16, 2012 · 3:56 pm

How Engagement and Detachment Combine to Create Breakthrough Success

Key Concept ~ On the surface it may sound like an oxymoron, but these two behaviors walk hand-in-hand along every successful journey.  

I frequently speak and write about the critical nature of engagement.  Of our associates as well as our prospects and customers.  Of cognitive and emotional engagement and the lessons we can take into our businesses from the field of Applied Behavioral Economics to accelerate our success.  Nothing is perhaps more important, yet to be truly successful (on your own terms) one must also practice detachment.

I learned the first part of this lesson during the early years of my career.  My formative, professional years coincided with the formative years of the biotechnology industry.  My territory was Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I split my days calling on the laboratories at Harvard, M.I.T., and the tiny startup biotech companies that these two institutions began spinning off.  I quickly realized that behaving like a typical salesman would quickly pave a roadway to failure.  You simply don’t play manipulative sales games with Nobel laureates.  Instead, I decided to become a differentiated resource.  Working for a small distributor, we often brought new research technologies to market first.  The big distributors, who still actually placed stocking orders with manufacturers back in those days, would wait to see what products gained traction through small independents before picking up a line.

In order to engage these brilliant scientists, I dedicated myself to being of service.  First, I took the time to learn their language.  I bought and studied introductory textbooks from the M.I.T. bookstore on everything from molecular biology to immunology.  I wasn’t looking for answers in these books, but learning how to ask intelligent questions about their research.  In doing so, I unwittingly engaged my prospects on both a cognitive (which was my intent) and emotional level (which some 25 years later would be proven as a critical driver for success through the research of people like Dr. Dan Ariely, now teaching and conducting research at Duke).  These researchers were passionate about their endeavors; seeking a cure for cancer, trying to unravel the mystery of HIV and AIDS, or attempting to decode the sequence of DNA.  By taking the time to ask an intelligent question, they would light up and walk me about their lab, discussing their recent discoveries and challenges.  With these insights in hand, I could then bring the rapidly emerging, innovative research tools to their attention, doing my small part in contributing to their success.  I didn’t attempt to be a peer, but I had succeeded in becoming a resource.

The lesson of detachment was also shown to me at the time, but I couldn’t see it.  Like every sales representative, I was too focused on hitting my numbers.  What was so fascinating in those early days of research on the molecular level was many new research tools were used in ways the manufacturers never could have contemplated or forecasted.  These researchers were innovators and tinkerers, there simply wasn’t any dogma to cling to yet, so they tried everything.  Products targeted for one use would find traction in an entirely different application.  Back then, there was no way to anticipate the outcomes because almost every new technology was a disruptive technology.

Now I have a much better understanding of how these two concepts, applied through out behaviors, go hand-in-hand.  In order to engage others, you must first engage with your authentic self.  I did so by diving into the research driven by my own curiosity and a sense of purposefulness.  In my own, tiny way, I was contributing to the good fight of discovering cures for horrible diseases that plagued our society.  The researchers sensed my dedication to their endeavors and, unlike many of my competitors at the time, I never walked into their laboratory with commission breath*.  Authentic engagement keeps us present, in the moment, focused on active listening, enabling us to respond appropriately in the only time we can…now.  We cannot change what we did yesterday, and we cannot do anything about tomorrow until it arrives.

That’s the lesson.  Stay engaged in the moment, with your prospects and customers while detaching yourself from the eventual outcomes.  If we focus too much on fixed expectations we’re bound to miss even greater opportunities that will unfold before us.  The author Don Miguel Ruiz points to this in his book, “The Four Agreements” when he suggests we shouldn’t take anything personally.  When people reject you (I’m assuming you’re acting ethically and honestly) it isn’t necessarily about you.  It is about them…their projections, perceptions, social conditioning, and individual mindset is always at play, often unconsciously.  Don’t take it personally because there’s nothing we can do about it and we cannot fix anyone other than ourselves.

Today, I am authentically engaged with my message and my mission of helping my clients succeed in the ever changing business climate of the 21st century.  At the same time, I recognize that my message will not resonate with everybody.  I must practice detachment and trust that, through my daily practice of authentic engagement, my value proposition will gain traction with prospects capable of embracing what we offer in the marketplace.  This isn’t to say we don’t conduct strategic planning, targeting, and such; we do.  It sets us upon our trajectory, focuses our resources, and accelerates our mission.  But it isn’t carved in stone, either.  We’re open to adjust, calibrate, and respond to new opportunities along our journey.  By having structure, we enable flexibility.  We know where we are at any given moment and have a clear orientation and understanding of the direction in which we are moving.  Without this foundation, flexibility becomes floundering.

Try this out for yourself on a small initiative and see where it takes you.  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

*The term commission breath is attributed to Jamie Kane, President of Sandler Training® of Sarasota, FL.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

1 Comment

Filed under Associate Engagement, Customer Engagement, Leadership, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

January 10, 2012 · 6:24 pm

Why “Googling” Yourself isn’t Narcissistic, It Can Help Protect You from Fraudulent Plagiarist and Copyright Infringement

Key Concept ~ Staying atop where your articles, blog entries, and online content flows throughout the internet is something you may want to consider doing on a regular basis.  If you write long enough, this practice will inevitably lead you to plagiarist…and not the academic kind, but criminals looking to steal identities, financial information, and commit fraud.

One of the best ways for an aspiring entrepreneur to market themselves is through article writing, blogging, and leverage social media as part of their overall marketing strategy.  We also employ a PR firm, conduct radio and print interviews, and guest blog for select companies and sites.  Every once and a while, I will run a variety of searches on the various engines, playing around with different key words to see what comes up.  Working for more than a decade as an Executive Strategist for investor-driven startups, I learned that I could often find cogent, current research, often conducted by federal government agencies (i.e. the Dept. of Commerce) deep into a search.  Not six or seven pages in, where most casual searchers rarely tread, but twenty-five to forty pages into the search.  I could often find fantastic, public data that research companies would have charged thousands of dollars for if I had not been so tenacious.  It was worth the time.

With this propensity in mind, from time to time, I will do the same thing, dig deep, to see where my registered, copyrighted materials wind up.  You’d be amazed at how consistent content creation and electronic publication can metastasize around the world!  Which is the point, right?  But only if you are cited as the originating author and a link is provided back to your site.  Last night was one of those nights when I wandered into the search engine forest.

“And what to by amazing eyes did appear”* but my registered, copyrighted articles appearing on dubious websites.  Websites that have comment boxes that are always awaiting mediation before publishing, or no comment area at all.  These sites also had no way to contact the originator, webmaster, or company.  And each one claimed direct credit for the post.  Here’s the really dangerous part, they were business credit related websites, and one can’t help but assume they’re phishing for personal, financial information in order to commit fraud.  As an accomplished business writer and published author, my content gives their sites a feeling of knowledge and credibility as a veil for fraud.

What I’ve learned through all this is there are two laws that may apply, and it can be a bit confusing.

One blatant thief has a site called Swannwebsite “DOT” info (I won’t give them the satisfaction of providing a live link).  At the bottom of this litany of stolen content (without proper citations for every article posted, including my own) is the phrase, “Proudly Hosted By WordPress”.  Not sure if that’s true, but I’ve reported it to WordPress to find out.  Because my content was unadulterated or altered, it is allowed under the Fair Use Doctrine of the DMCA of 1998.  I’ve been told this law is open to interpretation, which enables these scoundrels to steal our work and post it as their own.  By the way, the “person” claiming authorship is listed as “keshav12″.  Apparently Google is aware of them, and I highly doubt they are hosted by WordPress either.  This fraudulent site has over 1,000 pages of indexed content with no back links.  Pathetic.

The other example I came across was not considered actual plagiarism because they had rewritten portions of it, and poorly, attributing it to me, and thus risking my reputation and eroding my competitive differentiation in the marketplace.  This is blatant copyright infringement.  This site is called business-credit DOT com, and they are hosted by a highly dubious company called 1&1 Internet.  I tried to call them, and you get a message and can’t leave a message.  That’s a major red flag.  Upon a little more investigation, I found that the company is located in Chesterbrook, PA and actually tries to pass off a stock photo of their headquarters on their site as well as a stock photo of the supposed owner.  How can I tell?  I really doubt the beautiful glass edifice surrounded by palm trees is actually in Pennsylvania!

What can you do to protect your intellectual property?  First, whenever you publish anything on the web, be sure to register the trademark using the symbol “©” followed by the year and your name.  You can also add, “All Rights Reserved”, but that can diminish legitimate sharing that gives credit where credit is due.  If you do find your material plagiarized, contact the following organizations:

Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. ~ The search engine companies are exceptionally responsive to intellectual property violations and will follow up and remove these sites from there search protocols.

Contact one of the watch-dog groups, such as Report Plagiarism Now.  They’re outstanding, truly care, and will act immediately on your behalf.  Great people!

You can also contact the U.S. Patent Office and, if you can track down an address, the appropriate state’s Attorney General’s Office.

I hope this might help you protect yourselves and your property from outright theft.

* Excerpt quoted from “Twas The Night Before Christmas”, Clement Clarke Moore, Sentinel, Troy, NY, December 23, 1823.  I include this as an example of an appropriate citation that is not plagiaristic.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

3 Comments

Filed under Brand Management, Random Thoughts

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

January 8, 2012 · 6:47 pm

Why eLearning and CBT are a Waste of Time and Money for Small Businesses

Key Concept ~ Developing the professional skills and adaptive capabilities of your associates is mission critical in today’s hyper-competitive markets.  The expense of traditional and innovative learning solutions is driving the emergence of elearning and Computer-Based Training as a seemingly cost-effective alternative.  Yet this is proving to be a false perception.  A body of research is emerging that demonstrates traditional, passive learning methodologies are highly ineffective.  Changing the delivery mechanism from a traditional classroom setting to computer based training may save money, but it still isn’t money well spent.

I came across a fascinating report by Emily Hanford earlier this week that reveals some startling findings regarding traditional educational methodologies.  Some twenty years ago, a professor at Arizona State University, Dr. David Hestenes, published a series of articles revealing that his first year physics students’ test scores were endemically stuck at an average of 40%, semester after semester.  When Professor Eric Mazur, a physicist at Harvard came across these articles, he saw a correlation to his own students.  It wasn’t his teaching style that was lacking, as he consistently scored very high in student feedback.  It was the traditional approach to learning, the classical classroom lecture, that was falling short.  What he realized was while his students may be memorizing formulas, they were not creating the active neural networks necessary to apply the concepts in the real world.

Fellow physicist Joe Reddish at the University of Maryland noticed the same low ability to apply the lectured information conceptually.  In Ms. Hanford’s article, Reddish pointed to a basic test question regarding Newtonian Physics that was consistently on his exams:

“Two balls are the same size but one weighs twice as much as the other. The balls are dropped from the top of a two-story building at the same instant of time. The time it takes the ball to reach the ground will be…”

a.) about half as long for the heavier ball

b.) about half as long for the lighter ball

c.) the same amount of time for both

Rather than simply tell them the answer, he took them out for a bit of experiential learning.  Going to the second story of the physics building, he dropped two balls of identical size, but with different weights, with his students watching from ground level.  The students observed that both balls hit the ground at the same time.  Why?  This phenomena is explained by Newton’s Second Law of Motion and his discovery of terminal velocity (due to the interplay of air resistance and gravity, objects in free fall on Earth accelerate to a constant rate of descent of 128 feet per second squared).  Take away the force of air friction, by placing the same two balls in a vacuum, and the one of greater mass will reach the ground first.

Now, nearly every physics student is familiar with Newton’s Second Law of Motion.  It is taught in High School.  In the article, Professor Mazur observes the test results of physics students at the end of a semester demonstrates their conceptual application and understanding of these fundamental concepts only improves by an average of 14%.  This has now been demonstrated through the testing of tens of thousands of students for conceptual application.

Hestenes also observed that the traditional classroom lecture approach is effective for about 10% of students; those that are capable of independent learning.  He is quoted as saying, “Students have to be active in developing their knowledge.  They can’t passively assimilate it.”

If you’re familiar with the research of Dr. David Kolb on adult learning styles, this comes as no surprise.  While conducting research at M.I.T., Dr. Kolb discovered and demonstrated the Learning Style Inventory. Adults learn using two or three of four fundamental learning modalities: Experiential Learning, Reflective Learning, Modeling & Correlation, and Trial & Error.  It’s not an accident that passive assimilation isn’t included in his work…because it doesn’t work.

I’ve been around long enough to have been an executive during the first wave of automating business processes with technology in order to cut costs.  We quickly learned that automating bad process doesn’t improve the process.  It only accelerates it, often accelerating poor performance outcomes as a result.  We’re witnessing a similar rush to automation in the professional development and corporate training sector today.  Anyone that attended the most recent national conference for the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) experienced this firsthand.  The technology prophets were everywhere, attempting to demonstrate how their software and their cloud were the cost-effective solution to every learning challenge companies are experiencing today.

Automating a failed approach to learning to computer-based platforms does cut costs.  But at what price?  In today’s economy, the commercialization of intellectual property, kindled by human creativity and cohesive team work, is the driver of value creation and competitive differentiation.  I’m willing to bet we’ll see the same results I lived through in the early 1990s.  Accelerating passive learning through automation will likely accelerate passive results.  Ironically, Newton’s Law of Inertia may metaphorically apply to the conventional wisdom in many organizations.  Inertia is defined as the tendency of objects to resist change in their state of motion.  This seems to apply to the long-held ideas surrounding professional learning as well.

To paraphrase Albert Einstein, the level of thinking that created a problem is not the level of thinking necessary to solve it.  When we examine the evidence, it becomes painfully clear the time is long overdue for a new level of thinking about business training and professional development.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

1 Comment

Filed under Associate Engagement, Productivity, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

January 3, 2012 · 11:00 pm

The Emotional Contagion of Positive Intention

Key Concept ~ How we engage potential conflict is a conscious choice.  Here’s a simple little example of how positive intention can dissipate the emotional rage of an amygdala hijack.

We live and work in highly stressful times.  How we choose to be can have an enormous impact not only on what we do but how we are perceived.  The holiday break allowed for some reflective time, and I made a conscious decision to fully embrace a little goal I have…to reflect the perspective of what the Buddhist call a bodhisattva.  The translation literally means enlightened (bodhi) existence (sattva), but it also refers to a lay person (as apposed to a Buddhist monk) who joyfully embraces the sorrow of the world.  Well, I had my first chance to put this into full practice today!

I live in Florida, which means we’ve just experienced an explosion in seasonal population.  Traffic quadruples, and one must keep in mind our snow birds don’t necessarily have the best vision or reflexes.  I went out to run a couple of errands this morning and found traffic tied into knots due to a fender bender on the main drag of my town.  Unconcerned, I re-routed my journey using the back roads and went about my tasks.  As I was pulling into a shopping plaza that has a notoriously confusing parking lot a car raced up from behind me, right to my tail, and sounded its horn.

Knowing that the traffic in this parking lot moves in fits and starts, not to mention the pedestrians meandering their way through the moving maze of cars, I was concerned this driver might rear end me if I were to stop quickly.  Now, I spent six years working in Boston, where driving is a competitive, mean-spirited, full contact sport, so I have been conditioned to respond cautiously to road rage, even if my own temper responds automatically (that’s the amygdala hijack…part of our ancient survival-driven brain that responds blindly to perceived threats).

As I entered the access road to the parking lot, the traffic stopped entirely due to a delivery truck and the gentleman behind me decided another lay on the horn would surely clear the congestion.  I thought to myself, what a wonderful opportunity to walk my talk!  I popped out of my vehicle and approached the man’s car as he stepped out to greet me (perhaps greet isn’t the most accurate word here).  Shifting into full compassion-mode, I asked the man, “Are you okay?  Do you need any assistance?  I thought you might be trying to signal me for help.”  I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a scowl fall off a person’s face faster.  He was instantly perplexed.  I could almost see the thought patterns and synapsis in his brain begin to fire in a totally different direction.

The man fumbled to respond to this sudden inquiry of compassion, “Ahhh…no, I’m okay, my wrist slipped onto the horn.  Sorry!”

Smiling, I responded, “Good, I’m glad you’re okay!  Happy New Year!” and got back into my car just before the traffic opened up again.  It made my day!  Instead of engaging in potential conflict I chose a few words of concern and compassion and the situation was instantly diffused.  It was such a simple choice.  Had I allowed my own Core Mammalian Emotional System to take control of my response, I would have experienced a negative cascade of heart-eroding biochemicals that would have shut down my higher thought processes and focused my entire being on what my ancient brain perceived as a potential threat.  Research shows these states can last for hours, totally derailing our creativity and productivity. Making a conscious choice not to do so, left me feeling light, fully present, and calm.

The next time someone comes at you with anger or frustration during these stressful times, whether it is at work or anywhere, I highly recommend trying this approach.  Joyfully embracing the sorrow of the world has its own rewards!

© 2012, Terry Murray

4 Comments

Filed under Associate Engagement, Customer Engagement, Leadership, Productivity

Tagged as , , , , , ,