Keep up the great work Ed! For your success in blogging and your participation in the 2008 Best of Blogs Competition, Kevin has hosted your post, Leadership Development: Effective and Easy Performance Reviews on his blog. Take a look.

http://www.kevineikenberry.com/blogs/index.asp

We are excited to have you and are looking forward to the progression of the competition. Make sure you spread the word so people vote!

I could probably sell my boss on letting me subscribe at $120 per year ($10.00 per month). My recommendation for Gold Membership would be that at whatever price that is, it gives the member the opportunity to phone someone on your staff to discuss a specific leadership challenge for up to 2 hours per month.

Not sure what the fee would be, but within a few hundred a year would be easily accessible. Also, I believe that marketing the service would be more effective if there was a library of resources which were available to anyone with no fee. If there is a fee, please think about pricing that would allow for one user, or unlimited users. It gets very complicated trying to get lots of people to use something if only one person has the password.

Thanks for trying all of this out.

Ed:

Again, great job. What to pay is a tough question, as you point out. I think that you will win if you keep your prices way down, encouarging individuals and organizations to make use of the information. Colleagues in your industry are going to want to tie your materials to co-branding somehow to align their identity with EL.

Another challenge is to figure out how to fit this in to current products and processes, and make it seamless. There is so much information already in the pipeline that we have to have an easy way to find information and then share it with our clients. In oru long term developmental improvement, clients are asking for more vinette’s to break up the “speak” stuff, and this could be an answer to that challenge. I agree with Tim Hooper that several clips on a CD or downloadable that we could select from would be more manageable.

With regard to Gold service, I have no real opinions, although I liked the live coaching idea from Mary. I think that industry colleagues will need to be assured that you will not deal directly with their clients (ala TTI). it’s hard to serve both other “members” and industry as well.

Good Luck with your project. I think it is a great beginning to impact as many people in the world as possible.

Cheers,
Jerry

The format and length of these trainings has been good. I agree with Mary that changing up the format from video to video would help create an “I gotta see the next video” mentality.

Personally, I would not sift through a catalog of videos to find one that matched my question.

Perhaps another approach would be putting out a single DVD with several 15 minute clips to be used by an organization during weekly or monthly training sessions.

I would be more apt to purchase something like that than a monthly web fee.

Hi Ed,
I think what you are trying to accomplish has many possibilities. I encourage you to continue exploring. A bit of feedback prior to answering your questions … For this to be successful, it will be necessary to keep video clips on the cutting edge with technology and the “entertainment” value. I think this may mean mixing up your clips by using the method of subject matter expert, conversation between expert and client or between experts and maybe by client success stories, etc., with the handouts. From the feedback I am getting from my organziation’s leaders is that they like things they can download on their IPODs to listen to during travel (we service several states and the territories and in most of the states the territory covered is very large, so there is lots of air and auto travel.)

The value question is interesting because it is difficult to measure until after the fact. I can estimate potential impact on individuals and groups and not be able to answer the value question till later … something to ponder.

Because of my O.D. role, I would be looking at this from the perspective of multiple users. So pricing is critical and I would need to balance that with potential consulting that would come based on what leaders are hearing and seeing. To answer this question without a bit of research internally is not possible. I will discuss this with my team and organizational leaders and get back to you on what I am finding.

A gold level service you may want to consider is 15 – 20 minute coaching sessions (both individual and small group)on specific topics.

Great series Ed;

I find myself wondering how many books will be on the shelves for the next video

The short formats are great, however, without an e-mail “check this out” message; I am not sure if I would have personally taken the time to look through pages of subjects to find a relevant video. With leadership principals, core issues are addressed frequently enough that an occasional video over a break may provide value. Not sure if I would take the time to look for a video relevant to a pressing situation.

If you are to create a fee based service: I would recommend considering the issue of multiple users. If the service is of value to many within an organization; and the price is high, more people will tend to share access within their peer groups. Perhaps an area where many resources are no charge, you could help support word of mouth advertising by allowing folks to experience your new style.

In future videos, perhaps you could try a recorded webcast with feedback/questions or include additional people within the video to ask questions.

Keep up the good work.
Eagle Scout, Trevor Floyd, GISP

Like the brief videos.
Would pay 10-25 a month.
Don’t see a need for additional service.
See the site as a tool to assist me in staying sharp.

Dana