Overachievers have the drive, determination and energy you should covet for your team. But they can be finicky, and require attentive management. Here are some tips that Laurie Sullivan compiled for BNET.com:

• Identify the overachiever: Recognize the overachiever early, from the initial job interview if possible. Overachievers are driven, taking the initiative. They have high expectations, lack patience when asked to explain the same thing more than once as they don't understand why others can't see the big picture as they do, and have sharp problem-solving skills.
• Understand the personality type: Completing tasks above and beyond expectations provides them the same high as a drug. But that sensation gets harder to achieve as time passes, so they get bored quickly and want to move onto the next challenge -- which could be outside your organization if you're not careful. They are also not satisfied with pats on the back but expect you to give them more time than others on your staff.
• Lead by inspiring, not commanding: Overachievers don't like to be told what to do. You'll get the best results if you involve them in decisions and planning. "If there's a problem with their work, rather than telling them how to fix it, ask them what they think the solution should be," she writes.
• Make it safe to fail: Overachievers love to take risks but also hate to fail. A setback can make them feel inferior. Managers must help them accept failure, not punish them for it.
• Turn overachievers into team players: Overachievers usually prefer to work alone, to avoid getting bogged down by others, and given they can be hypercritical, colleagues often prefer that distance. Nudge overachievers to work with others by pairing them with co-workers who complement their abilities or asking the overachiever to mentor another employee.

Roy H. Williams, who bills himself as the Wizard of Ads, says Internet surfing has trained us to disregard empty words. People won't pay attention to drivel. In advertising, that means relevance has become more important than repetition.

To make your marketing work properly:

• Talk about things your customers actually care about.
• Write your marketing material in a style that rings true.
• Avoid heroic chest thumping. Saying "we're number one" is now considered gauche.
• Close the loopholes in your marketing by giving evidence to support what you say.
• Be specific. Details are more believable than generalities.
• Deliver a real message. Substance is more important than style.

A popular phrase these days, with the economy shaky, is the need to do "more with less." Consultant Michael Kanazawa says in Executive Excellence that it's a seductive phrase because it seems to enable leaders to get more work out of people without giving up anything.

But instead, he suggests you should be seeking the power of "more on less." That's a slight twist in words, but a big change in thinking. The idea is to reduce the tasks and initiatives so your team focuses on only the most critical priorities, and then puts extra effort against those. "It is about doing more work, not less, but on just a few select high-impact areas. This concentrates resources, aligns teams towards a smaller and common set of objectives and initiatives, and allows teams to achieve breakthrough results quicker," he notes.

There are a variety of ways of assessing the different personalities on your team. Here's one -- the 4P's of Personality -- offered by author Allison Mooney in Management Magazine:

• Playfuls are the social life and soul of any environment, thriving on fun and interaction with others and bringing life to lifeless situations.
• Precises are orderly, deep thinkers who revel in detail and analysis, and tend to be perfectionists.
• Peacefuls are diplomatic observers who work quietly at their own pace, are good listeners and non-confrontational.
• Powerfuls are action-oriented folk who focus on the bottom-line results and the big picture, wanting things done now.

"Nobody is better, just different. If you are building a team, you need each type," she says.

• The five must-haves of meaningful work, according to consultant Paul Fairlie, are variety, control, clear feedback, recognition, and significant impact. (Source: Canadian HR Reporter)
• Research shows that ads are more effective when the company's name is presented early in the ad, since that allows customers to more easily recognize the product category. If their interest is piqued, they will pay more attention. (Source: Get To The Point newsletter)
• Call on one person ten times and you might make a sale. Call on ten people once each and you'll likely strike out. If you want to dig a big hole, you need to stay in one place. The same is true of sales, with frequency and trust serving as your shovel in this case. (Source: Seth's blog)
• On a PowerPoint slide, a bullet-point that wraps around onto another line is not a bullet point but a badly written sentence. Keep your points terse. (Source: Make Marketing History blog)
• When you're sending a business e-mail, there's no reason it has to be devoid of your personality, advises sales consultant Kendra Lee. Mention a tidbit about yourself. One time she e-mailed a bunch of prospects and indicated it was her birthday that month; it drew a nearly 100 per cent reply rate, and opened up conversations with many of them. (Source: Selling To Big Companies)

6. Q&A with 8020Info:
    Encouraging Initiative        Top

Question: My staff lacks initiative. How can I get them to be self-motivated?

8020Info Associate Harvey Schachter replies:

There is a contradiction in the question, since self-motivation comes from within, and it's hard for a manager to insert some magical serum in the bloodstream of staff members to make them self-motivated.

Although some people aren't all that motivated at work, most are. So one possibility to consider is whether you have happened to hire the wrong people, and whether you need to change your hiring procedures to stress self-motivation when sorting through resumes, interviewing and reference checking.

But the greater possibility is that something in the culture of your company blocks or deflates self-motivation. It may be the equivalent of the highway double line in your company, telling people there are certain things they can't do, and de-motivating them.

Could it be the way you react to the initiative of employees -- does new ideas catch you by surprise, and are your initial comments (or the look on your face) defensive? Or do some staff members grouse continually that management doesn't like anyone showing initiative?

What can you do to show your employees your interest in self-motivation? Start by praising those who take initiative. And be wary of penalizing those who fail, if they do so with the right spirit and a sensible approach. The Alessi design factory in Italy holds its weekly design meetings in a private museum that houses the company's major flops, to remind everyone that failure will happen in the quest for breakthroughs.

One of my favourite companies, Creo, used to tell everyone they were the "president" of their specific job -- the person who knows their work best, and therefore that individual could decide what to do in carrying out their work. It wasn't just talk: Management reinforced the norm. And it wasn't anarchy: Management explained that in some instances people could act on their own and in others they had to consult because their actions would affect the other presidents around them in their own jobs.

Creo also gave every employee -- more than 2,000 of them -- company credit cards. The message was, we trust you to spend wisely, taking the initiative to do things for the company. Again, there was education: New employees were taught economic decision making so they could figure out whether an expenditure would be worthwhile. If a client halfway across the continent called late at night with a problem, the employee dealing with that client didn't have to ask anyone for permission to fly there if she felt it was necessary. She had the credit card in hand.

That's not to recommend those specific policies. But the spirit behind them is what encourages self-motivation. In that atmosphere, people are more likely to motivate themselves, and in the end that's the best you can do, set an environment that embraces self-motivation and initiative.

Around barbecues this summer we've noticed increasing interest in the idea that marketing today involves messaging that is "self-assembled" -- smaller units of communication, distributed through a variety of formats and channels, which audiences then integrate according to their own logic.

Traditionally, campaigns for print and broadcast communications have been fairly self-contained and easily managed. Members of your target audience today, on the other hand, will be exposed selectively to bits and pieces of your message, perhaps through email, photos from friends, web search results, text messages, blogs, YouTube videos, Twitter "tweets", comments on Facebook, RSS news feeds, media interviews, special events, table-top displays, brochures, posters, direct mail, print media, television, radio, and outdoor advertising -- not to mention the long-standing, rarely managed and ever-powerful channel known as word of mouth.

This creates a new mix-and-match planning challenge for marketers: how to communicate content in "chunks" that can be plucked in any order from different channels in a range of formats and then mentally assembled by members of your target audience, on their own, in a way that makes sense.

8020Info helps teams develop, communicate and implement more effective marketing communications strategies. We would be pleased to discuss your needs and welcome enquiries at (613) 542-8020, or by email at watercooler@8020info.com.

"A focus group is like a chainsaw. If you know what you are doing, it's very useful and effective. If you don't, you could lose a limb."

   -- Americus Reed II