New Year’s ReSOLUTIONS: Balancing Better

Peter Friedman, Founder and CEO of LiveWorld, recognizes that personal interests and teamwork fuel business success.

Our company, LiveWorld, through the great efforts of our team, has seen good progress in the last few years. Along with that, we’ve had team members repeatedly come close to burning out—including me. I’d like to see us continue to grow and do well, but in a more balanced fashion.

Some of this is better balance between work and personal lives. For me, it’s a mixture of creative photography work, being with my favorite people and, in special cases, being with my favorite people doing creative photographic work. This type of balance energizes my LiveWorld work as well. Partly because the creative photo work inspires new kinds of thinking for LiveWorld. Partly because just getting some distance from work enables a fresh perspective when one returns.

Don’t get me wrong: In an entrepreneurial company, especially for the Founder/CEO, there is really no such thing as letting go completely, even for a short time. It’s always in you. Balance here is a matter of allowing yourself to focus on other things. A photographic trip in Havana, Cuba, was helpful. American phone carriers don’t get reception there. And my images were creative enough to warrant an exhibition in New York City.

Another form of balance is central to our goals: better balance across our teams at work—deeper collaboration, sharing and distributing work, responsibility and leadership across team members and throughout the company. This is not just about delegating or even having teams. It’s about creating a collaborative culture and process that empowers people to work together and create value for customers, the company and themselves that they could not create alone. In some respects, this is the core ethos of LiveWorld. After all, we are a social content marketing company founded on the principle of the transformative power of online dialogue and relationships.

Both kinds of balance help charge and recharge our creativity. Both help us create value together that we could not create by ourselves. That’s great for the team, their families, LiveWorld and our customers.

Peter Friedman is Chairman and CEO of LiveWorld, a social content marketing company providing solutions to improve relationship marketing, customer support and market learning through engagement, moderation and insight. LiveWorld is a trusted partner to the world’s largest brands, including the top companies in retail, CPG, pharmaceutical and financial/travel services.