While experience can certainly be an asset, it is not at all uncommon for it to be a severe hindrance. While I’m not prone to stereotyping, it has been my observation that there are generally two types of people: those who don’t know what they don’t know, and those who do know what they don’t know. All other things being equal, the difference between the two groups boils down to experience and discernment. Those people who don’t know what they don’t know typically tend to be either younger professionals beginning their careers who have a lack of experience, or older professionals who have not gained wisdom and maturity as they have progressed along their career path.

The Early Stage Professional:

On the positive side of the equation young, inexperienced, and energetic professionals sometimes accomplish great things because they don’t have the experience to know what they are not supposed to be able to accomplish. As a result of their professional naivete, they sometimes appear to achieve the impossible. However more often than not, young professionals operating outside of experiential and/or educational boundaries are met with failure and frustration by having what appear to be great ideas eventually unwound by unforeseen factors that only were unforeseen to them due to their inexperience or lack of discernment.

The failures and setbacks of the early stage professional can be healthy learning experiences that lead to professional maturation so long as learning actually takes place, and mistakes of naivete don’t become patterns for future disruption. It is essential that young professionals gain an understanding of where their skill sets and competencies begin and end. Once the boundaries of knowledge are understood, then definitive steps can be taken to create a plan for personal and professional growth. The decision can be made to ignore weakness by design by playing to your strengths, or you can choose to improve weak areas by closing the gap between where you are and where you want or need to be.

The Tenured Professional:

Regrettably, it takes more than time on the job to reach true professional maturity. I have personally witnessed people, 20-plus years into their careers, who have reached executive level positions and they still don’t know what they don’t know. It is all too common for these types of people to operate in a vacuum by believing that their experience alone is a cure-all for any issue or problem.

How many times have we all observed an experienced person with subject matter expertise in one area, try to drive an initiative or an agenda in another area, only to fail miserably because they didn’t know what they didn’t know? Let’s look at this issue another way; how many times have you seen an older and more experienced person fail to solve a problem that a younger and less experienced person solved with seemingly little effort? While experience is a valuable commodity, in-and-of-itself and to the exclusion of other traits and characteristics, the sole reliance on experience can be a barrier to professional growth and maturity.

That being said, I have never been a believer in the adage “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” In fact quite to the contrary; I believe anyone (yes, I mean anyone) can change given one prerequisite; the desire to do so. However in that vein, I feel just as strongly that change cannot be forced upon someone who does not recognize the need for change, or even worse, recognizes the need but has no desire for change.

Whether young or old, experienced or inexperienced, the best way to approach personal and professional development is to always stay in the learning zone. When you think you have all the answers is precisely the point in time when you are headed straight for the proverbial brick wall. Always seek out people who know more than you do and actively learn from them. Find a mentor or coach who can dispassionately point out your shortcomings and help you chart a path to progress.

Most things in life happen as a result of choices we make. It is clearly within your grasp to make the choice to gain an understanding of what it is that you don’t know, and determine what you want to do with that information. It’s your choice; choose wisely.

Where’s the Gipper when you need him? There are great lessons to be learned from Ronald Reagan.

Few would argue that Reagan was a true statesman and one of the greatest presidents of the modern era. Virtually every politician, republican and democrat alike, have fondly referred to him on many occasions. Barack Obama would even quote him while stumping on the campaign trail. So why is it that the current administration doesn’t pay more attention to the wisdom contained in the words of President Reagan as they go about their day-to-day actions? The answer is simple; they are too busy feathering their own nest and acquiring more power for themselves, rather than looking out for our best interests.

In the text that follows I’ll do no editorializing whatsoever, as I believe President Reagan’s words speak volumes on their own accord. The following quotes from Reagan are just a few of my favorites, and given today’s environment, they provide more than sufficient food for thought:

“Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”

“Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”

“The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.”

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

“Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.”

“It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.”

“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”

“One way to make sure that crime doesn’t pay would be to let the government run it.”

“The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.”

“Democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.”

“Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.”

“Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.”

Search Engine Marketing has always played a critical role in managing the visibility of a company’s online brand. However with the Internet becoming what is arguably today’s dominant medium, Search Engine Marketing has also risen to become a key driver in a company’s overall brand strategy. Regrettably the maturity of the products and services that comprise search engine related disciplines come at a time when the industry has never been more complicated and difficult to navigate. Even though businesses today have many more options with regard to how they execute their search engine initiatives, I find that many marketing executives struggle more today with their online marketing strategies than they did a few years ago. In today’s column I’ll share my opinions on the current state of the Search Engine Marketing Industry.

Let me begin by stating that I have been actively involved in the search marketing industry from its conception, watched it struggle through its adolescence of the dot.com boom and bust, and am now watching it get a second-wind with Web 2.0. While the Internet as a medium is far from being mature, it has most certainly evolved and so have the methods for marketing your brand online.

I attended a number of search marketing conferences each year, and while the messages communicated at these events made it clear that the industry has shown remarkable growth, made tremendous advances in sophistication, and has increased in the diversity of product/service offerings currently available, I question whether things are getting better or worse for the average consumer.

In talking regularly with many senior executives, marketing professionals and entrepreneurs one thing is clear…they are clearly not fluent in the area of search engine marketing. While these professionals understand the potential that search engine marketing holds for their businesses, they do not understand how to capitalize on it. In fact, many of the people I have spoken with are extremely frustrated at the amount of money they have invested in search initiatives without being able to develop an understanding of the medium such that they have not yet been able to develop a consistent winning strategy in this space.

The major problems that exist within the search industry are tied to the fact that this is still an embryonic medium. There are only so many ways to purchase advertising in more mature mediums like radio or television. Contrast this with the numerous options available to consumers and businesses looking to purchase advertising on the internet: Organic Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click, Pay-Per-Call, Pay-Per-Acquisition, Pay-Per-Post, Sponsored Advertising, Themed Advertising, Internet Yellow Pages, Ezine Ads, Contextual Advertising, Embedded Advertising, Pop-overs and Pop-unders, Banner serving networks, Directory Ads, Content Syndication, Branded Portals and Microsites, e-mail marketing, Link Building, Blogs Viral Video, Podcasts, Webcasts, Twitter, and other forms of emerging Social Media Marketing.

Advertising mediums in the infancy of their lifecycle spit out new opportunities faster than you can shake a stick at, and worse yet, this happens with a plethora of inexperienced vendors lined-up to cut their teeth on the advertiser’s nickel. There is rarely a week that passes when I don’t speak to a company who has a horror story to tell about a search marketing company who over-promised and under-delivered, and by the time the advertiser figured out what was going-on they had spent thousands of dollars with little to show for it.

Another problem with the search industry is that a relatively small number of websites (Google, Facebook, etc.) currently control most of the traffic. Let’s look at Google as an example…Combine Google’s dominant position with the fact that they will share little if any data with advertisers, and that they can change the rules of the game at any time and it brings new meaning to the term “Flying Blind.” However the issue of transparency within the search industry is not limited to Google. Most of the search engines play their cards very close to the chest as they try and establish a leg up in the market. Until there is competitive pressure brought to bear on Google the odds are stacked against the advertiser. I met with a client last week that was spending 50% of their Pay-Per-Click budget on Yahoo and MSN because it was recommended to them by their search marketing firm. The problem was that given the advertiser’s product line and target market, Yahoo and MSN would produce virtually no return for them…This is a big problem.

The fact is that the Internet is the medium that can deliver the most velocity and biggest return on your marketing dollar. I also believe that this will continue to be the case as the dominance of the Internet medium will only continue to widen the gap over alternate mediums. Companies cannot afford not to allocate a substantial part of their advertising budget to online advertising, but until the medium matures it will behoove of them to make sure that they work with the best vendors who can keep up with the rapid pace of change in the industry.

As a CEO, getting engaged with your workforce is one the best things you can do to drive performance, engender workforce loyalty, and boost morale. The topic of “employee engagement” is something that many CEOs tend to struggle with. I’ve written before about the critical importance of CEOs and entrepreneurs having an external focus. Long gone are the days where the executive leadership of a company can remain sequestered in their offices with an internal focus on hard metrics. Given the current economic climate it takes far more than cost-cutting to survive. It is the CEO who focuses on the soft metrics of customer centricity and employee engagement that will create sustainable growth in revenue and brand equity. In today’s post I’ll examine the need to have a fully engaged work force.

Before you read any further, I want you to stop and ask yourself the following question: How many of your employees are truly passionate about your company, its values, its vision, its mission, and the role that they play within the organization? Don’t fool yourself; conduct a harsh, critical analysis and come up with a true head count of the passionate employees within your organization.

Your answer to the question above should be a very telling sign about the overall health of your business. Are people just showing up and punching the clock to collect a paycheck, or are they personally consumed and committed to achieving the company vision? Are your employees corporate evangelists serving as a motivating force to be reckoned with, or do they gather in small groups to gripe and complain about all the things wrong with the company and its leadership?

The key to having an engaged workforce is to have a passionate workforce. And the simple truth of the matter is that no single person in the company can instill passion in the ranks like the CEO can. Despite the consensus recognition that employee engagement matters, the enormity of its impact on the company’s bottom line still appears to be misunderstood by most CEOs. I rarely talk to a CEO that doesn’t understand this principle in concept, but yet I rarely see chief executives who put theory into practice.

So it begs the question, why are CEOs listening but not taking action? The answer seems to be that CEOs continue to allocate considerable effort and resources toward engineering the corporate strategy, yet they seem to be unaware of what forces can prevent said strategy from being delivered successfully. Not surprisingly, employee engagement is often the critical missing factor.

As the CEO you must also become the chief engagement officer. Operating in a vacuum and being out of touch is never a good position to find yourself in as the CEO. I have consistently espoused the value of walking the floor, dropping in on meetings on an impromptu basis, taking employees of all ranks to lunch, and any number of other items that focus on raising your internal awareness and creating a passionate workforce.

It is your passionate employees who are the franchise talent (regardless of position) that you should be building around. If you can’t get employees to see the light and become passionate about the company and their contribution, then seek to replace them as quickly as possible. Just as passion is a positive, contagious trait so are apathy and dissatisfaction. Passionate employees are productive, energized, committed and loyal assets. Apathetic employees quickly become disenfranchised liabilities that will hurt both productivity and morale. To drive home the point of how much I value passionate employees, I would take a moderately talented but passionate employee over a very talented but complacent employee 11 times out of 10.

Truly great companies are built around passionate employees. When you walk into a dynamic, thriving company you can sense the passion, you feel a certain buzz and fervor that pervades everything. Contrast this with a company that feels as if it has no pulse. If you’ve ever walked into an organization that feels like corporate rigor-mortis has set in you know what I’m referring to. In today’s economy, the old saying that “the only thing worse than an employee who quits and leaves is the employee who quits and stays” has never been more accurate.

As a leader, you need to understand that your employees not only want to be led, but they want to be led by a passionate leader. Ultimately employees want to be passionate about what they do; in fact, they’ll go to the ends of earth and sacrifice tremendously if passionate about the endeavor. Think of the employees that started off with Gates and Allen at Microsoft, or those that worked with Phil Knight in his garage before Nike even had a name, or those employees that endured the early days with Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google. It was their passion and commitment that helped change the landscape of business, not their starting salaries.

To build an extraordinary company, you must light the “fire in the bellies,” of your workforce. You must get them to feel passion about your organization and to connect with your vision. You must get your employees to engage. As the CEO, your ability to transfer your passion to your employees is the essence of being a great leader, so much so that if you can’t accomplish this, you simply can’t be a great leader. Think of any great leader, and while you’ll find varying degrees of skill sets, intellect and ability, I challenge you to name even one that did not have passion.

It’s not uncommon in today’s world to wonder “where have all the leaders gone?” When you want to find great examples of solid leadership, you need only look back to our nation’s founders. Since we’re headed into Presidents Day weekend and the commencement of Lincoln’s bicentennial celebration, I thought I’d take this opportunity to author a two part series in which I’ll examine the leadership characteristics of the two presidents for which the holiday is celebrated; George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. In this week’s column I’ll begin by taking a brief look at the life of George Washington in an attempt to quickly offer some leadership tips that you can apply to your role as a C-level executive.

First, a bit of history.

In the minds of many, Presidents Day is the holiday when we celebrate all men who have held the office of the President of the United States. However, it was originally established in remembrance of George Washington’s birthday, and according to the Office of Personnel Management the holiday is still officially referred to as Washington’s Birthday. It wasn’t until 1865, one year after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, that Lincoln’s Birthday was first officially celebrated. As it turns out, celebrating two Presidential birthdays in one month (Lincoln’s on the 12th and Washington’s on the 22nd) was just too much for law makers to endure. So in 1968 legislation was enacted to celebrate Presidents Day on the third Monday in February to both simplify the calendar and create a consistent three-day weekend for federal workers.

Born in Westmoreland County, Va., on Feb. 22, 1732, George Washington was a surveyor by trade, joined the Virginia militia just prior to the French and Indian War, served as a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congress, was commander in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution, and was the first President of the United States (1789-97). His rise to success was nothing short of meteoric, rising to the rank of Lt. Colonel by the age of 22, and his transformation from an arrogant and often brash young man to a polished and savvy leader was also quite remarkable.

Even though Washington was both personally and professionally polished, becoming well known for his economic, military, business and social success, it was his character that he was most admired for. The arrogance of his youth had been transformed into a true and unwavering confidence in his own judgment, underpinned with an implacable foundation of principled moral conviction. George Washington was a man of integrity beyond reproach, which made him a man worthy of respect and a force to be reckoned with. It is important to realize that he did not just espouse a vision, but that he was willing to put his life at risk to defend his vision, and live his life with the singular pursuit of seeing his vision become a reality.

Washington’s life gives testimony to the fact that great leaders can accomplish great things. It is important to remember that Washington was not merely a man among midgets who garnered his success because of the ineptness of his contemporaries, rather he was someone who rose to the top of a peer group comprised of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and John Hancock, among others.

The lessons here are simple: be a person of action, stay passionately convicted to your vision, make sure that your motivations and decisions are based upon a deeply rooted sense of character and integrity in both your personal and professional conduct, and be willing to take great risks in order to insure that your vision becomes a reality. While this brief post cannot even come close to doing justice to incredible life of George Washington, and the leadership qualities he possessed, I do hope it provides some inspiration and some guidance as you move foreword on your own leadership journey.

Tomorrow we’ll take a brief look at the life of Abraham Lincoln in the conclusion of this two part series…