Tag Archives: vision

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13 Qualities of Successful Business Leaders

A few years ago I attended a keynote speech from Pat Williams, Senior VP of Orlando Magic. His topic was the “Thirteen Qualities of Winners”.

Williams has had an amazing amount of leadership experience in the sports world at different levels within multiple franchise organizations. Perhaps his biggest venture was establishing the Orlando Magic NBA team, which is where he was at the time of the speech.

After I reviewed his list, it became very clear that the 13 qualities he identified equally apply to business leaders. If a business leader does not have these 13 qualities, they and their business’ potential, will be limited.

I took the liberty of replacing the word “Winners” with “Successful Business Leaders” in the list of 13 qualities below. This list describes the attributes of a successful business leader!

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Relentless Cost Cutting Will Kill Your Business

Eliminating waste and unnecessary cost inside your business is critical to its long term growth, profitability and success. However, primarily focusing on reducing cost will eventually kill your company.

As Gordon Bethune said, “You can make a pizza so cheap, nobody will eat it. You can make an airline so cheap, nobody will fly it.” The king of corporate turnarounds, Greg Brenneman, supported this with his statement “a maniacal focus on trimming cost can lose you more revenue than you gain.”

This was certainly my experience back in 1998 when I was brought in by a client to redo engineering work that another contractor had outsourced overseas. The contractor was looking to reduce their engineering costs by sending the bulk of their engineering to a lower cost country. Unfortunately, they did not control this work close enough. When the engineering was submitted to the customer, not only did it not meet expectations, it caused the client to loose so much confidence in the contractor that the contract for the work was pulled and awarded to another engineering company.

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Business Strategy That Actually Works

The book review for this week is Strategy That Works by Paul Leinward and Cesare R. Mainardi

This is a detail oriented, fact rich, research based book that establishes a model for successfully translating business strategy to execution. They have done detailed studies on many companies like Starbucks, CEMEX and Danaher and put them into their “Identity Profile” system. This system defines the company’s value proposition, capabilities system and portfolio of products and services.

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What Are The 5 Most Dangerous Words In Business?

“That is not my problem.”

If anyone in your business responds to a coworker or to a customer with “that is not my problem…”, your business is in serious trouble! These five words signal a dangerous situation where that employee is totally disengaged from the business and does not care about it, their coworkers, the customer or their career with your company.

I have heard these words many times over the years and other variants like:

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How to Craft a Vision Statement

The most important activity for any leader is to cast a vision for their organization! This vivid picture of what the future will look like when the organization has achieved its ultimate purpose must be so compelling that your staff will bet their careers on your organization and your customers will be inspired to do business with you.

The effectiveness of your vision statement can make or break your organization. It can be the biggest factor driving differentiation for your organization in the marketplace or it can reduce you to just another commodity, slugging it out in the trenches for the lowest priced sale.