Removing clutter is liberating – getting rid of the unnecessary and creating space to think and focus on the truly important. Yes, removing junk takes time, but it does eventually pay dividends with clean desks, open spaces and a more conducive living or working environment. Creeping clutter is more difficult to tackle – this type…
A company slogan caught my eye this past weekend and got me thinking. It simply, but maybe profoundly, read: “African Solutions, International Standards”. The statement speaks to the company’s ability to provide customised solutions for turnkey projects in alignment with the prescribed international standards. In other words, the business has the ability to deliver value…
“If serving is beneath you, then leadership is beyond you” (Anon) The team members that know that their leader is there for them, cares for them, checks in to see how each one is coping and, furthermore, develops the skills they need to advance their careers are team members who will be loyal no matter…
“Consistency is the only currency that matters” (Prudential Investment Managers) There are no short cuts to great leadership – great leadership is cultivated over time. In 1979, teenager Jadaf Payeng began planting trees on his small Northern Indian Majuli Island – it’s an action that he has repeated millions of times over the past 39…
“Good decisions come from experience and experience comes from bad decisions” (Mark Twain) One of the restaurants that I typically frequent usually serves great food. On a particular evening, my wife and I felt like eating seafood and ordered a fish and calamari combination discounted special – a decision that we later regretted. The calamari…
“The flower doesn’t dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes” (Mark Nepo) The use of positional power and authority to get employees to act on objectives and team tasks can certainly yield results, but this authoritarian style of leadership does not engender trust or willingness on the part of employees to offer…
“The best way to demotivate and lose top performers is to reward mediocrity in an attempt to maintain status quo” (Jameson St Claire) Governments do it. Many big corporates do it. They reward poor performance to maintain the status quo. Governments prop up ailing industries at the expense of those same industries, of necessity, reinventing…
“Success is never owned. It’s rented and rent is due every day” (Unknown) Success seems to be a fairly short-lived commodity – just being successful in one year doesn’t mean that the feat will be repeated in subsequent years. Exceeding annual sales targets significantly in one period does not guarantee future successes. The results derived…
A couple of decades ago, and even persisting today, the conventional definition of an effective leader was one who got results, optimised the business to create a stronger bottom line and generally forced productivity out of his or her employees. Many of these management initiatives expended to get these results were at the cost of…
“I don’t want to use the word ‘reorganisation’. Reorganisation to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you’re really fundamentally changing the way the organisation thinks, the way it responds and the way it leads. It’s a lot more than just playing with boxes” (Lou Gerstner) Successful implementation of significant and pervasive…
“If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his employees, not his equals” (J K Rowling) The leaders of Korn Ferry, in their “Future of Work” study, suggest that two-thirds of senior leaders think technology will generate greater value for their business than human capital. They note…
“Thinking collaboratively is not new. What is new is the increasing complexity of information flow in organisations that calls for high levels of engagement, innovation and collective problem-solving” (Bruce Wellman) The business intelligence context for almost every type of business has changed dramatically in the past couple of decades – the transformation of roles which…
