Ever watch closely as a teenager or younger kid watches TV, listens to an iPod or CD? They change the channel or song constantly. They rarely seem to listen to the whole song.

Today’s guest post (I’m in a canoe, remember?) is a video of a talk by Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo (a conference). Transcript is here if you prefer to read rather than listen/watch.

Don’t change the channel if you don’t care about Web 2.0 (a thing, sorta). The talk is about time, what we do with it and so on, but there’s another message there.

It’s also about understanding your employees, what motivates them (much less your kids), and perhaps even doing a better job of understanding your clients.

If you’re a little older, this just might make you crazy.

Clay explains some of why that is, and it also just might help you understand how to improve the conversations you have with clients and with employees.

Insightful stuff.

Every once in a while, I happen upon someone who wants to take their business to the next level, whatever that might be for them.

Sometimes they’ve caught themselves relaxing. Sometimes someone else has caught them napping.

Others simply feel that if they aren’t growing, they’re dying.

Finally, some simply want to grow themselves out of a job and into the position of running their business as an owner rather than a (hopefully) highly paid employee.

All of these are good reasons to turn a critical eye to your business and start for formulate strategies for growth.

But how exactly do you do the actual work?

How do you know what do you look at and what to ignore?

Consider these two things as fuel to prime the strategic pump:

• What would you do to prepare your business for sale, keeping in mind that you want to get top dollar for it?
• If you were seeing your business for the first time, what would jump out at you as ideal areas to expand upon and improve?

Get started today.

UPDATE: Hear more on the topic of going to the next level on the July 25 Hotseat Radio show.