Making decisions. Some people make quick decisions, others take longer, preferring time to reflect, digest and then decide. An inability to make decisions (procrastination) is one of the most frustrating characteristics a leader can possess.
A deferred decision (for no other reason than procrastination) can lead to frustration, lack of clarity and delays. People can accomodate the fact that you might be a reflecter, providing you ultimately make the call when they need it.
In tough times, business needs to move quickly. Delays can make the difference between winning and losing, survival or extinction.
As leaders, take time to understand your own people and their expectations of you. If someone needs you to make a call, make it. Don’t rush it unnecessarily, give it the due diligence, but don’t procrastine, prioritise it. You’ll find that you will earn their respect, even if it’s a wrong decision (and we can all make those) but in the long run, an ability to make a decision will top up your leadership credentials and speed your business up.
A great meal, takes great preparation, quality ingredients and hungry diners. A great presentation, takes preparation, quality thought and an enquiring audience.
It’s vital when you’re approaching a presentation that you get your preparation right. Seeing a presentation from a leading architect recently, he said that when preparing for a building project, for every £100 you spend at the design stage, you can save £1000 in material costs and £10,000 in running costs over it’s life.
Presentations are no different. Put the grunt in up front and you’ll get greater results as your presentation unveils and you yield bigger impact. The key thing is to always think of your audience, wear their shoes, view your presentation through their eyes, not yours. Don’t chest beat and remember the best radio station in the world for your audience is W11FM (What’s In It For Me).
Enjoying a dinner out tonight, the subject of Corporate entertaining and business trips came up. With a recession, everyone naturally tightens their belts, the easy cuts are made swiftly, trips and entertaining are some of the first to go. An interesting discussion ensued about the value of a good night out or a brilliant trip and how some of these events help carve out long term relationships with customers.
In tight times, it becomes more difficult to get people away from the office. Every hour or day, has a somewhat false value, in that “you can’t be seen to be away from the office” or your not contributing.
However, business still has people at its centre. Human relationships are key in nearly every part of business and we shouldn’t give this up so easily. Some events, not always indulgent or expensive, have an afterburn effect for many years. So, let’s not all retreat to our offices, let’s all remember to get out, make an investment in human capital and expect the return to come, not just today but for years to come.
There’s a lot of it around right now. Some obvious some hidden. Economic circumstances have led to an increase in tension. Is that a good or bad thing? Tension can be good as it can be the catalyst to an outing of problem, but carrying too much of it, in the long run isn’t good for you.
Here’s some tips for dealing with tension. Talk about your problems. Give in occasionally – it’s easier on your system. Ease up on criticism – don’t expect too much of others or yourself. Do things you enjoy and have some fun. Tackle one thing at a time if you feel under pressure. Take a rest from being competitive. Don’t feel one thing and say another. Get a massage and feel the knots being unwound.
When tension lifts, it’s a physical feeling or reaction. You instantly feel that you were carrying it. It’s great to get rid of and deal with. Don’t carry it around with you. Get it sorted. And relax.
Visiting Cumbria on Friday, Lord Mandelson praised the North West for acting as an emerging hub for low-carbon businesses. He rightly pointed out that the region must “act now” to take advantage of the opportunities that will be created from the low-carbon industrial revolution.
I’ve been banging on about this for ages. The birthplace of the industrial revolution is the fitting place for a new green-tech economy, creating new jobs, attracting skilled workers and potentially being a world leader in green-tech manufacturing.
But we need to get things moving, put some rubber on the road, get out of the meeting rooms and into the market. Like a developer for a new home, get building it, move the buyer in and get snagging later when the money is in the bank! Things aren’t happening fast enough for my liking and the word “emerging” is always a give away clue to try harder.
Passion is wonderful but useless without action. The North West needs to follow its forefathers, learn from their lessons and get on with it.
The benefits of failure. Are there any? I mean, who wants to fail? We spend our lives avoiding failure, pursuing success, not planning to fail.
Failure, is a characteristic of many successful enterpreneurs and big brands. If you read the biographies of many of the top businesspeople, failure features big. It’s been a catalyst for further success, a base point on the ascent of becoming a winner.
Large brands often have to launch a number of products in order to get a big success. They’ll have their hall of fame of the products that didn’t make it, the howlers. The moral of the story is don’t be afraid to fail. Real success in life means learning from failure, taking the hard lessons, brushing yourself down and getting on with it.
Speaking with a successful entrepreneur on a judging panel recently, he made no bones that his success was down to the amount of failure in his life. He started multiple companies on the basis that some might make it, others not. A brave thing to do. He saw failure as an essential part of his success. An oxymoron perhaps?
So, next time someone in your team fails. Look for the positives. What learning can be applied? What did we get from it? What would or wouldn’t we do next time? Was it the processes or the person? Don’t be scared. Remember “if your not failing, your not trying hard enough”.
Change is all around us right now. Economic change, organisational structure change, behavioural change. How we react to change however can be different based upon many differing factors including personality type and whether the change was self-induced or introduced by a third party.
Attending a workshop recently with Impact Consulting, I was introduced to this changecyle, which details the many steps that we as human beings go through in times of change. It highlights the need to take care when implementing change in your own organisation and for you – as a leader – to be sensitive to the impact of change in your people and in yourself.
They say that EQ is the new IQ. Emotional Intelligence is the key skill for leaders to develop to nurture peak performance in their people. It doesn’t mean you have to constantly group hug, high five or spend hours in counselling. It does mean that a deeper insight of self (I) can lead to a greater understanding of you (my colleague). Change is a constant, how you cope with it can be a skill you develop, a necesary skill in such turbulent times.
Yes, it’s new. Yes, it can be addictive. Is Twitter just another social networking fad for teenagers or is there a business benefit to it?
I’ve been giving some feedback on this today, into a couple of B2B networks on Linkedin. Here’s my take as someone that has recently joined.
Firstly, an excerpt below from a recent on-line summit held in San Diego. “….The social marketing generation gap is closing. No longer is the social media audience comprised solely of 18-24 year olds. While discussing the impact of the recession on budget cuts, AARP (an organization that traditionally used direct marketing to target seniors) trimmed their direct marketing budget to invest in their web site, email, video and analytics. So for those of you who “just don’t get” twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and the like…it’s time you did!” Twitter is hot right now, I’m using it to keep track of key journalists that I know, to understand what they’re talking about, I’m seeing conversations between them in their peer group, some serious, some not so serious, but the serious ones are valuable. By keeping track of them I can also see what websites are hot and what technologies are being discussed. Alternatively, why not check to see if your top customer is on Twitter? If you can see what their up to socially, it will make for an engaging conversation when you next call up to talk about business. So, in my view, if you choose your twitters carefully, it can benefit you.
Spraying my hands with an anti-bacterial cleaner in a customer reception today, reminded me of the need to focus on the hygiene factors in business. That is, in non-management talk, doing the basics well.
Turn your stock, collect your cash promptly, get great terms from your suppliers, speak to your customers regularly and be rigid about your cashflow, the number one killer of business.
There’s so much to think about right now, a veritable “eton mess” of an economy, a government struggling at the controls of the airliner as it heads for terra firma, the bankers, still living in their huge houses, worried about where the next multi-million pound bonus is going to come from.
Amongst all of this it’s easy to get distracted. Stay focussed on your hygiene factors, leave some room for some innovation and lead like crazy.
Sitting in a Holiday Inn in Cambridge tonight the question of transparent value crossed my mind. Let me explain. Have you ever flown a low-cost airline and thought how cheap a flight looked, until all the extras started getting added on, a booking fee, seat selection fee, taxes, priority queueing, then the ultimate insult of the extortionate luggage excess fees?
You feel cheated as if they’ve not been totally upfront with you. The problem is, quite often, that you have no choice but to fly that airline because they may be the only one on the route, so you put up with it.
At this hotel, I’m now logged into the supposed “high speed” internet. Priced at £15.00 for 24 hours, that’s the equivalent of £450 a month if you compared it to your broadband at home (around x30 more).
The speed is poor, I can’t watch BBC i-player later, my e-mail is slow to sync, even low bandwidth internet radio is struggling to keep up. What this ultimately means is that despite a comfortable room, I can’t work effectively and my expecations aren’t being met. My expectation for £15.00 a day (equivalent to my monthly broadband fee at home) is a killer connection speed.
It’s important that you in business, over deliver against customer expectation or alternatively don’t raise customer expecatation to a level that you can’t deliver. The old addage of under promise and over deliver still rings true. Pricing mechanisms/declared value are key levers in this highly uncertain time, if you possess value declare it and communicate it. Take time to understand what your customer is expecting for their money when they buy from you as if you shortchange them, your as good as saying farewell to them.
