Leadership

CEO Challenges for the 21st Century Business

/ Leadership

Business practises date back centuries when there were small businesses with local customer bases and little socioeconomic pressure. With rapid industrialization in developing and developed countries, the business has grown in size and complexity over the years, becoming multi-product and multi-location (and multi-national), and serving a diverse range of customers worldwide. A modern business is distinguished by the predominance of several socioeconomic factors.

Business, as we know it, is about trading – buying and selling and using money as a medium of exchange. Apart from trading, a business may also be involved in manufacturing, managing any kind of transformation or conversion process where certain inputs (like physical, human, financial and informational resources) are processed to be converted into useful products or services. These processes create significant value addition. This value addition forms the basis for surplus generation and/or profit creation in business. 

Business and the business environment have been changing at a fast speed – both the changes and the speed of change are very important. As such, the impact of the socio-economic state and structure of the region (and the rest of the world) has become very important in business.

So, in this context, the CEO’s job has become invaluable. 

The entrepreneur, the full-time director, or the CEO charged with managing the day-to-day operations of a modern business enterprise must therefore wear several hats in order to achieve an impressive bottom line in their business operations. They must build an effective and self-motivated team of competent employees, create world-class internal business processes, and implement appropriate mechanisms for delegation, decision-making, execution, monitoring, and control.

With this goal in mind, CEOs must frequently invest in training programmes for themselves as leaders in order to recognise and overcome workplace challenges. These coaching programmes, which are frequently executive coaching programmes or leadership training sessions with an experienced executive coach, assist CEOs in learning the skills and tactics that effectively assist them in identifying challenges and learning how to overcome these challenges for the betterment of the company as a whole.

A CEO both manages and governs.

Further, the CEO managing a modern business enterprise must distinguish between corporate management and corporate governance – they have to perform both the management and governance functions simultaneously in the best interest of the organization.

What is the difference, you may ask?

Corporate governance differs from corporate management in that governance is primarily about protecting a business, while management is more about growing it. 

Corporate Governance

Corporate Management

Governance refers to the policies and procedures set in place to ensure a business operates within the law and for the optimal benefit of all stakeholders. 

Management refers to the techniques executives use to help the company operate and flourish. 

For example, governance policies might include prohibiting a board of directors from awarding contracts to board members’ companies or the companies of family members. A business might require its accounting department to have two signatures on any cheque it writes to reduce the threat of fraud. 

Examples of management include setting budgets, giving staff members directions, and making strategic plans for marketing or product development. Corporations usually have management teams once the company becomes too big for the founder or one individual to oversee the entire business.

So, what are the challenges for a CEO?

Building knowledge

Any new CEO should take the time and resources necessary to thoroughly review all aspects of the business, including current positions and responsibilities for all employees, all processes and procedures that are currently in place, short-term goals and long-term objectives, growth, and development opportunities within the company, and so forth.

Taking feedback

CEOs must gather feedback from team members to see where the company may be lacking that could contribute to employee turnover rates or where there are areas for improvement, such as the need for additional resources in a certain department.

Tackling Inertia

The CEO must pull themselves away from what was previously done and fully evaluate every aspect of the business to ensure only the most productive and efficient tactics are in place to retain talented employees and keep revenue flowing.

Making those unpleasant decisions 

The CEO must take the entire company into account when making important business decisions. If the majority will benefit from a particular decision, then it is often best to move forward with that decision – even if it makes displease some colleagues you previously worked with closely.

Executing change

CEOs must understand that change is accepted, but it must be put forth at a pace that employees and other stakeholders can adapt to. CEOs cannot simply implement rapid changes without taking into consideration how team members and clients, or even investors and supporters, will react to these changes and how fast they are being executed.

Being a CEO of an organization is a great honour, but with this honour comes along with great challenges as well.

References

Mattone, John. “Top CEO Challenges and How to Overcome Them.” John Mattone Global, Inc., 26 Aug. 2022, johnmattone.com/blog/top-ceo-challenges-and-how-to-overcome-them.

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Leadership traits set an entrepreneur apart!

/ Leadership

A great entrepreneur should be a competent manager and an effective corporate leader, in addition to having a holistic entrepreneurial personality. The thoughtful incorporation of these three roles into an entrepreneur’s overall persona will greatly assist them in effectively and efficiently managing their business enterprise/project(s). 

As managers, they will be able to mobilise all necessary physical, financial, human, and informational resources to create value in the enterprise operations. An effective leader will be able to shape an excellent organisational structure with competent and skilled people all around who can discharge their functions in accordance with the slated enterprise objectives. As a corporate leader, the entrepreneur will also play an important role in developing a leadership pipeline through which they will be able to develop the skills of many middle managers to become future corporate leaders.

What can an entrepreneur do to facilitate the growth of future leaders to take the work forward?

To create a leadership pipeline, the entrepreneur should concentrate on development and integrate succession planning with leadership development to ensure the skills future leaders will need. This process should be fairly transparent and regularly monitored. To further develop this leadership pipeline, the entrepreneur should teach managers the power of storytelling, give them challenging assignments, launch a mentorship programme, provide skill development and cross-training opportunities, and, last but not least, assist them in embracing change.

I can confidently lay out certain suggestions for young entrepreneurs to prepare their future trajectories for becoming effective corporate leaders based on my own experience over the last four decades. I have dealt with many managers and corporate leaders involved in the operations of business enterprises or in the execution of medium and large-sized projects. I have included some of these suggestions below for my readers:

BE OPEN TO LEARN

The most important success mantra is to approach learning with an open mind. You must cultivate a strong learning orientation and be willing to learn from your own experiences and mistakes, as well as the experiences and mistakes of others. To improve learning, you can establish libraries in your organisation, assign appropriate mentors, host master classes led by experts in their respective fields, and do a variety of other things that come to mind. The basic idea is to work on developing a knowledge management and learning management system within your organisation.

FAIL FORWARD

Making mistakes and experiencing small and significant failures while running a business or working on a project is quite common and natural. I always advocate for ‘failing forward,’ which means celebrating your failures, learning from them, and moving on. This is an excellent habit in all successful entrepreneurs – they always hold the attitude, “I did not fail, my project failed”. Someone correctly stated that failure is simply postponed success.

CELEBRATE MILESTONES

Banish self-doubts by acknowledging your accomplishments. Post your daily successes and celebrate these with your colleagues. This habit will keep your confidence level always high. Cultivate generosity all around your organization. Make gratitude a part of your company culture.

At an organizational level, one could think of customer retention as a priority. Customer retention is critical because acquiring new customers is much more expensive than retaining existing customers. Customers who have returned are also more likely to engage in word-of-mouth marketing or become brand ambassadors.

COMMUNICATE WELL

Constantly and regularly hold short and long meetings with your team members to effectively communicate with them. Create enthusiasm and empower your people so that you can engage them in meaningful activities. Instil confidence in your team members and inspire your people.

At an organizational level, all critical information about the company’s operations and growth should be disseminated throughout the organisation so that every employee at every level has access to it.

An entrepreneur will do well to use such “applied wisdom” to generate and improve fantastic results throughout the organisation. Top-down, bottom-up, diagonal, and lateral communication should be promoted throughout the organisation (particularly about the enterprise’s vision, mission, goals, and objectives) so that every employee/member understands his/her exact role in the larger picture. Improving communication in the manner described here will also aid in the promotion of inter-departmental coordination, employee engagement, cooperation, and synergy.

IMPROVE 

Always keep improving on your processes and systems – what we also refer to as ‘Kaizen’ means continuous improvement. Break your current mould (if you feel that is required) and think independently once again. Always go for out-of-the-box thinking (also known as lateral thinking) as and when you confront problems and are required to engage in troubleshooting.

At an organizational level, employees at all levels should be provided leadership training so that an effective leadership pipeline develops from top to bottom at all levels. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the entire enterprise and Key Result Areas (KRAs) for key executives should be determined through a structured process and monitored on a regular basis to optimise enterprise operations.

Companies or enterprises may differ outwardly by their products/services or their line of business but essentially they all have certain common core characteristics. I hope this article helped you to think about your own project better! Let me know in the comments what idea resonated with you!

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What does it take to be a proactive entrepreneur?

/ Leadership, Business

The term proactive, as most of us understand it, refers to taking action in advance to deal with an unexpected problem or difficulty. Proactivity at work enables a person to act quickly and take responsibility in order to prevent problems from arising. This anticipation aids in reducing workplace stress and maintaining a pleasant organisational climate. Proactive person does not expect their leaders to notice a problem and incubate solutions. 

There are many examples that demonstrate this concept.

Notice that when a company conducts a customer survey on its products or services, what is it actually doing? It is taking proactive steps to improve the service it provides to its customers.

Consider another example: a city is taking a proactive approach to crime prevention by hiring more cops.

A proactive person, according to Bateman and Crant, is someone who takes action to influence environmental changes. A proactive entrepreneur will first identify opportunities before taking action and persevering until they have reached a conclusion by bringing about meaningful change. Merriam-Webster defines it as “acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, or changes.”

Being proactive means focusing on what’s important, not just what’s urgent. Proactivity is a vital part of creating massive success, and it’s the only way to reach your full potential.

A reactive (rather than proactive) person is at the mercy of time constraints and outside influences. Because the sense of urgency frequently trumps the sense of importance, many of us spend our days stuck in an endless loop of promptly responding to irrelevant emails, agreeing impulsively (without giving it much thought) to routine meeting requests from stakeholders, and attending to a variety of other unimportant (but urgent) communications/activities. 

However, keep in mind that proactivity always outperforms reactivity.

After all, reactive tasks are self-evident; these are the urgent day-to-day chunks that most people do automatically. And it’s not that reactive tasks don’t need to be completed; it’s just that they don’t have to be completed right now, and they don’t have to be completed by you.

Proactive tasks, in comparison, necessitate more thought and effort. They are the projects that have a significant impact on your company; the great ideas you’ve been putting off until you “have more time.” These tasks could include creating a compelling list of reasons why a specific feature is important for your product to move the company in that direction, or writing a blog post to develop thought leadership in your market. 

In a nutshell, proactive tasks are strategic initiatives that bring you significantly closer to achieving your goals. 

“Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase.”

Stephen R. Covey,
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

So, what does it take to be proactive?

In a word, discipline. 

Here are some of the reasons why self-discipline is so important: 

The world will put your resolve to the test the moment you begin incorporating proactivity into your life. Emergencies will arise, demands will rise, and you will be tempted to revert to ineffective, reactive behaviours. So, You need unyielding self-discipline to stay proactive in a reactive world; you can’t always control your circumstances, but you can manage your response. You have the option of remaining proactive.

Not only that, you will be confronted by procrastination. Procrastination leads to pressure, which leads to stress, and stress severely limits your brain’s creative processing abilities. As we all know, creativity is an essential component of proactivity; therefore, procrastination renders you incapable of being fully proactive.

References:

  • Ewers, Patrick. “How to Be Proactive: A Guide for Entrepreneurs | Better Humans.” Medium, 25 Jan. 2022, betterhumans.pub/the-definitive-guide-to-understanding-proactivity-and-becoming-a-proactive-entrepreneur-558ecf3a755d.

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Finetune your management style!

/ Management, Leadership
Being ethical and professional

Are you a manager/supervisor, business executive, or organizational leader? You may even be a CEO, or a Unit Head overseeing the working of a medium or large business, social, or a ‘not-for-profit’ organization. Your role may be entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial.  

Whatever the situation – you are concerned with effective and efficient utilization of various physical, financial, human, and informational resources at your disposal to accomplish organizational goals and objectives.

My sole purpose in writing this post is to impress upon you the need to restructure (and/or fine-tune) your leadership and management style so that you are more professional and ethical in your broader approach to people, their problems, and to their organizations. You will also do well to blend the right proportions of compassion and empathy while dealing with people.    

Based on my over four decades of experience in dealing with people and organizations, I am giving below a few specific suggestions to restructure/fine-tune your leadership/management style: 

The first and foremost aspect is to genuinely respond to the interests and expectations of all your stakeholders in the business – namely, your customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, and other local bodies that impact your business, the government, and society. You must do the best possible to fulfil their expectations from your business.

You must always ensure that all your decisions and actions are based on structured information and data. Kindly avoid taking any decision or action based on your personal preferences, whims, or fancies because that would mean that you are deviating from the path of professionalism. You must strive to practice stark professionalism in almost all functional areas like production, marketing, sales, accounts and finance and HR. 

You must also ensure that all your employees show up at work every day and on time, maintain good hygiene, dress appropriately, and follow the company rules. All your employees must understand that their employer expects a full day’s work for a full day’s pay.

All managers should also demonstrate integrity in their behaviour. In my opinion, managerial integrity is an essential ingredient for effective and ethical leadership. In addition to their job competencies, functional expertise and credentials, successful managers have personal characteristics that underlie their leadership skills. Integrity is one such characteristic that is noticeable in leaders who demonstrate a firm commitment to business principles. 

Illustrations of managerial integrity can be found during interactions with peers, colleagues, and subordinates as well as the public within and outside the workplace. Managers who lead with integrity do not sugar-coat employee evaluations for the sake of being popular or being liked. Socially irresponsible corporate behaviour is something that managers with integrity will not tolerate even if it means putting their job in jeopardy. 

As the Head of your organization – you must also ensure that all your employees working in various departments follow and practice ethics in their functional areas like production, marketing, accounts and finance, and advertising. 

You will also do well to sensitize your employees towards various other aspects like workplace discrimination, regulatory compliances, insider trading, and always adhering to moral and ethical practices. 

As a great organization, you must also do your bit towards society by adhering to CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) practices. As far as possible you should follow the concepts of Triple Bottom Line (TBL) and the 4 Ps of Ethical Business to make your CSR initiatives more effective and meaningful.

“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.

Vince Lombardi

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What makes you a great leader? #GreatMinds

/ Great Minds, Leadership

As we all know – leadership involves getting things done through people. Leadership is all about helping, encouraging, inspiring, and nurturing members of an organization and teams to give their best to accomplish organizational goals. It is the quality of the top leadership that sets the tone for how effectively and efficiently a corporate entity is being managed or navigated. Leadership comprises influencing members of an enterprise to endeavour willingly to achieve group objectives. Leadership has three dimensions, namely, the leader, the follower, and the situation. All leaders need robust personality attributes like vision, self-belief, integrity, courage and result focussed approach to function. These, however, must be accompanied by external qualities like communication skills, teamwork, attentiveness, commitment, and visibility.

Here’s what Tom Peters, an American writer on business management practices, has to say:

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Let me know in the comments section.

In this ongoing series #GreatMinds on my blog, I am shining a spotlight on the important ideas that some very successful people keep talking about in their public life.

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Managing Teams #GreatMinds

/ Great Minds, Leadership, Motivation

It is the capability of collective thinking of the team that decides its performance and success in the long run. It is the job of the manager/leader to strive to achieve a positive atmosphere, free from rigidity and envy, personal aggrandizement, in which people compete with ideas — not egos. The manager needs to instil camaraderie in the team, where it is clear that the group and its goals take precedence over the prominence of any member.

Here’s what Henry Ford, an American industrialist and the founder of the Ford Motor Company, has to say:

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Let me know in the comments section.

In this ongoing series #GreatMinds on my blog, I am shining a spotlight on the important ideas that some very successful people keep talking about in their public life.

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What’s The Grapevine Channel of Communication ? #GreatMinds

/ Great Minds, Leadership

The grapevine (or the corporate gossip) is the informal communications channel within an organization that is entirely different as also much faster than the firm’s or company’s formal communication channel. The formal communication channel within an organization generally flows in the same direction as the organization’s scaler chain. However, it is not so with the grapevine channel – which can flow in random order – in any direction – horizontally, vertically, diagonally, or in any other manner within and across the organizational structure. 

Juniors may pass on information to their superiors, an executive may share a small piece of information to a worker in the packaging section, or employees in different sections and departments may relay or share snippets or titbits. Grapevine information may have a wider coverage with a range of subjects concerning and involving policies announced by the top management, workers compensation, trade union matters, CSR related decisions, and even matters related to a cricket match or a recent Bollywood blockbuster – virtually anything of interest to members of the organization. The information may be highly accurate or totally distorted – and/or it may or may not be of interest to all.

Here’s what Lawrence G Lovasik, an American author and missionary, has to say:

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Let me know in the comments section.

In this ongoing series #GreatMinds on my blog, I am shining a spotlight on the important ideas that some very successful people keep talking about in their public life.

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Who is an Intrapreneur? #GreatMinds

/ Great Minds, Leadership

To be an intrapreneur means to work as an entrepreneur with someone else’s money! It means you do the work without taking any financial risk. For example, a middle-aged executive working in a large corporate can be assigned an independent project or an operational unit as its whole-time director or in-charge. The company will offer an attractive salary to him, or commission on sales. He may receive some fringe benefits or some share in the profits of the company. It is not uncommon to offer equity shares of the company to such intrapreneurs (either free or at a price lower than the face value of the share) to make them feel that they are the owners of a small part of the company.

Here’s what Oliver DeMille, an American educator, public speaker and the founder of an educational model known as TJEd, has to say:

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Let me know in the comments section.

In this ongoing series #GreatMinds on my blog, I am shining a spotlight on the important ideas that some very successful people keep talking about in their public life.

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Offering value to customers #GreatMinds

/ Great Minds, Leadership, Motivation

Customer Value Proposition (CVP) is a well-defined and persuasive marketing statement related to a specific product or service that details the reasons why a consumer would benefit from purchasing it. A business will typically use a customer value proposition as part of its marketing strategy to consumers, rather than using it internally among staff, suppliers, or distributors. A value proposition is a solution to your customer’s problem: “I am a customer, I walk in with a problem, I walk out with a solution.” The solution then is not your product or service, but the solution your product or service provides – the result, the value given to the customer.

Here’s what Don Peppers, an American author and founding partner of Peppers & Rogers Group, a customer-centric management consulting firm, has to say:

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Let me know in the comments section.

In this ongoing series #GreatMinds on my blog, I am shining a spotlight on the important ideas that some very successful people keep talking about in their public life.

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Workplace conflicts may cost dearly #GreatMinds

/ Great Minds, Leadership, Motivation

The cost for a conflict is not only paid by individuals but also by the organization. Most workplaces try to suppress any friction between people. But if the management fails to handle these conflicts efficiently, they can avalanche later. It is therefore crucial that the immediate leader should intervene in a work-related conflict at an earlier stage. With prolonged conflicts, the organization may have to suffer a bad working environment. Some of its valuable employees may leave the company. It can also generate a feeling of distrust among the employees that eventually could harm productivity.

Here’s what Thomas Crum, an author and presenter in the fields of conflict resolution and stress management., has to say:

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Let me know in the comments section.

In this ongoing series #GreatMinds on my blog, I am shining a spotlight on the important ideas that some very successful people keep talking about in their public life.

Workplace conflicts may cost dearly #GreatMinds Read More »