Crispin (Page 6)

celebrate

In: Career, Career Development

A common mistake people make in their career is believing that investing time and energy into making more money will make them greater happiness. On the whole people with more free time are happier, healthier and more productive than colleagues who put all the effort and priorities into making money. “I was justifying my choices by telling myself what a lot of us tell ourselves: that we’re working hard now so we will have more time to be happy later” Ashley Whillans This was backed by by research in a study by Whillans and Macchia who studied more than 220,000 people living in 79 countries to explore the differences in happiness of those who prioritise time (leisure) vs money (work). The findings proved that one you move beyond individual welfare, the value that nations place on leisure versus work fundamentally shapes individuals happiness. In an earlier article Jessica Stillman fromContinue Reading

LEADERSHIP

In: Leadership

Does your leadership need a renovation? How do you go about making changes to the way you lead without loosing credibility? Have you received feedback that your management style is causing problems with the team culture? This article looks at how leaders who recognise that they have areas to focus on improving, should proceed with out freaking your team out. Planning your renovation Leadership is about exercising influence to mobilise others to collectively tackle difficult challenges and achieve organisational results, whether they are in a management position or not. “competencies get us to the doorway of leadership, but character gets us through the doorway of leadership. Managers tend to control resources to get results, but leaders exert character to build a sustainable future”  Kevin Cashman, CEO at Korn Ferry It starts with humility The journey needs a level of transparency so that your team members can understand what you areContinue Reading

In: Entrepreneur, Startup

In the startup pitch every venture capital fund is looking at firms that can grow, turn a profit and ultimately realise value for the investors. The considerations of a successful pitch include the market fit, the company’s business plan, as well as the quality and depth of experience of the leadership team. In this study the authors Ma and Hu investigated the thesis that investors were often swayed to startup ideas when the presenters appeared enthusiastic, warm and excited even though these qualities are in most cases not likely to contribute to the success of the venture. Ma and Hu reviewed more than 1100 pitches using machine learning to review and score the visual, vocal and verbal aspects of each pitch. they assessed things like how positive did Team A look? How energetic did Team B sound? How warm was the diction of Team C? The combined rating provided aContinue Reading

In: Innovation

The innovation sweet spot is achieving the perfect combination of innovation brilliance. Alignment between the viability, desirability, feasibility and integrity. Desirability (Human) – the latent demand for this product or service. Do people really want it and will it add value Viability (Business) – can you deliver the product or service and can it scale to meet projected demand. Is the business model commercially viable and sustainable. Feasibility (Technology) – captures the technical debility as well as the technical and operational risk associated with building the product or solution. Integrity (Impact) – this could be summed as the point of difference, it captures contribution that this product or service provides to more broadly to its community. Don’t mix up the criteria – by understanding each of the criteria of the opportunity you can understand its desirability, do-ability, and feasibility. The integrity or impact on the community may outweighed by shortContinue Reading

communications with clarity

In: Effective Communication, Leadership

The leadership competence of delivering succinct communications with clarity is extraordinarily powerful, so why do so many leaders fail to master the skill? The amygdola (or reptile brain) is hardwired to be impatient and to be somewhat negative (it is the fear centre of our brains) so if we don’t capture the interest of the audience in a short period of time it is likely that those listening will either turn off or even have negative emotions as the lizard in our heads considers the worst. Presentations, meetings and communications that fail to engage, frustrates the audience and can lead to a loss of productivity and motivation. I once had a leader who would use what he referred to as “the rule of three – tell, telling and told”. You start any communication by telling the audience about what you are going to tell them, you then go into theContinue Reading

In: Leadership

Over your life you spend a lot more time at work than you do with your family which is why it becomes really important that you enjoy what you do. A job that sucks the life out of your soul is doing nothing for your health and wellbeing. But that does not mean the job has to be rewarding to be enjoyable and that is exactly where this article from Dan Rockwell starts. Positive Work Relationships Positive work relationships provide deeper collegial bonds, it supports effective knowledge sharing and relationship based learning. Worker productivity is directly connected to the productivity of co-workers. A study by Alexandre Mas and Enrico Moretti (2009) looked at peer effects in the workplace and found that when you put a highly productive worker on a team the whole team’s productivity goes up. The more frequent the contact, the more powerful the positive impact. For manyContinue Reading

startup

In: Entrepreneur, Startup

Is now the right time to launch your start up? It is the challenge that many entrepreneurs face, a global pandemic and global recession are challenging companies and industries all over the world but times of significant change bring significant opportunity. “Times of rapid and dramatic change can shift the tectonic plates of opportunity. “ There are numerous companies that have actually done very well at this time as lifestyle changes have created new demands. Organisations that supply online solutions to buy quality food, fitness and home office equipment have all seen significant growth as people navigate what seems to be the new normal. And business models have changed too with emerging support for subscription for products as diverse as cleaning products, tea and toilet paper. Four tests that potential founders should consider before launching a new venture: Compelling Opportunity – Identifying compelling evidence of customer pain – often founders look to theirContinue Reading

In: Crisis Management, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Uncategorized

The Pandemic is bringing up new leadership challenges and it is becoming clear that management styles need to change and that no one person can solve this on their own. This article points out that in these VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) times those who have stood out as the most effective leaders have demonstrated a new set of leadership skills. Based on 25 years of leadership research CLO believe that two very different leadership styles will cause failure or success in these turbulent times. Hero Leaders who direct from the top with an authoritarian, forceful and charismatic leadership style are much less likely to weather the current challenges. What has become clear is that no one person has all the necessary knowledge and experience to solve the problems, therefore leaders need to build an inclusive team that brings together different types of expertise to work together and createContinue Reading

In: Innovation

Management Consultants have made an art form out of delivering insights and advice into how to deal with disruption in industries. Now Consulting itself is being disrupted and the changes are significant. “Disruptive Innovation” a term coined by Clayton Christensen in 1995 was used to refer to the radical changes that caused a step change across an industry. Industries like manufacturing, music, television, advertising, airlines, publishing and many more have all been through disruptive innovation. The underlying economics of how that specific industry made money and sustained itself suddenly changed and in many cases new entrants were in a much stronger position than the incumbents.. Management Consulting is a $200B+ industry but it is mainly human driven, it is built on hiring intellectual capacity (brilliance), methodology, polish and global industry knowledge. BCG, McKinsey, Bain and others hire the brightest and most technical business school students and this can be shownContinue Reading

In: Career, Resilience

Recovering from failure, at some point in our careers, we all fail. It is how we recover from that failure that differentiates us. Failure is hard, it is ego shattering and very painful. But as Robert Kanaat writes; “failure, as much as it hurts, is a necessary evil. Failure, and the resultant pain it causes, helps to shape and mold us, tailoring a platform for future success. It doesn’t feel like something that’s beneficial at all when we’re going through it, but that failure is, in fact, a prerequisite for success.”  The first step to dealing with any failure is to fix it yourself – don’t leave the clean up to anyone else, help the team recover and find solutions to move forward. Secondly apologise quickly, own the issue by taking responsibility and having a clear plan for resolution. Thirdly move on by focusing and managing your emotions. Virginia Villari writesContinue Reading