Bøger af Jim Anderson

Before we can give the perfect speech, we have to get ready to give the perfect speech. Just saying the words of our speech over and over again is a good first step, but it's not enough. We need to know what else we have to do prior to giving a speech in order to be ready when the big day comes. What You'll Find Inside: CONNECT WITH YOUR AUDIENCE BY USING ENTHUSIASM CREATING HIGH QUALITY "A'S" FOR Q&AS 3 REASONS WHY SPEAKERS FAIL MISTAKES THAT WE SPEAKERS MAKE We need to understand that how we feel during the delivery of our speech is going to play a big role in how our audience feels about our speech. The more enthusiasm that you can bring to your speech, then the more excited your audience is going to be to hear what you have to say. During your speech you'll need to be careful to pick your words carefully. The one thing that you don't want to do is to use any "filler words" that don't have to be there. Every speech that we give is a performance. There are speakers out there that we recognize as being excellent speakers. We can model how they deliver their speeches in order to become more like them. At the same time, in order to make sure that our performance is top notch, we should consider taking some acting lessons so that our performance wows our audience. Every speech that we give is different. Our speeches that have a question and answer section need to be very carefully created. We're going to have to be ready to give the answers that our audience will be looking for. Other types of speeches, such as debates, require us to prepare for them using completely different tactics. The most powerful tool that any of us will have during a speech is time. We need to understand how to use this tool to allow us to fully communicate our message. If we don't use it well, then we won't be able to connect with our audience and there is the real possibility that the speech that we are giving will fail.

In today's fast-paced Information Technology (IT) field, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are being asked to do more than ever. No longer is it enough to just make sure that the company's various servers and email systems are up and operating correctly, now CIOs have to play a role in setting the company's overall strategic direction. What You'll Find Inside: SO YOU WANNA BE A CIO? HERE'S WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE 5 SKILLS OF THE CIO OF THE FUTURE WHAT IS THE #1 IT SKILL THAT A CIO NEEDS TO HAVE? YOU DON'T DO A GOOD JOB AT MULTITASKING CIO, GET OVER IT It's all too easy for a CIO to get caught up in the day-to-day activities being of a modern IT executive and forget to do the most important job of all - manage their career. Recent studies have shown that the average tenure of a CIO is only four years! If you want your career at your current company to be longer than that, then you need to start to take an active role in managing your career. It's not all about the technology (although that is important), rather managing your career is about managing relationships. In order for a CIO to be successful, he or she needs to find the time to build the relationships both inside and outside of the company that are going to be needed in order allow their career to continue to progress. One very important point that is all too easy to overlook is the fact that the skills that may have landed you the CIO job are not the skills that will be need to keep you in this job. What you're going to have to do is to develop an entirely new set of skills that allow the rest of the company to see just how valuable you are to the success of the firm. The purpose of this book is to provide you with real-world examples of what a CIO has to do in order to successfully manage his or her career. There is no one answer to this question. Rather it requires a different way of thinking. You actually need to take the time to fully understand what the other people in the company want you to accomplish and then you're going to need to find ways show everyone just how valuable you are. It is my hope that after having read this book you will be aware of the additional job that you've taken on as CIO - managing your career. Do this correctly and your CIO career will last a long time...! Good luck!

This book has been written with one goal in mind - to show you how you can land the perfect job when you get out of college. It doesn't matter where you are in school (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, or Senior) the strategies laid out here are going to get you the job that you want! It's full of practical, proven techniques that will both help you to find the job that you want and make it yours! What You'll Find Inside: - How to get real-world work experience before you get out of college! - Hidden LinkedIn techniques that you can use to get in contact with the people who want to hire you! - Secret tips for mastering the interview process and getting the job! - How to make yourself look different from everyone else who wants the job that you are interviewing for Dr. Jim Anderson brings his 15 years of college education coupled with his over 25 years of real-world work experience to this book. He's been on both sides of the interview table and he's going to show you exactly what you need to do in order to find and get the job that is perfect for you It turns out that this transition from working to get a college degree to starting to use that college degree as part of your first professional job can be made to be a lot less scary. What you need to do is understand that it's going to happen and then start to prepare for it. It turns out that this finding of a first job after you graduate from college is not all that hard to do. Look at it this way, people have been graduating from college forever and ever and each year thousands of new graduates stream out of colleges all across the country and they all seem to somehow end up working at a job in a fairly short period of time. Sure there are always some exceptions, but we're talking about most people here. This means that you've got some pretty good odds that you are going to find a job after you graduate. However, I want you to do just a little bit better than that: I want you to find the perfect job for you. I've spent over 25 years working in the so-called "real world". During that time I've had the opportunity to do my fair share of interviewing and selecting of new college grads. Trust me when I tell you that I have first-hand knowledge of what it takes to be the job candidate that gets selected for a position. How to find the perfect job for you is exactly what this book is all about. We're going to start at the beginning and we'll take you through the entire process. We're going to be covering everything that you need to know about how to find the right job for you and then how to make sure that the people who are doing the hiring see you as the perfect candidate for that job.

It turns out that most negotiations are over even before they begin. The promotional team that has spent the most time planning for the negotiation, doing their homework, and collecting the data that they'll need is the one that's going to walk away from the table with the best deal. Wouldn't you want that team to be your team? What You'll Find Inside: THE 7 DEADLY SINS OF PREPARING TO NEGOTIATE DEALS THAT MAKE MONEY: HOW TO PLAN YOUR CONCESSIONS MAKE MORE SALES: UNDERSTANDING BUYER POWER & WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT SINGLE VS TEAM NEGOTIATION: WHICH IS BETTER? Planning is what happens before a promoter sits down at the negotiating table. There are no negotiating tactics or tricks at play here. It's just a matter of you doing your homework. At the same time you hope that the other side is NOT doing their homework so that you'll show up at the negotiation more prepared then they are. Just committing to doing the planning that your next negotiation is going to require is not enough, you also have to know just exactly how to go about doing it. That's what this book is going to teach you. Every negotiation for your employer is different and so the planning that you'll have to do for every negotiation will be different also. The planning that is required for a successful negotiation for the person that you are responsible for takes on many different forms. These can include planning where and when the negotiations will be held, what concessions you'll be willing to make to the other side, and understanding who has what power in the negotiations. The end result of doing the planning that a negotiation requires is that when you sit down at the negotiating table, you'll have a sense of being prepared. You'll know what you need to know about the other side of the table, what their goals are, what their constraints are, and what they hope to be able to get out of the negotiations. This is exactly the type of knowledge that every promoter is going to need in order to be able to reach the type of deal that will allow you to walk away from the table with a sense of accomplishment.

Leadership is one of those things that we all think that we know what it is, but we are hard pressed to describe it to someone if they ask us. This makes picking the next generation of leaders that much harder. We want them to have the leadership skills that we know that they need, but how can we make sure that they have them? Some IT manager revert to using the time-tested trial-by-fire approach, but is this really the best way? What You'll Find Inside: YOU CAN BE AN IT LEADER, HERE'S HOW... IT MANAGER LEADERSHIP: TWO WAYS TO LEAD WHEN YOU'RE NOT IN CHARGE 5 THINGS THAT AN IT MANAGER NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT RISK HOW AN IT LEADER CAN MOTIVATE THEIR TEAM When we think about leaders, we envision them out in front of the team encouraging everyone onward. However, in real life it often doesn't happen this way. Sure, we may have the title of a leader, but what should we do if we have not been given the responsibility? Additionally, does a leader always have to be out in front? It just might be possible to lead from behind. We're not always placed in charge of the team that our career may depend on. When this happens, we need to find ways to lead the team despite not having the official responsibility to do so. In these cases, we'll be considered by the team to be part of the team and this makes our leadership challenge that more difficult as we attempt to lead the team from inside. Every time that we are placed in a leadership position, our success is not guaranteed. There will always be risk associated with what we are trying to do. This means that it's going to be up to us to find a way to both manage and deal with that risk. We are also going to have to be aware that we won't always be successful. We will occasionally fail and when this happens, we need to have a plan to deal with it. In any firm we may not have much of a say on who is on our team. However, when nepotism comes into play, things can become a lot trickier for an IT manager. We'll have to find a way to deal with this while at the same time trying to uncover ways that we can motivate our entire team. To show leadership to your team, you need to be able to communicate with them. There are many different ways to go about doing this, but more often than not, giving an effective speech is the most direct. This is a skill that every IT manager has to work at. Public speaking is a tool that will permit you to show your leadership skills.

The art of negotiation is all about using words to communicate what you want to other parties. Much of what we do is done at tables with both sides working closely to identify and resolve issues. However, in order to prepare for these face-to-face sessions, we often have to set the stage and let the other side know where we stand on an issue. Using an opportunity to give a speech to an audience allows us to send messages to the parties that we'll be negotiating with. However, we need to do a good job of clearly communicating our message when we give a speech. This means that we need to take the time to develop our speaking skills. What You'll Find Inside: "ONCE UPON A TIME..." - THE ROLE OF STORYTELLING IN BUSINESS COMMUNICATION HOW TO MAKE A TECHNICAL PRESENTATION RIVETING PERSUADE AN AUDIENCE USING 3 SECRETS USED BY PRESENTERS KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE: WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW MAY HURT YOU Just think of all of the great speakers who have gone before you Dr. Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Steve Jobs, the list goes on and on. Now you've been give your chance to change the world! I can well image what you are feeling right now - fear, doubt, uncertainty. Don't worry about it. I've got some good news for you - all of those great speakers felt the very same thing. However, they were able to muster up the courage to go out there and give the best speech that they possibly could. They did change the world and you just might end up doing the same thing. However, before you go doing that, we've got to make sure that you've got a well-planned speech to work with. Planning a speech is the first step in creating and delivering a powerful and effective speech. In order to plan a speech you need to take the time before you start to write out your speech and think about who you'll be speaking to. When planning a speech you need to make sure that you understand the purpose of your speech. Why are you going to go to all of the effort to create and deliver this speech? After you know that, take the time to think about your audience: what do they want from your speech? You're going to have to choose what type of speech you want to give. You can choose to deliver an informative speech, a demonstrative speech, an inspirational speech, or a humorous speech. More often than not the speech that you end up giving will draw from all four types of speeches. The good news is that I know that you're going to give a great speech and it's all going to start with the planning. Take the time to read this book, learn what you need to do in order to plan a great speech and then go out there and knock 'em dead!

An IT manager's budget controls what he or she and their team are going to be able to accomplish this year. No, creating a budget may not be the most enjoyable thing that you'll be called on to do, but it just might be the most important. The challenge that a lot of IT managers have when it comes to creating a good budget is that it requires them to master a number of terms and concepts that they may have never encountered in school. What You'll Find Inside: WHY IT MANAGERS NEED TO CARE ABOUT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AN IT MANAGER'S NEW BEST FRIEND: THE COMPANY BALANCE SHEET ROI: WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT MANAGERS NEED TO KNOW HOW TO USE IT 3 FINANCIAL TERMS THAT IT MANAGERS NEED TO KNOW The good news is that you are not the first IT manager to create a budget. There is a great deal to learn from the tips that other managers can provide you with. A good guide for how you should create your budget may be provided by your company's financial statements. In order to understand the company's financial situation you'll need to master the company's balance sheet. Additionally you'll have to understand the company's assets and its liabilities. How the company runs its day-to-day operations are closely tied to its use of working capital and so you'll need to have an understanding of this also. The company will be funding new IT projects using financial leverage and so you need to understand how this financial tool works. The status of the company is closely watched by outsiders and in order to keep your team informed you are going to have to learn how to read an income statement and a cash flow statement. Your company will be making an investment in your IT team and they expect it to return a profit. This means that you need to understand terms like ROI, net present value, and internal rate of return in order to understand how your performance is going to be measured. Master these financial terms and you'll be ready to create a complete budget for you and your team. One way to think about your IT budget is as fuel in the tank of your IT team. The more that you have, the farther you can go. Read on and find out how to fill your tank up...! For more information on what it takes to be a great IT Manager, check out my blog, The Accidental IT Leader, at: www.TheAccidentalITLeader.com

An IT manager's budget controls what he or she and their team are going to be able to accomplish this year. No, creating a budget may not be the most enjoyable thing that you'll be called on to do, but it just might be the most important. The challenge that a lot of IT managers have when it comes to creating a good budget is that it requires them to master a number of terms and concepts that they may have never encountered in school. What You'll Find Inside: WHY IT MANAGERS NEED TO CARE ABOUT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AN IT MANAGER'S NEW BEST FRIEND: THE COMPANY BALANCE SHEET ROI: WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT MANAGERS NEED TO KNOW HOW TO USE IT 3 FINANCIAL TERMS THAT IT MANAGERS NEED TO KNOW The good news is that you are not the first IT manager to create a budget. There is a great deal to learn from the tips that other managers can provide you with. A good guide for how you should create your budget may be provided by your company's financial statements. In order to understand the company's financial situation you'll need to master the company's balance sheet. Additionally you'll have to understand the company's assets and its liabilities. How the company runs its day-to-day operations are closely tied to its use of working capital and so you'll need to have an understanding of this also. The company will be funding new IT projects using financial leverage and so you need to understand how this financial tool works. The status of the company is closely watched by outsiders and in order to keep your team informed you are going to have to learn how to read an income statement and a cash flow statement. Your company will be making an investment in your IT team and they expect it to return a profit. This means that you need to understand terms like ROI, net present value, and internal rate of return in order to understand how your performance is going to be measured. Master these financial terms and you'll be ready to create a complete budget for you and your team. One way to think about your IT budget is as fuel in the tank of your IT team. The more that you have, the farther you can go. Read on and find out how to fill your tank up...! For more information on what it takes to be a great IT Manager, check out my blog, The Accidental IT Leader, at: www.TheAccidentalITLeader.com

Every time we are asked to give a speech, we feel a sense of nervous energy flow through our body. We think "I hope that this turns out well." We would give anything to be able to control the future and make this our best speech ever. Well, I've got some good news for you: you are in control and you can make that happen. What You'll Find Inside: HOW TO USE YOUR MENTAL TV TO MEMORIZE A SPEECH (OR ANYTHING) PRESENTATION PRACTICE: HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? LIGHTS, CAMERA, TV PRESENTATION? 4 TIPS FOR SPEAKING ON TELEVISION YOUR PRESENTATION VOICE: IS THAT REALLY ME? The secret to delivering a great speech is to know how to rehearse your speech. The reason that so many of us don't bother with rehearsing our speeches is for the simple fact that it takes time - who ever has enough of that? The sad truth is that just how effective our next speech is lies in our own hands. Take the time to not only rehearse your speech, but rehearse it the correct way and then when it's time to give your speech, you'll be ready. A big part of why we rehearse our speeches is because we want to remember what we're going to be saying. There are a lot of different ways to go about doing this - some easy, some hard. I think that I've discovered a way that will make this task easy for every speaker. Not every speech is the same. When we are asked to speak on Television, as more and more of us are, the rules are very different. As long as we know what the rules are, we can come away from this opportunity having been very successful. Rehearsing your speech consists of so much more than just repeating your speech over and over again. Each rehearsal gives you an opportunity to work on your acting skills, your voice, and how you build the sentences that you'll be using in your speech. In this book all of the secrets to getting the most out of the time that you spend rehearsing for your speech will be shared. We'll cover how to memorize your speech, how to deliver it, and how you can control what you sound like. After you have read this book, you'll be able to rehearse for you next speech knowing that your time is being spent wisely. For more information on what it takes to be a great public speaker, check out my blog, The Accidental Communicator, at: www.TheAccidentalCommunicator.com

All too often we find ourselves in the position of being an IT manager with little or no training on what it takes to correctly staff a team. This is a critical skill for us to have. Ultimately, the success of an IT manager rests on how his / her team preforms. What You'll Find Inside: "YOU'RE FIRED!" (HOW TO LET PEOPLE GO WITH CLASS) MANAGING IT TALENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY: GROW OR BUY? WHAT SHOULD AN IT MANAGER LOOK FOR WHEN HIRING EMPLOYEES? GOOGLE'S STAFFING PROBLEMS CAN TEACH IT LEADERS A LOT You might think that staffing is all about hiring the right people to come and join your team. It turns out that there is a lot more to this. Staffing involves attracting and retaining the right people. However, it also deals with knowing when it is time to let the wrong members of your team go. Knowing what to look for when it comes time to staff your team is a critical IT manager skill. You need to understand how important flexibility is because, as with all such things in life, everything continues to change over time. The best IT team members can come from unusual places and you need to know where to look for them. IT managers have to deal with the classic dilemma: should you be looking for the smartest people or the people who have the best ideas? They are not necessarily the same group of people. While you are at it, will you be doing anything to solve the problem of there being too few women in IT? We can all take heart in the fact that we are not alone in facing the challenges of creating a highly effective IT team. Even at companies as big and successful as Google they are struggling with this challenge and we can learn a lot from how they are tacking it. This book has been written to provide you with the skills that you are going to need in order to be able to attract, hire, retain, and motive a group of workers who will ultimately make your manager career a success. We'll investigate what you need to be looking for in new staff members and how you can get the most out of the team members that you already have. For more information on what it takes to be a great IT manager, check out my blog, The Accidental IT Leader, at: www.TheAccidentalITLeader.com

Every company wants to grow and become more successful. There is no magic formula to make this happen, but it is generally agreed that in order for this to happen the company cannot stand still. Instead, they always have to be trying new things and growing. What You'll Find Inside: CREATIVE ABRASION: HOW TO BUILD INNOVATION INTO IT FAUX MARKET SECRETS: HOW CIOS CAPTURE INNOVATION 4 INNOVATION STRATEGIES THAT ACTUALLY WORK THE REASON THAT INNOVATION ISN'T HAPPENING IN YOUR IT DEPARTMENT In the IT department, in order to make this kind of growth occur, innovation has to be encouraged to happen. All too often the workers in the IT department can get too involved in their day-to-day tasks to spend any time thinking about innovation. That's where the CIO has to step in. As the CIO it is your job to create an IT environment in your department that will not only encourage innovation to happen but will also help it to grow once it starts. A great deal of this has to do with how you communicate to the rest of the department what you want to happen. Innovation is something that we all know that we want to have happen, but just exactly how to make it occur is what often eludes us. As CIO you are going to have to identify the innovation strategies that will work with your company and your department and then implement them. It's possible that either innovation projects have been tried in the past and have not worked or, more likely, there is no innovation going on right now. It is your job to change this and make innovation take root and become part of everyone's daily routine. This book is filled with tools that CIOs can use to introduce innovation into their IT departments. These ideas range from using creative abrasion to employing faux market secrets. No matter what approach you decide to take, the goal is the same: cause innovation to take root and grow. Making innovation happen is not easy. By reading this book you will have the ideas and the techniques that you need to cause it to happen in your IT department. Once this happens, it can spread to the rest of the company. This is the kind of leadership that the company is looking for from their IT department. ? For more information on what it takes to be a great CIO, check out my blog, The Accidental Successful CIO, at: www.TheAccidentalSuccessfulCIO.com

It turns out that most negotiations are over even before they begin. The executive team that has spent the most time planning for the negotiation, doing their homework, and collecting the data that they'll need is the one that's going to walk away from the table with the best deal. Wouldn't you want that executive team to be your team? What You'll Find Inside: THE 7 DEADLY SINS OF PREPARING TO NEGOTIATE DEALS THAT MAKE MONEY: HOW TO PLAN YOUR CONCESSIONS MAKE MORE SALES: UNDERSTANDING BUYER POWER & WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT SINGLE VS TEAM NEGOTIATION: WHICH IS BETTER? Planning is what happens before a CEO sits down at the negotiating table. There are no negotiating tactics or tricks at play here. It's just a matter of you doing your homework. At the same time you hope that the other side is NOT doing their homework so that you'll show up at the negotiation more prepared then they are. Just committing to doing the planning that your next negotiation is going to require is not enough, you also have to know just exactly how to go about doing it. That's what this book is going to teach you. Every senior level negotiation is different and so the planning that you'll have to do for every negotiation will be different also. The planning that is required for a successful negotiation takes on many different forms. These can include planning where and when the negotiations will be held, what concessions you'll be willing to make to the other side, and understanding who has what power in the negotiations. The end result of doing the planning that a negotiation requires is that when you sit down at the negotiating table, you'll have a sense of being prepared. You'll know what you need to know about the other side of the table, what their goals are, what their constraints are, and what they hope to be able to get out of the negotiations. This is exactly the type of knowledge that every CEO is going to need in order to be able to reach the type of deal that will allow you to walk away from the table with a sense of accomplishment.

What does it really mean to be a CIO? You sure won't be writing any software any more. You won't be stringing network cables or updating firewall parameters. What does a CIO really do? I've got some bad news for you: CIOs manage. What You'll Find Inside: IT JUDGMENT CALLS: HOW TO MAKE GOOD ONES BREAKTHROUGH IT STRATEGY: TAKE A NEW "PATH" TO SUCCESS W.W.N.M.D.?: WHAT WOULD NELSON MANDELA DO? WICKED, WICKED IT STRATEGY PROBLEMS Sure, we all think that we know what that word means, but when it comes down to what CIOs do on a daily basis, what does this mean? At its very simplest, to manage means to make decisions. Not just any decisions, but the right decisions over and over again. That's why the really good CIOs get paid the big bucks. How can we learn to make the right management decisions? Judgment calls are a skill that can be learned, you just have to know how to go about doing it. We can look to companies such as Microsoft to get an understanding of how they go about doing it. However, we need to keep in mind that in the world of IT, bigger does not always mean better. Your company's IT department is built around one thing: information. It's how you collect it, store it, and use it that will determine how successful a CIO you are. This means that you need to be learning from how other companies have accomplished this and you need to be avoiding the mistakes that they have made. Finally, in the world of IT not all problems are created equally. There is a special breed of problems that we call "wicked" problems that are so big and so tough that all of our normal management skills generally don't work on them. They require a new way of thinking in order to solve. This book is going to provide you with the management skills that you are going to need as a CIO in order to be successful. We'll be taking a look at other firms and how they've dealt with management challenges (both successfully and unsuccessfully) and several new approaches that you can use will be revealed. For more information on what it takes to be a great CIO, check out my blog, The Accidental Successful CIO, at: www.TheAccidentalSuccessfulCIO.com

In the end, it all comes down to what your customer wants to tell you about your product. However, how many of us have been taught how to listen to our customers? What You'll Find Inside: LET'S GO VISIT THE CUSTOMER, PRODUCT MANAGER ARE ANGRY CUSTOMERS A PRODUCT MANAGER'S BEST FRIEND? CUSTOMER LED NEW PRODUCT DESIGN: NOTES FROM THE FIELD YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE IDIOTS & YOU NEED TO TELL THEM WHAT TO DO If only it was as easy as having our potential customers pick up the phone to give us a call and tell us what they'd like our products to do for them. That never seems to happen so product managers have to take a different approach. The good news is that information on what our customers want our products to do is out there - we just need to know how to find it. Visiting the customer is a great way to get important product information if you know how to ask the right questions. Additionally, we all collect tons of information on our customers and our products, but knowing what to do with it is another story. You wouldn't think that an angry customer would be able to help a product manager improve their product, but you'd be wrong. Angry customers will tell you in very clear terms what your product is NOT doing for them. Your ultimate goal as a product manager has to be to involve your customer in the product creation process. Since your customer is the one who best knows and understands what their needs are, the more that they can contribute to the design of the product, the better your chances of selling it them are. Finally, depending on how new or innovative your product is, your customers may not understand what it does or even that they have the problem that it solves. When you find yourself in this situation, you've got the job of educating your customer about not only their problems but also the solution that your product can provide them with. This book contains the answers that you need in order to better understand what your customers are trying to tell you. It's a matter of understanding how to listen to them and then how to understand what they have been trying to tell you. After you've read the book, you're going to be a product manager who understands what your customers are trying to tell you better than anyone else! For more information on what it takes to be a great product manager, check out my blog, The Accidental Product Manager, at: www.TheAccidentalPM.com

All too often CIOs can get caught up in all of the technical details of the job: boosting uptime, replacing servers, guarding against cyber criminals, etc. What we tend to forget is that IT exists to serve the rest of the business and they are there (in most cases) to make money. This means that there needs to be a business side to IT and that is one of a CIO's key responsibilities. What You'll Find Inside: 10 WAYS THAT IT CAN SOLVE REAL-WORLD BUSINESS PROBLEMS ARE CIOS LOOKING DOWN WHEN THEY SHOULD BE LOOKING UP? 3 WAYS TO FIX AN IT DEPARTMENT (SUGGESTIONS FROM EUROPE) HOW CAN YOU MAKE YOUR IT DEPARTMENT STRATEGIC The business is always facing a set of business problems. What you need to do as a CIO is to take the time to understand how these problems appear to the rest of the company. Then you need to use your technical skills to identify ways that the IT department can help the company solve these problems. This is going to have a huge impact on how you accomplish your CIO job. Your focus is going to have to shift from your department to watching over the rest of the company. Your top concerns are going to have to be business based, not technology based. In order to be a successful business based CIO, you need to establish clear lines of communication with the rest of the departments in the company. This means that the way that you talk about IT is going to have to change. No longer can you use the technical shorthand lingo that is used within IT, instead you are going to have to simplify things for everyone else. In the end it has to be your goal to transform the IT department. Gone are the days when you could simply be a support arm of the company fixing email systems and laptops. Now you need to become the strategic partner that the rest of the firm is going to have to rely on in order to accomplish their business goals. This book has been written in order to provide you with an understanding of how you can use your technical skills to solve business problems for your company. Follow the suggestions in this book and you'll transform your IT department into a powerful competitive tool for the rest of the firm to use. For more information on what it takes to be a great CIO, check out my blog, The Accidental Successful CIO, at: www.TheAccidentalSuccessfulCIO.com

As individuals we have a tendency to shy away from getting involved in arguments. We view them as being confrontational and filled with emotions. However, when it comes to negotiating and when we have a different view of the world than the other side of the table, it turns out that a little bit of arguing might be just what the doctor ordered. What You'll Find Inside: 6 THINGS A SALES NEGOTIATOR NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT USING THREATS DURING A NEGOTIATION GET WHAT YOU WANT BY BRINGING A PURPLE MONKEY TO YOUR NEXT NEGOTIATION LEGAL INTIMIDATION: 5 WAYS TO DEFEND AGAINST IT NEGOTIATORS NEED TO LEARN HOW TO DEAL WITH EXPERTS Every negotiation is a fast flowing affair. This means that a skilled negotiator knows to not make up his or her mind too early on in the negotiations so that they can remain flexible and open to new ideas. If we get backed into a corner during the negotiations, we may consider using threats to work our way out. However, as with everything in life, there are ramifications to using threats. The good news about a negotiation is that as a negotiator you don't have to be perfect. This means that you are not required to know everything. Additionally, during the negotiation if it suits you, you can act irrationally. Do be careful about coming across as being too smooth of a negotiator because if you do, then nobody will like you. During a negotiation you'll have many decisions that you'll have to make. Taking the high ground is one that always seems to pay off. Using standards to back up your position can help establish your credibility. To take this one step further, you need to be aware of any applicable regulations and laws that pertain to the issues being negotiated and you need to use them to the fullest extent. Our goal in any negotiation is to be able to reach a deal that we can live with. In order to make this happen we can do extraordinary things like bringing a purple money to the negotiations. We also have to learn how to deal with any legal intimidation that the other side may throw at us. We'll have to be prepared to stand our ground if the other side tries to raise the stakes or brings experts into the negotiations.

Isn't technology a wonderful thing? As CIO you are in charge of one of the most technologically sophisticated parts of the company. It's very easy to fill your days dealing with issues regarding servers, networks, routers, switches, firewalls, etc. However, it turns out that if you do this, then you'll be overlooking one of the most important tasks that a CIO needs to accomplish: communication. What You'll Find Inside: FORGOTTEN IT SKILLS: HOW TO ASK QUESTIONS CIOS ASK THE QUESTION: IS TWITTER A FRIEND OR A FOE? SHOULD A CIO BOTHER WITH THAT ITIL STUFF? 3 SKILLS THAT MOST CIOS ARE MISSING Keeping all of the moving parts that an IT department has in alignment is a challenging task. The good news is that you don't have to do it all - that's what the rest of the IT department is there for. However, you do need to clearly communicate to everyone both inside and outside of the IT department what you want to have done. This is going to require you to have good communication skills. Communication skills include knowing how to ask good questions, understanding how to use social media tools like Twitter, and realizing how to apply ITIL to your IT department. All of this stuff takes time to both learn and do. This book has been written in order to show you what you need to be doing in order to get your message out. In order to get the rest of the company to line up behind you and do what you need them to do, they first have to hear and understand your message. I'm going to show you many different ways that you can connect with the people who have to hear your message and how you can make your requests "stick" with them. It is my hope that after having read this book you will be aware of how to clearly communicate with not only your IT department, but also with the rest of the company. Do this correctly and your CIO career will last a long time...! For more information on what it takes to be a great CIO, check out my blog, The Accidental Successful CIO, at: www.TheAccidentalSuccessfulCIO.com

As the CIO of your company, it's your job to stay on top of all of the different forms of technology that the company uses to accomplish its business goals. This task is made even harder by all of the changes that are always occurring in the various technology fields. As the CIO you need to be understand how to pick the correct type of database to be used on projects. You need to watch the rollout of other large-scale IT projects and learn from them: what went right and what went wrong. What You'll Find Inside: The 7 Stages of Big Data Analytics That Every CIO Needs to Know About CIOs Need To Plan For the End of a Cloud Relationship Why CIOs Need To Get Good At Reusing Technology When It Comes To Data Mining - Is The CIO In Charge? The IT world that we live in these days seems to be awash in big data. As the CIO you are going to be called on to make important decisions about how your firm handles its own big data issues. You'll need to pick the right solutions and ensure that you are not being locked into proprietary vendor solutions. It seems as though every firm is in the process of moving more and more of their computing into "the cloud". As the CIO it's going to be your responsibility to make sure that you have a plan for how you want to handle your cloud vendor at the start of the relationship as well as at the end of it. The value of the IT department to the rest of the company becomes apparent when other departments need your help in sifting through vast quantities of data. Make sure that you have a plan for how you are going to do this. Also make sure that you have a help desk that is going to be ready to provide your customers with the support that they'll need. This book has been written in order to provide you with a great starting point for ensuring that you've done everything that you can to stay on top of the latest technology that is being used by your company. Follow the suggestions in this book and you'll know what technologies to use and when to use them. For more information on what it takes to be a great CIO, check out my blog, The Accidental Successful CIO, at: www.TheAccidentalSuccessfulCIO.com

Let's face it: giving a speech is hard work. First you have to write the speech, then you practice it, then you finally get up your courage and you deliver it. As long as you are going to do all of this, you sure want your audience to understand what you are telling them. In order to make this happen, you are going to have to organize what you tell them correctly. What You'll Find Inside: HOW TO GET YOUR MESSAGE TO STICK W/ EVERYONE! BACK TO BASICS: PRESENTATION TIPS 101 MAKE YOUR AUDIENCE SIT UP, TAKE NOTICE, AND LEARN AT YOUR NEXT PRESENTATION 7 SECRETS TO GETTING YOUR ADULT AUDIENCE TO LEARN FROM YOUR PRESENTATION A large part of any modern presentation is the PowerPoint (or Keynote) slides that we use. However, we need to understand what role they are going to play in our speech. As we organize the speech, we're going to need to make important decisions about how many slides we're going to need in order to communicate our points. There is so much that goes into making a speech successful. Group meetings where we are often asked to speak are tricky things: everyone may already be bored by the time we take the stage, what organization secrets do we need to know in order to connect with this audience? Perhaps the secret lies in how we will be introduced. Finally, we need to keep in mind that every audience is different. Adults learn and understand differently from other audiences. If we're aware of this, then we can organize our speech so that we deliver our information in a way that they'll be able to both understand and remember. This book will show you how to organize your next speech in order to transform it into something that is even more powerful than it is today. We're going to show you how to find out what you should be doing and how to lay out your information in a way that will boost the impact of your speaking. For more information on what it takes to be a great public speaker, check out my blog, The Accidental Communicator, at: www.TheAccidentalCommunicator.com

There are speeches, and then there are great speeches. As public speakers it's the great speeches that we want to give; however, how is one to go about creating such a speech? What You'll Find Inside: THE THREE KEY GOALS OF ANY PRESENTATION HOW TO CONNECT WITH YOUR AUDIENCE GET 'EM TO UNDERSTAND, GET 'EM TO REMEMBER QUICK HIT: TOP 10 TIPS TO REMEMBER WHEN WRITING A SPEECH It turns out that creating a great speech really is not all that hard to do if you know how. The first thing that you have to do is to realize that a great speech is one that your audience will enjoy listening to. However, even more important than that is that long after you are done speaking, they are going to remember what you said. A great speech is one that "sticks" with your audience. Your speech is also going to have to be persuasive. Every speech that we give is given for a reason. We want to change the way that our audience views their world. This means that you are going to have to change their minds. The key to doing that in a great speech is to find a way to be persuasive. Tap into your audience's desire to believe in something and make them believe in you and your ideas. We can all learn how to transform a plain ordinary speech into a great speech if we know where to look. There are great speakers out there who have tips for us. We can learn how to add humor to our speeches and we can learn how to write better speeches in the first place. All of these things are possible, you just have to be told how to do them. That's exactly what this book is all about - how to create the perfect speech. We are going to step you through each of the different techniques that you can use to make your next speech unforgettable. Speech perfection is within your grasp! For more information on what it takes to be a great public speaker, check out my blog, The Accidental Communicator, at: www.TheAccidentalCommunicator.com

An IT manager is only as good as his or her team is. This means that one of the most critical skills that an IT manager has is the ability to build the perfect team. The better a team that you can build, the better your team is going to make you look! What You'll Find Inside: IT LEADERS DEAL WITH THE THREE D'S: DEATH, DIVORCE, AND DISEASE HOW TO KEEP YOUR TEAM FROM LEAVING AS THE ECONOMY IMPROVES HOW DO IT LEADERS WRITE A GOOD JOB DESCRIPTION? HOW TO HIRE IT PEOPLE: WHAT THEY NEVER TOLD YOU Building a world-class IT team starts with the recruiting process. You are going to have to understand the challenges associated with hiring the right people and what it takes to ensure that you have a truly diverse team. Where to look for the best candidates can be confusing, but often they are located locally. Getting good people for your team is not all that you have to do. Once you've gotten then, you now have the responsibility of managing their expectations - which in some cases can be quite high. When people agree to join your team, they have expectations that you'll have their back when life's challenges come along and you need to be aware of these expectations. No team is fixed, there are always changes happening. As a successful IT manager you are going to have to make sure that your staff are not planning on leaving you. You need to prevent staffing disasters before they occur. When people do leave, it presents you with an open positon on your team that you need to fill correctly. Filling jobs starts with the same steps - creating an accurate job description that lays out what you are looking for in your candidates. It's going to be up to you to select the right person for the open job, but the challenge is that most of us have never had any training in how to do this correctly. The best way to avoid these challenges is to find ways to keep the staff that you have and understand why they might consider leaving you.

When we enter into a negotiation, we simply don't know everything that we need to know. What this means for us is that we've got to use the negotiation to do some exploring - we've got to get answers to the questions that are unanswered when we start. What You'll Find Inside: GIVING TO GET: HOW A SALES NEGOTIATOR MAKES CONCESSIONS 3 THINGS EVERY SALES NEGOTIATOR NEEDS TO KNOW HIDDEN NEEDS DRIVE SALES NEGOTIATIONS HOW TO WIN A RACE WHEN YOU'RE NOT THE FASTEST RUNNER In order to accomplish this we're going to have to make sure that we have the time that we need to think about what the other side is telling us. When they hit us with a lot of facts and stats to back up their position, we need to take the time to understand where all of these numbers came from. In order to get the deal that we want, we're going to have to give in on some of the issues that are being discussed. What issues we make concessions on and how we go about making those concessions is very important. Done correctly, we'll get closer to the deal that we want. In order to get better at this negotiating thing, we need to understand how to use all of the tools that are available to us. This includes the telephone. Additionally, it sure would be nice if we could get some professional negotiators to share with us how they have become so successful. One of the things that we need to be aware of during a negotiation is that we can't always trust what the other side is telling us. We need to learn to not believe the other side. This also means that we should get some guidance from someone who has done all of this before. Although it's not a word that a lot of us use very often, haggling is a critical part of any negotiation. We need to learn what it is and how to do it. The more that you talk with the other side, the better your chances of learning what their hidden needs are. A negotiation can take some time to complete. This means that as negotiators we need to learn how to be persistent in order to get what we want. We may not have the best product, the best price, or be the most competitive but we can still walk away with the deal that we want.

The part of a negotiation that every negotiator wants to get to as quickly as possible is the closing. This is when your prize is insight: the deal that you want is so close that you could almost reach out and touch it. However, it turns out that this is the most dangerous part of a negotiation - it can all slip away from you if you don't know how to navigate the closing correctly. What You'll Find Inside: 6 WAYS TO BREAK A NEGOTIATION DEADLOCK (PLUS ONE MORE) EVERY NEGOTIATION NEEDS A RAP(PORT) STAR! SUCCEED BY BRINGING THE GHOST WHISPERER TO THE NEGOTIATION A SALES NEGOTIATOR'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH A DEADLOCK Negotiating is a skill that we hone by using it over and over again. Opportunities to practice our negotiating skills come in all shapes and sizes and buying a car is one such event. Another way to get better at this thing that we call negotiating is by watching what other profession negotiators do. Negotiations between businesses and their workers, such as Verizon and the CWA / IBEW or even between two businesses such as EA and Take Two can offer us important learning experiences. In labor negotiations, it's the balance of power that can often determine which side walks away from the bargaining table with the best deal. Over at Boeing with the large number of different unions that the company has to deal with this has been shown to be true over and over again. In order to be able to successfully close a negotiation, you need to have built up a strong foundation that will allow you to move the negotiation to a close. This involves building rapport with the other side of the table and also knowing just exactly who is calling the shots for the other side. Finally, the closing of a negotiation often comes about because of a deadline or perhaps because both parties have reached a deadlock that they can't resolve. In both cases, your ability to get the deal that you want will be at risk. Knowing how to deal with these situations is a core skill that every negotiator needs to master. For more information on what it takes to be a great negotiator, check out my blog, The Accidental Negotiator, at: www.TheAccidentalNegotiator.com

Being willing to serve takes a real commitment on the part of anyone who wants to be a politician. However, before you can serve, you first have to get elected. In order for that to happen you are going to have to get enough people to believe that your views represent their views. The only way that you'll be able to do this is to prior to the next election, tell them where you stand on the issues that are important to them. There are a lot of different ways to go about doing this, but giving speeches is the time honored way that politicians communicate with the people that they want to vote for them. Now all you have to do is get good at giving speeches and that political office is as good as yours! What You'll Find Inside: "ONCE UPON A TIME..." - THE ROLE OF STORYTELLING IN BUSINESS COMMUNICATION HOW TO MAKE A TECHNICAL PRESENTATION RIVETING PERSUADE AN AUDIENCE USING 3 SECRETS USED BY PRESENTERS KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE: WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW MAY HURT YOU Just think of all of the great speakers who have gone before you Dr. Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Steve Jobs, the list goes on and on. Now you've been give your chance to change the world! I can well image what you are feeling right now - fear, doubt, uncertainty. Don't worry about it. I've got some good news for you - all of those great speakers felt the very same thing. However, they were able to muster up the courage to go out there and give the best speech that they possibly could. They did change the world and you just might end up doing the same thing. However, before you go doing that, we've got to make sure that you've got a well-planned speech to work with. Planning a speech is the first step in creating and delivering a powerful and effective speech. In order to plan a speech you need to take the time before you start to write out your speech and think about who you'll be speaking to. When planning a speech you need to make sure that you understand the purpose of your speech. Why are you going to go to all of the effort to create and deliver this speech? After you know that, take the time to think about your audience: what do they want from your speech? You're going to have to choose what type of speech you want to give. You can choose to deliver an informative speech, a demonstrative speech, an inspirational speech, or a humorous speech. More often than not the speech that you end up giving will draw from all four types of speeches. The good news is that I know that you're going to give a great speech and it's all going to start with the planning. Take the time to read this book, learn what you need to do in order to plan a great speech and then go out there and knock 'em dead!

It's only after you become a CIO that you truly start to understand all of the things that you don't know. Your technical skills are probably what got you this job, but they are not going to be enough to allow you to keep it. You are going to have to decide if it's going to take getting an MBA to allow you to get a seat at the table with the company's other decision makers. What You'll Find Inside: CIO'S WITH NO TIME FIND AN ALTERNATIVE TO AN MBA THE "R" WORD AND WHAT IT MEANS TO CIOS WHY IS THE CIO POSITION REPORTING STRUCTURE BROKEN? DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH PERSONAL ENERGY TO BE CIO? You want to become more than just a CIO, you want to become a high potential CIO who is known for going places. In order for this to happen, you are going to have to take action. You are going to have to find ways to make yourself valuable to your company. Ultimately it all comes down to just exactly how much responsibility you are going to be willing to accept. The more that you are willing to take on, the more valuable you will become to the company. However, you need to be very careful and not go too far - the authority granted to you as CIO can be abused and then you may find yourself in a very difficult place. The CIO job that you have today may not be your last job. If you are going to make a move to another CIO job, then you are going to want to make sure that you do it correctly. The last thing that you would want to do would be to make the wrong move. In order to make the most of the CIO position, you need to be listened to by your company. This means that you need to be part of the right type of reporting structure. Not every industry gets this right; however, right now the power industry is starting to realize the importance of the CIO and it's a good place for a CIO to be. To fully develop your CIO career is going to take a great deal of personal energy. This means that you are going to have to make sure that you have what it will take to be successful. No, you won't always be successful, but that's ok. Even the best of us stumble occasionally, but then we get right back up.

It turns out that most negotiations are over even before they begin. The HR manager that has spent the most time planning for the negotiation, doing their homework, and collecting the data that they'll need is the one that's going to walk away from the table with the best deal and a sense of winning. Wouldn't you want that person to be you? What You'll Find Inside: THE 7 DEADLY SINS OF PREPARING TO NEGOTIATE DEALS THAT MAKE MONEY: HOW TO PLAN YOUR CONCESSIONS CLOSE MORE DEALS: UNDERSTANDING BUYER POWER & WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT SINGLE VS TEAM NEGOTIATION: WHICH IS BETTER? Planning is what happens before a HR manager sits down at the negotiating table. There are no negotiating tactics or tricks at play here. It's just a matter of you doing your homework. At the same time you hope that the other side is NOT doing their homework so that you'll show up at the negotiation more prepared then they are. Just committing to doing the planning that your next negotiation is going to require is not enough, you also have to know just exactly how to go about doing it - you have to think about the offers and counter offers that are going to be made. That's what this book is going to teach you. Every negotiation is different and so the planning that you'll have to do for each negotiation will be different also. The planning that is required for a successful negotiation takes on many different forms. These can include planning where and when the negotiations will be held, what concessions you'll be willing to make to the other side, and understanding who has what power in the negotiations. The end result of doing the planning that a negotiation requires is that when you sit down at the negotiating table, you'll have a sense of being prepared. You'll know what you need to know about the other side of the table, what their goals are, what their constraints are, and what they hope to be able to get out of the negotiations. This is exactly the type of knowledge that every person who lives in the world of human resources is going to need in order to be able to reach the type of deal that will allow you to walk away from the table with a sense of having closed a deal that is good for both you and your company.

It turns out that most negotiations are over even before they begin. The team that has spent the most time planning for the negotiation, doing their homework, and collecting the data that they'll need is the one that's going to walk away from the table with the best deal. Wouldn't you want that team to be your team? What You'll Find Inside: THE 7 DEADLY SINS OF PREPARING TO NEGOTIATE DEALS THAT MAKE MONEY: HOW TO PLAN YOUR CONCESSIONS MAKE MORE SALES: UNDERSTANDING BUYER POWER & WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT SINGLE VS TEAM NEGOTIATION: WHICH IS BETTER? Planning is what happens before a psychologist sits down at the negotiating table. There are no negotiating tactics or tricks at play here. It's just a matter of you doing your homework. At the same time you hope that the other side is NOT doing their homework so that you'll show up at the negotiation more prepared then they are. Just committing to doing the planning that your next negotiation is going to require is not enough, you also have to know just exactly how to go about doing it. That's what this book is going to teach you. Every negotiation is different and so the planning that you'll have to do for every negotiation will be different also. The planning that is required for a successful negotiation takes on many different forms. These can include planning where and when the negotiations will be held, what concessions you'll be willing to make to the other side, and understanding who has what power in the negotiations. The end result of doing the planning that a negotiation requires is that when you sit down at the negotiating table, you'll have a sense of being prepared. You'll know what you need to know about the other side of the table, what their goals are, what their constraints are, and what they hope to be able to get out of the negotiations. This is exactly the type of knowledge that every psychologist is going to need in order to be able to reach the type of deal that will allow you to walk away from the table with a sense of accomplishment.

The goal of any speaker is that when they give their speech their audience hangs on their every word. In order to make this happen, we need to find ways to organize our speech so that we can both capture and hold our audience's attention from start to finish. What You'll Find Inside: BACK TO BACK TO BACK TO BACK SPEAKING: HOW TO YOU CAN LEARN TO SPEAK LIKE PRESIDENT OBAMA TECHNICAL TALKS: IS THERE ANY WAY TO MAKE THIS STUFF INTERESTING? THE 2 MOST IMPORTANT THINGS THAT A PUBLIC SPEAKER NEEDS TO DO WHEN THE CURTAIN GOES UP Every speech has to start out well and this is a great opportunity to do some bragging about yourself to your audience. Al Gore has some tips for us so that we can understand what budgets we have to spend during our speech. If you get asked to give more than one speech in a day, you're going to have to know how to manage your voice for the duration. If you want your next speech to make an impression then you are going to have to find a way to inspire your audience. This all starts with how you plan on going on capturing your audience's attention. Networking with your audience is the key to getting them to listen to what you are going to be telling them. Everything that you do starts from the moment that the curtain goes up. What your audience thinks of you is often determined by the introduction. If you get asked to deliver a keynote, then you are going to need to get some guidance on how to create and deliver one successfully. In the end, it's how you choose to organize your speech that will determine the impact that it will have on your audience. Carefully creating a speech that has all of the parts that you are going to need in order to capture your audience's attention is what is going to make your next speech memorable.

The goal of any speaker is that when they give their speech their audience hangs on their every word. In order to make this happen, we need to find ways to organize our speech so that we can both capture and hold our audience's attention from start to finish. What You'll Find Inside: BACK TO BACK TO BACK TO BACK SPEAKING: HOW TO YOU CAN LEARN TO SPEAK LIKE PRESIDENT OBAMA TECHNICAL TALKS: IS THERE ANY WAY TO MAKE THIS STUFF INTERESTING? THE 2 MOST IMPORTANT THINGS THAT A PUBLIC SPEAKER NEEDS TO DO WHEN THE CURTAIN GOES UP Every speech has to start out well and this is a great opportunity to do some bragging about yourself to your audience. Al Gore has some tips for us so that we can understand what budgets we have to spend during our speech. If you get asked to give more than one speech in a day, you're going to have to know how to manage your voice for the duration. If you want your next speech to make an impression then you are going to have to find a way to inspire your audience. This all starts with how you plan on going on capturing your audience's attention. Networking with your audience is the key to getting them to listen to what you are going to be telling them. Everything that you do starts from the moment that the curtain goes up. What your audience thinks of you is often determined by the introduction. If you get asked to deliver a keynote, then you are going to need to get some guidance on how to create and deliver one successfully. In the end, it's how you choose to organize your speech that will determine the impact that it will have on your audience. Carefully creating a speech that has all of the parts that you are going to need in order to capture your audience's attention is what is going to make your next speech memorable. For more information on what it takes to be a great public speaker, check out my blog, The Accidental Communicator, at: www.TheAccidentalCommunicator.com

So why do we give speeches? I mean, talk about an effort! When you agree to give a speech all of a sudden you realize that you've signed yourself up to pick what you want to talk about, do whatever research is required, actually write the speech, and then spend a great deal of time practicing how you are going to say it. What's the purpose of all of this? What You'll Find Inside: PRESENTATION CHALLENGE: HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY TALK TO TEENS - AND SURVIVE! WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU SAY THE WRONG THING DURING A PRESENTATION D.O.A.: WHY PRESENTERS HATE BAD INTRODUCTIONS HANDLING HECKLERS: 5 WAYS THAT PRESENTERS CAN RESTORE ORDER It turns out that the purpose is actually quite simple - we want our next presentation to make a difference. No matter if we've agreed to talk with teens, if we've screwed up and said the wrong thing, or if we're not sure that our voice is up to giving a speech, we always want to make sure that our efforts are going to count for something. Speeches are not easy to give. We have to struggle with getting bad introductions, make sure that we offend a few people as possible if we are giving toasts, and be aware of all of the nonverbal signals that we are sending to our audience. Because speaking can be so hard to so, when we get a chance to watch a famous person speak, we need to seize the opportunity - it's like going to speech giving school. They'll teach us critical skills like how to handle hecklers and how to give an effective keynote speech. It may not always seem this way, but as speakers we do have power. We need to learn how to tap into the power that we have and use it to deliver the best speech that we possibly can.