It won’t get you anywhere to gloss over the challenges of a new business venture. Three reasons why.

Every day business leaders launch challenging, often risky, initiatives. We do so because that’s how to get ahead, innovate, and stretch the organization. But let’s be honest: These projects are always tough, full of unknowns, and highly demanding of the people who will (or won’t) make them successful.

So what do most leaders do when they’re about to launch an aggressive project? They pretend it’s easy. In their desire to allay fears and encourage optimism, they come out with lame phrases like: “This will be fun,” or “It’ll be fantastic when we get there,” or “This could be the making of us.”

This is all very well intentioned but it’s wrong. Why?

It’s not true.

Unless the people working for you are idiots (in which case you have bigger problems) they all know that the project is going to be really, really hard. They can see at least some of the risks and pitfalls, and they’re probably nervous. When you act as if the whole thing is going to be one great picnic, you imply that it’s easy–so you’re either too stupid to see the problems or you’re lying. Both are bad. It’s far better to be honest about just how difficult and scary the project is. That way you can inspire people to grow and develop–something everyone wants to do. And it makes you look like you know what you’re doing.

The project might not pan out.

If you’re building software to an aggressive schedule, you won’t be the first company to miss your ship date. If you’re trying to invent a new product or launch something brand new, just about everything can go wrong. At the very least, the work is going to be difficult. But if you describe it as a cinch, and then it inevitably does get hard, everyone feels stupid and inadequate. They can’t even pull off this simple assignment.

You waste an opportunity.

When you acknowledge upfront that a project is going to be very taxing, completing it will represent a huge achievement, one that can and should be celebrated. But if you position it as “business as usual,” how are your collaborators going to be able to feel the magnitude of their success? Stretch goals are inspiring and rewarding because, when they’re met, everyone can be proud. Illuminate the challenge at the outset and you offer the chance of excitement and reward.

Big challenges–the ones that stretch but don’t destroy people–build businesses and reputation. But they can also boost morale and engagement if you’re frank about how tough, but exciting they’re going to be. Nobody was ever inspired to climb Everest on the grounds that it was a walk in the park.

Don’t be afraid to fail repeatedly, says HowAboutWe.com co-founder Brian Schechter.

Tired of success stories? Every Friday on Inc.com we bring you epic tales of failure and embarrassment. This week: Your worst bosses.

Most people like a good success story, but who can resist an epic tale of disaster, humiliation, embarrassment, and shame? I know I can’t.

Here’s how the Inc. Friday Fail works: Every Friday I post a new topic, invite readers to send in their favorite stories, and publish the best the following week.

Last week’s topic was Customers Who Won’t Pay.

This week it’s Worst Bosses, a topic that requires no explanation.

Here we go:

4. The Forwarder

I have always felt my job is to look out for and protect my boss. So when major systems changes were proposed by a manager in another department, I sent my boss a long email explaining the costs and problems those changes would create, both for our department and for the business as a whole.

My boss was, to put it gently, pretty non-technical, so I figured he would appreciate the input and the information. I thought we had a good relationship, so the email was fairly casual in tone and I didn’t pull any punches about the stupidity of the idea and, unfortunately, how clueless the other manager was.

So what did my boss do? He forwarded my email to everyone in the company, including the other manager. I asked him why he did it, and he said, “You put a lot of work into that email so I figured you should get the credit.”

Imagine how fun the next project meeting was for me to attend.—Craig

3. The Bond… James Bond

We called our boss James Bond because she spent all her time spying on us to catch us doing something wrong.

Her favorite trick was to call a random employee from “home” to check in and see how things were going, then casually mention she would be not be in the office for a few hours because she was on her way to a meeting. Then a few minutes later she would slip in one of the emergency entrances (she had an accomplice who would disarm the alarm and leave the door propped open) so she could try to catch people not working.

We figured it out pretty fast, and eventually got her back. One day a coworker saw her accomplice head for the warehouse. I followed behind, and after she turned off the alarm at the door and walked away I reset the alarm but kept it from triggering by taping a piece of metal between the contacts on the door and the frame. (My husband is an engineer and that is the first and last time I’ve ever taken an interest in electronics.)

When the boss pulled the door open it dislodged the metal and the alarm blared. “Somehow” a bunch of us happened to be in the warehouse at that moment and we all ran to the door to see if there was an intruder.

She said she was just testing our security systems and was pleased by how quickly we responded to a potential threat. What a loser.—Marcie

2. The Yellow Pager

At my first clerical job, the company owner’s son was in charge. He was known for peeing on people from the roof of his home when he was a teenager, and he had been married three times by his mid-30s.

He once looked me up and down and told me I must have gained five pounds. Even so, he called me into his office to suggest we have an affair.

I turned beet red and blurted out, “No!” I was married with two kids. It showed all over my face that I was upset when I left his office.

When we had a company party at Disneyland he tried to arrange it so I would be sitting with him in the bobsled. Fortunately the receptionist, who had taken me under her wing, pushed her way past, got in, and shoved back hard into his lap.

My boss said he’d fire me if my husband started his own company (in an unrelated field) because he only wanted women who needed their jobs. When my husband started the company, I quit. The boss stormed out of his office to grab the Yellow Pages to prove how easily I could be replaced.—Cheryl

1. The Sinker

An old boss hated when we took restroom breaks. (He once told me I should take care of all personal issues on my own time.) He was convinced we used trips to the restroom to get out of working.

One day he came out of the men’s room yelling. He grabbed me and pulled me inside to show me that someone had used the sink instead of the toilet for fecal evacuation purposes. He asked everyone if they did it, but no one copped to it.

When it happened again he said that if it happened again he would permanently lock the bathroom door since we could not be trusted to behave as adults.

About a week later I got to work earlier than usual, opened the bathroom door, and saw him backed up to the sink, pants at his ankles. His face turned white, he stammered some nonsense words, and then said, “I was just trying to see how tall you needed to be to do it… that way I might be able to eliminate some of our shorter employees as suspects.”

Unsurprisingly it never happened again. That guy was such a “waste.”—Myron

Next week’s Friday Fail Topic: Worst Date. (Hey, since workplace romances are so common, why not?)

Send your stories to fridayfail (at) blackbirdinc.com. If you want to remain anonymous, let me know.

Then tune in next Friday!

It’s impossible to work together in a dog-eat-dog showdown. Encourage collaboration and you’ll see huge sales growth for years to come.

In the old days, seeing a sales team work was like watching sharks smell blood in the water and furiously bite everything around them. Darwinian sales managers throw chum in the water in the way of contests, spiffs, shouting matches, and “top dog” awards. For companies that have short-term goals, huge prospect lists, and turn-and-burn attitudes, the feeding frenzy can work.

But for companies with longer sales cycles, more complex and expensive products, and more of the total deal value captured in post-sale annuity-type revenue streams, sales teams should be collaborative.

Collaboration is simply more effective. No one salesperson can marshal the information, contacts, and insights that a coordinated team can. And you don’t really need your salespeople working against each other by jumping territories or stealing leads. One of the most effective ways to disrupt a set of existing industry players is to sell to your audience differently.

Here are five ways to make your sales team more collaborative:

1. Don’t split commissions

The first move many managers make towards encouraging collaboration is to divide commissions among the salespeople who worked on the deal. In practice, though, splitting commissions always ends up in a vicious circle of compensation gamesmanship. Without fail, you’ll wind up in discussions about who contributed more to a closed deal and who should therefore take more of the commission home.

In a recent conversation I had with Dan Pink, bestselling author of Drive, he aptly said: “No matter what compensation scheme management devised, the sales folks figured out a way to game it. (That’s not a criticism. I’d respond the same way.) That led management to ratchet up the compensation scheme’s complexity –- which, in turn, led sales people to ratchet up the ingenuity of their response. On and on it went.”

Instead, it’s much more effective to encourage a team culture of collaboration with manager praise, kudos from the “team captain,” and unexpected spot bonuses.

2. Share information

No one knows as much about your company, competition, and prospects than everyone put together. The more information is communicated among a sales team, the more you can help each other. Discuss deals everyone is working on as a group. Talk about losses openly and without blame. Solicit your alpha salesperson to help a junior member with a deal. Ask everyone on the team to weigh in on a particularly tough prospect. You’ll be amazed when you find that the quietest person has a cousin in the purchasing department of the company you’re struggling to break into.

3. Invest in your sales team

The vast majority of sales technology spending goes to systems for oversight and reporting, rather than to empowering collaboration and sales success. Investing in tools, services, and training that help your team do well–individually and as a group–demonstrates your commitment to employee success, and will sell more products.

4. Hire collaborators, fire selfish sellers

This is obvious, but must not be overlooked. When you interview, pay attention to the people who say, “We achieved,” instead of, “I beat my quota.” Hire the applicants who talk more about their previous company’s growth than their one big deal.

After a team meeting or before an offsite, think over each member of your team and ask yourself, “Who would leave the rest of us stranded? When something goes wrong, who shares least?” If you want to send a message of collaboration to the rest of the team, let that person go.

5. Create external enemies

So many sales teams are built on “friendly competition” between members. Get rid of your top-seller award, and instead encourage collaboration by setting up an outside goal that the team can reach together. The best sports teams in the world pay more to their stars, but their attitudes always emphasize team achievements. Your star shouldn’t be proud of her MVP award if your team didn’t win the championship.

No need to be embarrassed. As long as you follow these three basic principles, tooting your own horn can bring on major success.

Don’t brag! Stop talking about yourself!

That’s what we were all told growing up. Okay, maybe I was told this more than most. Still isn’t it odd that here in the 21st century, millions and millions of us do little but brag and talk about ourselves constantly throughout the day on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube? And the ugly truth is that most of it is mindless, inane chatter that interests few.

And then, there are the marketers… Barraging us constantly with endless messaging about how great they are and how much we need their product or service with no consideration for our time or attention.

But is this always wrong? As an author and speaker, I have no choice but to constantly talk about myself, and what’s on my mind. Come to think of it, I’m doing it right now! Truthfully, I am no different then every entrepreneur that wants to benefit stakeholders, managers that seek advancement or even eager employees looking for recognition. It’s nice to think that people will simply notice the good and important things you are doing, however with all the noise online today, what are the odds that a single tweet, post or video will make any sort of impact? They are pretty slim indeed.

So we need to shamelessly self-promote, loud, strong and often. And yet somehow we have to keep from crossing that line of being annoying and offensive. Here are three tips on how to shamelessly self-promote and still keep your friends, colleagues and prospects from screaming and, dare I say it… unfriending you!

1. Be interesting

You already know what interests you, but you should consider what will interest your followers. Learn about them through research and their own self-promotion so you can find a way to connect their interests with what you have to promote.

2. Be authentic

Share the real you. Say what you truly believe and not what you think others want to hear. Being likeable helps too. Getting others to promote you openly will actually work even better than talking about yourself. If you can’t engage other people to talk about your accomplishment, then maybe it’s not worth talking about.

3. Provide value

Value comes in all shapes and sizes from an entertaining story, a lesson, or a simple joke that makes people smile and breaks up their day. Creativity in your delivery may even get people to share your promotion. (See tip No. 2)

Now these skills don’t come naturally. You need to practice. So here is your chance. Post your own shameless self-promotion in the comments below and we’ll see how many likes it gets by my next column in two weeks. I will send a copy of my new book Video Marketing For Dummies to each poster of the five comments with the highest number of likes and mention the winners in the next column. For those who feel this is a shameless self-promotion on my part just to engage social media activity, I’ll invoke Tip #1 and say absolutely, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a fun and interesting exercise. (Tip No. 3) So don’t be shy. Shamelessly self-promote away!

Oh and to show you I practice what I preach, Here is my quick and funny video for my new Amazon No. 2 Best Seller, which follows all three principles as you’ll see. If you like it, please don’t hesitate to share it around. (Oops, did it again.)

Company leaders with motherly traits can help employees develop into the best they can be in their field.

In case the commercials, web ads and direct mail pieces haven’t cued you in, Mother’s Day is here. In addition to designating a day to say ‘Thanks’ for all Mom does, the holiday offers all of us a reminder of the many things our mothers have done to shape our lives and, in a way, our companies.

Moms have a special way to always make you feel at home and to bring a family together. At least, that’s what my mom did in our home. She was our glue. She showed, by example, how to be compassionate yet firm and loving without spoiling.

In the archetypal family, a mother provides the nurturing and caring compliment to a fathers’ firm guidance. This same harmony can and should be attained in a business. We have a lot of amazing women leading teams within OtterBox including our ‘Otter Mom,’ my wife, Nancy Richardson. But having a motherly essence at your company has nothing to do with gender.

Establishing the nurturing traits of motherhood within a company brings a softer side to business. CEOs are often looked upon in a traditional fatherly way, regardless of gender, to be the provider, guider and chief disciplinarian. Not having complimentary systems in place to infuse compassion and caring into your culture leads to imbalance.

That’s not to say a CEO shouldn’t be all of those things, but it’s not enough to have a couple leaders fill that role. The motherly spirit of a company should be evident throughout. Every manager should be able to offer a refuge for employees to bring up workplace issues. Every employee ought to be able to serve as a sounding board for colleagues. The company as a whole should feel like a safe haven-a home away from home. If people are comfortable, happy and well cared for at work, they will give their best work.

Just as a mother develops her children socially and emotionally in order to face the world as adults, companies with motherly traits can help their employees develop into the best they can be in their field.

Sure, “mobile marketing” sounds intimidating. But check out these easy ways to get your feet wet.

You can’t talk about digital marketing–or even social media–without acknowledging the growing importance of mobile.

New stats about mobile’s gains and innovations make the press almost daily now. Here are a few you might have missed:

• “There are 5.3 mobile devices in use on the planet today” (Mobile Marketing Association)
• “86% of smartphone owners used their phone in the past month to make real-time queries to help them meet friends, solve problems, or settle arguments” (Pew Resear
• “Consumers spent $26.1 billion globally on apps last year” (Strategy Analysis)
• “Mobile ad revenue increased 149% 2011 versus 2010, up to $1.6 billion” (Interactive Advertising Bureau)
• “Within three years, $930 billion in payments will be processed via mobile” (KPMG)

And of course, who could miss “Purina’s iPad Video Games Purr-Fect For Cat Lovers” (USA Today)?

Essentially, this means you’d better get your business mobile-ready … and fast!

Embracing mobile doesn’t have to be as complicated as it may seem. Consider these six relatively low barriers to entry.

1. Check your website’s mobile-friendliness

Before you wholeheartedly embrace mobile, it’s a good idea to see how your website fares when viewed on different mobile devices. Run your site through a few of the mobile compatibility testing tools on this list for a good gauge.

Bonus: If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, Google will give you a free one for a year.

2. Run a short code/SMS text messaging campaign

American Idol first popularized this “text [ABCDE] to [12345]” form of marketing. Today, SMS campaigns can encourage users to request information, download coupons, set up reminders, participate in sweepstakes–or, sure, cast a vote–among other ideas.

These “short-code” campaigns are relatively easy to set up, especially if you follow these tips from Mobile Marketer. And short-code providers abound. A few include:

• Mozes
• SUMOTEXT
• Textmarks
• Trumpia

3. Claim your place

Particularly if you are in a consumer-facing business, mobile users may be seeking businesses like yours through location-based services such as Yelp, foursquare, Google Places and others. Make sure you can get found: Be sure to register and create a company account.

4. Use scannable QR codes

It’s hard to avoid seeing QR codes these days; their adoption rate in the US has increased 314% year-over-year from Q1 2011 versus Q1 2012. They can appear on products, posters, shelf displays, and even wine bottles.

Using camera-enabled smartphones, consumers can scan your QR code and be taken to a URL to receive whatever message or information you’ve set up to be associated with this code. QR codes are also simple to generate, with free tools like QuikQR.

5. Segment out mobile in Google AdWords

If you’re running a Google AdWords campaign, you can now separate and manage the mobile side of how your ads get seen–and you should be doing so. This allows you to better optimize, track and measure mobile-driven traffic.

Google explains how in this Help Center video.

6. Buy mobile ads

Target your campaign to your desired audience (demographic, geographic, whatever) using mobile advertising.

Since most mobile ad campaigns are served based on the user’s location, here’s a comprehensive list of location-based mobile advertising options.

See, this mobile stuff doesn’t have to be too painful. What will be painful, though, is if you lose customers because you haven’t yet embraced mobile but your competitors have. Ouch!

Are your meetings lacking focus? Learn the art of running an efficient meeting using these five tips.

When I worked at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office every Tuesday we would have an all attorney meeting to discuss the vexing legal issues of the day. It was a round robin discussion in which any examining attorney could bring any trademark application they were examining that, in their opinion, should be discussed by the group. The meetings were both informative and fun and really helped to disseminate information among the examining attorney ranks on often unique or important topics being addressed in trademark law.

Understanding the importance of continuous re-training when I came to The Trademark Company I attempted to mimic the Tuesday meetings from my days at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We began having Thursday lunch meetings to have all front-line staff come and discuss, what else, but the vexing legal issues of the day.

Initially the meetings were highly structured with specific agendas that would be worked through. But over time the agendas became less lengthy and the social time at the beginning of the meetings moved from being 10 minutes of the hour-long meetings to 20, 30, and beyond. One day we looked up and the realized that the meetings had become something that they were never intended to be, merely a social hour over lunch wherein nothing work-related was truly being discussed. Shortly thereafter we terminated the meeting.

We have since brought back our weekly meetings but in a much more focused manner. After all, the purpose of a meeting is to get a specific goal accomplished and to have the participants in that meeting contribute to that goal. With that in mind, we have learned how to run an efficient meeting. In our experience, here’s how:

1. Have an Agenda

Prior to the meeting prepare an agenda that will guide you and the attendees through those matters that will be discussed. Make sure all in attendance have a copy of the agenda prior to the meeting being started.

2. State the Purpose and Goals

Begin the meeting with a clear statement of the purpose for the meeting and the goals sought to be achieved.

3. Keep Focused on the the Goals

Throughout the course of the meeting, focus on those goals that were stated at the outset. Minor deviations or sidetracks are permissible, so long as they do not distract too much from the stated purpose. If so, use the agenda to remain on topic so as to move efficiently through the topics towards the stated goal.

4. Conclude with a Summary

At the end of the meeting briefly review that which was discussed and any decisions made to ensure all are in agreement with the same.

5. Memorialize the Results

Immediately following the meeting, or as soon thereafter as practical, memorialize the discussion, decisions, and assignments, if any, determined in the meeting and share a copy of the same with all of those in attendance.