Coach John G. Agno is your own cultural attache; keeping you abreast of what's effective in leadership. People learn better and are positively motivated when supported by regular coaching.
PERSONAL COACHING Leadership onboarding coaching helps the executive adapt to the employer's culture, create rapport with their team and develop productive ways to achieve necessary goals.
SELF ASSESSMENT CENTER Leadership skills and style testing. Know how you motivate and coach people to gain success at work and in life.
WHAT IS LEADERSHIP? Leadership is an interactive conversation that pulls people toward becoming comfortable with the language of personal responsibility and commitment.
LEADERSHIP TIPS “The crux of leadership development that works is self-directed learning: intentionally developing or strengthening an aspect of who you are or who you want to be, or both.” Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee (Harvard Business School Press)
Whether it relates to a start-up or a corporate venture, fostering and nurturing an entrepreneurial organizational culture is a common thread in virtually all entrepreneurship theories.
Every organizational culture is distinct and largely unique, but there are some models that managers can use as guides for adjusting or revamping an organization to drive an entrepreneurial spirit. Entrepreneurial organizations require risk-taking and bold initiatives.
Market intelligence is king in the world of opportunity discovery. These discovery paths entail exploration across alternate industries, strategic groups, customers, complementary offerings, functional or emotional appeal, and timelines.
Today’s business leaders put too much emphasis on efficiency rather than innovation.
By exploring and adopting practices from alternative industries, firms can discover new ways to approach customer needs.
“Because of an unwavering focus on efficiency, all too many firms have stripped away excess resources, reducing or eliminating their capacity to innovate, and have weeded out entrepreneurial skills,” author Jim Dewald warns. This makes them vulnerable to disruptive change and eventually leads to their decline.
He explains, “Although most existing corporations have almost everything an individual entrepreneur seeks in pursuit of success—money, brainpower, leadership capabilities, sales channels, research facilities, customers, status—corporate entrepreneurship is actually quite rare”
The larger an organization gets, the less likely it is that bad news will travel smoothly up the chain.
The mantra at big corporations is "go along to get along." Stopping work on products vital to the bottom line is often incompatible with pleasing the boss. Engaging in straight talk with those who lead Corporate America is a rare occurrence.
C-level executives tend to be isolated from their corporate stakeholders because most of the information they receive is filtered by subordinates, suppliers, and consultants. "CEO Disease" is a term used to describe the isolation that envelops a leader when subordinates become reluctant to disclose bad news or worst-case scenarios that might trigger a shoot-the-messenger response.
However, that is beginning to change as c-level executives seek a cure for "CEO Disease" by participating in interactive conversations through their personal blogs.
Blogs are personal. They humanize the Web and keep CEOs in touch with what’s going on out in the world.
As a young entrepreneur just starting out, you may have a great product you wish to retail, or a service you wish to provide. Renting a nice office suite, or a retail unit in a busy shopping mall, will help establish a local presence very quickly. Unfortunately, you also have the expense of rent and rate payments, power costs, and staff wages.
Starting online can provide you with an immediate world-wide customer base with the minimum of outlay. Many online businesses start off in the owner’s front room, with stock stored in garage, shed, or the bedroom.
Online businesses tend to fall into one of two categories, selling products or services to the general public, or providing technical assistance to other online businesses.
Online Retailer
As an online retailer, your prime consideration is having a website for potential customers to visit, pick their products, pay for them, and get them delivered. To this end, unless you are very web-savvy, contracting the services of a good website builder is the first thing required.
The website needs building, plug-ins added for shopping carts and email contact, search engine optimization (SEO) needs to be formulated, along with content marketing, and social media exposure, and all need updating on a regular basis. While you’re busy dealing with customer purchases, getting them delivered, and sorting out customer queries; your retained website management team will deal with keeping your site at the top of the search engine pages. Staff requirements in the early days, should be minimal.
Online Services to Businesses
As a business offering web building services to other online businesses, the situation could be somewhat different. Unless you are capable of providing all website services yourself, then employing specialists in the different areas is a must. Programmers, SEO specialists, content marketers and blog post and article writers, are all required to work as a unit if problems with sites you manage are to be avoided.
As your business grows, then greater numbers of staff will be required. Whether they are delivery drivers, packagers, extra personnel to deal with emails, or greater numbers of software engineers, they all become part of the team. Keeping them focused, happy to work, and feeling they are part of the business, is your job.
In this digital age, bosses are becoming younger. The old style boss, sitting in his office all day, issuing orders and checking the accounts, is becoming a thing of the past.
Nowadays it’s all about interaction between management and staff. Arrange to have brainstorming sessions. Discuss the way forward, what’s not working, and how to put it right. Organize team building exercises such as paint-balling. Take your staff on adventure days, where for instance, working as a team they have to build a bridge over a chasm against the clock.
While all must accept the boss is the boss, working with your staff, making them feel they are an integral part of your growing business, is the best way to ensure maximum productivity, from a happy and contented workforce.
With the rise in virtual work teams, flexible work arrangements, and personal electronic devices in the workplace, the opportunities for cyberloafing—using the Internet for non-work activities—are plentiful and creating serious problems for many businesses.
A new study from the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison examines two key personality traits—conscientiousness and emotional stability—that affect the likelihood of cyberloafing and looks at certain workplace conditions that may increase employee engagement.
The following suggestions for organizations seeking to reduce online distractions as a means of increasing productivity:
Screen candidates for conscientiousness and emotional stability during job interviews.
Create appropriate human resource practices and effectively communicate with employees so they feel people are treated fairly.
Have a policy that personal devices and non-work e-mail can be checked during breaks or only as needed throughout the day to minimize distractions.
“Both conscientiousness and emotional stability are strong predictors for job performance, and their presence would suggest a reduced likelihood of cyberloafing,” says Maria Triana, associate professor of management and human resources. “But we found that even a conscientious employee with a strong work ethic will engage in cyberloafing if they feel there is a lack of justice or fair treatment in the workplace. That means it is important for organizations to focus not only on those personal traits, but in creating a work environment where employees believe they are treated fairly and equitably.”
The research found that conscientious individuals seek to fulfill their obligations, are normally centered on task accomplishment and are less likely to be distracted and cross the line into cyberloafing. Emotionally stable people have less need to spend time and energy regulating their emotions, have more capacity to allocate resources to tasks at hand and are less likely to lose focus.
Another workplace condition the research considered was the level of employee empowerment. When empowerment is high, people generally have a good attitude about work and are more likely to be satisfied.
This expression comes from the theater; where it alludes to an actor studying his part in the wings (the areas to either side of the stage) because he has been suddenly called on to replace another. First recorded in 1885, it eventually was extended to other kinds of improvisation based on unpreparedness.
Having a strategy of what to ask, what to show and tell helps to move the prospect to taking the desired action. Anticipating obstacles to the sale will allow you to plan how to go around or over potential "roadblocks" in accomplishing your sales objective.
This shows up in not really listening to the prospective customer and, instead, filling the sales interaction with sales talk. They don't answer questions well because they don't listen for assumptions/beliefsthat's behind the prospect's words.
Their presentations are not in line with what the prospect wants to know. Being out-of-touch with the prospective customer's personality style insures that the inability to communicate will sour the sale.
According to an article on sales management in Business Performance Management, only 41% of companies surveyed were confident that their organization manages its sales operations and performance effectively. Two of the most common impediments to successful management of the sales team are inconsistent execution (47 percent of respondents) and an overall lack of sales processes (38 percent). Processes in areas of sales such as revenue forecasting, incentive calculation and territory management are imperative to achieving corporate revenue objectives; it's alarming that so many companies lack some of these basic procedures.
To improve your sales people's ability to sell well, train and coach them on a proven sales methodology that allows them to prepare for every major sales interaction. Provide them an understanding of their personality's strengths and weaknesses and how they can "read" their prospect's buying style. Usually a sales person's weakness, in the buyer's perspective, is an over extension of a strength and can be toned down through self management by the salesperson.
Editor's note: The following article was republished here with permission from the co-editors of the September issue of The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast, a publication of Robert Prechter's Elliott Wave International, the world's largest financial forecasting firm. From Sept. 25 to Oct. 1, EWI is throwing open the doors to all of its investor services 100% free. Click here to join EWI's free Investor Open House now.
This updated chart of the total number of liberal democracies is from Robert Prechter's book, The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior, which observed that bull markets "tend to lead to political freedom, while retrenchments lead to political repression."
Near the beginning of Grand Supercycle wave III (circled) (Elliott wave labels not shown), not even the United States rated designation as a functioning democracy. But a broadening of suffrage laws in the 1810s and 1820s made it the lone liberal democracy by the end of Supercycle wave I in 1835.
Various measures of democracy yield different totals, but the consensus tends to show that democracy started to spread at the beginning of the Supercycle wave III in 1842. The basic pattern is shown on the chart from WPHSB, which is constructed with data from The End of History by Francis Fukuyama as well as data from Freedom House, a democratic watchdog organization, beginning in 1973.
In a 1991 paper, "Democracy's Third Wave," social scientist Samuel Huntington states that the "first 'long' wave of democratization began in the 1820s and continued until 1926, bringing into being some 29 democracies." A "reverse wave" into the mid-1940s, reduced the number of democratic states to 12. Most of this period constituted a Supercycle-degree bear market in inflation adjusted terms. After another wave of democratization carried into the 1960s, "a second reverse wave brought the number of democracies back down to 30." A third wave toward democratization began in 1975, which matches well with the bull market, as it was the first year of Cycle wave V in stocks (in nominal terms). So, the trend toward democracy tracks the trend in the stock market remarkably well. The reason is that social mood is in charge of both trends.
According to Freedom House, the total number of functioning democracies is 88, down from a peak of 90 in 2007. The current total remains historically high, but it's back to where it was in 1998.
Underneath the surface, Freedom House's data show that democracy is losing ground. After years of gains, the number of countries showing improvement in political rights and civil liberties is below those showing declines in similar measures, and it has been since 2006.
In the early 1990s, the Berlin Wall fell and Fukuyama famously declared that mankind's ideological evolution had reached an "end point" in which liberal democracy would be the "final form of human government." American-style democracy went on to expand into an unprecedented number of countries, but that trend has clearly run out of steam. A New York Times op-ed columnist now says, "Pax Americana is in decline." Here's an assessment from a July article in Foreign Policy:
The Third Wave Peters Out
The end of the Cold War ushered in an era of expanding freedom. Is the golden age of democratic transitions drawing to a close?
What is the state of democracy in the world today? Though few of the democratic gains of the past have been decisively reversed, the last few years have been a discouraging period for democracy, and 2014 presents particular cause for alarm. Russia's annexation of Crimea and support for separatism in other parts of Ukraine highlight a trend toward the resurgence of authoritarian powers and a new willingness on their part to employ military and other means to counter democracy. The new assertiveness of the authoritarians can be seen in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq and in China's actions in the South China Sea, as well as a variety of other arenas in which they are pursuing policies aimed at the "containment of democracy."
There is reason to suspect that what we have been calling the post-Cold War period has come to a close. The chances are that the years ahead will witness greater international instability than the world had seen for the past several decades.
Subscribers to our sister-publication, The Socionomist, read about the trend toward authoritarianism back in 2010, as well as in the March, April and May issues this year. Socionomists are ahead of trends because we know their cause.
Now, finally the trend-watchers can see what's happening because, as they say, the writing is on the wall. It probably won't be too long before the walls are literal.
This article was syndicated by Elliott Wave International and was originally published under the headline The Democracy Wave Recedes: Does this Chart Show a Developing Bear Market for Liberal Democracy?. EWI is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts led by Chartered Market Technician Robert Prechter provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.
As the business world and the Internet become increasingly intertwined, it’s becoming apparent just how relevant that platitude is to the success of your business. Particularly when it comes to search marketing, as it is necessary to accumulate inbound links from other sites to your own
The average business typically doesn’t have a significant amount of time or resources to dedicate to gathering links or citations, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. What it does mean is that they should take a basic approach to link building that will greatly improve their SEO efforts without requiring major investments in their most valuable resources (time and money). Fortunately, there is a simple approach to link building that breaks the practice into two primary categories: content creation and networking. Here’s how you can get started without losing sleep or breaking the bank.
As with all search-related practices, content is the backbone of link building efforts. Content drives interest in your site, establishes you as an authority and, ultimately, gets you links. Thus, you must establish a content plan for your website. To do this, identify and learn about your target audience.
Before anyone will want to look at your content, they have to find it, which is why you should also identify widely searched keywords related to your niche that signify user intent, and then include them in your site’s content. Using these terms helps interested and relevant parties discover you, a crucial step in the link building process.
Once you know what you want to write about and who you want to write to, it’s time to start publishing content. Arguably, the best way to do this is by starting a blog and updating it regularly. You can blog as often as multiple times daily or as infrequently as weekly, but keep a consistent, regular schedule to make your audience feel familiar and comfortable. Don’t forget to make your content easily linkable or shareable (usually with social share buttons), so that visitors who enjoy it don’t have to work too hard to share it with others.
One great method to increase traffic and save yourself some time is to only submit part of an article (or one installment in a series) and include a link to the rest of it on your site.
See where your own visitors are coming from, such as other websites or directories, and then visit those pages to see where else they’re sending users. Some of these could provide good link leads from more established sites. Finding the best sites to target shouldn’t be difficult, because as a responsible publisher, you’ve already studied your audience and know what kind of content they like.
Source: Michael Garrity, associate editor, Website Magazine, November 2012
The way we communicate and share information with one another, with customers, and with employees has changed dramatically, and technological advances are the enablers that are making it happen. People are now accustomed to interacting and collaborating with one another through social and collaborative platforms and are bringing these habits and methods with them into the workplace.
One of the great changes taking place in the world is that information is becoming abundant and accessible. You don't need to know all that much anymore. All you need is a smartphone and Wikipedia, and you can get hold of information very quickly and nearly everywhere.
Information used to be treated like precious gems and hoarded. But in an age in which information is abundant, hoarding it is futile. In fact, it is counterproductive. Sharing the information widely gives you a better chance of making that information useful to you and to others.
Now, however, the challenge is where to share information so that it can be found. We all wonder how to connect the people in our companies in efficient and effective ways. We all want to capture and leverage information and wisdom for competitive advantage. This means that books, blogs and general presentations are informative and inspirational, but alone are not actionable. And, when you get into the details, you find that nobody's problems are exactly the same...and those reference librarians, who lived in the old world of paper files, have long ago retired. Therefore, the challenge for organizations today is finding a way to continue doing business and improving the way they do business, but in the context of the ways in which these changes are affecting them.
We have all heard about how social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs are changing the ways in which organizations communicate and collaborate with customers. It is important to use these tools to engage with and collaborate with customers; however, organizations need to change and evolve from the inside out, and that means starting with using similar concepts and ideas for collaboration within organizations among the employees.
The new book, "The Collaborative Organization," is written by author Jacob Morgan for those who already know that emergent collaboration should be a critical investment for an organization and those who realize that it's time to act to make it happen. The purpose of this book is to act as a guide for executives, decision makers, and those involved with collaboration initiatives at their organizations.
Emergent collaboration starts with being able to identify business drivers or problems. Emergent collaboration solutions provide benefits and value that other forms of collaboration do not. After understanding the business drivers, it's critical to map them to specific desired states. Then walk through the solution mapping process either in teams or individually to understand how to move from a business problem to a desired result.
By now we all should know to never write anything in an email we wouldn't want to read in the newspaper....because there is no eraser on the Internet.
Way back in October 1971, an engineer (who I went to high school with in Upstate New York during the late 1950s) named Ray Tomlinson chose the '@' symbol for email addresses and wrote software to send the first network email. Ray Tomlinson has been called the father of email because he invented the software that allowed messages to be sent between computers. Ray made it possible to swap messages between machines in different locations; between universities, across continents, and oceans. At the time, he was working for Boston-based Bolt, Beranek and Newman, which was helping to develop the forerunner of the modern Internet.
Now, over 40 years later, email messages are a large part of our lives in today's network society. Most of us accumulate huge amounts of data in our lives — including emails, telephone calls and spikes of online writing activity, as measured by daily keystrokes.
Stephen Wolfram, a scientist and entrepreneur, wondered: Could all of that information be compiled into a personal database, then analyzed to tell us something meaningful about our lives? Maybe it could suggest when we tended to be the most creative or productive, along with the circumstances that led up to those moments. Dr. Wolfram runs Wolfram Research, which is deeply steeped in data analysis, along with Wolfram Alpha, a computational search engine that provides many answers for Siri, the personal assistant for Apple’s iPhone 4S.
Wolfram wanted to use this analysis to discover, among other trends, patterns in his personal activity that might be linked to bursts of creativity. Yes, he had memories of times when he had been creative, but the details and circumstances were not always crystal clear. He hoped Wolfram Alpha Pro could act as an adjunct to his personal recollections.
The system may someday end up serving as a kind of personal historian, as well as a potential coach for improving work habits and productivity. The data could also be a treasure trove for people writing their autobiographies, or for biographers entrusted with the information.