NLP Podcast Extract : Andrew Wilcox on Online Networking

Andrew runs 'Cabre' which helps other businesses to rapidly capture, organise and publish their knowledge. For example: recording and publishing events from team meetings to large conferences; creating mind maps for presentations, web sites and printed publications; structuring early stage projects and product developments by converting ideas into plans and requirements; training companies and individuals to exploit Mindjet’s MindManager software.

"My name's Andrew Wilcox and my business is called Cabre. It has two purposes, to service the MindManager community and to make use of MindManager in a variety of situations. MindManager is a very comprehensive Mind Mapping software which interfaces with the Microsoft Office world."

"So I retail, I train people on how to use it and then do jobs for people, such as produce Mindmaps that they can take in presentations when they're trying to partner up with new business's - to explain their business in terms of how the new combination would work. Through to taking Mind Mappers to conferences along with video people and audio people and recording the whole event and publishing it on a website."

"I've been connecting with people online for quite a long time. I was looking back on this yesterday - I started using email at work at the late 1980's. I certainly remember arranging to meet people at the pub using the office email system, and they were only next door to me. A similar thing to that, also in the early years I was with Compuserve in the early 90's, I had a modem on the back of my Amstrad portable PC, and found out interesting things like how - what the fingering was for a fife that I bought at a car boot sale, through that process of asking a question on compuserve, inside a music group somewhere."

"The one I have the major strength with at the moment is Ecademy, which I joined in 2004. I also do a little bit of work in LinkedIn and Xing and I'm on Facebook too, but I can't say that I'm very active on it."

"Directly for the business, I get attendees for my courses, and people buy software from me because they've met me on Ecademy, principally and see what I do. I get referrals from clients, I get associates that work for me with my clients. And Ive received lots and lots of advice on sales and marketing and internet marketing, building websites and so on."

"I think it's important, particularly for small business', because we need help! We're operating as individuals or small partnerships, inside those, the individuals and the partnerships, but between those, that experience is often in quite a narrow area - for example my background is in engineering, it's not in sales or marketing. So the more we help each other, the better we'll get and the more able we'll be to take on bigger and better business's with bigger and better clients."

"I think that the first thing is being able to listen. It's not selling, it's listening. it's finding out what other people can do, what other people want. It's then connecting them with the resources that they want - and when you get the opportunity it's about being very clear about what it is you do. understand the message quickly and begin to ask you question about what you do rather than you trying to tell them what you do."

"I think I'd have to say almost any time. it's part of my working day. My network is part of my business, so it's very difficult to differentiate it at some times, and I don't think that I particularly want to. So most of the time I'm working from my home office, but I'm also networking in hotels, in the members lounge of the IoD where they're free wireless, at train stations, anywhere."

"I don't go 24-7, but it's not a 9 to 5. So I'm quite often working on it in the evenings, and have been periods that I've been working very early in the morning but not in the last year - I've managed to stop doing that addiction."

"I think they've got to create a strong profile first of all, because that's the first thing that people see of them online. They should then try and find people with similar interests, because that will be a cozy and comfortable group to start in, because we all have the same language and you'll start to understand the process's and tools that are involved whichever online networking site you're using."

"The next stage would be to start commenting on other peoples blogs, and then doing your own blogs, and then joining clubs, and then forming your own clubs. It's an iterative process, you don't have to do it all at once."

"I think profiles are very individual things. it's not like trying to replicate a CV, where you've seen one CV you've seen them all. Your profile should be different, it should be characteristic of you. So my belief is that you should write it and not get someone else to write it. You might want to take advice from people - and they should get a flavour of your attitudes, the business's you're involved with, your social interests, because someone may want to talk to you about that, and then lead to something else you never know."

"I think you have to be able to type. I was talking to someone only the other evening and he said 'I'm going to make a business now out of teaching people to type because you can see that people are very slow at interacting and that is the method of the keyboard - you can use ink, you can use voice-to-text, but predominantly it's typing. So if they're going to get going, just brush up on your typing skills."

"I think now there's a need to understand some html, and the other things that go towards making up a web page. because you're missing out on the richness that you can achieve. So if you don't understand how to embed your short youtube video onto one of the pages on your site, then you're going to fall behind. So it's important. "

"I don't think it's very difficult. I certainly think it's much easier than learning a new foreign language. Again, you can do it in stage, some people struggle to just add links to what they're writing, others struggle to add images - these are two straight forward things - and you just have to talk to someone that knows how to do it and let them explain it, and they're all out there willing to do that on these social networks."

"if they're talking to me about something, I'm giving them some of my knowledge, because it's pointless it all being locked inside my head - I would prefer it being out there and being used."

"That they're watching me, hopefully. Or listening to me. Or reading me. You have to believe that the rest of the world is actually looking at what you're doing, otherwise it's going to be a rather pointless activity."

Read or listen to the full Andrew Wilcox transcript and podcast on Networking.

Our index of Networking podcasts

Liam Beale

Business Development Manager

PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training

NLP Podcast Extract : Nick Bush on Change Management

"My name is Nick Bush and I’m an independent consultant and I help organisations clarify and organise their strategies and their business transformation."

"I spent around about ten years in working in the area of change management - business reengineering, transforming IT departments, and various other functions - as a consultant, and then for the last nine years I’ve been putting into practice those techniques, whilst working for a large UK telecoms provider."

"I think that’s a very interesting distinction to make. I think we can define a change project as a project in which you’re changing an aspect of your business or organisation over time, and like any project it’s got a start and an end date, and some measures of success. But the distinction between that and a transformational change project is that a transformational change project is one where you’re changing your organisation so it is completely different from the one that you set out with."

"So, if for example, you’re a large telecoms company and you have a legacy of working primarily as a telephone services provider, and then over the years you make the transition to the world of internet and broadband, and then ultimately to IT and home entertainment services. As we can observe in the UK market today."

"I think that before you look at that, a really frank conversation is needed with the sponsor, to really understand if he or she is really up for this. If it’s a transformational change project then it’s immensely easy - and I’m just as guilty of this as anybody else - to underestimate the scale of the effort and investment required to make a major or radical change."

"And also, for the sponsors themselves, they’re very likely to have to go through a rather profound personal transformation because if you’re seeking a really radical way of changing the way that an organisation works, then it’s very likely that whatever’s brought them to this leadership and success that they have today, is probably inappropriate and insufficient to bring them into the new challenges that they’ll soon be facing."

"Yes, I’ve seen this quite recently in the work that I’ve done, the leaders of that change and the leaders of that organisation will talk a good game’, if you like - but it’s very hard for the other people in that organisation to really pick up that anything has fundamentally changed in the way that those organisational efforts are lead from the top. Therefore it doesn’t really filter down effectively to the people who are actually able to put into effect that change."

"I think that there are about five main reasons in total that change fails- I’m sure that if I thought about it some more I could come up with a lot more! But this issue of sponsor engagement is absolutely fundamental, as I said before. And in one project I was running, we did have the ’are you up for this?’ conversation about three months into the project. It was at the point where we had done enough analysis on the problem to articulate the degree of transformation required, and where the efforts really needed to be focused. At that point the sponsor, because of a number of things that were happening to them elsewhere, backed a way from it and took a path that was less radical and less aggressive, and obviously didn’t achieve the results that we thought that they could achieve."

"So that’s the key thing to get right - and then to ensure the sponsor then stays engaged all the way through the process. "

"And again it’s very easy to think that it’s enough to communicate in one way, with people who are effected by the change and not get and listen to their feedback, and indeed not get their ideas about how best the change can be effected within the organisation."

"Another area where things can go wrong is in the area of symbolic and tangible change. People need to see a change effort take effect quickly, or some effect so that even if the overall goals of the program aren’t achieved, then there will be some symbolic or tangible change in the way things are organised. So people say ‘ah yes, we’ve started!’ This is a different era that we’re now moving into."

Read or listen to the full Nick Bush transcript and podcast on Managing Change

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Nick can be contacted at Open Chord Ltd

Liam Beale

Business Development Manager

PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training