in Leadership, Strategy
What is strategy? When done well, it describes how an organization wins; and serves as a guide to behavior in the day to day operations of the organization. Getting to this point is not easy, crafting strategy is hard. So hard that most company’s strategies are just more of the same; choosing to be a follower rather than a leader. All followers fall into the same strategy traps, and have to pay for it by competing on a race to the bottom.
You walk into a new situation, a new job, a new team, a new everything; how do you approach it? With an open mind or a closed one? Most everyone who gets hired for a job is rewared because they have experience in doing that job; not because they don’t.
in Leadership
What’s your favorite part of leadership? Leaders play many roles, I know many people who say their favorite part of leading is the X’s and O’s; planning and strategizing. While this is very important, it’s not the most important part of leading. What is? For me is about developing other leaders, and making them better.
Professor X, from the X-Men is not considered the most powerful mutant. But to me, he is because he has the most powerful superpower of all: the ability to read people’s minds. While we can’t read people’s minds like Professor X can, we can get into their heads with something we’re all born with.
in Leadership
What is the main challenge new, inexperienced leaders have? As new Managers, most everyone has a hard time adjusting to the new job because as a Manager, you don’t make the cake anymore; you supervise the making of the cake.
“Be yourself”, is universal advice. You hear it in movies, songs, video games, and day to day life. Parents, friends, coaches, teachers, girl and boyfriends, co-workers; they’ve all told us. Heck, we’ve said it too to other people, “Just be yourself”.
In my eyes, the biggest mistake inexperienced leaders make is acting as if they know everything already. I’ve seen this, and have experienced people in my organization acting this way, and it’s not fun for them and everyone else.