Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is a titan entrepreneur. Many books, articles, blog posts have been written by people about how Amazon works, but Jeff Bezos has written his own take on it: Shareholder letters that give a unique insight into how Amazon operates.
There are not shortage of articles, blog posts, books that give advice on what traits you should look for in people when creating a high performing team. Personally, I think anyone who’s creating their own business / organization / team should determine what those traits are based on what they want to accomplish; in other words: there is not set formula for everyone but there are some universal traits.
I was recently reminded of a founder I coached about 7 years ago. Back then he had developed a climate change solution which eventually failed for various reasons; I wasn’t all surprised when his venture failed. I remembered him while on a recent trip in Cozumel Mexico, where I saw a solution that mimicked his being implemented.
In the world of innovation, diversity of thought is necessary. Really, every business needs diversity of thought regardless of what business they’re in. Diversity of thought comes from diversity of experiences from people from all walks of life. Diversity of thought gives a team perspective, multiples ones, not just one. Naturally, this will create conflict. Not everyone will get along, and that’s just the way it goes most of the time.
in Leadership
What makes a great leader? It’s a question that has been researched and answered by many people across many years, decades and centuries. Leadership is a topic that stimulates a lot of conversation, and is probably the most written about topic in business. Leadership, in comparison to other topics in business, is about self and other improvement; meaning the improvement of others not just oneself.
As a leader, we all have people we rely on more than others. People who we’ll gladly pass the ball to because we know they will push it across the finish line no matter what. People we would love to clone. Who are these people, and makes them special? Liz Wiseman, author of Multipliers, calls these people Impact Players: Indispensable colleagues who can be counted on in critical situations and who consistently receive high-profile assignments and new opportunities.
Last week I wrote a post about what you should do to add value and increase your standing in the workplace. Now, let’s look at the opposite: If you could deliberately kill your credibility with your boss, what would you do?