Chuck Martin

Biography

Chuck Martin is a New York Times business best-selling author, noted researcher, speaker and business strategist.

Martin offers invaluable context and pragmatic solutions to the problems leaders at all levels face today, helping them refocus on effective leadership, management, team building, and matching people with the best job. He is the author of seven business books, including most recently, SMARTS (Are We Hardwired for Success?)AMACOM/American Management Association, co-authored with two noted psychologists. The book deals with what qualities truly define successful people and shows how each person possess 12 specific and very important cognitive functions, including Time Management, Organization, Focus, Working Memory and Stress Tolerance, which begin developing in the brain at birth.

Martin is currently leading a major primary research effort to determine the cognitive characteristics of high-performing individuals at leading companies throughout the world. He is working with a research team from the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire and many participant members from the American Management Association. The findings are the basis of a new book Martin is writing to be published in 2009 by AMACOM/American Management Association.

As the Chairman and CEO of NFI Research, Martin is at the nexus of a global idea exchange and the leader of a research engine that regularly samples the mood and intentions of 2,000 senior executives and managers from more than 1,000 organizations in multiple countries, including many of the Fortune 500.

This gives him a significant amount of useful information and a true, up-to-the-minute view of today’s workplace. The broad base of his network, the robust and virtually instantaneous nature of his process and his experience analyzing results give him unusual insight into business and workplace trends

A former vice president of IBM responsible for a global division dealing with Media and Entertainment, Martin has helped identify successful corporate business strategies for some of the leading companies in the world. Prior to joining IBM, he was the founding publisher and Chief Operating Officer of Interactive Age, the magazine credited with helping to define the interactive marketplace and the first publication to launch simultaneously in print and on the Web. He has been Editor-in-Chief of four national magazines and has been a journalist at five daily newspapers. He was Editor, Corporate Technology, of Time Inc., and was the Associate Publisher of InformationWeek Magazine.

His previous book, Tough Management (The 7 Ways to Make Tough Decisions Easier, Deliver the Numbers, and Grow Business in Good Times and Bad), investigates how companies large and small lead and manage in today’s world of work. He is the author of Managing for the Short Term, Net Future, The Digital Estate, and (co-author) Max-e-Marketing He also has written a business fable, entitled Coffee at Luna’s, about an overworked manager who can’t get off the treadmill of work until he learns three valuable lessons that totally improve his situation and those around him as well.

Martin writes a nationally syndicated newspaper column on management and business issues and regularly appears on television business shows. He also teaches Marketing Research and Consumer Buying Behavior at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire.

Publications

SMARTS
It remains one of the great mysteries in life--what qualities truly define successful people? While we are all destined for greatness, we also possess one or two weaknesses that may be holding us back. While you consider yourself to be highly focused and cool under pressure, you may lack flexibility. You know that you are talented, gifted, and great at what you do, but in trying to overcome your shortcomings, you may be frustrating yourself and others and neglecting those strengths that will lead you to excellence. We all possess twelve specific and very important cognitive functions, including Time Management, Organization, Working Memory, and Stress Tolerance, which begin developing in the brain at birth. Everyone has these same capabilities but to varying degrees. These skills are largely unchangeable by adulthood, but the good news is that they can be enhanced. Smarts reveals what separates those people who continue to excel in their lives and in their careers. These highly successful people know that the real opportunities lie in playing to their strengths, not trying to improve their shortcomings. And in understanding their own innate assets and limitations, they are more tolerant and more patient with the strengths and weaknesses of others, making them better bosses, exceptional workers, and more understanding partners.

Using groundbreaking new research, best-selling author Chuck Martin reveals how embracing our two or three strongest Executive Skills can help us achieve excellence, while denying our weaknesses can undermine our progress. This book includes the revolutionary Executive Skills Profile you can use to spot your own strengths, and leverage them both at work and at home. You will begin to understand why you--and those around you--act or behave the way they do. Smarts shows you how to nurture your positive skills; identify, accept, and deal with your own weaknesses; and manage those characteristics of the people with whom you live and work.

Impeccably researched and grounded in proven scientific principles, this is a truly eye-opening and empowering book that redefines the way we understand the potential for greatness--in ourselves and others.

Titles

How Social Networking Can Work for Your Business
Does your company use Twitter and why? How is Facebook being used? What about LinkedIn? How does your organization best utilize the wave of social networking mania publicized almost daily in the press? For business, it's not about following celebrities online and roaming from chat room to chat room. Learn how businesspeople are innovating with these new internetworking tools. What about the future uses for Mobile and smartphones? How does all of this tie together? And how can it be used to increase productivity and not be a big time waster? Digital Interactive Pioneer Chuck Martin can help you make sense of it all. Martin is a best-selling author, noted researcher and highly sought-after speaker. He was the founding publisher of Interactive Age, and is a bestselling author of seven business books, including The Digital Estate, Net Future, and (co-author) Max-e-Marketing in the Net Future. He is a former vice president of IBM and is CEO of NFI Research, a global business research institute. He has researched various business aspects of social networking (“three times more senior executives than managers use Twitter for business reasons”). He will research your audience in advance and show in his presentation how wired your group is, comparing this to other businesses overall and lead to an understanding of how the social networking phenomenon can work for your organization.

SMARTS: Hardwired for Success and Leadership
Why do people gravitate toward certain tasks and shy away from others? Chuck Martin answers this question when he uncovers and explains the 12 Executive Skills (actual brain functions that every person has) that can make or break any department or organization. In an enlightening, entertaining and thought-provoking presentation, he provides a groundbreaking blueprint for leaders, managers and administrators to quickly identify and tap into their greatest strengths as well as the strengths of those around them. Martin also shows people how to identify their greatest weaknesses, describing how to get around those weaknesses, after explaining why they cannot be dramatically improved, no matter what. He then details what it takes to identify these traits in others and best practices for leading and managing once this information is understood. Beyond leadership and team building, Martin's lecture inspires every audience member to engage in a self-assessment to help them think differently about how they perform any task and ultimately help them work at peak efficiency.

Tough Management
Work today is more demanding than ever before. With bottom-line focus, organizations large and small are pressed to do more with less in budget-constrained environments. Everyone is affected, as the burden falls on them, the people they manage, their customers, the customers of their customers, and the employees and managers at all those places. This requires a hardened approach by managers, with an eye toward pragmatically achieving results. These tough times demand tough management, a way to approach work. It is a practical, reasonable, and organized way to get to decisions more easily, make the numbers on a consistent basis, have those throughout the ranks understand where you stand, and increase and improve the business.

Work-Life Balance to Improve Your Business
Based on his entertaining and informative book, Coffee at Luna's, Chuck Martin shows audiences how to recognize the three secrets to knowledge, self-improvement, and happiness in work and life. To get off the treadmill of work, leaders, managers and employees need to find it, change it, and pass it on. This involves ways to tune in to those around you, so that you understand what is truly going on. It involves commitment to improve the situation by taking concrete steps. And it ultimately requires you to communicate this knowledge to others around you so that they can also commit to improvement.

Identifying Corporate Business Strategies
Sharing the stage with President Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Dr. Phil, and Lance Armstrong, Chuck Martin advises audiences and companies on how to best cope with today's business challenges. CEO of international market research powerhouse, NFI Research, Martin overseas a global idea exchange and research engine with a network base of 2,000 senior executives from more than 1,000 companies in 50 countries, including: AT&T, GE, American Express, Deloitte & Touche, Microsoft, and IBM. Martin will show your audience a fresh, bottom-line strategy designed for what really works in today's business world.