Leadership

Posts about Leadership of business, people and thought

ISO27001, Information Security Management
Reading Time: 19 minutesThe purpose of information security is to protect an organisation’s valuable assets, such as information, Intellectual property, hardware, and software. Through the selection and application of appropriate safeguards or controls, information security helps an organisation to meet its business objectives by protecting its physical and financial resources, reputation, legal position, [...]

A to Z of Information Security

 in Business Continuity / Business Skills / Information Security / Leadership / Management  tagged Cyber-security / Data / Information / ISO22301 / ISO27001 by
Coal to Diamonds
Reading Time: 6 minutesRebuilding an underperforming team or department is a huge challenge. The issues you will face from the team could include low morale, rapid staff turnover and high absenteeism levels. The managers involved could also have poor leadership skills, which is likely to hinder not help the situation. If employees are uncertain [...]

Coal to Diamonds – Raising Team Performance

 in Leadership / Management / Teams  tagged Communication / Self-Aware / Success by
A to Z, Product Management, Ansoff Matrix, Market, Product Development 9
Reading Time: 16 minutesProduct management can be a complex and often misunderstood discipline in business. In reality Product Management in its broadest sense, touches every part of an organisation that sells products and services, and everyone has their part to play in the product life-cycle to ensure that customers get the best possible [...]

A to Z of Product Management

 in Business Skills / Leadership / Management / People / Teams  tagged advertising / Business / Forecasting / marketing / Product Management / technology by
Passionate, Ambitious, Reliable, Trustworthy, Straight Talking 6
Reading Time: 18 minutesThe Chartered Institute of Marketing defines Marketing as “The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.” I think I prefer Seth Godin’s description: The art of telling a story to a customer that they want to hear, that lets them persuade themselves to buy something. Inherent [...]

A to Z of Marketing

 in Business Skills / Leadership  tagged advertising / Business / marketing by
Managing Poor Performance 1
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn part 1 of this two-part post I covered the potential impacts of poor performance, the causes and your responsibilities as a manager. In part 2, I’ll be guiding you through a seven-step process to help you deal with a poor performer. Tackling Poor Performance Many businesses do have policies and [...]

Stop the Rot – Managing Poor Performance ~ Part 2

 in Business Skills / Leadership / Management / People / Personal Development / Teams  tagged Feedback / Performance / Performance Management / SMART Goals by
Managing Poor Performance 3
Reading Time: 4 minutesEarlier this year the Roffey Park Institute published their excellent annual report – The Management Agenda. A staggering 46% of UK managers reported that poor performance is not tackled at all well in their organisation, rising to 60% in Public Sector managers. So what do I mean by Poor Performance? Simply put, poor performance is the failure [...]

Stop the Rot – Managing Poor Performance ~ Part 1

 in Business Skills / Leadership / Management / People / Teams  tagged Performance Management / Roffey Park Institute / The Management Agenda by
Culture AND Strategy for Success 1
Reading Time: 6 minutesHow many times have you seen stories in the business press or seen first-hand within your business examples of failures and successes that have been put down to poor strategy OR the wrong culture? One company that suffered the fallout of the strategy/culture collision is Kodak. Kodak was not ambivalent [...]

Strategy AND Culture For Success

 in Leadership / Management / People / Teams  tagged Amazon / Argos / Comet / Habitat / JJB / Kodak by
Pace in your Organisation, Execution
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn part 3 of this 4 part series of blogs I covered the importance of PACE to improve organisational effectiveness and speed and specifically Communication: PACE = Planning + Alignment + Communication + Execution The fourth and final part of The Need for Speed ~ Driving Pace in Your Organisation [...]

The Need for Speed ~ Driving Pace in Your Organisation ...

 in Business Skills / Leadership / Management / People / Teams  tagged Accountability / Decision Making / Delivery / Execution / Goals / Targets by
communication and collaboration 1
Reading Time: 6 minutesIn part 2 of this four part series of blogs, I covered the importance of PACE to improve organisational effectiveness and speed and specifically Alignment: PACE = Planning + Alignment + Communication + Execution The third part of The Need for Speed ~ Driving Pace in Your Organisation will focus on Communication of your [...]

The Need for Speed ~ Driving Pace in Your Organisation ...

 in Leadership / Management / People / Teams  tagged Collaboration / Communication / Culture / Inform / Inspire / Involve / Team by
Alignment 4
Reading Time: 6 minutesIn part 1 of this four part series of blogs I covered the importance of PACE in your organisation to improve effectiveness and speed and specifically Planning: PACE = Planning + Alignment + Communication + Execution The second part of The Need for Speed ~ Driving Pace in Your Organisation will focus on [...]

The Need for Speed ~ Driving Pace in Your Organisation ...

 in Leadership / Management / People / Teams  tagged Alignment / Business / Decision Making / Human Resources / Pace / Performance Management / Reward / Roles & Responsibilities by
Driving PACE in your organisation 3
Reading Time: 5 minutesSucceeding in today’s competitive business environment requires that your organisation be agile enough to respond quickly to internal and external change. To stay ahead, you have to explore new ways to grow your business – for example, by launching a new product or service or targeting a different marketplace. Speed [...]

The Need for Speed ~ Driving Pace in Your Organisation ...

 in Business Skills / Leadership / Management / People / Teams  tagged Amazon / Audi / BHAG / Business / Goals / JFK / Markets / Nike / Pace / Plan; Planning / Stratgey by
Politics without the Politics 4
Reading Time: 7 minutesOffice politics is a fact of company life. Wherever there are two or more people working together, there will be politics and there will be opportunity for conflict. However, destructive office politics can demoralise people in an organisation, hamper productivity, and increase turnover of good staff,. Much as you might [...]

Playing Politics without the Politics

 in Business Skills / Leadership / Management / People  tagged Network / Politically Savvy / Politics by
10
Reading Time: 8 minutesCommunicate or Fail may sound a little extreme. It’s not. Organisations and individuals can succeed or fail on the effectiveness of their communications. Communicate or Fail is a two-part post focussing on communications at an organisational level and on a personal level. Part 1 will focus on organisational communication. Good [...]

Communicate or Fail ~ Part 1

 in Business Skills / Leadership / People / Teams  tagged Communication / Employee Engagement / Full Steam Ahead / Microsoft / salesforce.com / Success / Teamwork / Vision / Yammer by
Destiny or Design - Choose to Succeed 5
Reading Time: 8 minutesLife is not something that just happens to you, something you are powerless to do anything about. You have choices. You can choose to succeed. It is never too late to improve your life and implement the changes that are going to lead you to your ambitions. I don’t profess to [...]

Destiny or Design ~ Choose to Succeed

 in Business Skills / Employability / Leadership / People  tagged Accountability / Business Networking / Communication / Goals / Success by
Teamwork 3
Reading Time: 7 minutesTrue teamwork promotes individual and collective performance. Powerful teams value listening and communicating, sharing work responsibilities, provide support and can even make work more social and enjoyable. Team members are supportive of one another and recognise the interests and achievements of each other. I would go one step further and [...]

Creating Powerful Teams

 in Business Skills / Leadership / Teams  tagged Accountability / commitment / Mission / Objectives / Team / Teamwork / Values / Vision by
Keep People Inspired 2
Reading Time: 4 minutesBusiness is all about measurement. Peter Drucker’s quote – “What gets measured gets managed” is never more true than in today’s tough economic climate. The use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are at the heart of most high performing businesses. However, there is often one important KPI missing,  and that is [...]

THE Key Performance Indicator – Keep People Inspired

 in Business Skills / Leadership / Management / People / Teams  tagged Business / Communication / Development / Inspiration / Inspire / Leader / Motivation / Peter Drucker / Team by
Focus 3
Reading Time: 4 minutesBill Gates achieved monumental success with Microsoft, and attributes “focus” as the key to his success. He stated “maintaining focus is a key to success. You should understand your circle of competence and spend your time and energy there…I’ve learned that only through focus can you do world-class things, no [...]

Focus on Focus

 in Business Skills / Leadership  tagged Bill Gates / Energy / Focus / Goals / Motivation / SMART Goals / SMART Objectives by
Milestones 2
Reading Time: 7 minutesThere are many theories on implemnting change effectively. Many originate with leadership and change management guru, John Kotter. A professor at Harvard Business School and world-renowned change expert, Kotter introduced his eight-step change process in his 1995 book, “Leading Change” with a follow-up work “Our Iceberg is Melting” in 2006. Step [...]

Implementing Change Effectively

 in Leadership / People / Teams  tagged Change Management / Coalition / Communication / Culture / Harvard Business School / Kotter / Urgency / Vision by
Dodo
Reading Time: 4 minutesWith today’s rapidly evolving technology and business markets in their most challenging time for decades, companies rise and fall faster than ever before. Leaders must constantly anticipate the market and their customer needs and that sometimes means you need to make changes – be that processes, products, organisational structure, or even the [...]

Dead as a Dodo…..Why Teams Don’t / Won’t Change

 in Leadership / People / Teams  tagged Business Change / Culture / Team by
The Oracle 2
Reading Time: 3 minutesWelcome to Part 3 of Leadership Styles: The Oracle The late, great and inspirational Steve Jobs made a statement that neatly introduces The Oracle leadership style: ‘Leaders are fascinated by the future, you are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply [...]

The Oracle – Leadership Styles – Part 3

 in Leadership / People  tagged Apple / Communicator / JFK / Leader / Martin Luther King / Oracle / Passion / Steve Jobs / Vision / Visionary / Winston Churchill by
Coaching Team 3
Reading Time: 4 minutesWelcome to Part 2 of Leadership Styles: The Coach Author, educator, and motivational speaker, Dr. William Arthur Ward wrote a phrase that I try to remember. It gives me personal strength to do the right thing, rather than the easy thing – ‘The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. [...]

The Coach ~ Leadership Styles – Part 2

 in Leadership / People / Teams  tagged Career / Coach / Coaching / Communication / Feedback / Leadership / Listening / Relationship / Success / Team by
Word Cloud - Elephant in the Room 3
Reading Time: 7 minutesI see two distinct types of ‘Elephant’ in my line of work…and two ways of tackling them. The Management Elephant and the Leadership Elephant. This blog focusses on the latter. If you missed Part 1 – An Elephant in the Room: Management breakthroughs, and are wondering what on earth I’m [...]

An Elephant in the Room Part 2 – Leadership Breakthroughs

 in Business Skills / Leadership / People / Teams  tagged Accountability / Business / Feedback / Goals / Honesty / Leader / Leadership / Relationship / Results / Success / Team / Vision by
Listening for the unsaid! 1
Reading Time: 4 minutesTo paraphrase Wikipedia – An “Elephant in the room” has become a management saying meaning an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed. It applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss and based on the idea that an elephant in a room would [...]

An Elephant in the Room Part 1 – Management Breakthroughs

 in Leadership / Management / People / Teams  tagged Discrimination / Elephant in the room / Feedback / Leader / Leadership / Performance / Relationship / Sabotage / Success / Team by
Listen to your People
Reading Time: 3 minutesFor a while now I’ve worked with developing my direct team into being more… More focused, more passionate, delivering more and being more commercially and customer focused. And to a large degree we’ve succeeded. I’m really proud of them and what we’ve achieved so far. But to really succeed and make a step change in our [...]

Stop listening …. and give up!

 in Business Skills / Leadership / People / Teams  tagged Feedback / Listening / Passion / Team by
Mark Conway 1
Reading Time: 5 minutesThanks to those of you who took the time to complete the recent Top Leadership Challenges poll. The top 3 challenges as voted for by Think Oak! readers are: 1. Creating a high performance culture How leaders believe things should get done is a key driver of culture. Leaders establish [...]

Top Leadership Challenges – The Results

 in Leadership / Management / People  tagged Culture / Customer Services / Innocent / Leader / Leadership / Public Sector / Raving Fans / Team / Walt Disney by
, Tree, Mark Conway, Oak Consult 3
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn my experience, over performance in business can’t happen consistently without building powerful relationships. Similarly, if you look at underperformance in your team, you will often find that it is the lack of powerful relationships or broken relationships that are the cause. There is no quick fix….sorry. BUT, if you invest time, honesty, passion and [...]

10 ways for building powerful relationships

 in Business Skills / Leadership / People  tagged Business / Coaching / Feedback / Myers Briggs / Relationship / Success by
1
Reading Time: 3 minutesI’m not sure who came up with the phrase – ‘There’s no ‘I’ in team’, and I’m sure it was meant with good intentions – focussing everyone on team work and collective goals and not individual egos. I’ve always used the hugely clever and witty repost whenever anyone has said [...]

There’s no I in Team…but there is an ‘M’ and ...

 in Leadership / Management / People  tagged Goals / Leader / Objectives / Relationship / Roles / Success / Team / Vision by
13
Reading Time: 3 minutesI’ve just got back from a few days away with the family at Center Parcs in Nottinghamshire (UK). We had a great time…and whilst Center Parcs is not everyone’s thing, we love it there – It’s very relaxing and there’s something to do for most people with most budgets. I’ve [...]

Customer Service ~ Basil Fawlty or Walt Disney

 in Leadership / Management  tagged Basil Fawlty / Center Parcs / Customer Services / Raving Fans / Walt Disney by