I recently spotted this on a tee shirt in the gym on a young man working with a trainer.  My first thought was this is the type of “rah rah” slogan used by many sales and marketing sessions to “pump up” a team or a group of would be team leaders. 

After some thought, however, I began to develop a concern that it was, perhaps, designed to build up leaders as the expense of denigrating “followers”, which began to beg the question “can leaders exist without followers?”

In a recent discussion with several like-minded people we spent some time discussing the concept of Leaders, Followers and Frankies (after the Frank of “I did it my way” fame).  I will leave the discussion of Frankies for another time.  We had no real trouble discussing leaders and the various qualities of leadership. 

We explored leadership in the context of “great leaders” and determined that for the most part great leaders fell into two categories;

1. people who were in the right place at the right time and accomplished great things; and

2. people who over a period of time generated a following of people who “believed” in the statements, tenets or beliefs of the leader.

We also concluded that for the most part leaders come and go, have their time in the sun and are replaced by others. 

The conclusion is that without followers, leaders cannot exist. Leaders must find and inspire followers in order to achieve greatness in leadership and like all leaders, followers will come and go with the leaders. 

At most times in our lives we are both leaders and followers.

John Gundy

 

Would governments be as despised by their citizens if they actually helped their citizens and tried to meet or exceed their expectations? Instead of continually cutting services (and while I certainly don’t mind eliminating the gravy) it may be more appropriate and required to find ways to increase the revenue and improve the cash flow. We are starting to see cities and municipalities who are running out of cash declaring bankruptcy. You just can’t keep running on debt -- you need to increase the cash flow to meet the required expenses.

How do you get business growth in today’s turbulent times?  With any successful organization it starts with engaged employees who strive each and every day to meet or exceed their clients / customer expectations. These employees create a positive environment for the customers creating a clientele that is more likely to return and purchase more services or product. These same engaged employees will work to meet all corporate objectives and deliver improved results because they clearly understand what is expected of them and the benefits of delivering superior results. 

Procter and Gamble, West Jet, Apple all get it. Success is delivered through their employees and plenty of leadership time is focused on empowering these employees to improve results and create a positive consumer experience generating ever increasing cash flow.  What are your thoughts on the importance of employees with respect to business growth?

 Let me know at @mdick54

Mike Dick

There are good ways and bad ways to make decisions around technological change. 

Bad technology decisions get made when they are tied to somebody’s pet project, or as a kneejerk reaction to some business or technology failure, or when an IT executive can’t articulate the business value of an investment, to name a few.

So here’s a thought – let’s align IT business plans with organization business plans.  So every project that the IT team wants to do is examined and success defined in the context of which tactics and strategies it enables.

What happens when we do this?

1. Clear business sponsorship for IT projects. If the operations manager understands that to achieve his goals (and get his bonus) he needs a technology solution implemented, he will fight for it and support it.
2. Clear business direction for the IT team.  The solution has a clearly defined pressing set of outcomes needed, the team knows why this is important, and can make day-to-day decisions with an appropriate context.
3. Clear implications when business goals and priorities change.  Cost cutting exercises show direct implications for the business (if I stop work on this project, we won’t be able to deliver this business goal).
4. Clear communications about projects and activities in language that all business leaders can understand.
5. Clear evidence of contribution of the IT team to the overall organization results – so the CIO gets her bonus, and team members are appropriately rewarded for their contributions.

Christy DeMont

The purpose of using technology in your business is to help achieve your business goals.  So the technology and tools you use are supposed to make work easier or faster, result in fewer mistakes, or save people time.  Technology helps your business by managing information and making it easier to store and retrieve, allowing you to ensure processes are running efficiently and profitably.

If it takes 2 weeks to get a new computer or phone, if the computer you have has to be shut down and restarted 3 times a day, if the systems don’t produce the reports you need to make business decisions, you are not getting everything you should be getting out of your technology investment.

It’s time to start asking questions.

Christy DeMont