To begin this piece, let me tell you a true story. Recently I was talking to Dave; a security young man at a mall on a very cold Saturday morning. I was checking out a book to buy from one of the shops. Dave was going round to see to it that everything was going well around the mall. As he walked briskly alongside me, we greeted.I asked him about his present job, if he was enjoying it. He told me how happy he was. He said he feel so free and independent working as a security than as chef. Apparently, he was a fired chef. This former cook told me that he resigned from the job because of the way he was maltreated. He was being ordered around in the kitchen at his former workplace. So I asked why he is happy here as a security despite the higher risks involved with the security job? To me, securing lives and property when compared to cooking foods are two extremes when based on the associated risks. However, for Dave, the risks were nothing and the reason was quite simple. He has found an opportunity to bloom and blossom here as security than as a Cook. The chief chef had made life so miserable for Dave such that he had to quit. The reason is not farfetched. The initial plan of the creator was for man to subdue all creation. Man was never created to be subdued by his own kind. I have never admired any leader who made me feel so insecure and less important. And I am guessing that the same goes for you too?
The reason why people will settle for less paying job, less dignifying job sometimes is because of the leadership in those workplaces. Business leaders need to understand that their staffs deserved to be respected no matter how low they are on the organization chart. They should never be hauled, mauled or ruled. Staffs determine the strength of the organization and profits made therein. They are partly the powerhouse of the workplace. The longevity of the business depends on them. Hence they are important and must be seen as such.
If I may ask you at this point. Are you a leader or a follower? Everyone needs to know which side on the continuum they fall. If you are not a leader what kind of follower are you? What can you identify as the problems in leadership today? What do you think a corporate leadership should look like? What does a corporate leader require in a business sector? Have you ever worked with a business leader where everybody runs into hiding, pretending to be doing something serious or the other when he appears? What was your experience like? How did you see such “big boss”? What do you admire about him? What makes you envy him? What did you observe in his life that is so unique? If you are a leader? What kind of leader are you? Are you oppressive or supportive? Are you accommodative or a repellant?
What is Corporate Leadership?
“Corporate leadership is any business oriented leadership that believes in team work, harnesses the ability of the team in generating momentum; develops strategies in implementing models; maximizing potentials and building upon the strengths of the team in implementing projects to the intent of reaching exceedingly valuable and precise results.” –( Odunuga, 2009)
Using driving as illustration.
Driving on the highway can be synonymous with corporate leadership. Sometimes your speed on the highway can be determined by the speed of the vehicle directly ahead of you. And the speed limit, at which you travel, can be influenced by the person beside you. The speed, at which the person behind you drives, can also be determined by your speed. In a situation where you cannot overtake, when you have to follow a single narrow lane. You cannot over speed. When the person directly ahead of you is driving on 60km per hour. You cannot drive 80km/hr. If you do that, you would have hit him and you will have yourself to blame. The same principle of speed limit and limitation is observable in leadership. It is applicable in how driving a corporation towards a corporate goal can be a matter of team effort, team spirit, team work and team influence. As a leader, you will need to understand all these because they can impact you adversely if you don’t. They can determine how far your organization will go. They will determine at what pace your organization will go. They can determine whether or not, the people will grow or not.
Principles of corporate leadership.
In business, profitability edge does not come except by corporate leadership principles and more. When people identify with an organization, they work until such organization is strong enough to adequately pay their bills. They can stand by the organization even in recession. I have seen a situation where a business was about folding up and the staff refused to go on strike for not being paid simply because they understand and they have bought into the corporate vision, such that they would slog it out together through the crisis until the bad season is over. Loyalty is easily commanded in such situation.
There are certain conditions which must be present as prerequisites in corporate leadership. The best businesses that will thrive exceedingly well in the 21st century are the businesses that will rely on these principles of corporate leadership. These principles are as follows:
1. Strategy must be synergistic: they must continually be structured to build upon previous efforts and continually aligned with other team efforts.
2. Corporate leadership is a process. It must be seen as a process that can not be arrived at in one day. And we cannot graduate from the discipline thereof.
3. Indispensability: It is indispensable, if there must be a positive result in the organization.
4. Unison: Most business relies on the brain of the board of directors or the Chief executive officer. They usually feel the hardest blow when such leader leaves the organization either by resignation, death, or retirement.
A Case study of a corporate Leadership
I was privileged to visit one of the leading automobile companies in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. After a tour round their factory, observing and asking questions about regulatory standards, their corporate goals, their sales, social responsibilities, their best practice, their new management plan on marketing, their newest strategies and more. I asked a twisty question in an interview session with their president. Having been aware that his predecessor failed and the company was nose-diving when he took over the leadership. I asked: “How were you able to turn this business around? What was the secret of your success in this company?” He humbly said that the credit goes to all the people on his team. “Team work did it!” he replied. He was a man who understood how to redirect praise and give credits to others. Some CEO believed that people should not be praised because they will stop putting in their best. They don’t want their people to think they have arrived. The contrast is true. People want to be seen as priceless despite the fact that they are receiving salaries from the organization. They don’t fancy being equated with their paystub. Appreciating people who worked with you to make things happen will encourage and inspire them to do more. The president of that automobile company I mentioned refused to allow his picture appear on any column or magazine profile page dedicated to heroes in their industry. As the one who deserved the credits; he shared the glory with the average people on his team. It was the picture of a team of people who worked on the tool benches, sits on the security table, answered the telephones at the reception, and typed on computer in offices; that appeared on the profile page of the popular magazine column. These were the heroes! This was the secret. Little wonder they were all smiling and feeling accepted and happy with their job regardless of what happens.
Acronym of the ethics of corporate leadership:
1. Commitment: the leader is committed to fulfilling his promises to his team once he pronounced it. Broken promises breed doubts, discord and discouragement. It wanes people’s strengths.
2. Outstanding: The leader is exceptional. He is extremely result oriented.
3. Resilience: the leader is able to weather the storm for the organization rather than seek a bail out. He is not a quitter.
4. Productivity: he is effective and industrious. The people take a cue from him. He never loiters around the corridors or stays longer on break.
5. Openness: the leader is very transparent and accountable.
6. Reward: the leader sees win-win for all on board per time. He tries to ensure the team gets their raises at the right time.
7. Affirmation: the leader gives approval and acceptance. The leader understand that the mind of man is able to conquer any form of obstacle or challenge where there is a force of encouragement in guise of a pat on the back from the leader.
8. Trust: The leaders have faith in his people. In cases of unexpected melt down, in the face of bankruptcy, in times of mergers and acquisition; he tries to protect their interests.
9. Effective: the leader is able to bring success through. He maximizes resources in the organization.
10. Loyalty: the leader is the first person to sow the seeds of loyalty before he reaps it from his team. When the people see that he can be relied upon they follow him all the way through thick and thin.
11. Eloquent: the leader is well expressive. He has the ability to move an audience back to work in cases of union strike.
12. Ambitious: the leader is a go-getter. He is optimistic. Always seeing the positive side of things.
13. Determined: the leader is strong minded, unwavering. Once the target is set, he makes sure that the result is delivered on the due date and not excuses.
14. Extraordinaire: the leader is excellent and outstanding in his work.
15. Retention: Usually it is the man behind the big desk who decides if the people will stay or go. The leader believes in investing in people, developing people rather than laying them off.
16. Service: he sees his role as a servant leader. He is not bossy or oppressive.
17. Humorous: the leader is entertaining, he is able to slow down and play in the face of tension. He is able to handle a stressful situation with wits. He can easily accommodate people and he can go along with the team as well as the public.
18. Intelligent: the leader is smart. He is a thinker.
19. Persuasive: the leader is able to persuade, win sales, negotiations and deliberations for the corporate good.
Showing posts with label corporations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corporations. Show all posts
Friday, November 6, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
“What you are doing wrong, that big corporations are doing right”
Let me fill you in on secrets and strategies of big corporations. What most entrepreneurs don’t understand is that they have sufficient potentials to beat “the big guys” in those big buildings. All you’ve got is more than enough to blaze the trail in the business world. May be you don’t recognize this. Let me list them for you. You have got your integrity, hard work, diligence, authenticity and above all, vision. You always deposit some vital part of you into every product and services that goes out from you. You are always there. How do I know that? You are here now reading this just because you want to improve your entrepreneurial skill! And you are always ready to learn. You want to give your all just to make your business a success. You’ve got it!
Truth be told, big corporations don’t always have it all together. They have politics, politicking, backstabbing, absence of authenticity, deficiency of integrity and more. All the worst things you can ever imagine are going underneath in some big corporations. They just try to cover it all up. And they do that by playing on the figment of your imagination in the way they use resources extravagantly. They appear flawless in the media, by adjusting reports, results and presentations. By showing just what they want you to see. By using false impression, phasard of confidence, branding gimmicks to work on your psyche. By thoughtful use of colours, advertisement, public relations techniques and more; by use of premeditated application of bank loans to sensitive emotional areas of human lives. By deliberately creating relationship with influential people, leaders, people in power; by adopting team spirit so that the strength of all cover the weakness of one. By rewarding stakeholders on paper even when in reality they have nothing, they have managed to create a buy in, a trusting strategy, a process with which they are able to convince you and I. They make us conclude that they don’t really need our money because they have more patronage. And thereby they have stylishly increased their sales and profit margins. These are just few of the secrets of increasing sales in the corporate business world.
However, on your part, you’ve been working tirelessly day and night, often going overtime to make it through in your business. They have always worked 9 to 5; and go on vacations while other staffs fill in for them. Thereby they are able to avoid burnouts and depression. What I am trying to show you here is that there is a subtle power of phasard, delusion and more in all they do. These are the secrets of big corporations. I have studied big corporations for some time and I have discovered that the more you look, the less you see. When you pierce through the blinds to the offices of the managers, all you see are people like you and I who are smart in maximizing potentials of other employees. By delegating work to team members and just doing whatever they know how best to do on their desks, they achieve more as a team. They have been able to produce more result better than the average entrepreneur who works alone on his business at the corner of the street somewhere.
There is an unquantifiable, immaculate power and productivity that comes from every entrepreneur who goes about his business with an extraordinary passion for what he does, with an undying love for his customers/clients and with an undying determination and dedication to success. I tell you this: You can grow better than big corporations if you can learn the good things they are doing and apply them to your business. For instance, rather than worrying about start up capital, you can deliberately build a winning team through partnership with people of like minds to raise capital for your business. Drive is one of those unnoticed things that distinguish the rich from the poor, the successful from the failures, and the ordinary from the great folks. People with drive are always on the go. They are ever looking on the horizon of improvement. You will wonder why some employees get promoted faster than their colleagues in big corporations. Sometimes, it is in the way they go about their roles at the workplace. The attitude and passion they add as spice. They have managed to become assets such that the organization can not do without them. I don’t call it luck. I call it drive! In order for your business to succeed you will need to develop your drive, have an understanding of the terrain, flexibility to change what is not working as soon as you discover that in your business. Extend your reach, by deliberately advancing your business environment in terms of who gets access to your product and services. I cannot overemphasis this that entrepreneurs need real drive to succeed in business.
Contrary to the myth that all he has to do is to assemble all the resources together and go to bed. An entrepreneur must be tutored! He needs information, strategies and continuous unstoppable action. The 21st century entrepreneur needs to understand that things are changing at the speed of light and businesses are evolving with time just as trends. Some basic things such as customer relations, quality product and services may remain the same in business but there is advancement in promotion, presentations, sales strategies, advertisement, which must be carefully presented. This is the rationale for branding your business uniquely. You cannot afford to present your business raw or mechanically to your customers and expect to out-sell your competition. You cannot get all the resources together and dump everything in the hands of a manager and expect him to work magic. There is a negative attitude in our present day entrepreneurs which I have seen. And that is, they want the money in the business but not the perspiration involved. This has made some entrepreneur lose their investment. An entire organization has gone down through mismanagement, bankruptcy, fraud and more. You are not free to go to sleep on your business yet. You have to go the extra mile on it. You need to be the cheer leader who motivate and encourage your staff. This is because the business atmosphere is not conducive as it should. You need to continually appreciate your sales people and encourage them to do more. Therefore, it takes an extraordinary push. Customer volume cannot increase by mere advertisement. You need to establish a bond with each customer such that they feel valued beyond the transaction.
In ideal environment, where the system works smoothly; where the government serve responsibly in playing her role. In settings where corruption is missing; in a place where you can just place your product on shelves and customers will walk in and purchase them without you having to be in touch with them. Then, you may not need drive as such. However, in this situation, you will need some force, energy, gut to push a little more. You will need more than mere push, to get the result you want. You will have to work at your best practice, auditing your business for what big organizations are doing right that you have been doing wrong. Set up a microcosm system that mirrors them. Simulate their strategies in a small scale and you will see the difference.
It is not in the number of hours given to the business alone, it depends on the quality of time, and the appropriateness of whatever you are doing. For instance, if you spend over ten hours at work doing the wrong thing. It does not matter how much sincere you are in a wrong thing. You are wrong! The question is what precisely are we supposed to be doing that we are not doing? What is the quality of our result, how productive are we? What is our yardstick? How are we measuring how progress? What result are we getting with respect to our target on profit? What is the actual goal we have set? How are we measuring them? What new target have we set after reaching the previous ones? Then we need to measure ourselves against these criteria. The most vital of all is to work on our relationships with people. People will become your customers/clients. Your customers/clients are people. In business world, you cannot reach anywhere without people’s involvement in your business. No business is run in vacuum. However, you need to know that people may buy your product based on pity but they will never stay with you forever if you keep producing sub-standard products and reeling out ineffective services. You will only lose all your customers to competition. That is why you must deliver a quality and affordable product because people want value for their money. You will only be patronized for a season. And people always want value for their money. Nobody in their right mind resist quality product and services. As you go out to take on your business world, I dare you to make these adjustments and you will see the difference. Believe in yourself. Value yourself. Believe in your business; value your staffs, and customers. Develop a unique product or service, get better at it. Believe in it. Go all out and offer the world what you’ve got because that is it! That is what the world need. You’ve got what the world wants. You’ve got it!
Truth be told, big corporations don’t always have it all together. They have politics, politicking, backstabbing, absence of authenticity, deficiency of integrity and more. All the worst things you can ever imagine are going underneath in some big corporations. They just try to cover it all up. And they do that by playing on the figment of your imagination in the way they use resources extravagantly. They appear flawless in the media, by adjusting reports, results and presentations. By showing just what they want you to see. By using false impression, phasard of confidence, branding gimmicks to work on your psyche. By thoughtful use of colours, advertisement, public relations techniques and more; by use of premeditated application of bank loans to sensitive emotional areas of human lives. By deliberately creating relationship with influential people, leaders, people in power; by adopting team spirit so that the strength of all cover the weakness of one. By rewarding stakeholders on paper even when in reality they have nothing, they have managed to create a buy in, a trusting strategy, a process with which they are able to convince you and I. They make us conclude that they don’t really need our money because they have more patronage. And thereby they have stylishly increased their sales and profit margins. These are just few of the secrets of increasing sales in the corporate business world.
However, on your part, you’ve been working tirelessly day and night, often going overtime to make it through in your business. They have always worked 9 to 5; and go on vacations while other staffs fill in for them. Thereby they are able to avoid burnouts and depression. What I am trying to show you here is that there is a subtle power of phasard, delusion and more in all they do. These are the secrets of big corporations. I have studied big corporations for some time and I have discovered that the more you look, the less you see. When you pierce through the blinds to the offices of the managers, all you see are people like you and I who are smart in maximizing potentials of other employees. By delegating work to team members and just doing whatever they know how best to do on their desks, they achieve more as a team. They have been able to produce more result better than the average entrepreneur who works alone on his business at the corner of the street somewhere.
There is an unquantifiable, immaculate power and productivity that comes from every entrepreneur who goes about his business with an extraordinary passion for what he does, with an undying love for his customers/clients and with an undying determination and dedication to success. I tell you this: You can grow better than big corporations if you can learn the good things they are doing and apply them to your business. For instance, rather than worrying about start up capital, you can deliberately build a winning team through partnership with people of like minds to raise capital for your business. Drive is one of those unnoticed things that distinguish the rich from the poor, the successful from the failures, and the ordinary from the great folks. People with drive are always on the go. They are ever looking on the horizon of improvement. You will wonder why some employees get promoted faster than their colleagues in big corporations. Sometimes, it is in the way they go about their roles at the workplace. The attitude and passion they add as spice. They have managed to become assets such that the organization can not do without them. I don’t call it luck. I call it drive! In order for your business to succeed you will need to develop your drive, have an understanding of the terrain, flexibility to change what is not working as soon as you discover that in your business. Extend your reach, by deliberately advancing your business environment in terms of who gets access to your product and services. I cannot overemphasis this that entrepreneurs need real drive to succeed in business.
Contrary to the myth that all he has to do is to assemble all the resources together and go to bed. An entrepreneur must be tutored! He needs information, strategies and continuous unstoppable action. The 21st century entrepreneur needs to understand that things are changing at the speed of light and businesses are evolving with time just as trends. Some basic things such as customer relations, quality product and services may remain the same in business but there is advancement in promotion, presentations, sales strategies, advertisement, which must be carefully presented. This is the rationale for branding your business uniquely. You cannot afford to present your business raw or mechanically to your customers and expect to out-sell your competition. You cannot get all the resources together and dump everything in the hands of a manager and expect him to work magic. There is a negative attitude in our present day entrepreneurs which I have seen. And that is, they want the money in the business but not the perspiration involved. This has made some entrepreneur lose their investment. An entire organization has gone down through mismanagement, bankruptcy, fraud and more. You are not free to go to sleep on your business yet. You have to go the extra mile on it. You need to be the cheer leader who motivate and encourage your staff. This is because the business atmosphere is not conducive as it should. You need to continually appreciate your sales people and encourage them to do more. Therefore, it takes an extraordinary push. Customer volume cannot increase by mere advertisement. You need to establish a bond with each customer such that they feel valued beyond the transaction.
In ideal environment, where the system works smoothly; where the government serve responsibly in playing her role. In settings where corruption is missing; in a place where you can just place your product on shelves and customers will walk in and purchase them without you having to be in touch with them. Then, you may not need drive as such. However, in this situation, you will need some force, energy, gut to push a little more. You will need more than mere push, to get the result you want. You will have to work at your best practice, auditing your business for what big organizations are doing right that you have been doing wrong. Set up a microcosm system that mirrors them. Simulate their strategies in a small scale and you will see the difference.
It is not in the number of hours given to the business alone, it depends on the quality of time, and the appropriateness of whatever you are doing. For instance, if you spend over ten hours at work doing the wrong thing. It does not matter how much sincere you are in a wrong thing. You are wrong! The question is what precisely are we supposed to be doing that we are not doing? What is the quality of our result, how productive are we? What is our yardstick? How are we measuring how progress? What result are we getting with respect to our target on profit? What is the actual goal we have set? How are we measuring them? What new target have we set after reaching the previous ones? Then we need to measure ourselves against these criteria. The most vital of all is to work on our relationships with people. People will become your customers/clients. Your customers/clients are people. In business world, you cannot reach anywhere without people’s involvement in your business. No business is run in vacuum. However, you need to know that people may buy your product based on pity but they will never stay with you forever if you keep producing sub-standard products and reeling out ineffective services. You will only lose all your customers to competition. That is why you must deliver a quality and affordable product because people want value for their money. You will only be patronized for a season. And people always want value for their money. Nobody in their right mind resist quality product and services. As you go out to take on your business world, I dare you to make these adjustments and you will see the difference. Believe in yourself. Value yourself. Believe in your business; value your staffs, and customers. Develop a unique product or service, get better at it. Believe in it. Go all out and offer the world what you’ve got because that is it! That is what the world need. You’ve got what the world wants. You’ve got it!
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