Registrations are coming in, so if you’re considering, I nudge a quick Yes! See you there.

Previous post detail:  Do you lead a middle market private company? I have worked with entrepreneurs and their employees for over a quarter century now, and I have never been more excited to introduce you to a Success Story Entrepreneur. Mark Fitzpatrick grew his company from $0 to $30M revenues in 18 months during the current global recession!

The company isn’t a garage innovation disruptive technology killer app, either. It’s storefront, folks. Mark has flown in to Colorado to share with business owners what it takes to grow a healthy, vibrant, recession-resistant and profitable company. I’ll bet it’s not what you think… and more than you imagined!

If you’re in the Denver / Boulder area, you have 2 coffee talks when you can hear a success story entrepreneur tell how he grew his non-internet company during the ongoing Great Recession. Come listen over coffee July 29 in Westminster or July 30 in Boulder, 8:00 am.

http://growthcurveinstitute.com/Sustainable_Growth_Speaker_Series.html (Seating limited so please register)

A colleague, friend, and master mind peer, James Fischer, is the founder of the Growth Curve Institute. He consulted with Mark Fitzpatrick to navigate the strategic, cultural, financial, and operational growth curves of Mark’s company.

If you attend, you’ll also receive a copy of James’ book, Navigating the Growth Curve. It detail the processes Mark and James used to growth this success story company.

I’ll be there. Hope you are, too! Trina, your occasional blogger.

I’ve been asked to do a lot of coaching and speaking lately on how I built Tennyson Gallery’s patronage so quickly, as well as how I’ve built such long lasting business relationships. This is the basic presentation that came from those questions.

Networking is the answer, and I share this for those who might pick up a tip or two. I was playing around with SlideShare presentation app tonight on LinkedIn, and here is my first uploaded show. This was done as support for a speech I did this winter for Chicks Who Click. Enjoy! Click on the link below to view the presentation.

http://tinyurl.com/ddw9vs

Happy New Year!

What an interesting ride we are all having together. I have been doing so much private writing and creating that I have been neglecting my blog and networks a bit, but much is coalescing and I am confident the best is yet to come….

Many of you have asked about my 2-day course for the University of Wisconsin, interested but unable to make the class. It is available as a custom inhouse offer, and will also be offered again May 19-20, 2009 in Milwaukee.

In the meantime, I wanted to extend an invitation to an extraordinary evening! This is a unique event because yours truly is featured in the book! If you conduct a series of 50 interviews with experts in a specific field, will it change your life? Brian Schwartz believes it will.

After going through this process himself, he is so convinced about its effectiveness that he wrote a book about it and is now building a business around it. Brian Schwartz, the author of 50 Interviews: Entrepreneurs has interviewed 50 entrepreneurs about their challenges as well as their rewards. He got advice from people who stood in his shoes, felt the same fears, and went through the same challenges.

On January 19, 2009, Brian Schwartz will be demonstrating the process used to create 50 Interviews: Entrepreneurs by interviewing a panel of entrepreneurs unscripted & LIVE during Startup Junkie Underground, a monthly series hosted by The DaVinci Institute in the Denver area (Westminster, for us Colorado folks). https:www.davinciinstitute.com

Brian will also share the truths and insights he uncovered upon interviewing over 50 entrepreneurs. The intent of 50 interviews is NOT to simply offer another book of useful advice (although it is full of useful real-world wisdom). There’s already an ample supply of books that provide all the self-help tidbits you will ever need (in fact, you will get a list of recommendations from the interviewees themselves). Rather 50 Interviews serves as a catalyst for the reader to discover his or her own answers, as we often learn the most about ourselves through observing others. The compilation of over 50 interviews offers the reader endless opportunities to observe skilled, successful, and fulfilled individuals to discover something new about their own life. The framework is one that anyone can apply immediately to immerse themselves in practically any passion.

Every interview was conducted in 2008, and many of the names will be familiar to you, so the content will be highly relevant and applicable. The cost of the event is $25 if you are not already a member of the DaVinci Institute, and will include a $10 credit for all attendees towards the purchase of the book. In the meantime, if you’re not in Colorado or can’t attend, but are intrigued…. you can join the 50 Interviews community on: Facebook Linked In Twitter Happy new year! Let’s make 2009 the best one yet.

This current reality is unprecedented, and I’m in fear sometimes, too. Would love to say I’m not, and most of the time I am more positive than hopeless, but this is real. ALL my newer clients have put holds or dropped projects from the budgets. (So I have time on my calendar, folks! Take advantage of it and contact me! lol). Kind of hard to stay in denial when it hits my work. My best asset is a long history of doing good work and seeing many ups and downs. But back to Corporate America.

Wanting to cut, and cut hard, is understandable but still dangerous. Get on a budget, yes. Delay optional new initiatives, maybe so.   Historically, though, a couple years after these big swings, the cuts usually end up costing more than if the company used the time to improve and get more lean but NOT go into big sweeping layoffs. These “swing” businesses spend more money to recoup the lost talent and, averaged, have saved nothing. And this behavior doesn’t factor in the cost to the people impacted, either. My friend and colleague Lisa Jackson has said it as well as it could be said, so I will relinquish the blog mike to her, and ask that you read Lisa’s posting.

Find her at http://blog.jacksonandschmidt.com.  I’m sure she would welcome comments as much as I would.

I noticed something in the room that was palpable.

The capabilities demonstrated were solid, impressive, and the presentation (and presenter) good. Yet, en masse- the audience fell into a couple camps with a pretty wide berth between them. The passionate and wonderful geeks who shared vocabulary, and the rest of the room. Mike, our passionate leader, made a good effort to translate to the nontechnical folk in the room, but it didn’t work. The tools work great and are at the beginning of what will fast unfold in the open source world of Java, but the talking about the tool…

The trainers in the room were lost when the technical vocabulary overwhelmed. Connected, interested, giving up a night with their families committed to bringing collaborative virtual training to their organizations, but definitely not tracking the vocabulary. The programmers get it. Use it. Adapt it.

I loved the conversation and watched the respect and genuine attempts to bridge the gap, but they really do speak 2 different languages. They can connect, but it’s with effort.

At least that’s what I noticed. What can we do to better translate so that business really can build the kind of affordable and triumphant virtual team work and training environments that are available? I know at GroupONE Solutions we are  moving more of our collaboration and virtual team training to Just-In-Time modules that can be team train or self-paced, synch or asynch. I’ve wanted to do this for years, but customers have still been  committed to classroom training. As more teams become virtual and geographically dispersed, as travel budgets stay tight, and as onboarding happens through rolling entry…. the time has come for virtual training to be another equally viable option.

It seems to me it’s also time to up the design and engagement quality of much self-paced online instruction. The tools are here, including Sun’s Project Darkstar and Project Sun and others. But will nontechnical users easily migrate into the virtual world? Didn’t see it in that room tonight. It’s too bad, because it’s easier to use than ever.

What do you think? Do you agree that there remains a digital divide within the computer-savvy population? Developers and nondevelopers? Geoffrey Moore nailed it when he wrote Crossing the Chasm. There is a huge gap between early adopters and early majority users who are progressive but more cautious.

What I saw tonight, though, was a little different. I saw an invitation to dialogue and partner, on both sides. But at least some of the nontechnical audience members who most want and need simple and engaging virtual training solutions got lost in the vocabulary.

I got lost in the vocabulary, and I’m more familiar with the virtual world and collaborative software space.

What do you think? How do we bridge that gap? I ask because I’m curious, because I know a whole lot of people in that room want to find ways to work together, and because, honestly, I want to make sure any content conversion I do with GroupONE’s virtual work training and other solutions meets the needs of all who need it.

It’s exciting stuff… if only it weren’t so hard to teach us old dogs new tricks….

As a teacher, practitioner, and facilitator of collaboration, I vibrate with excitement while shivering in worry.

We can do this. We are smart when we bother to be. The Cabinet being created and huddling in Chicago, preparing to break into fast action in DC is being compared to Lincoln’s Team of Rivals (a brilliant read by historian Doris Kearns) while hands wring or clap that the team has a ring of retro 90’s Clinton days. That’s not my worry, and here’s why….

First, whether it’s for the US Cabinet or hiring the best branding team, if you want the best and brightest, you find them. If you’re seeking smart experience with aligned commitment to the objective, you find them and hire them. If it provokes the media and pundits, reassure them by reminding them of what you know…. that you are setting not only the agenda, but the tone of the team dynamic. That people can rise above their own agenda for the greater good, and be better people with a wiser agenda in the end as well. In other words, people can collaborate better than they ever have, and for reasons bigger than WIIFM.

So now you have smart, experienced, committed, competent people embarking on a path that has never been travelled. You are forging a path together, smart and, I hope, humble enough to know that there is no time or room for isolationist action, polarizing politics, ego grabs, or stubborn insistence on holding on to one opinion when many are being offered for consideration. This is an invitation for not only critical advisers to the President, but for all of us in our own work and challenges and lives.

We are being invited into a higher order of caring and commitment and responsibility to be part of the solution, not the problem. We are being asked to stop standing by and waiting for someone else to do something for us.

I know – from over a quarter century of professional work facilitating collaboration and from twice that of living my life – that the end result of authentic joining together to think and act is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. I have success story after success story, and a few disappointments and abject failures ready to give testimony to the Power of Collaboration.

We can do this. The Administration can do this. The Nation can do this. Possibly, if we really commit to this, we can beat all forecasts and odds and, even successful examples from history. Miracles happen every day when minds join, wisdom speaks, and hearts align. Actions follow.

Extreme opinions do not need to derail this overriding commitment to building a pathway back to the United States as global leader and prosperous nation. America is burying labels that don’t allow for crossing borders. We must collaborate across the distance of difference, beliefs, habits, perspectives.

So I don’t worry about too many Clinton administrators or the size of the challenge before us. My life exudes the power of collaboration even while I am severely impacted by the current global financial crisis.

Rather, I worry that fear will short circuit patience, and that strong opinion unexamined will hide the best integral solutions. I ask that I, you, and American leaders actively explore together the best routes to build our future together the fastest without disregarding risk, most innovative after reasonable examination, and as fairly as possible.

HIRING: A team of rivals committed to lead with a visionary executive fully committed to the United States being a healthy and contributing global citizen. Lots of room for strength and power and savvy and brilliance and advocacy. Much need for inquiry and What If’s and wisdom unfolding integral and synergistic solutions.

In other words, dialogue and collaboration that is so important it cannot fail.

Are you ready to be a full collaborator – beyond your labor-management views? your socio-economic perspective? Your “job status”? your comfort zone? Your zebras-are-better-than walruses bias?

Am I? Yup!!! I’m all in….

The manager.

Research sponsored by Microsoft and major universities shows that virtual managers (even if only partially virtual) must be better at 3 things:

- communicating

- managing by results

- trusting employees to manage their own work habits.

Managing remotely requires a proactive and engaged approach to expand the emotional bandwidth in the team and across teams. Poor people skills are the 1^st and 2^nd reasons many C-Level Executives fail in the first two years. How well we work with people matters. If virtual, it matters even more. Collaborative software and technology have finally pretty much caught up to the promise, and with good strategy and training, technology is truly enabling virtual work. Nearly all parts of an organization engage electronically with their customers.

But people are still the key.

We are entering the third wave of virtual work and virtual collaboration, yet we still find ourselves spending more time traveling than we might. When any of us work in groups, people are part of the mix, and many are still more comfortable meeting face to face.

Thanks to increased energy prices, budget constrictions, better technology, and increasing desire to collaborate across distance, more of us find ourselves needing to spend less time traveling to manage our virtual teams and clients than we have in the past. Travel time and expenses are making traditional methods of relationship and project management ineffective.

Virtual management is a core competency in modern business culture. Everyone who wants to stick around will join the third wave of virtual collaboration armed with confidence and competence.

Without the usual face time to get to know one another, trust and work flow is built and supported differently virtually, as are communications, workflow, decision making, tracking results, and team development. The leader’s job is to build a wide path for trust to build, to proactively manage work and people as much as to manage production.

Over the years I have helped thousands of people and dozens of companies find ways to maximize success by effectively integrating virtual work into their customer and employee engagement processes. Telework programs have

-           built call centers without walls,

-           retained quality employees without geographic barriers

-           reduced real estate, travel and other hard & soft business costs.

In truth, virtual work is here to stay. According to The Conference Board, recent research for American Business Collaboration (ABC) found that more than 80 percent of workers today are working at a distance from colleagues, and this number is growing.

Want advice, help, or training to improve your ability to work and collaborate effectively, whether F2F, Virtual, or a hybrid of both? Call or email me! GroupONE Solutions now has a solid team of virtual experts in

- telework installations / expansions

- online facilitation

- collaborative software

- organization development and change management in global organizations and cross-organizational collaboration.

If you’d rather Do It Yourself, our OCTOBER-NOVEMBER SPECIAL is a $50 discount on our Virtual Team Tool Box, filled with over 80 tools, assessments, case studies, templates, tips and guidelines, and management / leadership resources.

The full tool box includes Working Virtually and The Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams for only $249 through November 2008.

The tool box alone is available for only $123 and is fully downloadable.

Also consider University of Wisconsin’s new 2-day course, Working Virtually, November 12 – 14 in Milwaukee. It won’t be offered again until spring, 2009! “Working Virtually” is a must for anyone in a virtual work / collaborative environment regardless of your organization’s size. Leave with templates, guidelines and tools to manage an effective virtual/distance team. Course fee includes morning and afternoon refreshment breaks, lunches, instructional material and tuition. I and my design team designed and developed the course, and I will be the trainer.

Register or learn more at

www.sce-mgmt.uwm.edu

If you want to bring training to you, contact me!

You can also work with  GroupONE Solutions virtual experts directly. Whether you want a speaker, executive briefing, JIT coaching advice (by the hour or by the project), active assistance, or training, we can help. Stay tuned for announcements regarding JIT online training modules coming in 2009 as well.

Other News: Colleague, co-author of The Handbook, and GO-S Virtual Expert, Janet Salmons releases The Handbook of Research on Electronic Collaboration and Organizational Synergy next month. For more information, go to www.info-sci-ref.com, and tell Janet Trina sent you!

If you want to learn a little more about the people part of virtual work, I talked to Rob McNealy of Start-Up Radio about The Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams recently.   http://www.startupstoryradio.com/working-virtually-with-trina-hoefling/

Thanks for your continued interest, and know I am interested in what YOU want to hear about and need as well. What do you want to hear more about? I’d love to know!

The good news for the blogosphere is I went out of town Wednesday morning and was completely unplugged until Monday morning – was in the glorious Rocky Mountains at a gathering with 15 years of friends. I came back and slammed myself into DVR’ed news shows and emails and catching up with the world. Not that I learned good news, but fundamentally, things were about as I expected.

Moral of the story? I’m clear on what I need to do as a citizen and need to relax about being hyper vigilant, and am antsy to get back to my professional blogging and writing. You’ll hear more from me soon with some news and more strategy-based and business-focused postings ….

Though tonight I have a debate to watch. Catch you on the rebound! Trina

Or something in between? I’m getting my ducks in a row to do some real world research in organizations, and polling and surveys will be part of that research. It reminds me, though, that I ask people their opinions because I truly not only want – but need – to know in order to do good information gathering. I am also genuinely seeking to learn about them as people and members of the organization, and opportunities to make things better for them while also accomplishing whatever project I’m doing research for.

Interactive. Engagement.Trust building, Relationship building, Alliance building – Expanding Emotional Bandwidth. Oh, yeah – and good information, data and sometimes, wisdom.

Polls and surveys are one tool in my arsenal, but not really enough to sort out what else is really going on inside the organization and the organization’s members and stakeholders. I go in and help the company figure itself out and get better at being who it is more successfully and  responsibly. I can’t do that if I don’t know the people or know what is going on. Polls and surveys are one part of doing that faster and with more safety in reducing bias and letting every voice have a say.

In the media, though, polling is more limited. It is about the only engagement tool that reaches out and pulls information from the American public during this election season. What is its role? Media’s growing requirement is to

• entertain us,
• educate us (not sure where that directive came from, but it is there especially on morning news shows),
• engage us,
• edify our knowledge of current events
• elevate important news so we know to pay attention.

That’s quick off my cuff…. Anyone agree or have another point of view? And what role does polling play, and to what end? [Hint: I'm actually more interested in the "to what end" part. lol]

Transformational, futuristic, intentional. Cirque de Soliele on a dramatic scale. How did they do it?

Discipline.  Being directed.

Commitment.  Personal sacrifice.

Collaboration. Great honor.

Earlier today I was listening to an old keynote by Angela Davis. She talked about how, in the past,  we as U.S. citizens created change for a different future. Through her stories and historical perspective, she showed us.

Organizing. We learned how to be change agents.

Commitment.  We showed up and did the work.

Community.  It took everyone working together to create the future.

And here i sit in Denver, the DNC nominating Obama with Biden on a ticket of Change. Perhaps one of the most well organized political campaigns in modern history, engaging a whole new generation of committed, politically involved citizens, and launching a global movement of hopeful activism.

The Chinese stunning coming out party. A black man running for president. A new generation of voters.

Things do change. Step up. It takes all of us.