A cool company needs hot groups.

Teams may be ground zero for innovation at most companies, but they start with individuals. I'm sure you've got plenty of extraordinary people in your organization. Match them to projects, challenge them, and give them a chance to blossom, and I think you'll be surprised at the results. There's nothing like a hot team to get the job done.

The art of innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman

"Knowledge" quotes of the week #7.3rd round

Sunday:

"I like to do business with the fellow who informs himself about his own business, who can tell exactly what he has that I can use, and goes at his work without wasting my time or his. I like the man with useful ideas, the man who can show me how to get more goods or better goods for the same amount of money. He helps me handle my job to the satisfaction of my employers. I try to favor any salesman who is absolutely honest about his good, and who sees their limitations as well as their virtues. I have never had a misunderstanding with such a man." Frank Taylor

Monday:

"This is the age of the specialist. Charm and good manners are worth up to $30 a week. After that, the pay-off is in direct ration to the amount of specialized know-how in a fellow's head."

Billy Rose

Tuesday:

"Anyone who stops learning is old - whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."

Henry Ford

Wednesday:

"A man's errors are his portals of discovery."

James Joyce

Thurday:

"Knowledge is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."

Johann Wolfgang

Friday:

"No matter what your product is, you are ultimately in the education business. Your customers need to be educated about the many advantages of doing business with you, trained to use your products more effectively, and taught how to make never-ending improvement in their lives."

Robert G. Allen

Saturday:

"Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind."

Dale Carnegie

Hot teams meet

Taking field trips, playing hooky, and holding edgy off-sites can help keep a team motivated. But when you can take the energy that most companies only manage to drum up in an off-site meeting, and find it in your routime work, then you are onto something huge. The secret, I think is to scuttle rules, provide good food, and encourage a lot of play.

T-shirts are metaphors in motion. Once hooked, you'll find yourseld unabled to resist making more T-shirts than you ever imagined. T-shirts are liked a quick and dirty prototypes, and if your team or company has a number of projects going on, every few months you'll have something new to wear.

The art of innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman

Team Morale

When people feel special, they'll perform beyond your wildest dream. It's why we throw blowout end-of-year bashes - to celebrate who and what we are. The point isn't how much money you spend but what kind of experience you can create.

Another great way to make people feel special is to let them play hooky. Sometimes the best inspiration for a team can be the zen-like act of not doing any work at all.

You can't worry about how much time or money the fun costs. You'll get back whatever time the team lost in the next week and quickly more into the black. After all, moral isn't something that can be measured or planned. Encourage unplanned breaks during the day.

The art of innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman

"Sincerity. Deserve confidence" quotes of the week #6. 3rd round

Sunday:

"My greatest source of courage, whenever things have looked dark; has come from believing in the wisdom of this philosophy: Not - Will the other person believe it. The real test is, do you believe it.?"

Frank Bettger

Monday:

"The wisest and best salesman is always the one who blunty tells the truth about his article. He looks his prospective customer in the eye and tells his story. That is always impressive. And if he does not sell the first time, he leaves a trail of trust behind. A customer, as a rule, cannot be fooled a second time by some shady or clever talk that does not square with the truth. Not the best talker wins the sale - but the most honest talker... there is something in the look of the eye, the arrangement of words, the spirit of a salesman that inmmediately compels trust or distrust... being bluntly honest is always safe and best."

George Mattew Adams

Tuesday:

"In all my relations with clients, I agree to observe the following rule of professional conduct: I shall, in the light of all the circumstanes surrounding my client, which I shall make every effort to ascertain and understand, give him that service which, had I been in the same circumstances, I would have applied to myself."

Frank Bettger

Wednesday:

"To win and hold the confidence of others, Rule One is: Deserve Confidence."

Frank Bettger

Thurday:

"If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint" then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."

Vincent Van Gogh

Friday:

"Don't live down the expectections. Go out there and do something remarkable."

Wendy Wasserstein

Saturday:

"Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong."

Peter T. Mcintyre

"Silence." quotes of the week #5. 3rd round

Sunday:

"The importance of being a good listener, showing the other person you are sincerely interested in what he is saying, and giving him all the eager attention and appreciation that he craves and is so hungry for, but seldom gets!"

Frank Bettger

Monday:

"Try looking straight into the face of the next person who speaks to you, with eager, absorbed interest, and see the magic effect it has both on yourself, and the one who is doing the talking."

Frank Bettger

Tuesday:

"Cicero said two thousand years ago: 'There is an art in silence, and there is an eloquence in it too'."

Frank Bettger

Wednesday:

"Do you ever sense, when talking to someone, that what you are saying is not making much of impression? I found many times people heard me all right, but they weren't listening. The effect of my talking was zero, as far as they were concerned. So I said to myself: "The next time you are talking to a man and this happens stop! Stop right in the middle of a sentence! 'Sometimes I stop right in the middle of a word. I find people regard it as a courtesy. They are never offended. Nine times out ten, they have something on their minds that they would like to say. And if they do, they won't pay any attention to what we're saying anyhow, until they have got in their two-cent's worth."

Frank Bettger

Thursday:

"Considering that in conversation knowledge was obtained rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue, I gave Silence second place among the virtues I determined to cultivate."

Benjamin Franklin

Friday:

"The shortcut to popularity is to lend everyone your ears, instead of giving them your tongue. There is nothing you can possibly say to an individual that would be half as interesting to him as the thing he is dying to tell you about himself. And all you need, in order to get the reputation of being a fascinating companion is to say: 'How wonderful! Do tell me some more.'"

Dorothy Dix

Saturday:

"I no longer worry about being a brillant converstionalist. I simply try to be a good listener. I notice that people who do that are usually welcome wherever they go."

Frank Bettger

"Key Issue." quotes of the week #4. 3nd round

Sunday:

"Much of my success as a trial lawyer lay in the fact that I was always willing to give the opposing attorney six points in order to gain the seventh - if the seventh was the most important."

Benjamin Franklin

Monday:

"But what is the key issue? Let's simplify it. Isn't it just this:

What is the basic need? or What is the main point of interest, the most vulnerable point?."

Frank Bettger

Tuesday:

"How can you get at the key issue? Encourage your prospect to talk. As soon as a man gives you four or five reasons why he won't buy, and you try to argue each one, you aren't going to sell him."

Frank Bettger

Wednesday:

"If you get him to keep talking, he will help you sell him. Why? Because he will pick out of these four or five things, the one thing that is the most important, and stick to it. Sometimes, you don't have to say a word. When he gets all through, come back to that one point. Usually, that's the true one."

Frank Bettger

Thursday:

"Gradually by trial and error, I have found the thing to do is to agree with everything he says until I find out what is the real reason he isn't buying."

Frank Bettger

Friday:

"The main problem in the sale is to:

1. Find the basic need, or

2. The main point of interest.

3. Then stick to it!

Saturday:

"You will find the key to success under the alarm clock."

Benjamin Franklin