The key to promoting a culture of ideas, supported by excellence in execution, relies upon the clarity of communication and the quality of leadership.
As successful companies focus on developing their businesses, greater thought and emphasis is being given to capturing, disseminating and promoting the best business improvement ideas throughout their organization.
Good leaders must know how to motivate their teams, making sure they are staffed by individuals with the experience, skills and wisdom to be personally fulfilled and successful in their roles.
The good leader must be observant, untiring, shrewd, kindly yet demanding, simple and crafty, a watchman and a robber, lavish and miserly, generous and stingy, rash and conservative. The leader must know his or her business and the strategies and tactics required to achieve the desired goals and outcomes for success.
Leaders’ relationships with their subordinate team members are critical for success. It is important for a leader to know each of their team members’ “characteristics”—which can be trusted with an independent mission, which must be held back and urged on, and which must be kept under a carefully perceptive eye and ear. Every individual is unique with their own gifts, experiences, fears and doubts; all wrapped up into what we might call their personal “DNA.”
No method of education, no system of promotion, no amount of common-sense ability is of value unless the leader has in him or her, the root of the matter – the determined “fighting spirit” to be successful, and the courage to always tell the truth. No business plan, no sales call, no client meeting, was ever ineffective or lost until the leader thought it was so.
5 Maxims for Success
- Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- The best way to be convincing is to be convinced. Passion persuades.
- Clients no longer want to talk to salespeople, they want to talk to problem solvers.
- You need to be in business with your clients, not just doing business with them.
- Rehearsal is fundamental to winning.
