Normally, we don't augment other peoples post to place on our site, but today there is an interesting posting on how our best intentions can cause our websites to suffer.
hidden links I think this posting could be applied to any form of artistic or business and marketing plan. We'd like to see what our audience thinks of this article posted on lifehack.org . I hope you leave feedback on what thoughts you may have. A link to the source site will be placed at the bottom of the posting
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Now for the featured post written by
Paul Sloane
Leaders have more power than they realize. They can patiently create a climate of creativity or they can crush it in a series of subtle comments and gestures. Their actions send powerful signals. Their responses to suggestions and ideas are deciphered by staff as encouragement or rejection.
If you want to crush creativity in your organization and eliminate all the unnecessary bother of innovation then here are ten steps that are guaranteed to succeed.
1. Criticize
When you hear a new idea criticize it.
Show how smart you are by pointing out some of the weaknesses and flaws which will hold it back. The more experienced you are, the easier it is to find fault with other people’s ideas. Decca Records turned down the Beatles, IBM rejected the photocopying idea which launched Xerox, DEC turned down the spreadsheet and various major publishers turned down the first Harry Potter novel. The same thing is happening in most organizations today. New ideas tend to be partly-formed so it is easy to reject them as ‘bad’. They diverge from the narrow focus that we have for the business so we discard them. Furthermore, every time somebody comes to you with an idea which you criticize, it discourages the person from wasting your time with more suggestions. It sends a message that new ideas are not welcome and that anyone who volunteers them is risking criticism or ridicule. This is a sure fire way to crush the creative spirit in your staff.
2. Ban brainstorms
Treat brainstorming as old-fashioned and passé. All that brainstorms do is throw up lots of new ideas that then have to be rejected.
If your organization is not holding frequent brainstorm sessions to find creative solutions then you are not wasting time on new ideas. Instead you are sending a message to staff that their input is not required. If people insist on brainstorm meetings then make them long, rambling and unfocused with lots of criticism of radical ideas.
3. Hoard problems
The CEO and senior team should shoulder the responsibility for solving all the company’s major problems.
Strategic issues are too complicated and high-level for the ordinary staff. After all, if people at the grass-roots knew the strategic challenges the organization faces then they would feel insecure and threatened. Don’t involve staff in serious issues, don’t tell them the big picture and above all don’t challenge them to come up with solutions.
4. Focus on efficiency not innovation
Focus solely on making the current business model work better. If we concentrate on making the current system work better then we will not waste time on looking for different systems.
The current business model is the one that you helped develop and it is obviously the best one for the business. After all, if the makers of horse drawn carriages had improved quality they could have stopped automobiles taking their markets. The same principle applied with makers of slide rules, LP records, typewriters and gas lights.
5. Overwork
Establish a culture of long hours and hard work.
Encourage the belief that hard work alone will solve the problem. We do not need to find a different way of solving a problem – rather we must just work harder at the old way of doing things. Make sure that the working day has no time for learning, fun, lateral thinking, wild ideas or testing of new initiatives.
6. Adhere to the plan
Plan in great detail and then do not deviate from the plan regardless of circumstances. ‘We cannot try that idea because it is not in the plan and we have no budget for it.’
Keep to the vision that was in the plan and ignore fads like market changes and customer fashions – they will pass.
7. Punish mistakes
If someone tries an entrepreneurial idea that fails then blame and retribution must follow.
Reward success and punish failure. That way we will reinforce the existing way of doing things and discourage dangerous experiments.
8. Don’t look outside
We understand our business better than outsiders. After all we have been working in it for years. Other industries are fundamentally different and just because something works there does not mean it will work here. Consultants are generally over-priced and tell you things you could have figured out anyway.
We need to find the solutions inside the business by working harder.
9. Promote people like you from within
Promoting from within is a good sign. It helps retain people and they can see a reward for loyalty and hard work. It means we don’t get polluted with heretical ideas from outside.
Also if the CEO promotes people like him then he can achieve consistency and succession. It is best to find managers who agree with the CEO and praise him for his acumen and foresight.
10. Don’t waste money on training
Talent cannot be taught. It is it a rare thing possessed by a handful of gifted individuals. So why waste money trying to turn ducks into swans?
Hire our kind of people and let them learn our system. Work them hard, keep them focused on our business model and do not allow them to fool around with crazy experiments. Workshops, budgets and time allocated to creativity and innovation are all wasteful extravagances. We know what we need to succeed so let’s just get on with it.
Ten Great Ways to Crush Creativity
While some may say this method is dirty, tainted, or just underweight marketing, it's being used by business everywhere to propel their site recognition and visibility. The point is not to consider any form of media as to small to be useful. Whatever addresses are applicable to your business or site should always be listed in Google, Yahoo, and Mapquest Map sites. Unless there are privacy concerns, this is an easy method at getting multiple links and search traffic to your site. If there are privacy concerns, it is quite apparent that a lot of businesses are using addresses that are not their own, not remotely related to the company, and in a few cases, don't even exist. Like I said, I don't take a stance either way on the address issue. Whatever address you choose to use is your own business and will be pertinent to your site needs. The pint is to consider adding site traffic through any means possible and to elevate your position in the search engines. If you find that having multiple addresses within search maps allows for extra exposure, it might be worth considering.
You'll see lots of advice about "SEO" or Search Engine Optimizing, or "using keywords." Much of that advice can actually hurt your Google rankings, especially "keyword stuffing," or deliberately over-using the terms you think will bring your page to the top ranks in a search. Google and other search engines are constantly changing the way they calculate search rankings, and they're getting smarter about figuring out ways of rewarding quality sites. That means that the best way of making sure your pages and posts have top search engine rankings and appear in the first few results when someone does a search is to write well.
Really. Good writing trumps all the deliberate use of SEO keyword techniques.
But what, you ask, is good writing? I'm glad you asked, Grasshopper.
To begin with, good writing means being as clear as you can about what exactly you're writing about.
Use a very clear and specific title for your page or post. Remember that a lot of readers will only see your title in their RSS feed, and the title has to be clear enough that they click to read the post. You want to be accurate, descriptive—and brief.
Don't use the same subject phrase over and over—that's called keyword stuffing, and it's not only repetitive and boring, it's down right obnoxious. Overusing a keyword or phrase can suggest to a search engine that you're a spam site, and your ranking will suffer accordingly.
Do use the most appropriate descriptive and specific language. Being specific means that your reader doesn't have to guess what you mean or what you're talking about. SPecificity makes your work easy to find.
Remember that just because you call cats kitties, doesn't mean that your readers will; so think about synonyms, and likely search phrases. What will help a reader find your post? You might choose to use cats, kitties and felines—and you might also deliberately choose to avoid using pussies, since you don't want to attract porn spam.
Google offers some tools to help you write good posts. One of them is the 
Visualize The Approach
Think of throwing rocks into a small pond or lake. The ripples will swell outward in various patterns and expanses. They become even smaller as they travel outward. As they encounter obstacles and other ripples, their direction shifts in many more obscure ways. This is the key visualization to increase site traffic... In reverse, of course.
Keep in mind, all waves have roughly the same amplitude. With this thought, imagine pushing traffic in small, obscure waves that build in size while traveling back to your website. This requires a lot of work and interaction with other sites as well. Using the blogosphere, utilizing Press Releases, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Ning, Digg, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn, ect.... The list could go on for some time. Now these are the at the tops of most every "At Home SEO Expert", but what of the lesser known sites? What about blogs that are only minimally related to your goal. They "ARE" all fair game, regardless of what some experts may say. The point is to not just think of social networking, not just think of bookmarks, not to just think of the quick response websites
With al of the advances in content management, jQuery, Content Galleries, and SlideShoPro(just to name a few), why do companies continue to abuse themselves with large, long-loading, and usually unrelated flash based websites. It's like the "Cornflower Blue" joke from Fight Club... The Flash is played out and doing your site a disservice if it takes longer to load than a persons attention span. Many at even the highest reaches of the professional world have yet to learn this basic theory. It has been estimated that for every second of load-time your site waste, you loose another 10% of prospective viewers. With inbound marketing being the most common reason for a business site, why would a company purposefully turn away prospective customers?
I'm not saying that Flash is evil, and I certainly do not have a battle with Adobe. Flash has served the web community in various ways for over a decade, but at some point, businesses should realize what a detriment it can be when potential customers are lost to time needed for the site to load(another post coming on flash this weekend)
The best way of getting like minds to follow you is to begin by following people of a like mind. When setting up each account, consider your site definition. If your site is built to target designers, following designers would be your goal, if you paint, following people associated with painting...ect. This method will result in the people you follow usually following you in response. By this method, you should receive a fairly strong and targeted market.