Simple Management Lessons from The Batman

Taking a break from management books, posts on linkedin, TED talks, and pep-talks from the Boss (?), I happened to pick up a comic book at the airport bookstore.

There’s no arguing that The Batman is the most iconic character among superheroes (and I sincerely hope the image stays iconic even after Bat-fleck gets out of the cave – hence this article while we still have Bat-bale fresh in our memory!)

Batman has no superpowers and no super human strength. He is subject to the limitations that apply to human physical capabilities and wit. Yes, he is super-rich and can afford such pass-time as crime-fighting for Gotham’s sake!

Over the years, he has had no career change. The Batman is consistent in his dedication and pursuit to save Gotham. And that’s quite commendable ’cause his job description had the words, “deal with nutcases like The Joker, The Penguin and Ra’s al Ghul everyday!”

How does he do it? And what’s that got to do with regular office going folk, making a living and advancing their careers … and on a much leaner bank account compared to the primary resident of Wayne Manor?

Here are some key lessons observed from The Caped Crusader’s mission over the years.

1. Train Mind and Body. Everyday :

Batman needs to be at his optimum fitness levels everyday. His Job Description requires him to make quick (life & death) decisions, rational judgments and Holmes-like deductions to solve cases. Working out and meditating is the only way he can keep himself sane and battle ready.

Regular training can help one cope with taking the punches and still keep going. Tough days in office and long work trips take a toll on the body so much that even The Joker won’t think it funny!

In a small step towards being The Dark Knight in the office, check out this Batman workout

2. The Utility Belt

Batman keeps The Utility Belt packed with tools for every imaginable situation. Other SuperHeroes don’t even seem to have pockets in their pants, and here Batman innovated the belt to ensure comfort and practicality!

The Utility Belt is quite the metaphor for “Being prepared”. For someone in a business or client facing role, the equivalent of a “Utility Belt” could be a “meeting kit” or a well organized folder.

The tools inside could be research, record of historic discussions, list of resolved / unresolved issues, tailored prezis, hand-outs, sample documents, and even a “backup” on cloud or thumb drive when your sidekick laptop is all tied up at security!

3. Overcoming Fears

Being in a Bat Suit is the biggest indication of Batman’s triumph over his own fear of… Bats! Batman took time to understand his weakness and turned it into his biggest strength. He created an image which capitalized on the fear psychosis associated with Bats. The outcome of that, everyone knows, gives him that extra-second to turn any situation to his advantage.

Fear, as we know it, has a negative effect on one’s confidence and self-esteem. People have unwarranted and imagined fears that hamper personal growth and development. Students fear exams, employees fear appraisals (!), HR fears being bypassed by candidates and line managers!

Techniques such as visualization, meditation or setting of “small achievable goals” can help in easing fears and increasing positivity and motivation.

4. Data Analysis, Research and Insight

Picture This: Bat Cave. Bat Computer. Bat Login. Bat Search. Bat Analysis!

An observation derived from reading comics – Batman seems to be the Original proponent of the “Big Data” concept! An unsung hero, yet again.

From Hi-Tech SONAR devices to trace the whereabouts of The Joker to studying behaviour patterns of every villain, Batman relies a lot on hard data.

While organizations rely regularly on data – for market or industry research, forecasting business pipelines and measuring KPIs to social media marketing campaigns – there is enough data to derive in our individual lives. Such data can provide basic analysis and insights to ensure a better living. One can track and monitor energy levels through the day (think sugary foods and that afternoon slump in energy), count reps in the gym, measure time spent on certain tasks or figure the best time of day to study or draft contracts and proposals!

Not to End up “Just Following Up” Email

 

 

Just wanted to check in with you and see if you’d had a chance to check out my proposal for the 4 of July Business Party.

What? Really?

The opening to my blog post didn’t provide you with any value or reason to continue reading. I hate to admit it, but I even do it every now and then. So why do we still use it when we’re following up with prospects? Because sometimes we’re selfish and lazy. But messages like that are annoying and disruptive to the recipient.

 

The problem is that we all know that following up is critical to closing deals. According to Referral Squirrel:

• 2% of sales are made on the First contact.
• 3% of sales are made on the Second contact.
• 5% of sales are made on the Third contact.
• 10% of sales are made on the Fourth contact.
• 80% of sales are made on the Fifth to Twelfth contact.

However…

• 48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect.
• 25% of sales people make a second contact and stop.
• 12% of sales people make three contacts and stop.
• Only 10% of sales people make it more than Three contacts with a prospect.

It is well known that repeat customers and referral business are the two best (and cheapest to acquire) types of business.

We’ve all sent the “just checking in” email before. So what should you be doing instead? Hubspot (one of the Kings of content marketing…along with one of my virtual mentors: Seth Godin “virtual” because he doesn’t know me, I just obsessively read everything he puts out) says that there are three key ways to drastically improve these “check-in” emails:

1. Google Alerts – Set up a custom Google Alert for your prospect’s company name, competition and industry keywords. That will create a trigger event to customize your follow up email.
2. LinkedIn Groups – Find a LinkedIn Group that discusses their industry. That will provide you with content and an actual reason to follow up.
3. Signals Alerts – Signals allows you to track when your prospect is actually opening and/or clicking your email. That way, you know when they open your email and will help you with the timing of your follow up. (By the way, I’m not an affiliate for Hubspot or Signals…I guess I should be…anyway, there are plenty of email tracking services available. Just Google “email tracking software”)

Hubspot has a great slide deck that you can check out by clicking here.

The point is, you don’t get any value out of the emails you receive that say, “Just checking in” so stop sending them out to your clients and prospects and start sending something of value. You can’t afford not to nowadays in the modern world of constant interruption (how many emails, texts, phone calls, snapchats, etc. did you get while reading this 500 word Blog?)

Make sure your clients and prospects know that you are THE thought leader in your space.

The Bargain That Is WhatsApp & 4 More Stories You Need To Know Today

SUCH A DEAL! — There’s been no shortage of opinions on what Facebook paid for WhatsApp, ranging from “I don’t get it” to “You don’t get it.” But the only opinion that matters has now weighed in, and, in his view, WhatsApp was cheap. “I just think that by itself it’s worth more than $19 billion,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed Monday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “The reality is there are very few services that reach a billion people in the world.” The reality is that WhatApp isn’t one of them — it has around 465 million users. But Zuck thinks it can be a billion-member platform, and, again, that’s all that matters.

 

_____

 

DIMON IN THE ROUGH — The Financial Times (subscription required) reports that JP Morgan Chase is set to fire “several thousand” more employees, above and beyond a recently announced round of up to 15,000 job cuts. The reason, per the FT: Better tech at branches and plummeting mortgage applications. Official word may come as early as today, when CEO Jamie Dimon speaks at bank’s annual Investor Day, his first address to shareholders since the bank’s record $13 billion settlement with the Feds over allegations of mortgage chicanery. The bank employs more than 250,000 people.

 

_____

 

HI, FIVE — The Samsung 5 got a nice enough reception from the tech press, which tossed around words like “refined” and “elegant.” Samsung’s newest flagship smartphone boasts some welcome features, like water resistance, fingerprint sensing, a built-in heart rate monitor, pedometer and fitness tracker. But the low-key kudos award goes to BGR Executive Editor Zach Epstein, who Tweeted: “Galaxy S5 is a nice iteration. Good job focusing on refinement vs feature spam but no BUY ME features.” Let’s hope, for Samsung’s sake, that’s not literally true. The S5 will be available in 150 countries on April 11.

 

_____

 

BAD DAY FOR BITCOIN — The virtual currency that’s beginning to attract mainstream attention is facing an “existential crisis” after a leaked document, allegedly from one of the companies which act like banks for the crypto-currency, reveals it was hacked for years. Missing from the Bitcoin exchange in question, Mt. Gox, are a total of 744,408 coins worth some $350 million. Bitcoin lost 17% in value in the 24 hours after the revelation, but has since stabilized (to the extent Bitcoin ever does). Mt. Gox was once the biggestBitcoin exchanges and been offline since late Monday. Six other big exchanges — Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, BTC China, Blockchain and Circle — sought to isolate the problem: “This tragic violation of the trust of users of Mt. Gox was the result of one company’s actions and does not reflect the resilience or value of bitcoin and the digital currency industry. As with any new industry, there are certain bad actors that need to be weeded out, and that is what we’re seeing today.”

 

_____

 

ELEVATOR PITCH — In what should come as surprise to nobody — seriously, people — the person behind @GSElevator isn’t a Goldman Sachs employee sharing OH 1% disdain for the rest of us. The New York Times‘ Andrew Ross Sorkin blew the lid off this three-year-old prank “after several weeks of reporting,” outing the Tweeter as John Lefevre. The Texas-based bond executive didn’t actually hear anyone at Goldman Sachs (New York/London/Hong Kong, not Texas) say things like: “I never give money to homeless people. I can’t reward failure in good conscience.” He tells Sorkin his parody was aimed broadly at Wall Street, not Goldman Sachs per se. The Wall Street brokerage was circumspect, telling the Times: “We are pleased to report that the official ban on talking in elevators will be lifted effective immediately.” Lefevre’s last Tweet was Feb. 15, leaving his 628,000 followers in the lurch for tone-deaf white shoe firm humor. Worry not! Lefevre has a book deal. Of course.

 

 

The truth about making money online

 

I hear every single day from readers who want to know exactly how I’ve made money with The Simple Dollar or how they can make money doing a similar thing, whether it’s starting a blog or posting Youtube videos or writing ebooks.

Click on below interesting link to visit Referral webiste:

http://ReferralRound.com/?refer=61912

I’m going to spell all of this out in detail so that the reality of it is as clear as possible.

First of all, the only way to make money consistently online is to produce a lot of content on a very consistent basis. There’s really no other way to do it with any consistency. Sure, someone might throw a video up on Youtube only to see it go viral and get passed around like crazy, but that type of phenomenon is often completely unexpected and heavily based on luck.

RECOMMENDED: Can you manage your money? A personal finance quiz.

The only way to make it work consistently is to produce content every day – or at least several times a week – and do it over and over and over again. You have to treat it like a second job.

Because you’re going to be doing it so often, you need to either be producing stuff you’re excited about or have an incredible work ethic. Ideally, you’ll be doing both at the same time.

If you can’t do that, then anything you do online will be effectively like playing the lottery. You might randomly put up a hit every once in a while, but it won’t be sustainable in any way.

Second, if you’re concerned about earning money during the first year of putting in consistent effort, you’re better off spending your time doing something like Mechanical Turk. Mechanical Turk can earn you a few bucks an hour right from the start, so if you’re just wanting to earn a few bucks right now while clicking around, that’s probably a better approach for you.

So, why aren’t you going to earn a lot of money right away? It’s because there are a few rules that govern how people make money online. These rules seem to be true for everything that makes money online.

Is Google+ is future? At least Google believe it is !

It’s common currency in internet punditry circles that Google won the battle to dominate search while Facebook won the battle for social, and that Google+ is just a failed competitor to Facebook. But Google hasn’t given up

It has been clear for a while now that, to make up for the fact that not very many people actively use Google+ as a social network, Google is turning it into a platformon which the rest of Google’s web services are evolving—something that has the effect of making people use Google+ by default. Results from Google+ already clutter search results. YouTube’s commenting system has been replaced by Google+. Chat and Talk, once stand-alone services, were combined into Hangouts and incorporated into Google+.

In a revealing interview with the Indian business newspaper Mint, Steve Grove, a Google+ exec who inks deals with content providers and influential figures, makes it clear that this is just the beginning. Grove tells Mint that “the reason for that is that Google+ is kind of like the next version of Google.”

Why? According to Grove:

There’s a lot of great value here, because Search also shows results from Google+ and this is going to bring more people into Google+; people are going to see that there’s a lot of value in logging into our services, before doing a search.

We’ve written before about how Facebook’s strategy for getting users in emerging markets is to convince people new to the internet that Facebook basically is the internet. Google’s strategy looks a bit like the obverse of this: convince people already on the internet that the internet runs on Google+

But when you look at it longer-term, Google’s strategy is actually very similar to Facebook’s. New internet users, such as the hundreds of millions expected to come online in India in the coming years, will find that being on Google’s social network is increasingly a prerequisite for using Google’s other services. Roping those new users into Google+ from the get-go is the company’s best chance for coming from behind and defeating Facebook’s dominance in social media. And that clearly seems to be Google’s goal, given how much effort it’s pouring into the network.“We focused a lot on Google+ here [in India], and it’s already very active, and people are getting on board on their own,” Grove said.

Related articles

• Top 5 Social Media Marketing Trends Of 2014 (business2community.com)
• Search and Google+ (redbricksmedia.com)
• Google sincerely thinks that Google+ is the future of Google (highonscienceandtechnology.wordpress.com)
• “Google+ is kind of like the next version of Google” (arstechnica.com)
• Facebook thinks it’s a good idea to clog your newsfeed with auto-playing video ads (qz.com)
• Why Google+ is still at the center of Google’s strategy (smartbrief.com)
• Google sincerely thinks that Google+ is the future of Google (backwardstimemachine.wordpress.com)
• Social Media Optimization: SMO is the New SEO, Part 2 (shutterstock.com)
• What might finally be the death of Google? Naked, self-destructing sexts. No, seriously… here’s why (bgr.com)
• How to Search for Tech Talent on Google+ (thearmadagroup.wordpress.com)

Big Data is here to stay !!

 

The amount of data in our world has been exploding, and analyzing large data sets—so-called big data—will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus, according to research by MGI and McKinsey’s Business Technology Office. Leaders in every sector will have to grapple with the implications of big data, not just a few data-oriented managers. The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, the rise of multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things will fuel exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future.

Interactive

Deep analytical talent: Where are they now?
Deep analytical talent: Where are they now?

Research by MGI and McKinsey’s Business Technology Office examines the state of digital data and documents the significant value that can potentially be unlocked.

Pop out
MGI studied big data in five domains—healthcare in the United States, the public sector in Europe, retail in the United States, and manufacturing and personal-location data globally. Big data can generate value in each. For example, a retailer using big data to the full could increase its operating margin by more than 60 percent. Harnessing big data in the public sector has enormous potential, too. If US healthcare were to use big data creatively and effectively to drive efficiency and quality, the sector could create more than $300 billion in value every year. Two-thirds of that would be in the form of reducing US healthcare expenditure by about 8 percent. In the developed economies of Europe, government administrators could save more than €100 billion ($149 billion) in operational efficiency improvements alone by using big data, not including using big data to reduce fraud and errors and boost the collection of tax revenues. And users of services enabled by personal-location data could capture $600 billion in consumer surplus. The research offers seven key insights.

1. Data have swept into every industry and business function and are now an important factor of production, alongside labor and capital. We estimate that, by 2009, nearly all sectors in the US economy had at least an average of 200 terabytes of stored data (twice the size of US retailer Wal-Mart’s data warehouse in 1999) per company with more than 1,000 employees.

2. There are five broad ways in which using big data can create value. First, big data can unlock significant value by making information transparent and usable at much higher frequency. Second, as organizations create and store more transactional data in digital form, they can collect more accurate and detailed performance information on everything from product inventories to sick days, and therefore expose variability and boost performance. Leading companies are using data collection and analysis to conduct controlled experiments to make better management decisions; others are using data for basic low-frequency forecasting to high-frequency nowcasting to adjust their business levers just in time. Third, big data allows ever-narrower segmentation of customers and therefore much more precisely tailored products or services. Fourth, sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision-making. Finally, big data can be used to improve the development of the next generation of products and services. For instance, manufacturers are using data obtained from sensors embedded in products to create innovative after-sales service offerings such as proactive maintenance (preventive measures that take place before a failure occurs or is even noticed).

 

3. The use of big data will become a key basis of competition and growth for individual firms. From the standpoint of competitiveness and the potential capture of value, all companies need to take big data seriously. In most industries, established competitors and new entrants alike will leverage data-driven strategies to innovate, compete, and capture value from deep and up-to-real-time information. Indeed, we found early examples of such use of data in every sector we examined.

4. The use of big data will underpin new waves of productivity growth and consumer surplus. For example, we estimate that a retailer using big data to the full has the potential to increase its operating margin by more than 60 percent. Big data offers considerable benefits to consumers as well as to companies and organizations. For instance, services enabled by personal-location data can allow consumers to capture $600 billion in economic surplus.

5. While the use of big data will matter across sectors, some sectors are set for greater gains. We compared the historical productivity of sectors in the United States with the potential of these sectors to capture value from big data (using an index that combines several quantitative metrics), and found that the opportunities and challenges vary from sector to sector. The computer and electronic products and information sectors, as well as finance and insurance, and government are poised to gain substantially from the use of big data.

6. There will be a shortage of talent necessary for organizations to take advantage of big data. By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.

7. Several issues will have to be addressed to capture the full potential of big data. Policies related to privacy, security, intellectual property, and even liability will need to be addressed in a big data world. Organizations need not only to put the right talent and technology in place but also structure workflows and incentives to optimize the use of big data. Access to data is critical—companies will increasingly need to integrate information from multiple data sources, often from third parties, and the incentives have to be in place to enable this.

Related articles

• Norman T. Kutemperor of Scientel Presented GENSONIX NoSQL DB & Enterprise Content Management (ECMS) Technology at Data Mgt. Forum Conference, Washington, DC, On Nov. 22 (prweb.com)
• Applied Relevance Announces Epinomy Version 7, an Advanced Information Management Application for Organizing and Retrieving Big Data (prweb.com)
• Jaspersoft and Caserta Concepts Form Strategic Partnership to Provide… (prweb.com)
• 2014 Technology Predictions Series: SGI on Big Data (siliconangle.com)
• 2014 Technology Predictions Series: Think Big Analytics on Big Data (siliconangle.com)
• 2014 Technology Predictions Series: RadiumOne on Mobile (siliconangle.com)
• Big Data – More Headache Than Elixir (workplacepsychology.net)
• What Enterprises Want from Hadoop Big Data: Usability (thevarguy.com)
• Big Data Goes Mainstream in 2014 – 6 Major Vendors Weigh In (cmswire.com)
• Big Data Market to Hit $32 Billion in Four Years (webpronews.com)

Top Video Ads and Brands making most of the Noise !!

Which brands managed to take the most advantage of the burgeoning online video advertising space this year? A pair of new reports reveal the big winners this year: YouTube unveils this year’s Ads Leaderboard, while Unruly reveals the brands that scored the most shares of their ads. YouTube, recently forecast by eMarketer to generate $5.6 billion in ad revenues this year, puts Evian’s “baby & me” at the top of its leaderboard, which factors in paid views, organic views and audience retention when determining its rankings. Samsung, meanwhile, tops Unruly’s list.

The YouTube Ads Leaderboard tracks the most-viewed ads rather than branded content, measuring both paid and organic views. With more than 66 million views as of December 2, the Evian ad stood a significant distance from the second-placed ad, Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches” (59.6 million) which also happened to be the most shared video ad of the year, according to Unruly.

The other ads making the leaderboard were (all view counts as of December 2):

Internet Explorer’s “Child of the 90s” (47.9 million);
Pepsi Max’s “Test Drive” (39.6 million);
PooPourri.com’s “Girls Don’t Poop” (20 million);
Kmart’s “Ship My Pants” (20 million);
GEICO’s “Hump Day” (18.6 million);
Ram Trucks’ “Farmer” (16.6 million);
Volkswagen’s “Get Happy” (14.7 million); and
Audi’s “Prom” (10.7 million).
Not too surprisingly, 6 of those ads landed on Unruly’s chart of the most-shared ads of the year. One more might have made it if not for a later launch: Volvo Trucks’ “The Epic Split feat. Van Damme” took the 6th spot in YouTube’s top 10 trending videos of the year. It joined 2 other branded videos to make the list: Evian’s commercial and the Carrie promotion “Telekinetic Coffee Shop Surprise” were the others.

Top Social Video Brands of the Year

Several of the above-mentioned ads were so successful that they drove the advertisers into an Unruly’s list of most-shared social video brands, which showed significant turnover from last year’s list.

Based on the number of video shares tracked between January 1st and November 18th, Unruly reveals that the top 10 brands were:

Samsung, with 7.3 million shares;
GEICO, with 4.93 million;
Dove, with 4.52 million;
Pepsi, with 4.02 million;
Budweiser, with 3.86 million;
Red Bull, with 3.75 million;
Evian, with 3.71 million;
Kmart, with 3.4 million;
Cornetto, with 3.39 million; and
EA, with 3.39 million.
Last year’s top viral video brand, Google, failed to make the list this year, coming in 12th. Unruly also notes that Nike, TNT Benelux, DC Shoes, P&G, Abercrombie & Fitch and Volkswagen also couldn’t repeat their successes from last year to make it into the top 10. The fairly high turnover from last year suggests that making the list is dependent on the virality of a limited number of ads: 6 of this year’s top 10 brands had a video ad make Unruly’s list of most-shared ads.

Related articles

• Watch the Most Shared Ads of the Past 8 Years on Unruly Media’s ‘Viral Spiral’ (adweek.com)
• YouTube’s 10 Most-Viewed Ads of 2013 (mashable.com)
• Brands Invade YouTube’s Top Videos List For 2013 (forbes.com)
• These Are the Most-Shared Ads of 2013 (mashable.com)
• This Interactive Infographic Shows The History Of Branded Online Video (tubefilter.com)
• Samsung is the Most Shared Social Video Brand of 2013, Says Unruly (virtual-strategy.com)
• What Does The Fox Say? With 276 Million Views, “The Fox” Wins Top Trending Video On YouTube For 2013 (marketingland.com)
• See the Top Trending, Music and News YouTube Videos of 2013 (mashable.com)
• Top 10 Most Shared Video Brands Of 2013: Samsung Takes The Lead, Followed By Beer, Babies & Pranks (marketingland.com)

Five Leadership Qualities: You need to drive you business

For reasons that aren’t exactly clear to me, there’s a powerful tendency to overcomplicate the whole notion of leadership: what it is, why it matters, and how it manifests itself.

I’m not saying it’s a simple concept to master; quite the contrary. We see the evidence of this all around us in our daily lives: whether in business, politics, sports or other endeavors large and small, it’s not easy to find effective leaders who’ve built an enduring record of success.

In my own career, and with the great executives on my team now, I try to keep the leadership formula pretty simple. And yes, I know that scores of business books have been written about leadership, and it’s been the subject of countless courses and seminars in MBA programs. That’s great, and I’m sure each of those offers some value.

But I’ve found that the best way to be a leader, and to help shape high-potential young people into the leaders of tomorrow, is to ensure that these five abilities are always the focal points:

1) Getting the strategy right.

2) Executing that strategy.

3) Putting the right people in the right places.

4) Managing dual priorities that others see as conflicting.

5) Keeping everyone focused on what matters.

Let me explain a little bit about each of these and why I think they’re so important—and why I think that efforts to add more and more layers onto the definition of leadership can be distracting at best and harmful at worst.

1. Getting the Strategy Right. While this has always been a top priority for CEOs, it’s taken on an even greater significance in the past few years because of the highly accelerated pace of change in today’s world. Consumer tastes and needs are shifting faster and more dramatically than ever before—do you have a sustainable strategy for product development and customer engagement and employee engagement that lets you keep pace with this relentless upheaval? Or do you find you’re always playing catch-up with competitors, always struggling to find new sources of revenue, and all too frequently seeing market share taken by competitors that are far more in tune with customers, opportunities, and structural trends?

I am a huge believer in brilliant, razor-sharp operations and execution—but unless those outstanding qualities are being applied to a world-class strategy, that company’s ability to compete and win and grow will diminish.

2. World-Class Operations and Execution. Some consultants and B-school professors are fond of saying that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” That conclusion totally misses the point: if the strategy’s right but the company can’t execute, then the problem isn’t an overly hungry culture – it’s weak or incomplete leadership. That’s why I describe my leadership formula as simple—not easy, but simple: the CEO’s got to be able to not only set the right strategy but also drive operational excellence that brings the strategy alive with dynamic new products, sales teams that are highly intelligent and engaging and brilliant new talent that sees the company as a terrific destination.

Operations aren’t just supply chains and automated systems; they are the optimization of people and process across every part of the organization—front office, back office, product development, finance, engineering, customer service, sales, etc.—that allow them to work with the shared purpose of delighting customers, winning new business, creating fantastic new products, and identifying and exploiting opportunities well ahead of competitors.

3. Put the Right People in Place. I know, that sounds pretty simplistic. But again, the margin for error in today’s always-on business world is shrinking rapidly—and in spite of the fantastic applications and systems that are available to companies today, brilliant technology in the service of sub-par managers will yield nothing but sub-par results.

That’s why the business leaders of today have to be able to master this third indispensable discipline: after formulating and communicating the right strategy, and optimizing operations to execute that strategy, CEOs and other top leaders then must be able to build management teams that truly understand the big picture, that understand how their teams must engage inside and outside the company to deliver maximum value, and stay laser-focused on making that strategy come fully alive for customers and prospects.

4. Recognize Business Isn’t an “Either/Or” World. In addition to those three absolutely indispensable qualities outlined above, I want to mention two other attributes that are essential for leaders. We all occasionally get questions like this: “Are we more concerned with long-term vision or short-term execution?” Managers will seek to pick one or the other, but leaders will instinctively know that the answer is “Both!” When asked if employees should focus on cost and efficiency, or growth and innovation, leaders will instinctively answer “Yes!” Another variation is, “Is our primary focus new products or new revenue?” And again, leaders will know that the answer must be both. For most people, those answers can sometimes be counterintuitive—but leaders in today’s turbulent business environment have to be able to not just answer the question but also build teams in such a way that both outcomes stand a high likelihood of success.

5. Stay Focused on those 3 Big Things. I’ll never forget something FedEx founder and CEO Fred Smith once said: “In business, the big thing is making sure the big thing stays the big thing.” And to me, the Big Thing is made up of those top 3 qualities: the ability to set the strategy, the ability to harness operational excellence to bring that strategy alive, and the ability to pick the right people to drive relentless execution.

For CEOs and aspiring leaders, distractions abound: the temptation to get caught up in important but non-essential discussions and projects; the tendency to fall back on what you’re comfortable with rather than what needs to be done; and the understandable but dangerous attraction of shiny new toys and trends in today’s remarkably fast-paced world. So I’d add that a second key supporting attribute is one of focus: “The big thing is to make sure the big thing stays the big thing.”

Related articles

• Management vs Leadership- reply to Mark Hurd, President of Oracle (pmcounseling.wordpress.com)
• Would you like to hear that, Boss you are Fired !! (ravigour.wordpress.com)
• The Only 3 Skills That Great Leaders Need – #Business (execdaily.wordpress.com)
• Five Leadership Qualities Great Executives Must Have (venitism.blogspot.com)
• Amy DeWolf added a discussion to the group Optimize with Oracle (govloop.com)
• Announcing CEO.com (domo.com)
• The Only 3 Skills That Great Leaders Need (businessinsider.com)
• Why Self-Awareness is Key to Effective Leadership (psychologytoday.com)
• Mary Barra Named GM CEO, Automaker’s First Female Chief (forbes.com)

Would you like to hear that, Boss you are Fired !!

What is lousy leadership? Here are a few of the most common ways leaders can get it wrong and too often do.

The first and perhaps most frustrating way that some people blow leadership is by being know-it-alls. They can tell you how the world works, what corporate is thinking, how it will backfire if you try this or that, and why you can’t change the product one iota. They even know what kind of car you should be driving. Sometimes these blowhards get their swagger from a few positive experiences. But usually they’re just victims of their own bad personalities. And you and your company are victims, too. Because know-it-all aren’t just insufferable, they’re dangerous. They don’t listen, and that “deafness” makes it very hard for new ideas to get heard, debated, expanded, or improved. No single person, no matter how smart, can take a business to its apex. For that, you need every voice heard. And know-it-all leadership creates a deadly silence.

If know-it-all are too in-your-face, a second kind of lousy leader is too remote. These emotionally distant bosses are more comfortable behind closed doors than mucking it out with the team. Sure, they attend meetings and other requisite functions, but they’d rather be staring at their computers. If possible, all the messy, sweaty people stuff would be delegated to HR managers on another floor. Like know-it-alls, this breed of leader is dangerous, but for a different reason. They don’t engage, which means they can’t inspire. That’s a big problem. Leaders, after all, need followers to get anything done. And followers need passion for their fuel.

A third category of lousy leadership is comprised of bosses who are just plain jerks—nasty, bullying, insensitive, or all three. As one reader wrote us recently: “My boss is abusive, by which I mean disrespectful, finger-pointing, and sometimes even paranoid.” Such leaders are usually protected from above because they deliver the numbers. But with their destructive personalities, they rarely win their people’s trust. That’s no way to run a business, which is why these types of leaders typically self-destruct. It’s never as quickly as you’d hope, but unless they own the place, it does happen eventually.

The next type of lousy leadership is at the other end of the spectrum: It’s too nice. These bosses have no edge, no capacity to make hard decisions. They say yes to the last person in their office, then spend hours trying to clean up the confusion they’ve created. Such bosses usually defend themselves by saying they’re trying to build consensus. What they really are is scared. Their real agenda is self-preservation—good old CYA.

Which leads us to a final version of lousy leadership which is not unrelated: bosses who do not have the guts to differentiate. The facts are, not all investment opportunities are created equal. But some leaders can’t face that reality, and so they sprinkle their resources like cheese on a pizza, a little bit everywhere. As a result, promising growth opportunities too often don’t get the outsized infusions of cash and people they need. If they did, someone might get offended during the resource allocation process. Someone, as in the manager of a weak business or the sponsor of a dubious investment proposal.

But leaders who don’t differentiate usually do the most damage when it comes to people. Unwilling to deliver candid, rigorous performance reviews, they give every employee the same kind of bland, mushy, “nice job” sign-off. And when rewards are doled out, they give star performers not much more than the laggards. Now, you can call this “egalitarian” approach kind or fair—and these lousy leaders usually do—but it’s really just weakness. And when it comes to building a thriving enterprise where people have an opportunity to grow and succeed, weakness just doesn’t cut it.

Surely we could go on, but we’ll end here with a caveat. We hardly expect lousy leaders to read this column and see themselves. Part of being a lousy leader, no matter what the category, is lack of self-awareness. But if you see your boss here, take heart. When it’s finally your turn to lead, you’ll know what not to do.

Related articles

• Attitude Reflects Leadership (changeinadvance.com)
• How to Succeed with a Lousy Boss (rizk0016.wordpress.com)
• How to Turn a Boss into a Leader – Dr Arthur Shelley (aimvictas.wordpress.com)
• How to Succeed with a Lousy Boss (prayertherapy21.wordpress.com)
• The Six Deadly Sins of Leadership (jeffhalloran.com)
• Five Leadership Qualities Great Executives Must Have (venitism.blogspot.com)
• Is Leadership (Good or Bad) Contagious? (troop113.wordpress.com)
• Go Read A Manual: Another First Boss Leadership Lesson (vantageleadership.wordpress.com)

I am the Master of my fate, I am the Captain of my Soul — Nelson Mandela

 

Today is an extremely sad day. Nelson Mandela, one of the most courageous leaders, has passed away. South Africa –indeed, the whole world – is saying goodbye to a great human being and an incredible inspiration.

I am among the millions around the world who feel a deep sense of loss. The fact that Mr. Mandela lived to the age of 95 does not diminish in any way our feeling of immense grief; nor does the fact that his health has been frail for a while now, severely limiting his public engagements.

By the force of his amazing personality, his incredible achievements, his sweeping vision, his enormous generosity and his admirable values, Mr. Mandela’s presence served — and will continue to serve — as a beacon for all those who believed in the power of political good eventually overcoming divisive evil.

He had spirit, commitment and humility that drove him as an activist, freedom fighter, unifier and nation builder. I spoke of the inner strength and values that sustained him during 27 years of (often-brutal) imprisonment under apartheid. And example that he set, not only for developing countries navigating complex political transitions but also for advanced countries marred in a quagmire of anemic growth, high unemployment, and rising inequalities of income, wealth and opportunities.

There will be lots of reminders in the next few weeks of Mr. Mandela’s historic successes. We should, and we will collectively celebrate not just what he achieved, but also how and why he achieved it.

Many will also fret about South Africa’s future now that the country has lost the moral compass that Mr. Mandela provided. And some will associate his passing with today’s more generalized malaise about political leadership around the world.

None of this should detract from how Mr. Mandela was, as I wrote over a year ago, the living embodiment of the greater good that truly committed and encompassing human beings are capable of. In life, and now in passing, Nelson Mandela always serves as the north star for all who aspire to a better and more just world.

Thank you very much Nelson Mandela – for all the good that you delivered to so many, and for all those that you helped, both in South Africa and well beyond. We are deeply indebted to you and, already, we will miss you enormously. We will never forget you.

Related articles

• Vale Nelson Mandela (iainhall.wordpress.com)
• South Africans celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela (timesofmalta.com)
• [PHOTO] Former South Africa leader Nelson Mandela Dies at 95 (olawandesalam.com)
• Nelson Mandela Mourned by India (usafricagateway.biz)
• Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s Liberator as Prisoner and President, Dies at 95 (inspirationalyou.org)
• Remembering Nelson Mandela – History in the Headlines (adejokeiyabadan.wordpress.com)
• Nelson Mandela Passes At 95 (apropheticwalk.wordpress.com)
• nbcnews: Nelson Mandela dead at 95 Nelson Mandela, the revered… (shortformblog.com)
• Nelson Mandela’s first TV interview in 1961 (telegraph.co.uk)