Although it has been tough for most companies in this economic recession, a new study reports Great Workplaces have performed better, with revenue and stock prices to the avoidance of the dreaded layoff and its terrible consequences. Our good friend Asher Adelman, Founder of GreatPlaceJobs.com, said their recent study “shows that even though top-ranked employers have suffered through the current recession, their revenue levels and stock prices are still in better shape than their competitors.” He also stated “the general sample of companies laid off employees almost twice as often as the excellent employers.  A shocking 86% of the Fortune 100 largest companies have laid off workers since the recession started in early 2008,” stated Adelman.

Let’s revisit the proven reasons Great Workplaces survive in a rough economy, which I shared with you last September.

The people inside Great Workplaces make the difference because their company truly cares for them by creating a sustainable, flourishing culture.  As a result, a majority of their energized employees are engaged and running on all cylinders. The benefits of creating a Great Workplace are numerous.  As chairman of the board, CEO, business owner or start-up entrepreneur, the proven benefits of building a Great Workplace will likely make your company a powerful force even in the most difficult of times.  Why? The benefits of creating a Great Workplace have been researched and proven by the Great Place to Work Institute:

• Higher productivity
• Higher profitability
• Better customer satisfaction
• Lower staff turnover rates
• Greater number of applicants for open positions
• Attraction of the best and brightest talent
• Less resistance to change
• Lower health care costs
• Lower workers’ compensation costs
• Lower absenteeism rates
• Lower presenteeism rates
• Higher levels of cooperation
• Higher quality products and services
• Increased innovation and risk taking
• Higher returns to stockholders

When you build a winning team with a great work environment, employees will take care of business during both good and bad times. It is a winning formula for building a long-term, growing and profitable organization. Finish reading here:

Engaging in any one of these could sabotage your brand.

In my 25 years as a branding consultant, I’ve seen companies make major branding mistakes, some real doozies. One company wanted to tout itself as the most innovative, even though it spent zero dollars on research and development. Another acquired a well-respected competitor and then immediately changed its name, leaving millions of dollars worth of good will on the table. Those are obvious offenses. Many other companies make all-too-common–subtle yet avoidable–mistakes that sap the value right out of their brands. Here are five I would caution against.

Mistake No. 1:Equating branding with communications. Yes, branding includes communications. But if your branding strategy is all about messaging and advertising and nothing about business strategy or people, then you won’t be able to deliver on your communications. If you have lousy customer service, telling people it’s great will only drive customers away faster. But investing in training and infrastructure to improve service will enable you to market your great service and still look yourself in the mirror As more information about companies and products is available online, a great company and product are your brand’s only defense.

Mistake No. 2:Branding on price. Don’t do it. Basing your brand on your low price is a race to the bottom–and someone will always beat you there. Even if your prices are the same as your competitors’ prices, you need to give clients compelling reasons beyond price to buy from you. The difference between the product offered by Morton Salt and a supermarket’s house brand? Not much. The difference in pricing? Fourteen percent. That margin is due to how well Morton has built up the intangible parts of its brand. Establish trust with your customers, and you can breathe a lot easier when the newest competitor undercuts your price.

Mistake No. 3:Changing your promise. Like a dog sniffing at a fire hydrant, every time a new marketing vice president is brought into a company, there’s a risk she’ll try to change the brand, or put her mark on it. While your brand promise should be relevant and up-to-date, making a wholesale change from, say, being the educational leader to being the innovation leader will only confuse your market.

Are you ready to change your tagline or logo? Companies get tired of their own marketing way before the market does. (You live with it day in and day out. They see it only once in a while.) Remember when Jack in the Box killed its ping-pong-ball-headed CEO? Customer sentiment brought him back, but the company was smart enough to do so in a new, updated way. Whatever you do, don’t let your visual brand identity and messaging force changes in your brand promise (see Mistake No. 1).

Mistake No. 4: Overpromising. The least expensive way to brand yourself is to have your customers do it for you. How do you get them to become evangelists? By underpromising and overdelivering. Fight the temptation to sound better than you are: Promise what you can deliver, then do it to the nth degree. Are you the fastest? Then don’t give customers a long voice-mail message to listen to before they can act. Are you the friendliest? Don’t let your employees bad-mouth clients behind their backs. Are you the coolest? Then make sure your lobby looks awesome and has wow power.
Alongside this advice, I recommend that you focus your brand message–don’t try to be all things to all people. Figure out the most compelling part of your promise and build that up, rather than try to communicate 10 different elements of your brand promise.

Mistake No. 5:Me-too branding. I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs have said, “If I only get x percent of the market, I’ll be rich.” You have to give consumers a compelling reason to give you their business to get that percentage. You can’t expect to siphon off business from the market leader without a substantive reason. Don’t try to be like other companies: Be yourself. There will be a subsegment of the market that likes what you do better than what the market leader does, and that’s the percentage of the market you can skim off. Instead of emulating competitors, be different. If you’re competing against Starbucks, zig when it zags. Make your décor unique, encourage customers to play board games, roast beans on site or have coffee-tasting parties. Get your own buzz on.

Steer clear of these mistakes, and you’ll be well on your way to branding nirvana–being known for your compelling and differentiated value.

Lynn Parker is co-founder of Parker LePla, a brand strategy consulting firm in Seattle. She’s also the author of The Reluctant Entrepreneur, and co-author ofIntegrated BrandingandBrand Driven.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

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1. Use RGB Color Mode For Photoshop Images

For several of the following tips to work, you will have to create and save all of your Photoshop images and artwork in RGB color mode. If you’re a veteran designer, you probably think this goes against what you’ve been taught, which is to use CMYK color mode. Well, technology has come a long way, and nowadays RGB color mode is better because it produces a wider range of colors and allows you to use one image for several media, including print and Web.

Think of it this way: RGB colors (red, green, and blue) are created with light. That’s why your computer monitor and TV use RGB colors to produce its fantastic range of colors. CMYK colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and key, or black), on the other hand, are created by putting ink to paper. “Ink-on-paper colors” will never be as bright or saturated as the colors on your computer screen or TV, no matter how much ink you add to the paper. So, to get the widest range of colors possible, you need to save all of your Photoshop files in RGB color mode. Most of the time, you won’t even have to think about it, because almost every photographer will supply you with RGB images. All you have to do is keep them in that mode.

A 3-D map showing the range of the Adobe RGB (1998) color space, the sRGB (or small RGB) color space and the common newspaper CMYK color space. sRGB’s range is much smaller than Adobe RGB’s. Working in the Adobe RGB color space would result in much brighter colors. The range of the CMYK color space is much narrower. Especially for this newspaper, the white in CMYK mode isn’t white at all. It’s more of a dirty brown.

Continue reading here.

Here is a list of resources on Dot Connector that can help you with various elements of achieving exceptional performance in execution and follow through.  At the end of this list, you’ll also find 3 outstanding articles from the blogosphere.

10 Execution and Follow Through Resources on Dot Connector

1. Mental Focus – The Secret to Becoming Legendary at What You Do

2. Creativity: 3 Ways to Seize the Opportunity to be Creative!

3. The Secret About Project Priorities

4. The Power of Weekly Meetings

5. How Do You Prioritize?

6. How to Never Forget Anything Again: 3 Ways to Boost Your Memory with Online Reminder Services

7. Tell Your Story – Essential Business Communication Tip!

8. Top 3 Business Email Tips

9. 10 To Do List Tips for Getting Organized [Bonus: To Do List Template]

10. Remember the Milk Review – To Do List Software

3 Other Resources for Tips on Execution and Follow Through

1. 7 Ways to Grow the Action Habit by John Jorgensen

2. Follow through by Seth Godin

3. The Art of Execution by Guy Kawasaki

During a recent trip to Edinburgh, I learned that this clock at the top of the train station is ten minutes fast. The theory is that people will then get to the train station earlier when the clock is fast; however, this probably isn’t as effective as it could be because even tourists like me know that it is ten minutes fast, so we can all compensate for this trickery.

Continue reading here

This past weekend a rough looking middle-aged woman deliberately threw a rather large plastic cup full of soda out of her car window onto a retail store parking lot as we walked by. Realizing the unkempt woman littered on purpose, my wife said to her, “you dropped your cup.” In a very hateful tone the litterbug shot back, “come over here and pick it up!” A trash can was simply four or five steps away from the rude woman’s car door but she refused to do the right thing, trashed our environment with her un-cleanliness and her unsightly rudeness.

What has happened to basic courtesy? When did it become okay to simply throw your trash out the car window while driving down the highway. When did it become okay to yell, scream and curse at other drivers on the road? This same lack of courtesy has crept into the workplace as well.

Why do some managers find it acceptable to yell or curse at employees? Why do some organizations allow fear and intimidation to be used as a management tool? Even non-profit groups, churches and Christian organizations have not been immune to the disease of mean.

One time I observed a blustery executive respond to a subordinate who simply asked a good question, “I am not telling you again because I didn’t stutter the first time,” the impatient executive stated to the employee who was visibly shaken by the rude response. How creative and innovative do you think that supervisor’s employees were?

A majority of professionals will display trust, dignity and respect among subordinates, peers and leaders. However, there are those difficult ones who create toxic work environments due to their refusal to treat people nicely. They litter the workplace with their toxic behavioral trash. Their behavior and demeanor smells and makes people sick.

The Power of Nice is a great book written by advertising executives Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval showing “how to conquer the business world with kindness.” I highly recommend the brief 119 page book to all my clients, leaders and future leaders. We have all heard the adage “nice guys finish last.” Actually, this is far from the truth. Sure, mean managers get significant press time. But according to the authors, “The Power of Nice shows that ‘nice’ companies have lower employee turnover, lower recruitment costs, and higher productivity. Nice people live longer, are healthier, and make more money.”

The authors Thaler and Koval go on to say, “companies and people with a reputation for cooperation and fair play forge the kind of relationships that lead to bigger and better opportunities, both in business and life. But nice doesn’t mean acting wimpy. In fact, nice may be the toughest four-letter word you’ll ever experience,” say the authors.

Building great workplaces is not complicated work. Treating employees with dignity, trust and respect is not rocket science. Being nice, respectful and caring is powerful. These qualities are not the tools of a wimpy leader. These are the qualities of a focused and successful leader who does not need to ruin lives while climbing the corporate ladder or building a successful company.

Will you join The People Group in making a commitment to create a trusting, respectful and caring work environment where you work? It makes sense. It’s the right thing to do. And you will be financially better for it.

During lunch the other day I was seeking marketing advice from a good friend and respected business leader.  Full of wonderful and relevant ideas, she mentioned my writing style tended to be very direct.  This Tulsa business leader said a couple of articles seemed to reach out and grab the reader in a more threatening tone.  Because I greatly respect her opinion, I wanted to share some thoughts.

First, I apologize if my writing is too aggressive at times. Unfortunately, we work in a business climate today where overly aggressive behavior is rewarded. The “just get the job done” attitude is not the way to build long-term, viable organizations. Short-term thinking and decision-making, along with greedy behavior, will eventually lead to an organization’s failure. (Finish Reading).

About The Author

My grandma, Mabel Reynolds Ostrander, and I shared one of those special relationships as rare as a double rainbow. She was 53 when I was 10. That’s when we planted our first Victory Garden together during World War II. We planted seeds together—in the soil—and in each other.

Grandma lived 87 seasons without a complaint. I was 44 when I last saw her. But I remember every mince and lemon tart, every bite of made-from-scratch apple pie and every lingering wave of her hand as she stood (out of sight, or so she thought) behind the rayon Priscilla curtains in the little house at 718 West Pennsylvania Ave. in San Diego, Calif., where I was born and raised. As our station wagon full of kids and contentment would slowly pull away from the curb, we would all look back at her and wave—and I would gaze at her fragile silhouette through the rear-view mirror, wishing I could frame her there forever, just that way—wondering how many more Easter and Christmas dinners we would share.

Most of all, I remember my grandma and I planting seeds. We planted squash, beans, corn, watermelons, beets, pansies, mums and other flowers. I’ll admit I rode my bike those 20 miles each Saturday more for the bonus of the conversation and the homemade pastries than for the vegetables and flowers. But no matter how full I was after I ate, I was always left hungry for more of the wisdom and optimism she shared with me.

I’ll never forget the day we tasted our first harvest as a result of crossing a plum tree with an apricot tree. The ripe fruit was pink, not purple like a plum or orange like an apricot but a combination of both. “Gee, do you suppose they’ll be any good?” I asked. “Why of course they will be wonderful,” she chided. “Didn’t we do the planting, nurturing and pruning?”

Sure enough, they were delicious, even though they were different from any fruit I’d ever seen before. “That’s because they are uniquely unlike any other fruit you’ll ever eat. They are plumcots!” she said. ‘“You always get out what you put in,” she continued as we sat under the tree eating most of what we had picked. (Finish reading here).

Display beautiful images is a potent element in web and graphic design, where there is less concern for readability and more potential for using images in an artistic manner. Photoshop is useful for both creating and editing images to be used in print or online. Not too easy to use, but full of high-quality features, Photoshop is the best choice for any image manipulation job.

This article showcases the Most beautiful and ready to use free Photoshop PSD files and resources which helps you to enhance your design work and features.

For those, who don’t know what is Photoshop? and what it can do? Then please follow the link below for detail introduction.

• About Photoshop | adobe.com
• Adobe Photoshop | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The next generation, representing two decades of excellence. This application contains everything you need to create high-end images and graphics. For those artists whose work demands more than the basic application, There is a Photoshop to satisfy their every needs that utilizes photo manipulation.

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Please feel free to join us and you are always welcome to share your thoughts even if you have more reference links related to more PSD files that our readers may like.

Finish checking out Free Photoshop PSD Files and Resources!  There’s a lot more!!