Keep an open mind

I think one of the most important roles of the leader is to immediately intervene and remove the obstacles so that the team can advance towards the corporate goals.

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person was of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
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— John Stuart Mill

It's more than that

Image c/o University of York

We tend to think about finance as a math-based field with numbers, data, charts, and formulas. It’s much more than that – people make decisions about their money based on their outlook on the economy. And these decisions are all based around their own personality and psychology; therefore, there is so much more to finance and economics than finance and economics. If we think through the lens of history, psychology (e.g., greed and fear), sociology (e.g., keeping up with your neighbours), and politics (e.g., Why are certain regulations put in place?). All these fields of study are based around how people think and behave, and behaviour is such a big incumbent field. I think there is a lot we could learn from economics and finance if we looked through the lens of those other subjects.

We can be heroes

How can you make the customer the hero of the story?

The short answer is through customer experience, sales, and brand loyalty initiatives. Many organisations position their marketing around benefits and features of their products and services. The customer is the hero, not the brand and I think the focus should always be on the strategic outcomes that the customer needs. In other words, shift the focus from ‘us marketing’ to ‘customer marketing’. We all have the need for someone to show us the way and consumers don’t always buy the best products and services; they usually buy the ones they can understand the fastest. What the customer has to sense is that we have stepped into their story and we care about their pain.

Listening skills

Culture refers to the basics of how people work together to make decisions and how quality is maintained. I have observed that in several organisations the implicit attitude at work demands that professionalism means the employees ignore their emotions. I think that it’s important to create time and space to talk about what’s on people’s minds and I have found that if the team does this then there’s a large positive payoff - smarter questions and better understanding.

“The biggest communication problem is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply.”
— Burrellism

Ikigai

Ikigai (生き甲斐, "ee-kee-guy") is a Japanese concept that describes the things that make your life worthwhile; the things that give you a deep sense of purpose, satisfaction and joy. Ikigai is made up of two Japanese words, iki (生き), which means life, and kai (甲斐), meaning effect, result, value, benefit, or worth. Iki and kai come together to give us ikigai: a reason to live/to exist.

Search and you will find

It takes more than self-motivation to really alter your life. I think you have to have a better plan for your life, and the first key to doing better is to find out how things work. Perhaps the real problem is the lack of ideas of how to attract your dream partner, create money and wealth, or maintain your ideal body weight. To change your life, you will need new ideas and to get new ideas you must consistently study. When you find something that works, take notes as it’s important that you don’t use your head as a filing cabinet. One way to learn if from your own experiences and another way to learn is from other people’s experiences. Which path will you follow?

Fine-tune your sales processes

What makes your sales team run like a well-oiled machine?
In sales we always want to be the trusted advisor, and you only need two things to be a trusted advisor - trust and advice! And if you don’t have the advice part, then you are not the guide. If you’re hard pressed to pinpoint how your sales team is effective, you may need to rethink your strategy. It isn’t enough to give your sales team skills to boost sales, you may also need to equip them with the right tools to increase your revenue. I think every human being has the need for someone to show them the way. Contact me via e-mail to discuss a workshop for your sales team, for example, pipeline management.

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Fuel your creativity

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In my day to day, I face a variety of internal and customer-facing situations, both positive and negative, and being able to communicate effectively has served me well throughout it all. What I love about my job is that I get to bring talented people into an engaging environment where they can make a difference. I think that talented people working together for the greater good around the world will determine our future.

Remember just because you were born talented doesn’t mean you are the best, there will be someone working harder than you and that person will succeed. Contact me via e-mail to book a motivational coaching session.

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”
— Tim Notke

Planning tools

“Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition. It’s not a matter of being better at what you do - it’s a matter of being different at what you do.”
— Michael Porter

Strategy is not only what you talk about doing, strategy is also something you do. I think that to develop a bold and executable strategy starts with making sure leaders have addressed these two questions:

·      What are we great at?
·      What are we able to achieve?

How will you be different than your competition? Contact me via e-mail for a deeper dive of your strategy.