A holistic perception of Romanian business and career issues

“Recently discussing visible changes in Romania with a friend, he made the following comment concerning the country’s development in the course of the last twenty years.  His observation was that during these two decades, there has been in fact very little evolution in most of the country’s infrastructures.  Since 1990, a large number of very local improvements have been made but they are still disconnected from each other, as well as from the larger national, international or global environment.  And no matter their number, if local improvements are not connected to each other, they do not add up to the perception of real collective development.

The common example that most people have experienced directly or through acquaintances concerns the number of private homes and public developments that have sprouted right and left and that are patiently waiting to be connected to the electrical, sewage, water and road system.  These homes and developments are often beautiful and have been sold, but they can neither be accessed nor inhabited for lack of connection to decent infrastructure.”

Source: Alain Cardon/Metasysteme.fr. Read more here.

Via Mihai Stanescu.

Via Mihai Stanescu.

Steve Jobs (source: Wikipedia)

TheNextWeb recently published a piece that explores the implications of Steve Jobs stepping down from Apple’s steer, even if just temporarily, as Steve Jobs announced recently in an internal email. TheNextWeb’s theory states that this is just the first step in what will actually be in fact an actual change of top leadership at Apple.

Haunted by a pancreatic cancer he fought with in the past several years, Steve Jobs recently announced his staff that he is taking a medical leave of absence of six months in order to better take care of his personal health. Meanwhile, Apple’s COO, Tim Cook, will take over the reigns of Apple.

TheNextWeb states that since Apple is a public company and since Steve Jobs has the power to move markets (his keynote speeches and Apple’s new product launches have always boosted the Apple stock price dramatically), having him step down from his top leadership position at Apple might cause the company stocks to plummet. To prevent this financial disaster, the company is trying to slowly go through this crucial transition and thus try to minimize the potential harmful impact on the company stock valuation.

Based on this assumption, TheNextWeb opinionates that Steve Jobs will not return to the steer of Apple and, based on this situation, Apple will have to prove to the world that it can remain the same innovative and cool company as it was under Steve Jobs’ leadership as well.

A brand tightly connected with its leadership (actually gravitating around Steve Jobs in terms of definition of success), Apple will most probably suffer an important brand value loss by losing its most powerful associative image. Similar to Jack Welch’s retirement from the General Electric leadership, Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple will leave the company without the limitless resources of his innovative mind. If GE was a market leader and the largest company in the world when Jack Welch retired, Apple, although a market leader in some of his product lines, is still a challenger in a few market segments.

This type of loss for a company of Apple’s stature brings into light the real problem of succession planning. Identifying a company brand with an individual brand in the customers’ minds through can cause an important brand loss when a part of the perceived brand value is lost through the departure of an individual. How important is it then for a company to embark on this train towards success having a powerful individual as its engine and are the wins during the trip worth the losses at the end of it?

(originally published at: blog.ceubusiness.ro)

Top 100 Marketers of 2008 (source: Invesp Consulting)

Invesp Consulting has recently published their top 100 Marketers of 2008 list. Split into three categories (1-10, 11-49, 50-100), the top tries to bring forth the most influential names of last year’s online marketing industry. I will no go into too many details about this top, you can find more information about how it was created on Invesp Consulting’s website.

1. Online Marketer of the Year: Chris Hughes – co-founder of Facebook, Chris was the strategist behind Barack Obama‘s online campaign strategy during the North American Elections in 2008. Using the social networks at their maximum potential, Chris managed to rally 1.5 million volunteers through myBarackObama.com, raising also $600 million funds from 3 million people.
2. Guy Kawasaki – from Apple to a successful entrepreneur and later a seed capital investor, from an online blog to a series of books, Guy bathed in success in every project he got involved with.
3. Brian Clark – founder of Copyblogger.com, Brian managed to become in only two years one of the most influential and most successful online copyrighters and bloggers worldwide.
4. Michael Arrington – founder of TechCrunch.com, now probably the most influential and successful technology blog in the world, profiling and reviewing all new Internet companies and their products, thus able to indentify the potential future successful online entrepreneurs.
5. Rand Fishkin – CEO of seoMOZ.org, Rand is one of the most influential SEO experts out there. Rand and his team’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO is one of the most concise and most accurate SEO resources on the web. His company’s blog is also one of the most popular blog in the SEO world.
6. Pete Cashmore – web technology consultant and founder of Mashable.com, Pete focuses his work on news related to social networks, news websites or Internet startups. In the past three years, his blog managed to become one of Technocrati’s top 10 blogs worldwide.
7. Aaron Wall – SEO expert and author of SEOBook.com, Aaron managed to establish himself in the past five years as one of the world’s top SEO experts. His blog is also one of the most popular tools in the online industry.
8. Jackie Huba – a speaker and a business advisor, Jackie has worked with thousands businesses at association conferences such as Microsoft, Ulta, Discovery Education, Yahoo and Verio. In 2008, Jackie and Ben McConnell founded the Society for Word of Mouth, a free social network for the true believers of word of mouth (or the merely curious). Jackie and Ben also write on the Church of the Customer Blog, one of the most important marketing blogs out there.
9. Darren Rowse – the guy behind Problogger.net, Darren is one of the worlds most dedicated experts on blogging and blog monetization strategies.
10. Avinash Kaushik – a Google Analytics evangelist and author of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, Avinash is one of the thought leaders who have put some order into the hectic webanalytics world.
    

If you want more information about the Invesp Consulting’s top 10 marketers of 2008, check the link below:

• The top 10 Most Influential Online Marketers of the Year

You can also see the rest of the top 100 online marketers of 2008 and their achievements following the links below:

• 49 to 11 Most Influential Online Marketers of the Year
• 100 to 50 Most Influential Online Marketers of the Year

My only dissapointment with this list of online marketing leaders is that I did not find Seth Godin anywhere in the top 100, although I believe that his leadership in the online industry in 2008 was one of the most important ones.

The event will explore ways of successfully handling the main challenges that Romanian businesses face from the leader’s behavioral perspective, be it owner, general manager or executive manager. The focus of the seminar will be the link between the leader’s behavior and the company’s evolution on the market it activates on. The event will feature two guest speakers, both of them successful Romanian entrepreneurs who will talk about their business experience.

The event will explore the following main themes (but will not be limited to them):

• What are the specifics of coaching?
• How can you obtain 500% ROI through coaching?
• Workoholism – I have 24 hours available, but I feel that I need a couple more.
• Delegation – How many times do I work for the same money?
• Losing business vision and drive.
• The shortest path to the clients.
• Fear of raising the price.
• Team reporting – what do I do with my people?

The event will be lead by Mihai Stanescu, who is Executive Coach and President of RoCoach, the first Romanian company to offer dedicated coaching services in South-Eastern Europe. Mihai Stanescu is the most experienced Romanian coach and was considered to be the “Best Coach of 2007″ by Business Edu.

The event participation fee is 150 Euro (VAT excluded), sum that will cover not the seminar itself, but one hour of coaching for each participant, based on a schedule agreed upon by both parties. The deadline for event registration is November 5, 2008. For more information about the event and for participation details, please contact Monica Cazan, Associate Coach, monica.cazan[at]coaching.ro, +40 723 525 267.