Sulemaan Ahmed2013-05-21T06:35:49-04:00Sulemaan Ahmedhttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=sulemaan-ahmedCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Sulemaan AhmedGood old fashioned elbow grease.When Should You Reject A LinkedIn Invite?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31622332013-04-26T18:10:00-04:002013-04-26T18:10:09-04:00Sulemaan Ahmedhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sulemaan-ahmed/
As my seven year anniversary of joining LinkedIn just recently passed, a question that comes up without fail every time I speak about LinkedIn is a big one: Who do I accept LinkedIn connection invites from?
As LinkedIn has skyrocketed to 200-million global members (74 million in the USA and 7 million in Canada) my personal philosophy since I joined is as follows:
"I have to meet you, and like you, in order to connect with you."
Why? It allows me to ensure the integrity of my network and confidently introduce connections to each other when asked or when I feel two great people should connect with each other.
What is the point to connect with someone you can't comfortably vouch for or state you had a meaningful interaction with? Quality always trumps quantity. One should be judicious with who they connect with and continue to stay connected to.
Some take a different approach, where they accept LinkedIn invites from anyone located anywhere. For them, size and scale matters and they even have a self-appointed acronym: LIONS (LinkedIn Open Networkers). I'll admit it right now: I'll never be a LION, and don't ever plan to have over 2,000 LinkedIn connections. But why not be LinkedIn LION? It's a pretty fancy term isn't it?
Long before social media came to be, my father counselled me, saying "You are judged by the company they keep." That still holds true today both offline and online. The quality (not quantity) of our LinkedIn connections and our relationships with said connections say as much about us as our profiles do.
One could say "to each their own" in terms of decision-making criteria, but if you:
A) Are in a high-profile or executive position
B) Work in a highly regulated industry (i.e. financial services, legal, accounting, insurance, consulting and/or pharmaceutical)
C) Care about the integrity of your network,
My advice is to think twice before accepting invites from people you don't know or like. I've seen people burned and (trust me) you don't want that outcome.
Not only does this open you up to potential risk, but it also could create more work for you.
For example, a good friend recently noted more people search Google for keywords "remove connections in/on/from LinkedIn" than how to accept them. Although removing LinkedIn connections is simple, it can take lots of time based on how much 'network trimming' is required.
One final thought: the days of potential employers, employees, investors and/or clients simply contacting three references you provide are over. Should they do some due diligence and are connected to someone within your LinkedIn network and ask about you, what would that shared connection say?
Ask yourself what the answer might be as that may provide clarity whether to click "Accept" the next time you get a LinkedIn invitation to connect.
]]>How to Keep Your Calm in a Presentationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26911132013-02-15T11:58:24-05:002013-04-17T05:12:01-04:00Sulemaan Ahmedhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sulemaan-ahmed/
One day, I was supposed to meet the President of an organization to review a presentation. If it went well, it could lead to many potential client opportunities. Pretty clear cut, right? Well, the previous time I went through an iteration of the presentation with the President, let's just say I crashed and burned. No survivors.
Fortunately, this executive was extremely gracious and gave me another opportunity so I intended to deliver.
I showed up on time at the President's office and he greeted me graciously as usual. He then advised me that a half-dozen key stakeholders on his team (and successful business people in their own right) were there also so I might as well run the presentation by everyone. The problem was that I didn't know I was going to present to a group so I left my projector at home.
No big deal.
We try to hook up my laptop to the two projectors on site. Both of the projectors simply do not sync up properly to my laptop.
Big deal.
The audience had a busy schedule and only allocated 30 minutes for my presentation and we're already 12 minutes delayed.
Big deal.
So I take my laptop and plunk it on a stack of books in the middle of the table and tell them I'm going to present. It actually worked and in no small part due to a very patient audience. One of them later opined, "If you could deliver under such circumstances then you'll be fine."
No big deal.
If this was five years ago, I may have panicked but it's amazing what you can do when you force yourself to focus.
Three days later I'm in the midst of presenting to clients across the country via a conference call and web presentation. The problem is that their technology was not cooperating due to very restrictive IT constraints but we'd figure out a solution.
No big deal.
It's now time to start and no presentation sharing platform (Slideshare / Join.me) will work due to the firm's firewalls.
No big deal.
So I figure I'll just email the presentations to the attendees in PDF to follow along and we'll be fine. The email inboxes at my clients are not working.
Big deal.
I also advised everyone that those who were late must do 1 push-up for each minute they are late. Yours truly is now 19 minutes late to start.
Big deal.
It doesn't matter that technology wasn't cooperating because as host of the meeting it's all on me. We could have rescheduled the call but we decided to forge ahead, let the chips fall where they may and finished the entire presentation on time to the surprising satisfaction of everyone. Yours truly then had to do 19 pushups for the late start. (Blurry photographic evidence below and you might just see the man on the grassy knoll but I digress...)
Big deal.
Kidding aside, years ago I probably would have frozen under such circumstances but since then learned to stay calm and plug ahead. And if I can learn to do that then anyone else sure can.
No big deal.]]>The NHL and I Are Taking a Breaktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24966012013-01-17T17:43:57-05:002013-03-19T05:12:01-04:00Sulemaan Ahmedhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sulemaan-ahmed/
Since I was young child, I played hockey, collected hockey cards, wore your branded pajamas, owned a Guy Lafleur lunch box, watched many games and whenever fate smiled upon me, went to the famous Montreal Forum to watch my beloved Montreal Canadiens play. My father, a dedicated CBC employee for over 35 years, allowed us to watch two Canadian shows as children: The Nature of Things and Hockey Night in Canada.
I took my wife to her first NHL game in Montreal and it was a special moment as the team captain, Saku Koivu, had returned to the lineup after being treated for cancer. The incredible standing ovation he received from the fans still gives me the chills.
Years later when we relocated to Toronto, I read my kids The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier, bought all of them Canadiens jerseys since we now resided deep behind enemy lines within Leafs Nation, and made annual pilgrimages to Montreal to watch the Canadiens play. When my eldest child was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and feeling understandably down, she received a personalized, very supportive, confidence boosting email from Rejean Houle, President of the Canadiens Alumni. You can imagine how that solidified her conviction to the team.
Fast forward to the present. Over a week has passed since the NHL lockout ended. Teams are starting training camps, players are getting traded and general managers are getting fired. Everything is back to normal, right?
Despite all the aforementioned sentimental stories, I regret to inform you that, as a long-customer, I must now evaluate our relationship from a business perspective in terms of ROI (return on investment).
So please consider this a performance review for your benefit. Looking back since 1993 here are the facts, as I understand them. As a business:
Your teams have valuations anywhere between130 million all the way to1 billion per team.
Revenues rose from $2.2 billion to $3.3 billion (an average of160 million a season) since your last collective bargaining agreement.
Before the start of the 2011-12 season, the average NHL player salary had increased to $2.4 million from $1.5 million since the 2005-06 season. To be clear this applies to those NHL employees who are members of the NHLPA.
You locked out your players and halted this season despite having one full year remaining on the current collective bargaining agreement.
Your direct corporate partners such as broadcasting networks (i.e. CBC, TSN, RDS, NBC) and advertising clients such as Ford, Nike and RBC suffered. Some ran advertising campaigns asking you to come to your senses.
Your players (NHLPA) decided to go play in other leagues in North America and overseas taking away roster spots and jobs from other professional hockey players who weren't able to play for NHL teams.
Your non-NHLPA employees in operations, marketing, ticket sales, concierge services to the parking attendants, merchandise and concession sales staff, Zamboni drivers and others all suffered a loss of income. This at a time when terms like "fiscal cliff" and "debt ceiling" are sadly too common.
Your ancillary business partners such as the business owners and employees of local restaurants, sporting goods stores, taxi cab drivers have all suffered.
Your customers pleaded over months to continue the season and resorted to creative ways to communicate that message with little success.
You have had not one but three (3) work stoppages in the past 20 years. This is more than any professional sports league in North America.
Last week you finally realized the irreparable harm you were doing to yourself and your commissioner Gary Bettman apologized to everyone.
Some teams like Los Angeles made charitable donations in an effort to apologize to its customers and fans.
After the 2004-2005 lockout, almost a decade ago, you apologized and painted messages on the ice.
You implied lower ticket prices would be a result of the previous lockout and that didn't happen.
I've invested thousands of hours watching pre-game shows, reading the Hockey News, watching games on television, voraciously reading my favorite hockey blog, going to hockey summits organized by fans, chatting about breaking news with colleagues and clients, attending NHL games, watching game highlights and analysis early morning on Sports Centre all while checking NHL iPhone apps.
When the season abruptly stopped this year, I invested that time in my family and business. Instead of spending three hours watching a game, I went skating with my family, read books to my kids, discovered new ideas for clients and friends plus giving back to those in need. The return on my time has been much better personally and professionally.
It's also a misnomer that you (NHL) represents hockey. Hockey is about parents who wake up early in the morning to take their kids to play games and name their family dog Bauer; about people like Matthew Hallett who volunteer as coaches and scouts; and about people like Ian Cobb who billeted players for years to help groom them to be better players and upstanding members of society.
The bottom line is that you are a business, not a sport and if I look at our relationship from a strictly business perspective, the ROI has been lousy lately.
The silver lining to the lockout is that I've discovered more important things to spend my time and money on. For that, I thank you; however, I'm still pressing pause as a customer at least for the remainder of this year.
For those other customers (i.e. fans) who do come back to you, I hope you don't reward their loyalty with more ticket hikes and lockouts in the future. They deserve better. You need to see a negative impact to your bottom line so you don't repeat this foolishness. Otherwise, your actions won't ever change but if Major League Baseball can learn then anything is possible.
I'll be carefully watching how you conduct yourself as a business moving forward and re-evaluate our relationship at that time. It's now your move.
