Strategic Leadership
Carolyn Taylor - 'Walking the Talk' Harry Onsman - 'Management Powertools' Jim Collins - ‘Built to Last’ Jim Collins - ‘Good to Great’ John Adair - ‘Effective Strategic Leadership’ John Kotter - ‘The Heart of Change’ John Kotter - 'Our Iceberg is Melting' Jack Welch - 'Winning' Ian Brooks - '10 Steps to Becoming Customer Driven' Ian Brooks - 'Second to None' Ken Blanchard & Barbara Glanz - 'The Simple Truths of Service' Leigh Branham - ‘Keeping the People who Keep you in Business’ Mark Victor Hansen - 'The One Minute Millionaire' Malcolm Gladwell - 'The Tipping Point' Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman - 'First, Break All The Rules' Michael Gerber - 'The E-Myth Revisited' Michael Gerber - 'E-Myth Mastery' Michael gerber - 'Awakening the Entrepreneur Within' Sam Parker & Mac Anderson - '212 Degrees - the extra degree' Stephen C Lundin - 'Fish!' Valerie A. Zeithaml - 'Delivering Quality Service' W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne - 'Blue Ocean Strategy'
Leading Others
Leading Others
Barbara Prashnig - ‘The Power of Diversity’
Clive Gilson et al - ‘Peak Performance’
Daniel Goleman - 'Emotional Intelligence'
David Giber - ‘Leadership Development Handbook’
David Rock - 'Quiet Leadership'
David Taylor - 'The Naked Leader'
Edward de Bono - 'Six Thinking Hats'
Ferdinand Fournies - ‘Coaching For Improved Work Performance’
Ferdinand Fournies - ‘Why Employees Don’t Do What They’re Supposed To’
John Kotter - 'A Force For Change - how leadership differs from management'
John Maxwell - ‘The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork’
Jon Katzenbach & Douglas Smith - 'The Wisdom of Teams'
Ken Blanchard - 'Leading at a Higher Level'
Ken Blanchard - ‘The One Minute Manager’
Ken Blanchard - ‘The OMM Builds High Performing Teams’
Mac Anderson - 'You Can't Send a Duck to Eagle School'
Michael Gerber - 'The E-Myth Manager'
Michael Henderson et al - ‘Values at Work’
Pat Riley - 'The Winner Within'
Patrick Lencioni - 'The Five Dysfunctions of a Team'
Reg Garters - ‘Managing to Lead’
Robert Burns - ‘Making Delegation Happen’
Robert Slater - ’29 Leadership Secrets from Jack Welch’
Spencer Johnson - ‘Who Moved my Cheese'
Self Leadership
Self Leadership
Alastair Ferguson - 'Stand Up & Shout!' Anthony Robins - ‘Awaken the Giant Within’ Andrea Malloy - ‘Get a Life!’ Brendan Nichols - ‘Your Soul Purpose’ Brian Tracy - ‘Eat That Frog’ Cameron Fulljames - 'On a Wing and a Prayer' Dean Graziosi - 'Totally Fulfilled' Denis Waitley - ‘Seeds of Greatness’ David Maister - ‘True Professionalism’ Dr Seuss - 'Oh, The Places You'll Go!' Kurek Ashley - 'How Would Love Respond?' Merrill & Donna Douglas - 'Manage Your Time, Your Work, Yourself' Napoleon Hill - ‘Think and Grow Rich’ Pat Mesiti - 'Attitudes and Altitudes' Rhonda Byrne - 'The Secret' Scott Martineau - 'The Power of You!' Stephen Covey - ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ Spencer Johnson - 'The Present' Stephen Covey - ‘The 8th Habit’ Stephen Covey - ‘First Things First’ Terry Hawkins - 'There Are Only Two Times in Life - now & too late!'
Articles
"5 Steps to Creating a Great Customer Experience"
"5 Steps to Creating a Great Customer Experience"
Dr Ian Brooks
To be successful over the long-term, your business needs to have profitable customers who come back again and again and again. For that to happen, your customers must have a great experience every time they do business with you.
By Jon Gordon, author of 'The No Complaining Rule and The Energy Bus'.
This is a refreshingly brief and bright article as Gordon offers a pleasant contrast to the excess of recession doom and gloom talk that otherwise seems difficult to avoid right now.
In the current economic climate, it is imperative that businesses are leveraging their resources to achieve peak performance. Here are 8 simple but effective steps to move towards this desireable but sometimes elusive state.
On August 22, 1741, George Frideric Handel shut the door, sat down at his keyboard, picked up a quill, and began to compose. Twenty-four days and nights later, he emerged with 260 ink-filled pages, some of them streaked from his own tears. The result came fully to life on April 13, 1742, at Dublin’s New Music Hall, with the debut of the majestic oratorio now known to the world as Messiah.
“It is not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change” – Charles Darwin
Regardless of whether you agree with change or not, it will continue to happen. It would be fair to say that most people have come to this realisation – so why then do we continue to find it such a challenge to successfully navigate through the mine field of change?
As leaders it is our responsibility to successfully navigate the business from one year to the next. The following questions will hopefully prompt thinking and ensure your organisation responds effectively to change as it comes along.
As a business which specialises in assisting Owner / Operators of retail businesses in this country, it is interesting to take a step back and reflect on why it is that some businesses excel in retail whilst others do not.Why is it that some are nominated regularly for industry awards and some are not?Why is it that some have committed teams who are prepared to make the discretionary effort to make the business succeed whilst other businesses do not?
Stephen Covey discusses in his 1994 book 'First Things First', that understanding the relationship between urgency and importance lies at the heart of effective time management. Many of us fall into the trap of living in the realm of 'urgency'. This is often referred to as crisis mode. We jump from crisis to crisis and in doing so let urgency control our life.
"Can Improving Employee Health Improve Business Health?"
"Can Improving Employee Health Improve Business Health?"
Craig Macdonald
Can a healthy workforce improve your business’s bottom line? Businesses of all sizes are starting to find that for a small amount of money and time invested in employee health, there is a corresponding reduction in absenteeism through illness, stress and injury and improvements to employee satisfaction and productivity.
"Culture Surveys - an input to the strategic analysis"
"Culture Surveys - an input to the strategic analysis"
Ant Carter
There are many valuable inputs to the strategic analysis, but one often overlooked and easily implemented is an annual culture survey to gauge the ‘culture’ of your most important source of competitive advantage – your people.
Oops, you did it again - sent that email without the attachment! Or perhaps you suddenly remembered just after you clicked 'send' that you needed to include something else. Or worst of all, a couple of minutes after you sent that hasty reply, you wonder if perhaps you should have 'cooled off' a little first or even not replied at all!
Why not set up a rule in 'Outlook' that delays the physical sending of your email by a few minutes? You can specify exceptions so you may find it prudent for example if emails marked as 'high importance' are not delayed to allow you to still send those urgent messages when required.
Your customers have a clear set of expectations and your service offer will achieve one of three outcomes. You can either:
Fail to meet these expectations;
Meet the expectations; or
Exceed these expectations.
Of course, in a competitive market, failing to meet these expectations could well mean you lose that customer. Meeting your customers’ expectations will lead to a sense of satisfaction but unfortunately, a satisfied customer is not necessarily a loyal customer. It is only by exceeding your customers’ expectations that you generate a sense of delight and therefore ongoing customer loyalty.
So, how do you ensure that you exceed the customers’ expectations and therefore generate ongoing loyalty from a customer base of raving fans?
At the heart of the success or failure of every business is the connection it creates with a customer. Visually. Emotionally. Functionally. Financially.
At the heart of that connection is your Client Fulfillment System.
"Disengaged Employees Cost NZ $3.6 Billion per Year!"
"Disengaged Employees Cost NZ $3.6 Billion per Year!"
The Gallup New Zealand Engagement Study found that only 17 per cent of people working here are engaged at work, providing their employers with high levels of productivity, profitability and customer service. It is estimated that this costs the New Zealand economy in excess of $3.6 billion per year in lost productivity.
Engagement ultimately comes down to people’s desire and willingness to give discretionary effort in their jobs.Gallup measures this by 12 simple principles:
"Emotional Intelligence: Lessons from a 1-Pound Furball"
"Emotional Intelligence: Lessons from a 1-Pound Furball"
By Tom Terez
In most workplaces, technical skills and cognitive intelligence (IQ) are the dominant measures of a person’s potential. These are what get people hired. And they’re often the key to getting people promoted. That’s a shame, because they’re only part of the intelligence equation. Have you ever worked with someone who was smart as a whip and a true expert in the field – but had the emotion-management skills of a concrete slab?
There is strong evidence to prove that engaged employees have a positive impact on a superior customer experience, retention of customers, attraction of new customers and ultimately conversion to loyal customers.This in turn has a positive impact on sustained revenue growth and an inverse relationship on both the cost of goods sold and general expenses, which all leads to improved operating margins.
Click here to view a diagram of the engagement / financial link.
"Enterprise is Better Than Ease"
"Enterprise is Better Than Ease"
By Jim Rohn
If we are involved in a project, how hard should we work at it? How much time should we put in?
Our philosophy about activity and our attitude about hard work will affect the quality of our lives. What we decide about the rightful ratio of labour to rest will establish a certain work ethic. That work ethic - our attitude about the amount of labor we are willing to commit to future fortune - will determine how substantial or how meager that fortune turns out to be.
“Selling is simply a transfer of enthusiasm from salesperson to customer.”
Despite it’s simplistic appearance, this is one of the most useful descriptions of the sales process I’ve ever heard. It says a lot about what it takes to be successful in selling and can pay huge dividends for entrepreneurs and sales professionals that take this message on board.
We will look back on these tumultuous days in wonder. To me, in my late 40s, the depth and breadth of volatility in the financial markets reminds me most strongly of the sudden end of the communist regime in East Germany, the tearing down of the wall and the tumbling of communist governments across Eastern Europe. While the speed of change is different, there is a similar sense of historic fundamentals being swept away as if they meant nothing.
I work with many small business owners who pride themselves on being nice. And being a nice person is fine and admirable. But what I have also seen is that a desire to be nice can get squarely in the way of delivering clear feedback when things are going off course. You may be tempted to just go along and hope for change, or you might decide to just finish the job yourself because the confrontation doesn't seem worth it and you don't want to be seen as mean or confrontational.
I believe this is exactly the wrong approach and that you are doing no one any favors by tolerating sub-par performance and avoiding what may feel confrontational for you. What is needed most in these situations is clear and timely communication from you about what you are seeing, delivered in a clear, non-threatening way.
So what should you as a leader keep in mind when considering how and when to give feedback?
Of the original Fortune 500 companies listed in 1955, only 71 remain on the list today. Companies once deemed indestructible have fallen by the wayside. Corporate titans of enormous influence have completely disappeared in the span of a few decades. Staying power has been rare atop the Fortune 500. Instead, the list has undergone a steady turnover from year to year. Reaching the top is a monumental achievement, but remaining there may be the most spectacular feat of all.
"Generational Differences in Terms of the Great Eight Competencies"
"Generational Differences in Terms of the Great Eight Competencies"
By Stewart Forsyth
Are there differences between generations? Does it make any practical difference in managing your people? A conversation after my presentation on the topic led to three of us becoming the guest editors for the October issue of the Journal of Managerial Psychology - on generational differences.
Society is currently speeding up due to fast schedules, high levels of professional expectation and high production requirements. Life in the fast lane, if not managed correctly, can lead to an inherent breakdown if you don’t take some time to relax, refuel and focus.
"How to Improve Your Leadership Skills in Life & Business"
"How to Improve Your Leadership Skills in Life & Business"
If your life's purpose is close or similar to become someone that the word Leader would fairly represent then you should be very concentrated on where you need to focus on more. If your focus is on how to get more people to follow you then you have to change your mindset. Your focus instead should be on How To grow yourself as a person and ultimately become the one that others will follow as a result of the Law of Attraction. People are attracted to other people when they feel that they are important and have lot to offer, helpful and open hearted, smart and spiritual, experts in their field etc. This may sounds simple but it is really not. It's a process and it takes time.
For most business people 100% of their time is committed to maintaining the status quo. There is no time to spend on building for the future.
Like treading water, they expend all of their energy reacting to the demands of staff, clients, email, phone calls and faxes. Most of these activities follow on from things that started in the past – sometimes the long distant past.
In the Entrepreneurs Success Programme we use a time system which makes sure our use of time is aligned with the goals we are trying to achieve. We have four key days that we book into our schedules in advance.
Leadership has always been a hotly debated topic and continues to be a prime business issue for several organizations. Can leadership be taught?Is the leadership skill portable? What makes a leader? Is a leader born or made? Can we teach our followers to become leaders?
Leadership is all about an enduring quality character. Popularity is temporary. Change is often unpredictable. But only character endurance is the one true constant in your life.
Leaders in any case are stewards of a nation, company, team or family ideals. They exist to protect values and believes. To drive positive results for all. A steward is a caretaker, someone who holds something in trust on behalf of others. It is not behavior motivated out of self interest.
Leadership is truly about choosing service over self interest.
Managers manage. They manage space, time usage, inventory control and many other things. At times, they even attempt to manage people. However, people are not things. They cannot be managed. They must be led.
"Leading Change - Lessons From Real Life Experience"
"Leading Change - Lessons From Real Life Experience"
Leaders need to be continuously awake to an ever present need for change, and providing leadership to change - whether it is to make certain adjustment in the image an organization presents to the outside world or to gain competitive advantage or to bring about a complete transformation in upgrading a single department or the organization as a whole. The pivotal focus of the leadership for planned change may be modelled on the USEM concept with planning for Top-down Understanding, training, coaching and harnessing Skills while creating the proper Environment and Motivating.
When it comes to potential chaos, few places rival a grade school. And when it comes to leadership roles, few are as challenging as school principal. Just ask Dr. Fred Burton, principal of Wickliffe Elementary School, who describes the typical workday as “a little like holding hands with a tornado.”
For a leader, honesty and integrity are absolutely essential to survival. A lot of business people don't realize how closely they're being watched by their subordinates. Remember when you were a kid in grammar school, how you used to sit there staring at your teacher all day? By the end of the school year, you could do a perfect imitation of all your teacher's mannerisms. You were aware of the slightest nuances in your teacher's voice - all the little clues that distinguished levels of meaning, that told you the difference between bluff and "now I mean business".
Meetings are a paradox. Most businesses consider them to be an essential communication channel yet the vast majority of them tend to be boring and painful. It is not meetings themselves however that are the problem – it is the way in which they are administered and led!
Thousands of workers are actively disengaged from their jobs according to a new survey, which says they are costing the country more than $3.6 billion a year in lost productivity.
Being "actively disengaged", says the Gallup survey, leads to people being less productive, less loyal and less likely to offer excellent customer service. These are the 15 per cent of workers who roll their eyes when you approach them for help, sigh when you complain about poor products or service and put the phone down on you moments after saying "I can’t hear you, are you still there?". They are also often disruptive at work, bothering co-workers and causing them to be less productive.
"Teams - Key Business Strategy or Just Another Fad?"
"Teams - Key Business Strategy or Just Another Fad?"
Craig Burborough
As leaders of people and HR professionals, in our hearts, we have always known and believed in the potential of teams. So why is it that the quest to create a functional high performing team seems to have become the modern day equivalent of the search for the Holy Grail?
"Team Performance - A Matter of Chance or Choice?"
"Team Performance - A Matter of Chance or Choice?"
Ant Carter
The truth is, many of us in business think we’re working well in teams but the reality is something quite different. Measuring team effectiveness is an unknown and black science to many business owners and managers and so it is something left untouched by many, blindly costing businesses huge sums of money every year.
Maps serve as guides and conceptual frameworks to study terrain, find paths and explore the world. They help you understand the relationships between different places. TetraMap serves a similar purpose, the difference being that the relationships are between people. This map reflects the diversity of Nature and in doing so, reflects the diversity of human capital and the potential for synergy and sustainability. Born in New Zealand, TetraMap was conceived in part, centuries ago in ancient China.
"The 5 Essential Skills Needed to Create a Great Business"
"The 5 Essential Skills Needed to Create a Great Business"
In Michael Gerber's book, 'The Power Point', he states that there are five essential skills every entrepreneur must have in order to create a great business. Consciously or unconsciously, every entrepreneur does these things to some extent in their business. But it's the ones who master these skills that will create world-class businesses.
Unlike transactional leadership taught at supervisory level which has a fair degree of ‘science’ to it, transformational leadership is very much more of an ‘art’ for senior managers and owner / operators. Few would disagree that transformational leaders are required for a business to realise its potential and gain competitive advantage, yet very little is understood or delivered with respect to this important style of leadership.
The work of the Entrepreneurial Manager falls into three categories:
entrepreneurial work;
managerial work; and
technical work.
Every manager must learn the differences among these three, and the role each must play in the organization if they are to lead a balanced and productive existence. In short, each and every manager must learn to discriminate between the appropriate type of work to be done at any one moment, as well as to formulate an ideal relationship among the three forms of work in order to become an effective manager.
Life is often made up of engineering metaphors. Almost every successful endeavour starts off on a “solid foundation”. Companies measure business achievements on established “benchmarks”. Some people feel as though they are just another “cog in the machine”, while a “spanner in the works” can throw their whole life balance off.
Ironically, unlike the technical engineering skills learnt through a working knowledge of processes and experiences, life itself seldom comes with an instruction manual. If you often wish that you could start planning and managing your life the same way you would an engineering project, then maybe it’s time to consider a coach to help you with it – much the same way a supervisor detached from the actual nitty-gritty of field work can see and direct the bigger picture.
Using a Tickler System as part of your time-management routine is one of the best ways to eliminate spending endless hours looking for misplaced papers. Creating a Tickler System will give your paper a home and you will be able to find it when you want it.
What's a relationship, business or team without trust? Comments like "I can't trust her anymore..." or " He's broken my trust, I'll never trust him again" are not too unfamiliar remarks from those who have for one reason or another, lost the trust they once had for each other.
Where did it go? How do I get it back? Can you get it back? Where did trust come from in the first place? This thing called trust, what's it all about?
Trust must be present in every human interaction where confidence, safety and service is important. It must be there in abundance and applied liberally in each and every situation, between work team members who wish to maintain both a productive and positive relationship.
Well, just getting started each day is a real challenge for many people. The bed monster tends to grab us just when the alarm sounds, or when the snooze button’s been hit for the 9th time. The latest Pink Batts advert is great at describing how many of us may feel each morning!
For some, being in a routine is a constant challenge, especially when they know it’s not what they want to be doing. They feel stuck and in that well trodden groove which may seem quite impossible to pull out from and change direction.
As a human resources manager, I’m sure there are many questions raised when looking at the ingredients that make for a great leader. Should they be practical or visionary? Do they take a hands-on or hands-off style of management? Should they rise from the ranks or enter in from past senior management roles? Where should leadership come from? More importantly, what should be the most important trait of a great leader?
Invariably, the answer will be the person’s ability to have people follow. Quite simply, great leaders inspire people to want to achieve more.
The most effective leaders are those focused on people instead of just goals. Goals are important but many think of people as instruments to achieve them. You can categorize leaders in two big groups. The 'hard' ones are those who remain distant to obtain respect and compliance with their directives and frequently resort to a rewards and punishment strategy to manage people. And there are those who think that this way of thinking is obsolete. They promote closeness, support and flexibility.
If coaching in the workplace didn’t exist, we’d need to invent it.
Think about that. Over the last decade, the way people interact with their work and their employers has altered greatly. Empowerment, continuous change, greater emphasis on leadership and teamwork, and the need for flexibility have all created a workplace where coaching is not only the smart way to manage people — it’s perhaps the only way that works.
"Why is it Critical for Leaders to Understand the Culture of Their Organisations?"
"Why is it Critical for Leaders to Understand the Culture of Their Organisations?"
In today's fast-paced, global business environment it is easy for leaders to want to focus their attention largely on business factors that can be measured. It is much easier to make sense of a complex world if we are able to measure where we stand in relation to some metric. What many leaders fail to realize is that what is often considered the "soft stuff" plays a critical role in the long-term success of their organizations.
Huge publicly traded companies Enron and Worldcom go down in flames under the guidance of capable leaders with highly questionable ethics. Gold medalist Marion Jones, once considered a positive role model, faces criminal charges for doping. The Catholic Church continues to agonize over lapses in leadership that resulted in sexual abuse of children.
In the recent past, we've witnessed the public downfall of leaders from almost every arena of society — business, sports, religion and politics. One day they're on top of the heap, the next, shame and infamy is heaped on them.
We are incensed by the catastrophic failures of these leaders. After all, we cheered for them, voted for them, put stock in their companies, and consulted them for spiritual guidance. We trusted them, they let us down, and it hurts.
"As a result of the training provided by Cardinal Solutions, we have observed a large number of the participants step outside their comfort zones and grow in confidence.A couple of participants have had such huge positive turnarounds in their attitudes at work that it is hard to believe they are the same people.I would highly recommend Cardinal Solutions as a training provider”.
Karen Box, Human Resources Manager, McDonalds New World, Taradale
