Solid leadership is an essential component of effective management, and although not everyone is a born leader, it is possible to be molded into a leader.  The subject of leadership has been greatly covered by academic scholars & management consultants, yet building high-performance teams remains elusive to most companies. Leadership is the most important competitive advantage of a company, not technology, finance, operations nor anything else. I would love for someone to justify otherwise (I also asked this on LinkedIn).

A high-performance company with solid leadership is like a high-performance car and driver.  Proper performance and integration of all components are critical.  Unanswered customer calls are like faulty wiring.  Missed production schedules are like misfiring spark-plugs.  A poor strategy is like an engine out of tune.  Poor internal communications are like a weak battery.  Poor morale is like a flat tire.  And, poor leadership is like a moving car whose driver has bailed out.  Companies, like cars, need all components properly working, and working in an integrated manner.  Such integration is even more important in today’s dynamically competitive environment.

One of the biggest problems facing poor leadership, and possibly the most significant reason we are stuck with it, is that so many of us are prepared to tolerate – or even support – those who are not fit to lead. “The reason we do so”, says Peter Drucker, “is that it is easier to toe the line than to make trouble”.

Another reason that many of us are happy to follow people for whom we may hold little respect is that we tend to crave the kind of simplicity and stability that does not go with the responsibilities of leadership.

When management tends to focus so much on one management area, e.g., sales, and has no time to manage the internal organization challenges, dysfunction creeps in and takes hold. Here is a great checklist of warning signs of poor leadership from the International Institute of Management.

No 360 Degrees Feedback: There is limited or no leadership performance feedback.

Personal Agendas: Recruitments, selections and promotions are based on internal political agenda, for example hiring friends to guarantee personal loyalty at the expense of other highly performing and more-qualified employees.

Inefficient Use of Resources: Budgets are allocated between business units or departments based on favoritism and power centers rather than actual business needs.

Empire-building Practices: Managers believe that the more people they manage and the bigger the budget, the higher the chance that they will be promoted. This results in raging battles around budgets, strategies and operations.

Unequal Workload Distribution: You’ll find some departments are underutilized while other departments are overloaded.

Too Much Management: There are many management layers in the organization, thus, hindering communication and resulting in slower execution.

Fragmented Organization Efforts: Interdepartmental competition and turf wars between rival managers lead to the emergence of silos, which results in communication gaps. Management silos almost always result in fragmented and duplicated budgets and projects, thus wasting valuable company investments.

Too Much Talk: Plans are heavy on talk but light on action. In a political corporate culture, image management becomes far more important than actions.

Ineffective Meetings: Argumentative and heated cross-divisions meetings with discussion and language focusing on point scoring and buck-passing rather than sharing responsibility and collaborating to solve the problem

Lack of Collaboration: Every person for himself/herself. Low sense of unity or camaraderie on the team. The key criterion for decision-making is What is in it for me?

Low Productivity: Management wastes more time and energy on internal attack and defense strategies instead of executing the work, innovating and overcoming challenges. Critical projects fall behind on deadlines, budgets and performance targets (e.g. sales, market share, quality and other operational targets).

Constant Crisis Mode: Management team spends most of their time on fire fighting instead of proactive planning for next-generation products and services.

Morale Deterioration: Muted level of commitment and enthusiasm by other teams. Even successful results cannot be shared and celebrated due to animosity and internal negative competition.

Backstabbing: Backbiting among the executives and managers becomes common and public.

Highly Stressful Workplace: There is a high rate of absenteeism and a high employee turnover rate.

Dictatorial Leadership: Management that does not allow disagreements out of insecurity or arrogance.

Poor leadership is undoubtedly one of the main potential factors that can lead an organization to fail.  Pay attention to the warning signs, be proactive and hopefully, the elephant leaves the room.

I’m sure that most of you have heard of sales battlecards.  The Microsoft Partner Network still encourages every channel partner to create at least one to help them better align competencies across their channel ecosytstem.   Battlecards are short, sales-ready documents that provide sales teams with an understanding of a specific competitor’s marketing strategy, key sales messages, product information, and tactical value propositions to use when selling against your competitors. Typically battlecards are no longer than 2 pages, and provide sales organizations with a competitive displacement “cheat sheet”.

There really isn’t a simple applied methodology to creating a sales battlecard.  The best “standardized” framework that I have come across is by the Forte Consultancy Group.

They recommend using the following 9 steps or sections to create an effective sales battlecard ..

I will quickly summarize each of the steps.

1. Market Conditions

This step ensures that your sales staff has a firm understanding about the marketplace they are selling in. Quick points about market size, estimated market demand, and other relevant data related to market segmentation should be added here.

2. Target Customers and Opportunities

What pains are your customers experiencing? This step needs to specifically highlight who your buyers are (i.e. their personas), what they currently are missing and how your product and/or service will fill the gap.

3. Product Features and Promotions

In this step, a quick description of product specifics should be highlighted using your customer vernacular with a larger focus on relevant benefits. I wouldn’t recommend putting limited time offers or promotions on your sales battlecard, unless they are valid for over 12 months.

4. Competitor Analysis

This vital step is essentially a competitive SWOT analysis in comparison to your current product or service offerings. I typically create a matrix, and add brief notes about their weakness, pricing, support differences, etc.. Leveraging proof points that are legitimized by customers who left your competitor and decided to come to you, can be extremely effective.

5. Customer Segment – specific Propositions

What do your prospects care about most? This step doesn’t focus on any product specifics, but more the intangibles that the product will provide if used (i.e. unmatched warranty, fanatic customer support, free upgrades, etc..)

6. Possible Customer Issues with Product

This step should provide enough detail to arm your sales team with a way to mitigate any concerns a prospect may have when inquiring about a potential bad customer experience.

7. Golden Questions

The most important part of the sales cycle is getting prospects to self-identify their needs by asking questions. These questions should be used as a trigger for your sales rep to match the best possible product, package, license, etc.. with the customer at hand.

8. Referencing Success Stories

This step is self-explanatory. Nothing is more useful then giving concrete, real-life examples of success stories experienced by your own customers. Obviously, the story is more effective if the problem(s) you solved, are similar to the problem(s) your prospect has experienced or is experiencing first hand.

9. Additional Information

I usually use this final step to create a small reminder checklist. Did I forget to mention a valuable note, has a follow up meeting been scheduled, have I determined BANT for this project, etc..

There you have it, 9 steps to creating a sales battlecard. I would highly recommend ‘every’ organization that doesn’t exclusively sell organically to create one. Well prepared battle cards can play a vital role in empowering your sales force, ensure that everyone is on message and allows your sales team to have an upper hand during prospective customer engagements.  Preparation is certainly a catalyst to sales success, and your battlecard is the official cheatsheet.

Silicon Valley super-VCs, Fred Wilson and Ben Horowitz, both agreed that, “entrepreneurs should build the product that everybody wants, then raise enough money to build the company.” This may seem like yet another over-simplification but I believe the point to note is that “building a business” should be recognized as a separate, distinct challenge.   I asked this question on LinkedIn and 22 well thought out answers later resulted in some very powerful points.  I would like to share a few of them with you. Here are 5 of the more notable answers below (sorry, some of them are a bit longer).

1.  If you have good people with good skill you can build the business

Veronika Gultom, Business Intelligence Consultant & IT Software Specialist

Agree,  if you can expose the capability of that product to customer and if you have people with good skill and knowledge to implement that product.

Sometimes good product that everyone wants cannot be implemented because of no one can show the capability and proof that it is a good product everyone needed.

2. You need both a great product and a good way of getting it out there

Heather Vitaglione, Tutor, Translator, Editor and Writer

Is this the 21st century version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s technique of building the better mousetrap and having folks beat a path to your door?

I think that you need both a great product and a good way of getting it out there. Let’s see. I worked in a branch of IT that made a good product but the bells and whistles version wasn’t necessary or user friendly enough to be adopted. I think that even though everyone might want a product, they have to be willing to pay a good price for it. You have to consider the competition as several others have commented on.

If you create a fuel efficient car and think that everyone’s going to want it, you haven’t contended with the mentality of many people who figure that freedom means buying the biggest flashiest gas guzzler on the market.

I say both views must be considered.

3. Often the bold visionaries shape the future to make the potential customers see the need

David Saintloth, Chief Software Architect, Apriority

This can work but recall that revolutionary services often spring whole cloth out of no where to create solutions between technological bridges that no one ever saw. Twitter is a perfect example of this, it was a solution looking for a problem…and found that “problem” in the form of an easy way for entertainers, sports stars and media figures to interact with their fans, to feed and receive late breaking information…to shape the conversation of their brand in a way that was not possible, barely imagined before micro blogging services came along.

Many businesses today are built on ideas and theory that were mere curiosities in the past and now are the foundations of entire lines of business. Could Fourier and Laplace have forseen the use of their mathematical tools inside communication devices and art creation programs (photoshop). Could Einstein see the light emitting diode and the modern digital camera photo sensor that came out of his explanation of quantized light via the photo electric effect 105 years ago? Those are distant examples but it just goes to show that an idea without a need today doesn’t mean a huge one will be satisfied by that idea in the future. Often the bold visionaries shape the future to make the potential customers see the need and the ones that succeed are the businesses that tend to have extreme success.

4. Building a business around one product is a very risky idea

Andrei Kolodovski, Entrepreneur, Investor

1) Product and company building are closely related and iterative processes, impossible to separate;
2) Product always evolves as new information comes in from the interaction with the customers and markets;
3) Many products require venture capital to build, even to the working prototype stage;
4) Building a business around one product is a very risky idea. I would rather build it on an intellectual platform allowing multiple products and markets.

5. Without this evidence, nobody will invest

Mike Van Horn, Author of “Grow Your Business without Driving Yourself Crazy”

If you don’t have a workable product, then you cannot demonstrate that everybody wants it. Without this evidence, nobody will invest in you.

Creativity and innovation are hard; building a business around these is much easier (though still difficult). Creativity and innovation are rare, business skills are much more common, investment capital is plentiful. But investors want strong evidence that you can give them a 5x return.

Thus most businesses are initially self-funded, or rely on “3F funding”: family, friends, and fools. You go into hock to build your prototype and see if you can generate some market buzz. Then you go after angel or VC backers. You get some seed capital, do more marketing, produce more results, then go after 2nd round financing.

You build stepwise in this manner. You hire only those who are essential to get your product to the next level.

Pre-dot-bomb and pre-”great recession” rules were much different, but this is 2010, and investors hold their cash with an iron fist.

I’d love to hear your 2 cents on this topic.  Is this the way lean-startups are going to live and die?  If you want to read all the responses on this LinkedIn thread, go to this link.   Do you agree or disagree?

I was fortunate enough to get introduced to international business coach, speaker and author, Doug Smith last week through a respected colleague of mine. Doug’s life story in itself is certainly inspiring and worth reading about – dsenetwork.com.  This post is about how my 30 minute morning discussion with Doug, really opened my eyes about something often overlooked by technical entrepreneurs.  It’s not what you know, it’s who you know… and, more importantly, who knows and trusts you.  My conversation with Doug, made me realize that for any of my startups to prosper, building a strategic network, or “roster” as Doug coins it, needs to not only follow a methodology but also, needs to be nurtured and constantly refined.

My Realization

After my meeting, I sat down and jotted all of the people that came to mind within my personal network, or “roster”.  I define my roster as my professional community – people I know well enough to ask for a favor without hesitation at any time.  Sadly, I could ONLY think of about 10 people. This was a stark realization. According to Doug, your roster is the top 50 people in your strategic network, all of whom you have worked with in some capacity or know personally. These non-institutional thinkers typically offset certain skill sets that you may lack, or they may just be super connectors. The effectiveness of your roster really depends on how committed you are to building it.  A great example of one of the most effective networks is Ron Conway, who happens to be one of the most connected and respected individuals in the Silicon Valley. In order to be involved with Ron’s network, you must meet certain important requirements. He cherishes his network and because of that, it has become an extremely valuable asset to everyone who is a part of it.

My goal is to build relationships, not numbers of contacts

Everyone experiences a lull at some point in his or her career. One way to jump-start your resurgence is to examine your social network for clues about how to get back on track. Doug encourages all of us to be brokers of quality not quantity. I am now planning to revitalize my network and galvanize my entrepreneurial endeavors by leveraging Doug’s prescribed methodology.  Doug is a superconnector and he openly tells people that he is willing to help, but it is up to us to build a meaningful, substantive network that is valuable to our business.

Research shows that if you create your “roster” or strategic network with trust, diversity and brokerage, you can raise your ability to be successful and raise your game from, what you know to who you know.

More than 100 years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson reportedly declared during a lecture, “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, even though he built his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” But Emerson was only half right. Creativity and insight are certainly important, but without an effective strategic network, you may never spark your imagination, reinvent yourself, or declare your sensational news to the world.

“A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without the aim, there is no system.” – W. Edwards Deming

So, for all you entrepreneurs, looking to build your startup, who’s on your roster?  Has your network been one of your greatest assets or biggest liabilities?

If you’re interested in learning more about Doug Smith, you can subscribe to his mailing list at dsenetwork.com.  He will also be launching his next book May, 2010.

Mobile marketing has taken far longer to evolve than people imagined, but I believe we are on the doorstep of an evolution in marketing that will rival social media in terms of impact. Yes, the most critical emerging media venue is mobile.

Mobile advertising is a rapidly growing sector providing brands, agencies and marketers the opportunity to connect with consumers beyond traditional and digital media directly on their mobile phones.  A recent Forrester study shows that the world market for mobile marketing and advertising is projected to reach $50 billion by 2014, up from $29 billion currently, representing an annual growth rate of 12 percent. With the rapid maturation of this market, brand managers will have quite a bit to celebrate as this gold-mine marketing channel fully emerges.

I have been actively following Adenyo (f.k.a Silverback Media), which is a growing mobile marketing software platform business that recently raised a large $26.9 million financing round. They are one of the leading global companies looking to make their mark in this very hot mobile ad network space.  Adenyo enables agencies, brands and mobile carriers to develop, target, deliver and analyze fully integrated mobile marketing strategies and campaigns.  It’s just a matter of time before large brands get into the mobile economy over the next year, and become the catalysts for mass-consumer adoption.

US Market Size and Growth Trends

The US Mobile Marketing Industry Survey estimated that advertisers will spend about $1.7 billion on Mobile Marketing in 2009, growing to $2.16 billion in 2010.

Companies are primed for mobile advertising but undoubtably there is still a suprising amount that simply don’t understand how to mobilize their brand, or don’t even know where to start.  A Unica Global Marketing Survey gathered information from companies in North America and Europe, including retailers, consumer product companies, and providers of travel and hospitality services.  57% of those surveyed said they either already use mobile marketing tactics—mobile messaging, mobile web sites mobile phone applications—or plan to in 2010.  Respondents replied as follows: currently use, 33%, plan to use in 2010, 24%, plan to use after 2010, 13%, no plans, 20% and don’t know, 10%.

Local-Intent Still Key for Mobile Industry

As mobile data consumption rises, I expect local marketing to be the big winner.  There is a strong correlation between local search and the mobile use case, which will cause a good portion of the ongoing mobile application boom to focus on local. The mobile industry seems to concur, as some analysts now project that location-based mobile spending will top $4 billion in 2015. That’s a mind-blowing increase from the relatively paltry $34 million spent just last year.

The mantra that rings true for successful real estate agents – “location, location, location” – seems poised to similarly ring true for mobile marketers in this new decade. And Google is admittedly hard at work optimizing advertising platforms for the increasing pertinence of “local-intent” in a substantial chunk of all mobile searches.

Google, however, won’t be alone in its efforts. Far from it. This week, Forbes chronicled Yahoo’s hastened foray into local advertising. According to the publication, Yahoo’s sales reps are “going after big companies with outlets that adverise in local newspapers and on regional radio stations and Web sites.

With the increased usage of high-end devices like the iPhone, Blackberry and Android – and companies like Adenyo making mobile advertising easier and more effective in this very hot mobile ad network space, it’s safe to say mobile marketing is definitely ready for prime time in 2010.

This past month, I have been actively involved with the Lean Startup Circle, a Google Group that provides real-life lessons learned from entrepreneurs across several startup communities.  One common name that is referenced regularly is Steve Blank. A serial-entrepreneur who teachs at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford (eMBA program) and also the person who coined the theory “Customer Development”.  This theory has become so influential that most people now call it one of the three pillars of the lean startup – every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development.

What is Customer Development?

When we build products, we use a methodology. For software, there are too many to keep track of – Wikipedia is a good place to start.  One of the vital flaws of several startups, and one that I’ve fallen victim to myself is not creating a roadmap on how to discover and cultivate paying customers.  But too often when it’s time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to “suits”.  Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and highly unpredictable. We’re easily convinced by the Field of Dreams mantra that all we need to do is “build it and they will come”.  And when they don’t come, well, we just keep trying, and trying and wait, trying again. So, what’s the inexpensive fix? Focus on customers and markets from Day 1 – this is what the new product development manifesto is all about.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany

In Steve’s book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, his methodology has interesting contact points with the design thinking methodology (user observation, fail often and fail cheap in order to learn quickly…). It provides a great framework with actionable milestones to help you launch a business.

Here is a synopsis of the “Four Steps”
I believe this was written by Eric Ries

1. Get out of the building.

Very few startups fail for lack of technology. They almost always fail for lack of customers. Yet surprisingly few companies take the basic step of attempting to learn about their customers (or potential customers) until it is too late. I’ve been guilty of this many times in my career – it’s just so easy to focus on product and technology instead. True, there are the rare products that have literally no market risk; they are all about technology risk (“cure for cancer”). For the rest of us, we need to get some facts to inform and qualify our hypotheses (“fancy word for guesses”) about what kind of product customers will ultimately buy.

And this is where we find Steve’s maxim that “In a startup no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.” Most likely, your business plan is loaded with opinions and guesses, sprinkled with a dash of vision and hope. Customer development is a parallel process to product development, which means that you don’t have to give up on your dream. We just want you to get out of the building, and start finding out whether your dream is a vision or a delusion. Surprisingly early, you can start to get a sense for who the customer of your product might be, how you’ll reach them, and what they will ultimately need. Customer development is emphatically not an excuse to slow down or change the plan every day. It’s an attempt to minimize the risk of total failure by checking your theories against reality.

2. Theory of market types.

Layered on top of all of this is a theory that helps explain why different startups face wildly different challenges and time horizons. There are three fundamental situations that change what your company needs to do: creating a new market (the original Palm), bringing a new product to an existing market (Handspring), and resegmenting an existing market (niche, like In-n-Out Burger; or low-cost, like Southwest Airlines). If you’re entering an existing market, be prepared for fast and furious competition from the incumbent players, but enjoy the ability to fail (or succeed) fast. When creating a new market, expect to spend as long as two years before you manage to get traction with early customers, but enjoy the utter lack of competition. What kind of market are you in? The Four Steps to the Epiphany contains a detailed approach to help you find out.

3. Finding a market for the product as specified.

When I first got the “listening to customers” religion, my plan was to talk to as many customer as possible, and build them as many features as they asked as possible. This is a common mistake. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. In order to do this, we have our customer development team work hard to find a market, any market, for the product as currently specified. We don’t just abandon the vision of the company at every turn. Instead, we do everything possible to validate the founders’ belief.

The nice thing about this paradigm is it sets the company up for a rational discussion when the task of finding customers fails. You can start to think through the consequences of this information before it’s too late. You might still decide to press ahead building the original product, but you can do so with eyes open, knowing that it’s going to be a tough, uphill battle. Or, you might start to iterate the concept, each time testing it against the set of facts that you’ve been collecting about potential customers. You don’t have to wait to iterate until after the splashy high-burn launch.

4. Phases of product & company growth.

The book takes its name from Steve’s theory of the four stages of growth any startup goes through. He calls these steps Customer Discovery (when you’re just trying to figure out if there are any customers who might want your product), Customer Validation (when you make your first revenue by selling your early product), Customer Creation (akin to a traditional startup launch, only with strategy involved), and Company Building (where you gear up to Cross the Chasm). Having lived through a startup that went through all four phases, I can attest to how useful it is to have a roadmap that can orient you to what’s going on as your job and company changes.

As an aside, here’s my experience: you don’t get a memo that tells you that things have changed. If you did, it would read something like this: “Dear Eric, thank you for your service to this company. Unfortunately, the job you have been doing is no longer available, and the company you used to work for no longer exists. However, we are pleased to offer you a new job at an entirely new company, that happens to contain all the same people as before. This new job began months ago, and you are already failing at it. Luckily, all the strategies you’ve developed that made you successful at the old company are entirely obsolete. Best of luck!”

5. Learning and iterating vs. linear execution.

I won’t go through all four steps in detail (buy the book already). I’ll just focus on the paradigm shift represented by the first two steps and the last two steps. In the beginning, startups are focused on figuring out which way is up. They really don’t have a clue what they should be doing, and everything is guesses. In the old model, they would probably launch during this phase, failing or succeeding spectacularly. Only after a major, public, and expensive failure would they try a new iteration. Most people can’t sustain more than a few of these iterations, and the founders rarely get to be involved in the later tries.

The root of that mistake is premature execution. The major insight of The Four Steps to the Epiphany is that startups need time spent in a mindset of learning and iterating, before they try to launch. During that time, they can collect facts and change direction in private, without dramatic and public embarrassment for their founders and investors. The book lays out a disciplined approach to make sure this period doesn’t last forever, and clear criteria for when you know it’s time to move to an execution footing: when you have a repeatable and scalable sales process, as evidenced by early customers paying you money for your early product.

It slices, it dices. It’s also a great introduction to selling and positioning a product for non-marketeers, a workbook for developing product hypotheses, and a compendium of incredibly useful tactics for startups young and old.

When I first encountered this book, my first impulse was as follows. I bought a bunch of copies, gave them out to my co-founders and early employees, and then expected the whole company’s behavior would radically change the next day. That doesn’t work (you can stop laughing now). This is not a book for everyone. I’ve only had luck sharing it with other entrepreneurs who are actually struggling with their product or company. If you already know all the answers, you can skip this one. But if you find some aspect of the situation your in confusing, maybe this will provide some clarity. Or at least some techniques for finding clarity soon.

My final suggestion is that you buy the book and skim it. Try and find sections that apply to the startup you’re in (or are thinking of building). Make a note of the stuff that doesn’t seem to make sense. Then put it on your shelf and forget about it. If your experience is anything like mine, here’s what will happen. One day, you’ll be banging your head against the wall, trying to make progress on some seemingly intractable problem (like, how the hell do I know if this random customer is an early adopter who I should spend time listening to, or a mainstream customer who won’t buy my product for years). That’s when I would get that light bulb moment: this problem sounds familiar. Go to your shelf. Get down the book, and be amazed that you are not the first person to tackle this problem in the history of the world.

For all intents and purposes the general theme of my blog is to inspire collaborative creativity. To help people realize the vital importance of working together to not only achieve business success but also social betterment. This article focuses on the “exceptional people” that have created the infrastructure necessary to inspire change, make a difference and improve a life besides their own! These individuals are the silent champions that are not credited in mainstream media, yet their efforts are far more glamorous, courageous and valuable than a majority of Hollywood’s finest faux social advocates. Networks should all focus on paying homage to these individuals instead of broadcasting the trivial rhetoric we are forced to consume each day about some pop star’s troubles. These remarkable individuals represent a new breed of entrepreneur, the “social entrepreneur”. Courageous, compassionate and committed to transforming society, these brilliant men and women have turned their business skills into tools for change, development and hope. Their unrelenting desire to help others without the expectation of anything in return, really does make them truly extraordinary.

1. Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy

As founder of Aravind Eye Hospital, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (“Dr. V”) gave sight and hearing back to millions of people who would otherwise be blind and deaf.

Dr. V. came to the conclusion as a young man that “intelligence and capability are not enough. There must be the joy of doing something beautiful.” So, instead of retiring at the age of 65, Dr. V. mortgaged his home and opened a hospital to perform free or low-cost cataract surgery – if untreated cataracts can lead to blindness – on poor Indians. In his first year, Dr. V. performed over 5000 surgeries.

• See an article on “Dr. V” in Fast Company:
  http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/43/drv.html

• Aravind Eye Hospital Founder Profile:
  http://www.aravind.org/aboutus/founder.asp

• See his video “Infinite Vision”:
  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-430943131005128104

• See his profile on Wikipedia:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Govindappa_Venkataswamy

2. Marian Wright Edelman

Edelman is the author and editor of a number of books on social justice, including Social Injustice and Public Health (2005), which expounds her belief that “a primary goal of public health is to address the root causes of social injustice: widening gaps between rich and poor, the unequal distribution of resources within our society, discrimination, and the disenfranchisement of individuals and groups from the political process.” Edelmen is the founder of Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) an initiative that encourages preventive investment before children get sick or into trouble, drop out of school, or suffer family breakdown.

• See the profile of the founder of Children’s Defense:
  http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageNavigator/People_MWE
• See her profile on Wikipedia:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Wright_Edelman
• See her videos on You Tube:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWf-OpQvpKo

3. Byron Katie

Times magazine described Byron Katie as ‘A visionary for the new millenium’. Byron applies the Gandhian concept of “Be the change you want to see in the world” to one’s thoughts, with a deceptively simple technique and stunning clarity. She offers a constant ‘invitation’ to go inside oneself and to take responsibility for any situation by questioning one’s thinking.

Byron Katie’s method is called The Work, and is effective in bringing joy, happines, inner peace and an end to confusion. It has been described as a kind of Socratic Dialogue. “Believing our untrue thoughts is a sure way to scare ourselves to death” Byron Katie. ‘The Work’ has changed the lives of thousands of people.

• See and hear it here:
  Short Video and Audio Clips demonstrating Byron Katie at work
• See the official website for The Work: www.thework.com

4. Muhammad Yunus

Nobel Peace winner in 2006, Professor Muhammad Yunus has transformed Bangladesh and founded a bank that has loaned billions of dollars to millions of poor families, all without any collateral.. This country is the only one in the world which is on course to reach the millennium development goals of reducing poverty by one half by 2015. That is a statistic not to be missed!

His new book “Creating a world without poverty” outlines his vision for the eradication of poverty.

• See his official website:
  http://www.muhammadyunus.org/

• See his profile on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus

5. Mario Capecchi

He lived as a feral child after the Nazis sent his mother to a death camp. His ‘unworthy’ ideas were rejected by the scientific establishment. Last year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for a medical revolution. He made his dreams a reality and never quit. He is truly exceptional!

• See his profile on Wikipedia:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Capecchi
• His Utah Lab Profile:
  http://capecchi.genetics.utah.edu/capecchi.html
• See his article in Time: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1670524,00.html

6. Mimi Silbert

In 1971 Mimi Silbert founded Delancey Street with four residents, a thousand dollar loan and a dream. She envisioned a place where substance abusers, former felons and others who had hit bottom would, through their own efforts, be able to turn their lives around.

Silbert has since built an empire grossing 20 million dollars a year with locations in New York, New Mexico, North Carolina and Los Angeles. She has never accepted a single penny of government funds.

• See Mimi’s interview with PBS:
  http://www.pbs.org/opb/thenewheroes/meet/silbert.html

• See Mimi’s foundation:
  http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/president.php

• See Mimi’s article “the most successful rehabilitation programme in the world” on BBC:
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6245531.stm

7. Kailash Satyarthi

Kailash Satyarthi has been instrumental in freeing thousands of child slaves from numerous industries. He has evolved various strategies and methods to secure freedom for the slave children. These include direct action, secret raids, judicial interventions, parental motivation, community mobilization, persuading and pressurizing employers, etc. Hundreds of real life stories of his liberation operations have motivated countless people to join the fight against child labor.

• See his official website:
  http://www.kailashsatyarthi.net/

• See his profile on Wikipedia:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kailash_Satyarthi

As you know, this list is by no means complete, there are several truly exceptional people that should be included on this list – so, if you have a blog take some time and write about them also. Let’s give credit where credit is due.

“Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.” – Erma Bombeck