I had the privilege of hearing my friend Marta Wilson, CEO of Transformation Systems Inc., talk about that very subject this past Friday at a Chamber of Commerce lunch.

Marta’s on the circuit in support of her terrific new book, “Leaders in Motion: Winning the Race for Organizational Health, Wealth, and Creative Power” – the title’s long because it’s a big subject – in which she weaves her own personal story through leadership stories that have made, or are making, history.

Her purpose on Friday was to spread the message of the importance of intention in leadership. Boiled to its essence, here are the key parts of that message:

• Intention – the will to see something through must be the starting point.
• Clarity – once you have a target, bring it into focus.
• United effort – get everybody on the bus.

She told a great story about a leadership development exercise one of the leaders she interviewed for the book outlined: a bunch of masters of the universe were at a weekend retreat, working on leadership development, and they were given a challenge late one afternoon.

100 homeless people would arrive for breakfast the next morning, and these captains of industry were to provide that breakfast. Food, cooking equipment, utensils, plates, the whole nine.

The real challenge? They couldn’t use any resources – no money, no credit cards, no promises to pay later – to get the breakfast on the table for those 100 people.

They pulled it off – after storming around, pissed off, for a little while – by identifying what they needed: food, equipment and utensils, and decorations. I dunno as I would have thought that decorations were necessary, but I wasn’t part of the team!

They split up into three groups, and when out to achieve their goals. The guy Marta interviewed was on the food team, and it took them hours of begging, pleading, and doors slammed in their faces, but around 2am they’d gotten everything they needed.

They worried that the two other teams might not have gotten what they needed. They went to bed, got up at 6am, and went to the kitchen to get to work.

All three teams had accomplished their missions.

100 guests – homeless folks – got a beautiful hot breakfast, with lots of good food, surrounded by balloons, streamers, and smiling faces.

You have to see your goal. Focus on that goal, make clear to yourself and your team exactly what the end-game is. Then get everybody moving toward that goal. That’s intentional leadership.

Blame no one. Expect nothing. Do something. Those are Gene Valvano’s words, and they’re true for any leader, any team member, any business effort on the planet.

Marta’s story is worth a book on its own – she started life on a small, hardscrabble farm in Tennessee, putting herself through college all the way to a doctorate from Virginia Tech in organizational development. She’s lived a transformative journey, which certainly informs her work helping organizations transform themselves.

If you’ve been, um, “evaluating your options” lately (translation: looking for a j-o-b after getting downsized to the curb), there’s an event coming up that could help you open up your entrepreneurial chakras.

I’ve been singing the Don’t Think J-O-B, Think B-I-Z song for over a year now, and it seems as if the rest of the world is starting to sing back-up – including RVA’s own Venture Forum, who has announced their Entrepreneur Fair on June 5 @ CapOne’s West Creek campus. Capital One is hosting the event, which has to be a good idea on their part. Earn loyalty from start-ups, get their business as they grow. Win/win (if everyone remembers to read the fine print).

The Entrepreneur Fair is slated to include sessions on a variety of topics of interest to anyone looking to start or grow a business:

• What I Wish I’d Known When I Started My Business
• Controlling Your Destiny: Why Pursuing Your Entrepreneurial Dream Makes Sense
• Buying a Business
• From Corporate Exec to Managing in an Entrepreneurial Organization
• Entrepreneur Success Stories

The Fair’s also going to feature my buddy Mike Ogilvie’s IGNITE Speed Networking, a facilitated speed networking session that goes miles beyond traditional business networking, helping create contacts and connections that will help move entrepreneurs further, and faster, down their path to success.

Get yer entrepreneur on – if you’re anywhere near RVA on Friday, June 5, plan to come by the Fair, running from 8am to 1:30pm. Start writing your own success story.

That’s MY story, and I’m stickin’ to it…

I had my 15 minutes of internet fame recently, with a “My Take” essay on BusinessWeek.com. To say that made my month would be an understatement!

Social media played a part in bringing me this opportunity. If you’re not a believer in the power of the Holy Trinity of SM (Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook)…you need to be.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…

I don’t know about you, but I prefer to visit the bathroom alone. Given that preference, I’ve felt, for over a decade now, like I’ve been under attack by advertising in public restrooms. The brain trusts who decided that ads on bathroom stall walls were a smokin’ good way to get their message across have been pushing their products in my face, and I’ve been making note of companies NOT to buy from.

I mean, who wants to buy insurance from some dude who you first see smiling down at you in a bathroom stall? Larry Craig might find that compelling, but I most certainly don’t. Besides, a strange guy in my bathroom means that he’s in the ladies room, which adds another level of weirdness to an already weird scene.

Bathroom walls have long been used for commercial messages, but those have traditionally been along the lines of ‘for a good time call’ or ‘Dwayne + Lola 4 Evah’. Why insurance brokers, day spas, or anyone else would think that bog walls would be an attractive, or even suitable, venue for their messages is beyond me. Well, beer might work, in a bar bog, but bars have notoriously uncontrollable bog walls, and ads posted there might find their messages being morphed by user-generated content. The beer company may find themselves appearing to participate in unnatural acts, or to agree with white supremacists.

Anyone who has any thoughts on why the bog-wall ad is a good idea, please share.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…

The always-full-of-great-information Sarah Evans, @PRSarahEvans on Twitter, and one of my favorite Tweeps, shared some really stunning stats today from Adam Singer’s The Future Buzz blog. One mindblower of a statistic, among a buffet of them, is that there are 346,000,000 global citizens who read blogs. Wow, I’d be happy to have .1% of that number reading this blog!

I found myself thinking as I read Adam’s post that there’s a lot of talking going on out there on the Wild Wild Web. The really critical part of social media, however, is LISTENING.

It’s tempting to think of one’s web platform(s) as megaphones – Hey look! Over here! It’s me! That’s fairly par for the course in human interaction: we’re all interrupting each other constantly, usually about 20 seconds in to what the other person is saying. Reminds me of Gary Larson’s classic “What Dogs Hear” cartoon – you’re blathering away at your dog, all she hears is her name. Blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah.

Same holds true with social media: people only listen if they hear something they want to hear, that their ears (eyes?) are tuned for. Everything else boils down to blah blah blah. Unless, of course, what you’re saying is pitched to their tuned ears – their wants, needs, curiosity, value system, whatever you want to call it.

Which means you’ve got to listen. Listen at least twice at much as you talk. The web ain’t a megaphone. It’s a conversation.

I’m going back to listening now.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…

Only connect.

When E.M. Forster wrote that in ‘Howards End’ in 1910, the first iteration of wireless – radio – was in its infancy.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

In many ways, the complexity and scope of modern communication – connection – mean that there’s lots of the former, but not much, at least not in a meaningful way, of the latter.

‘The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.’ Joseph Priestly presciently said that in the late 18th century, and it holds even truer in today’s communication-saturated world.

However, there are some stunning examples of how the complexity of 21st century communication can enable connections of the most human, and humane, kind.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the story behind the Twitter hashtag #daniela.

David Armano, a big noise in the complex web that is new media, is one of the people I follow on Twitter. If you don’t know what Twitter is, go find out, but after you read this, OK?

I missed the kickoff of his conversation about Daniela yesterday, but my attention was snagged today when another of my connections – Tweeps – tweeted (Twitter has created an entire lexicon of its own) about @Armano’s campaign to help out a woman with three kids who has just escaped a horrifically abusive marriage and is trying to get her life back.

All the pertinent details are on David’s blog, so I won’t give you the blow-by-blow. What I will tell you is that David started a ChipIn pass-the-hat to raise some chedda to help Daniela and her kids get back on track. He set a goal of $5,000.00. As of this afternoon, the total raised was approaching $13,000.00, and still rising.

In less than 48 hours.

THIS is the power of connection. THIS is why the internet is so powerful. It’s not porn. It’s real people, with real stories, making real connections.

David Armano is a mensch beyond words.

How many lives have you saved today?

Think about it.

Only connect.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it…