The amount of discussion around the new MPN is increasing, and the information available to help explain it seems to have settled out, so I am going to take a little time to address the coming changes. There are a series of common questions and whines that seem to be consistent, so I'll share my take on what is to come from what I believe to be true.

The first question regards when the new MPN takes effect. October is the launch of the program broadly, although some aspects have been slowly intergrated into the current program over the last months. But October is the official date, so that is when things kick into gear. I have had lots of questions and confusion around why we continue to get the report cards monthly with points listed on them. These are informational and are important for companies whose renewals are happening prior to October. The information is valid under the current program, but will go away once we reach the October launch. No more points.

This week there was a great post in Harvard Business Review by Robert Sutton entitled ?True Leaders Are Also Managers?. This is an age old discussion ? what the role is of a CEO vs. President or manager vs. leader. The article includes these comments:

?In my reviews of the writings and research, I kept bumping into an old and popular distinction that has always bugged me: leading versus managing. The brilliant and charming Warren Bennis has likely done more to popularize this distinction than anyone else. He wrote in "Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader" that "There is a profound difference between management and leadership, and both are important. To manage means to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or responsibility for, to conduct. Leading is influencing, guiding in a direction, course, action, opinion. The distinction is crucial." And in one of his most famous lines, he added, "

This week is all about the IT industry. I am at the annual CompTIA breakaway event and gathered with industry leaders from every facet of the IT world. It has already been a great event and we are only getting started. The focus of a number of the sessions has revolved around change - particularly that of the cloud and the pending changes that will be coming as that reality comes to fruition.

That said - I think more and more people are beginning to take a more balanced view of things. The sky is falling approach to dealing with it is over the top. Life is continuing in spite of the cloud. VAR's and Solution Providers continue to stay in business and serve customers. The reality is that if we take care of the customer - deliver strong customer service focused on their best interest meeting their business goals - we have a place in any new economy. It will come down to the relationship, and nothing cements it like good customer service. That does not mean we should stick out heads in the sand and pretend it is business like usual. We need to begin our due diligence into how the cloud will fit our business model and our customer's needs, and then learn all we can about selling, implementing, supporting, training and marketing it.

CRN released their list of the 100 most powerful women in IT. I am unsure of their criteria, but there are three that definitely belong on that list from HTS/HTG. I have been privileged to work with all of them closely and have experienced their excellence and solid leadership.

A month or so ago, HTG hosted our second CEO Forum in Denver and had Colleen Abdullah who is CEO of WOW as our speaker. She was dynamic and extremly engaging. One thing she said I have not forgotten was this: "If you want to succeed in the business world today, you need to have some strong women on the management team". May be paraphrased a bit, but the message was clear. The days are over of male dominance in the board room. It is time to leverage the current generation of female leaders and leverage their skills as part of a successful management team. I can validate that statement completely.

This blog post is based on some great information shared on Harvard Business Review written by Stever Robbins. You can find the original post here. Mr. Robbins gives some great thoughts on the role of a CEO and particularly on success in that role as it relates to entrepreneurship. He focuses on the reality that most CEO's likely began their journey as an entrepreneur, and as such, need to do some things differently as they grow in their leadership responsibilities. Here are some of his thoughts:

"The CEO entrepreneur sets a company's vision and strategy. The vision is why the company exists in the first place. The strategy is how the company plans to do that, given the reality of the marketplace, the competitors, regulation, technology trends, etc. Strategy includes everything from designing the organizational structure to defining the business model to choosing partners for the venture.

Great entrepreneurs make strategic opportunities. Great entrepreneurs use research, prediction, and detailed plans. But rather than hope to discover an opportunity, they make their opportunities. They build an ecosystem of customers, employees, suppliers, and partners who all have a vested interest in the company doing well. They experiment and learn, continuously altering their strategy — and indeed, their entire vision — as needed for success.

What a week - and a very well done one at that. My hats off to the team that made this week possible - Pam, Julia, Deanna and all the rest. Been attending this event now for 8 years and this was hands down the best one ever. Hard to imagine it continuing to get better each year - but somehow it has and I am very thankful for the many hours and days and months that are put in to making the experience so valuable and enjoyable.

That really is a trick - making it valuable - but also keeping it enjoyable. There was lots of content this week - maybe a bit too much as there was really no way to figure out which of the hundreds of sessions to attend. I was involved in presenting in three, and the crowds were a bit light considering how many folks were in attendance. But having lots of choice was obvious and there was something available for everyone. If you didn't get value from the content - it was definitely your fault.

The highlight of day three might surprise you - but it had nothing to do with former President Clinton speaking at the Verizon Center. In fact, I have to confess I didn't even go hear him. It happened between 7 and 8 AM at the Partners in Christ Prayer Breakfast where Amy Lucia, former Microsoft marketing guru for the US shared her life story with the room. Amy didn't share her story to tell all of us to quit what we are doing and find a new place to go to work. In fact, she was very clear that leaving Microsoft had nothing to do with Microsoft at all actually. It was all about God's call on her life, and her desire to walk in obedience to His leading.

God is in the business of calling and leading each of us. That is how He works. Through prayer, His Holy Scriptures in the Bible, and equally importantly - solitude with Him. We need to learn to slow down, stop and listen. In this rat race chaotic industry we are part of, solitude is a rare commodity. Many would say it doesn't even exist. But it does if we make it priority. If we put the need to seek God's voice ahead of rushing around - it can happen. That means no computer, no PDA, no email, no phone, no nothing - except quiet. Do you even know what that looks like? Many of us have never experienced it. We just rush through life and find out that we missed a turn somewhere back a ways. It doesn't have to be that way.

So a bit of a departure on the topic today as I normally don't write about technology and certainly not products, but this one is really worth discussing. Change is coming to a small business near you - and we need to get ready and prepare for our entry into this brave new world of on premise and cloud services. Microsoft has built a product just for us - so here are some thoughts....

This week marks a transition for SMB partners with the announcement of Microsoft Small Business Server "Aurora." Aurora is targeting companies on the smaller end of SMB, while the regular Small Business Server product will grow beyond the limitation of 25 users. Aurora does not come with Exchange Server and SharePoint but serves as a basic domain controller giving small businesses a stable and reliable internal on premise networking environment. Key workloads like e-mail and document management can then be handled through the use of cloud services making the maintenance and administrative overhead that's a feature of the normal Small Business Server product go away. The result is a greatly simplified product that's ideal for organizations with little or no IT expertise.

I am in Washington DC to attend the most important vendor event of the year - Microsoft's WPC. The attendance is touted at 14,000, and there certainly are a lot of folks here. Not bad considering the registration fee was $1795 for the four day event plus hotel and travel. For many, who come overseas for the week, this is a pricey event to attend. But it is worth every penny from my perspective. There is no other event one can attend where you can get access to as many people in one spot with a very well designed way to connect - called ironically WPC Connect. A decent web portal to create appointments and hundreds of tables that are assigned to enable people to connect the old fashioned way - communication between four eyes. In this day of social media, email, and cell phones - talking to one another face to face is sort of a treat. And the way I spend my week here is taking advantage of that very opportunity - making as many face to face, eyeball to eyeball, connections as I can fit in.

This was first sent out in the July 1 HTG newsletter - but it is such an important topic I wanted to share it broader.....

On June 25-27, Nancy and I hosted our third annual Weekend on the Farm which is a leadership training session with a spiritual bent. We do this event for people that get my daily email update each morning on life and my study of scripture. (If you want to be added to that list just send me an email requesting addition to the distribution list) Our first event focused on the book "The Go Giver" and last year we studied "Lead Like Jesus". This year – our instruction came from the pages of the Bible as we learned lessons on leadership from Nehemiah. He may have lived nearly 2500 years ago, but as is often the case, there are a lot of similarities to what he dealt with when compared to being a business leader today.