This is a cicada.

Cicadas emerge from the earth every 17 years to mate like crazy, lay their eggs, and die. I personally find their story amazing, and am fascinated by the 17 year cycle in which they exist. I am currently living in Northern Virginia, smack dab in the middle of cicada central and expect to be hearing them for most of the summer, before they are either eaten by animals and human alike (yes, seriously – Google it!).

I actually remember the last time they were around, it doesn’t seem like all that long ago. 17 years seems to go pretty fast these days…and yet. Here’s a few things that were going on 17 years ago:

• Nintendo 64 was released in America
• Dolly, the first cloned sheep debuted.
• Pfizer patented Viagra
• Larry Page and Sergey Brin began working on a search engine that will be called Google.

Puts it in perspective a little, huh?

Imagine the change that we will see in the next 17 years!

Interesting article by Paul J. H. Schoemaker on Inc.. that a friend of mine pointed out to me today:

You’re the boss, but you still spend too much time on the day-to-day. Here’s how to become the strategic leader your company needs.

In the beginning, there was just you and your partners. You did every job. You coded, you met with investors, you emptied the trash and phoned in the midnight pizza. Now you have others to do all that and it’s time for you to “be strategic.”

Whatever that means.

Came across a very interesting article at the Forbes website today from contributer Erika Anderson, called:

WHY TOP TALENT LEAVES: TOP 10 REASONS BOILED DOWN TO 1

Came across an interesting article today by Om Malik.  He was able to sit down with Mark Pincus, CEO at Zynga, and have a nice little interview on what it means to lead and how one must grow and change as they expand in their career.  The title of the article is:

ZYNGA’S CEO ON LEADERSHIP, STARTUPS & MOBILE GAMING

Customer Experience is beyond just servicing support to your customers.

It is looking at your entire business model from the customer-centric point of view, and scoping, planning, and developing accordingly.  In his Handbook of CRM, Adrian Payne outlines the Framework for a CRM model that he has implemented into companies like BT, Broadvision, Royal Mail, SAS, Teredata, and more.  His forward-thinking wholistic approach to Customer Experience delivered through the entire company is my methodology , as well.