Effective leadership can make or break your business. Are you an effective leader?
A few months ago, I wrote a post entitled “Are You an Effective Leader and Why You Should Care” Since that post, one of my Mastermind groups discussed each of the 23 aspects of leadership outlined in this post. This discussion revealed some very valuable nuggets of information! I took a lot of notes during these discussions and the key points I captured are shown below:
Disruption is highly uncomfortable! Purposefully causing disruption inside your business seems like a stupid thing to do! For what reason would you want to disrupt something that is running smoothly?
Well, for starters, building a business that never changes is a flawed business strategy. A business that is too rigid to change will be obliterated by the fast-changing marketplace! As Clayton Christensen pointed out in the Innovator’s Dilemma, the fact that you are successful makes it hard to keep the edge you need to win in the future!
We do not have to look too hard before we find prime examples of businesses that were once at the top of their game and now have failed or are basically on their death bed! It is clear that they were not relentlessly committed to self disruption.
The easy examples that always get the spotlight are businesses like Blockbuster, Sears, and Toys R Us. But, there are countless others including Radio Shack, Vitamin World, Gymboree, Swissair, Woolworth’s, Sharper Image, Polaroid, and the list goes on!
So, what can a business leader do to productively disrupt their business?
As I wrote in a post a few years ago, project management is not for the faint of heart! Projects can be very complex and stressful.
Besides managing scope, schedule, and budget, project managers need to manage relationships with staff, customers, contractors, vendors, community leaders, and many others. Much of this project management is now done virtually as the project team, contractors and customers can be spread in multiple locations over multiple time zones, cultures and languages.
This is a daunting task!
Even more daunting is the task of a person responsible for the oversight of multiple projects. How can one person possibly stay on top of all the details from multiple large projects?
The answer is that they cannot and they should not even try!
So, what can a leader who is responsible for oversight of multiple large projects do to ensure the projects are on track and delivered successfully?
The book review for this week is What’s the Future by Tim O’Reilly.
O’Reilly outlines the process he uses to understand and successfully identify developing trends that will make an impact in the future. He explains how to build this set of tools and mindset in yourself and in your organization. There are many great examples and personal stories provided to illustrate the concepts that he is teaching.
The last section of the book identifies a number of societal shaking trends that are developing and how we can position ourselves and our businesses to leverage these trends successfully.
My takeaway from this book is what O’Reilly calls the business model map for the new economy which consists of the following seven components outlined below and shown in his graphic:
There is unlimited expertise available from world renowned leaders on every imaginable topic . . . and it is all available to you for free!
This treasure trove of knowledge is easily available to anyone, anywhere through podcasts. All you need to do is subscribe and set time aside to listen and learn!
I listen to podcasts when I am driving, jogging, flying, or whenever I have a few spare minutes to sit, listen, and learn.
I subscribe to an eclectic collection of podcasts covering topics like business, religion, health and wellness, technology, history, politics, marketing, blogging, copyrighting, and many more! I find the wide ranging topics not only help me to learn but increase my creativity by finding connections between the diverse topics.
This instant access to free expertise is unprecedented and we, as business leaders, are doing ourselves a huge disservice if we are not taking advantage of it!
I am often asked what podcasts I listen to, so I have listed them below. I do not listen to each episode of these podcasts because there is simply not enough time in the day! I pick and chose the episodes that interest me and I delete the rest.
