13 Leadership Tips That Lead to Fast-Growth

Leadership Development is critical for growing companies. Leaders point the team in the right direction and inspire followers to be productive and engaged with the mission.

The Freeman School of Business MBA program (Tulane University) Professor Christopher McCusker is leading a dynamic class to identify successful business leadership techniques. Dr. McCusker invited me to share some ideas on leadership and here are the 13 critical leadership development techniques I shared with the class:

1. Swim In "Blue Oceans"
Leaders need to pull followers to Blue Oceans where companies can prosper and thrive. Markets appreciate the contribution a company provides when their offering is unique and will pay them handsomely. Exit out of the Red Oceans which are filled with sharks and you and your competitors are sure to bleed. MARLIN STEEL exited the Red Oceans of commodity bagel baskets and transformed itself toward a model of "Quality Engineered Quick" baskets for precision material handling applications. Where are your blue oceans? Read Professor W. Chan Kim and Rene Mauborgne legendary studies about seeking your blue ocean.

2. Create Entrepreneurial Culture
Compensate your employees with aggressive large cash bonuses to keep them engaged. Your team craves an achievable carrot that provide frequent gratification. This will encourage out-sized dedication and engagement from your employees. Eliminate the finger wagging middle management roles that monitor bathroom breaks and chatting about sports. Dedicated employees have no time to waste time.

3. Best Tools for Team
Provide superb support (equipment, software, etc) for your team and they will provide extraordinary results. At Marlin Steel, we purchased the best laser (it cuts steel 1 foot a second with 0.004" accuracy) from a factory in Connecticut. It costs more than their competitors however it enables our engineers to get more creative so we can solve our clients challenges. Clients are inclined to choose best of breed companies that utilize the best equipment.

4. Listen
Put a cork in it and listen to your clients or vendors or employees. Really listen. Turn off your cell phone. Listen intensely. You will get more out of meetings and will draw conclusions that will pay dividends. People will notice you are attentive and take meetings more seriously. The duration of the meetings will decline since meetings will go faster since everyone is engaged.

5. Continuous Improvement
Improve yourself and your company 1% each day. By the end of the year you will more than double your productivity or sales. Never be complacent. Even if your team is better than your competitors, they are gunning for you. Up your game so your clients are enchanted with your performance.

6. Cure Mistakes Fast or "Hire Fast, Fire Fast"
In prior Inc Articles, I discussed some of the following techniques (http://www.inc.com/drew-greenblatt/8-leadership-attributes-to-go-extra-mile.html ) like assessing mistakes and then lancing the boil quickly. As the economy picks up, hire people to keep up with demand. Be picky. Purge the mistaken hires quickly so that your "A" players do not become disappointed.

7. Grant Freedom--Hire Great People
Hire great people and get out of their way. If you have a wonderful person, why would you want to slow them down with pestering questions? It slows them down from their mission and makes them second-guess themselves. They will make mistakes but you will be way ahead on the deal if you give them opportunities for an unfettered launch.

8. Mentor, Not Bully
When discussing topics with your team mates, be a counselor. Mentoring talent is the best way to get a dedicated engaged employee. Many leaders get a thrill bossing around people. This bullying tendency drives down employee motivation.

9. Failure is the Leader's Fault
Ted Williams, the best baseball batter there ever was, never batted 50%. Mistakes will happen. Failure is common. Don't throw your team under the bus. As Truman said, "The buck stops here" and the leader should take the fall. Improve systems so failure does not occur again but stand in front of the troops or clients and take the blame. This conduct will ingratiate you with your associates and your team will embrace you for taking the heat.

10. Success is due to the team
Wins happen. Lavish praise on your team and thank them for the success. Do not take credit. The team won the game--you should not call out your contributions. People follow humble leaders.

11. Transparent
Be unique and call it like it is. Do not beat around the bush. When you first observe a problem, share the concern with the person that tripped up. Clearly articulate the failure and suggest ways to improve. Strike when the facts are in and be concise in your description of the problem and the remedy. Do not tolerate lies of omission.

12. Integrity
Be the most honest person on the team. Do not cut corners. Do not enter the "grey areas." People like working for honest people.

13. Cool
Leaders should be even keeled. Quiet understated approach is more likely to generate loyalty and trust. Raising your voice and getting in people's faces do not encourage long-term devotion.

How the Best Entrepreneurs Think

How The Best Entrepreneurs Think

If you just observed the actions entrepreneurs take, you would conclude there isn’t that much to be gained from studying them. Each entrepreneur’s behavior is as idiosyncratic as they are. You would have to be Larry Page and Sergey Brin to start Google; Oprah Winfrey to found Harpo Productions.

But—and it is a huge but—if you look at how they reason, you see remarkable similarities.

The process just about all of them follows in creating their companies looks like this. They:

1. Figure out what they really want to do; what gets them excited. In other words, what is it that they really desire.
2. Take a small step toward that goal.
3.  Pause after taking that small step to see what they have learned.
4.  Build off that learning and take another small step.
5. Pause after taking that step.
6. Then they build off what they learned and take another small step…

If we were to reduce it to a formula, it would be, as we have written about before, Act. Learn. Build Repeat.

In other words, they don’t spend a lot of time planning or playing “what if” games. You never truly know how the universe is going to react until you give it something to react to.

So, in the face of an unknown future, entrepreneurs act. They deal with uncertainty not by trying to analyze it, or preparing for every contingency, or predicting what the outcomes will be. Instead, they act, learn from what they find, and act again.

Three things follow, all of them good. There are three wonderful benefits of taking this approach. 

1. You can get started right away.  
2. You don’t do a lot of planning and guessing about what the market might want. 
3. You go out into the marketplace and find out.

·         You don’t need a lot of resources. Remember, the best entrepreneurs are taking small steps toward their goals.  That means they just need sufficient resources to take the next step.

·        You can quickly respond to market needs.  Because they are moving rapidly, and don’t have a lot of resources committed, they can move to satisfy customer needs almost as quickly as those needs appear.

It is a simple, straight-forward approach. And what worked for these people should work for you.

5 Ways to Build an Extraordinary Team Culture

5 Ways to Build an Extraordinary Team Culture

When your employees work together to achieve common goals, everyone wins--you, your business and your customers.

Employee teams are one of the best ways to get things done in any business. When you take a group of independently talented people and create a team in which they can merge their talents, not only will a remarkable amount of energy and creativity be released, but their performance, loyalty and engagement will be greatly improved.

Here are five steps for building an extraordinary team culture:

1. Create a Team-Oriented Organization

Make teamwork one of your core company values, and put a clear emphasis on self-managing teams that are empowered to make their own decisions. Don't just talk about teamwork. Show your employees the seriousness of your commitment by giving teams the authority to get their jobs done on their own terms, while ensuring they accept responsibility for the results.

2. Assign Serious Team Goals

Give your teams really important assignments and projects, not just planning for next summer's annual company picnic. Bring teams in when you're looking at new trends in the market, or need to see things through new eyes. It's important to mix it up and not have the same people making the same decisions all the time. Ask them to challenge the status quo and the conventional wisdom. This will help to keep your company fresh and ahead of the game.

3. Encourage Informal Teams

More work in organizations is accomplished through informal teams than formal ones. It's therefore in your interest to encourage the proliferation of informal teams throughout your company, addressing any and all issues and opportunities that capture their interest. When your employees are able to tackle concerns themselves, without elevating every little decision to top management, you'll have a much more efficient organization.

4. Cross-Train Employees

When employees understand how different areas of the company work, they are more apt to make decisions that benefit the company as a whole, rather than solely their own department or group. Give your employees the opportunity to learn other people's jobs. Some organizations go as far as switching employee roles on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. And don't forget your managers. Have top executives spend a few days working on the front lines with customers or directly with your product. They'll have a new appreciation for what your regular employees go through on the job.

5. Provide Team Resources

No matter how talented a company's individuals might be, teams cannot be successful without the proper resources. Teams need a designated and available place where they can regularly meet. Nothing much can be achieved in an over-crowded lunch room. All employees need to be given adequate time to devote to their team meetings, with no grief from supervisors. And make sure to supply your teams with an appropriate budget if required, and the permission--with guidance--to spend it as they see best for the company.

BY PETER ECONOMY

3 Signs You're Meant to Be a Leader

Hey Everyone, 

Found this article on Inc.com and thought it made some interesting points on leadership. What do you think?

Not everyone is cut out to be a leader. But if you have these three traits, you might be a natural born leader.

Reading leadership literature (including this column), you'd sometimes think that it was written in the stars that everyone has the potential to be an effective leader. I don't believe that to be true.

In fact, I see way fewer truly effective leaders than I see people stuck in positions of leadership who are woefully incompetent at worst and seriously misguided about their own abilities at best. Part of the reason this happens is a lack of honest self-assessment by those who aspire to leadership in the first place. And so, in the interest of increasing the quality of next-generation leadership, I give you this simple three-point self-assessment tool. To paraphrase a certain comedian, "you might be a potential leader if..."

1) You lead only when you have to, not all the time. We've all met the type of individual who simply must take charge. Whether it's a strategic brainstorming session, a pick-up basketball game, or a family outing, they can't help grabbing the lead dog position and clinging on to it for dear life. Always opinionated, usually impatient and frequently brusque, these gotta-be-in-fronters get so used to other people describing them as natural born leaders that sooner or later--to their own and everyone else's detriment--they begin to believe it. Truth is, they're most always nothing of the sort. True leaders don't presume that it's their divine right to take charge every time two or more people get together. Quite the opposite. A great leader will assess each situation on it's merits, and will only take charge when their position, the situation, and/or the needs of the moment demand it. Oh, and if you read that last paragraph with a sneaking belief that in most situations you are the right person to take charge, you're most likely a gotta-be-in-fronter, not a leader.

2) You see much more than you do. Many business executives confuse leadership with action. These Tasmanian Devils believe that constant motion somehow generates leadership as a byproduct. Consequently, the more ambitious they are for a leadership role, the more furious their momentum becomes. Leaving us mere mortals in their wake, the Tasmanian Devil works harder, faster, longer than everyone else. Faced with any situation that can't be solved by the sheer brute force of activity, they generate a dust cloud of impatience. Their one leadership tool is volume: if they think you aren't working as hard as they are--or as hard as they think you should--their demands become increasingly louder and more strident. You'd think that such a blunt, one-club-fits-all mentality would preclude our action-at-all-costs executive from attaining any degree of seniority in a mature organization, but you'd be wrong. Sadly, many organizations, some of them Fortune 100 companies, encourage just such a chest-beating, fire-aim-ready definition of leadership. True leaders understand the value of action, of course, but it isn't their only tool. In fact, it isn't even their primary tool. Great leaders see more than everyone else: answers, solutions, patterns, problems, opportunities, threats. They know it's vitally important to do, but they also know that thinking, understanding, contemplation and interpretation are equally important.

3) You change people. They achieve outcomes. Executive A hits his targets and burns out his team in the process. Executive B builds a great team, but they miss their goal. Which is the better leader? It's a false dichotomy, and sadly, one that I see in organizations all the time. A true leader is option C: someone who develops his or her team so that they can and do hit their targets, achieve their goals. If you're fixated on outcomes to the extent that you manipulate and bully others to achieve those outcomes (I know, you call it motivation--it isn't), then you aren't leading at all, you're dictating. And don't think this means that being a door mat is leadership either (we talked about the destructive nature of needing to be liked here). True leadership means building strong, capable teams that are goal- achievement-oriented.

Financial Planning Tips

Hey Everyone! I found some great financial planning tips that I wanted to share with you all. Starting you career can be a challenge financially so I hope this can give you an advantage!

Learn Self Control
If you're lucky, your parents taught you this skill when you were a kid. If not, keep in mind that the sooner you learn the fine art of delaying gratification, the sooner you'll find it easy to keep your finances in order. Although you can effortlessly purchase an item on credit the minute you want it, it's better to wait until you've actually saved up the money. Do you really want to pay interest on a pair of jeans or a box of cereal? 
If you make a habit of putting all your purchases on credit cards, regardless of whether you can pay your bill in full at the end of the month, you might still be paying for those items in 10 years. If you want to keep your credit cards for the convenience factor or the rewards they offer, make sure to always pay your balance in full when the bill arrives, and don't carry more cards than you can keep track of.

Take Control of Your Own Financial Future 
If you don't learn to manage your own money, other people will find ways to (mis)manage it for you. Some of these people may be ill-intentioned, like unscrupulous commission-based financial planners. Others may be well-meaning, but may not know what they're doing, like Grandma Betty who really wants you to buy a house even though you can only afford a treacherous adjustable-rate mortgage.

Instead of relying on others for advice, take charge and read a few basic books on personal finance. Once you're armed with personal finance knowledge, don't let anyone catch you off guard - whether it's a significant other that slowly siphons your bank account or friends who want you to go out and blow tons of money with them every weekend. Understanding how money works is the first step toward making your money work for you.

Know Where Your Money Goes 
Once you've gone through a few personal finance books, you'll realize how important it is to make sure your expenses aren't exceeding your income. The best way to do this is by budgeting. Once you see how your morning java adds up over the course of a month, you'll realize that making small, manageable changes in your everyday expenses can have just as big of an impact on your financial situation as getting a raise. In addition, keeping your recurring monthly expenses as low as possible will also save you big bucks over time. If you don't waste your money on a posh apartment now, you might be able to afford a nice condo or a house before you know it.

Know what healthy spending looks like
Most of us were never taught what healthy spending looks like. My favorite rule of thumb comes from (Sen.) Elizabeth Warren's book written with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, called "All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan." The rule of thumb: 50/30/20. The idea is 50% of your take-home pay goes to needs, 30% to wants, 20% to savings. Keep that rule of thumb in mind and a young person can avoid so many classic financial mistakes.

6 People Who Determine Your Future

This is a great article from Inc that talks about the influence and importance of the people who are close to you. Take some time to think about who you network with!

The most successful people in the world have a small, structured network of core contacts. Here's how you can, too.

 

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How many "best friends" do you have? Social scientists say most people count just four friends with whom they can discuss very important matters, but the maximum possible number of such friends is around six. With rare exceptions, it's just not practical for anyone to maintain close, truly meaningful relationships with more than six people.
Super-successful people know this better than anyone. In the survey research I did for my book Business Brilliant, I found that the wealthier you are, the fewer "best business friends" you have. Specifically, when asked to count how many people they closely network with in order to source new business, the average number was 4.8 for millionaires who have a net worth over $30 million and 5.7 for millionaires who have a net worth below $10 million. Ordinary middle-class people? They reported an average of nine close contacts. That's right. The people at the lowest level of financial success counted the highest number of close networking contacts.
The reason is very simple. If you count nine people as very close, the odds are you're not really close to them at all, which means they won't be inclined to offer their close network connections with you. If, on the other hand, you are very close to six highly-connected people, as most super-successful people are, those six people will make their networks available to you, giving you potential access to 36 more people, as well as access to their networks, by which time your effective network numbers in the hundreds.
Size Is Only One Part of a Strong Network 
Researchers who study networking, however, say that network size isn't the most important thing. Network structure makes an even bigger difference, and the strongest networks are structured strategically with a small core that branches out to encompass lots of people who, most importantly, don't know each other. Build a network like that, and you put yourself in the center as a connector who can make introductions, summon resources, and create valuable interactions in ways no one else can. Being the linchpin, the go-between, is what entrepreneurship is all about. Entre, after all, is the French word for "between."

So while there's nothing wrong with counting 500 or 5,000 people in your online networks, the more important thing to do is to follow the example of the super-wealthy and design your core network to be tight, strong, and, above all, made up of just a few select people who will need you in order to reach each other.

Here's how to do it:

1. Write down a list of a dozen key people.

These are the people you would go to tomorrow for help in finding new work of the kind that you do best. Last week I wrote about how luck always favors people with focus and purpose. That's especially true with networking. You first need to identify your ideal work situation or type of business deal. Only then are you ready to take stock of whom you'll need to help find it.

2. Rank the top six people who are best positioned to help you.

Let's say you lead a cake-baking business. As a baker, you might rely on business referrals from a dozen or more caterers, wedding planners, and party planners. From this list, sort out those people who are strongest and most likely to send high-value work your way. Then, after ranking the top six, figure out if any of them know each other. Maybe your top six includes a caterer and a party planner who often work closely together. If that's the case, drop the one with the least clout and pick a replacement from your original list of 12.

3. Label six file folders from one to six.  

You've now identified the six people on whom your livelihood and dreams depend, at least for the near future. What do you think you'll need to know about such important people? Collect all the information you can in each of your six ranked folders. (These can be electronic folders, physical folders, or both.) Fill each folder with items from company websites, corporate board memberships, charity involvements. Don't forget the names of spouses and children. These are your six best business friends, after all.

4. Make a seventh folder.

This folder serves as your "bench" folder, where you can toss information about all the peripheral players in your network, the ones you might need to call on when the value of one of your regulars falters. Networks are always in flux. People come and go, your priorities might change. Having six people in your core and another dozen or so on your bench maintains a healthy balance between focus and flexibility.

5. Make network maintenance a regular Monday morning event.
Most super-successful people consider their networks one of their most precious assets. Treat your network accordingly. Manage it as you would any asset portfolio. You want to be on the lookout for new promising network members and consider dialing back contact with connections who are no long aligned with your goals.
The other key thing to remember about this science is that social networks tend to grow in the direction of whatever you feed them. If you fill your network with college buddies, you'll get lots of invitations to events that might have interested you back when you were in school. But if you manage your portfolio of contacts wisely, and feed it with people who are important to your work and command greater resources than you have access to, you'll be growing in a direction that positions you for sustained future success.