Leading The Team – With Energy

 Born or made, leaders stand out from the crowd.

Actually, leaders are ordinary people. First and foremost, a leader’s job is to lead a team, and that means being part of the team – someone who can sit down at the tea table and have a chat just as well as the rest of us.

Leaders have additional attributes though – maybe flamboyant, possibly unassuming. But what every leader needs is drive and plenty of positive energy.

Many leaders are extroverts who are highly motivated and thrive on work and the desire to keep progressing. Others though may be quietly confident, yet decisive and determined. Either way, they are energetic, they live and breathe the business vision, and encourage others to do the same.

Challenges are Opportunities

Successful leaders also have a highly positive attitude to business. They know that businesses face challenges every day. The key is to view those challenges as opportunities to learn and grow, rather than as yet another ordeal to wade through.

Being in business is about facing challenges and the positive leader will thrive on finding a way around them.

Jack Welch knows about challenges. He spent 40 years at General Electric and led the company to success time and time again as CEO. In his book Winning, he shares very candidly what he’s learnt about leadership over the years.

 

Candidly Speaking

Candour, in fact, is one of the most important qualities of any leader, he says. It’s about being open and honest with your team about what you think and what’s happening, and encouraging others to do the same. If it’s happening from the top, candour will permeate the entire business and keep ideas bubbling.

“Lack of candour,” on the other hand “blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer,” 1 he says.

Welch also looks for other attributes in leaders including:

§  Edge – the courage to make tough decisions

§  Execution – the ability to get the job done

§  Passion – about work and life generally

§  Authenticity – being true to yourself, real

	1 Winning, by Jack Welch, Harper Collins Publishers, 2005.

 

 www.astillhawke.co.nz

Take Stock with Annual Legal Check-Up

Ignorance is no excuse when it comes to breaching the law. But keeping up with law changes and how they affect your business can be onerous.

To keep abreast of recent legislation and to make sure you stay on track, it’s a good idea to plan an annual legal check-up with your solicitor.

Review Your Business Operations

Regular check-ups give you the opportunity to review all aspects of your business operations. Numerous laws influence your business and the implications of recent court cases and changes in the law may require you to make adjustments in some areas.

Don’t get caught out through your own lack of awareness. Legislation is always evolving – employment law, for example, has seen big changes in New Zealand recently – and the world of commerce is dynamic, especially as telecommunications technology and the global village we now live in effect faster and better ways of doing things.

Internet businesses, for instance, and those offering trading on-line must keep track of laws relating to e-commerce. Copyright laws also become extremely important here.

All business owners need to be fully conversant with commerce laws, including restrictive trade practices, fair trading and consumer protection.

Staff and the Workplace

If you employ staff, changes to employment law will directly affect you, including amendments to the Holidays Act  and the introduction of the KiwiSaver scheme under the KiwiSaver Act 2006. Health and Safety legislation, which was amended in 2002, is hugely important for all employers.

Businesses involved in parallel importing need to be up-to-date on copyright laws, specifically the amendments to the Copyright Act in 1998 and 2003 relating to the parallel importing of copyright goods.

Environmental and resource management law will be extremely important to other businesses.

These are just some of the laws which could affect your business. Most companies will be influenced by many more. Stay on track with legal issues by keeping in regular touch with your solicitor. 

www.astillhawke.co.nz

Becoming Customer Driven

A really practical read on retaining customers in your business is Ian Brooks’ 10 Steps to Becoming Customer Driven. Brooks talks about customer relationship management (CRM) as “not just a marketing initiative or a piece of business software, it is a powerful business strategy. CRM is the way you run your business.”[1]

He says businesses serious about becoming customer driven need to build their entire business strategy towards totally caring for the customer, and changing the behaviours by which the team and therefore the business will carry out this strategy.

Everyone in the organisation, from the CEO to the front-office people to the workers in the storeroom, needs to be customer driven.

Go out of your way to solve the problem

Brooks asks how important is it to retain your customer? Obviously it’s very important. Therefore you need to go out of your way to solve the customer’s problem.

Why then do surveys reveal such shocking customer service statistics in this country, and why, as consumers ourselves, we often feel fobbed off by companies that show lack of compassion, understanding or care?

You need to care very much if your customer has a problem because if you don’t care, they’ll go somewhere else that will. Walk in the customer’s shoes for a change – if they have a problem, it becomes your problem to fix. Help solve the problem, and the customer and you will walk away happy. Strive always for a win-win situation.

A customer-driven organisation involves putting the right systems in place and the right people in place and managing your relationships with customers really well. 

www.astillhawke.co.nz