Source: www.abcgreatpix.com
Emma Birchall is a keynote speaker at the 
A visit to The Climbing Wall in Sandyford, a 3 week old fledgling business already packed with happy customers on a freezing January night made me stop to think. What gets customers in this case to a business with no marketing or advertising budget? What separates success and disaster for a young business in the early scary days?
“The wall” is an indoor state of the art climbing wall in Sandyford industrial estate. So, your business is very different, but the same answers apply and will help you succeed early.
- Passionate attention to all customers, including the ones future customers. I dragged along a friend who doesn’t climb, and had no intention of doing so. She instantly felt welcome, even though climbing up the wall until then was something she only does at business meetings. Your customers may come in many forms and will have different needs. See the world from their perspective – are they confused? Scared? Stressed? Finding it hard to park? At the Wall you feel safe and at ease. And yes, of course, she climbed. And is now hooked.
- Create a happy place where staff are as engaged as you are in looking after customers with care. Your staff must feel like a really core part of your baby business. Get them on board and make sure to find ways of harnessing all their bright ideas about how to make your project a success
- Know your customers intimately before you start. Alan and Brian really understand their market, and are well networked. They already understood exactly what climbers want and immediately ran simple high impact events that have built up loyalty, traffic to The Wall and loads of Word of Mouth publicity, always the most powerful form of marketing. This also helps you create a sense of community and shared values among your customer base, so your customers stay longer and believe in what you do. Happy customers come back.
- Be clever about how to position and communicate what you offer: .The Wall makes canny use of social media and press coverage to get the story out in a more targeted and dynamic way than any ad ever will. Network, but be savvy about how you use that precious network.
- Know your competition equally intimately, know when to compete (and how) and when to collaborate. Sometimes collaboration is the right strategy – work together and instead of splitting a new small market you can grow it together, creating greater awareness by acting as a group and attracting more people to a new service or product.
- Good team - make sure all the practical stuff is under control. The top team here includes a marketing whizz and an employment law specialist. They have team skills to make sure the business is set up on a sound financial footing, property and planning skills and expertise to make sure design and operations are top class.
- Finally – do something you love. The chances are you will be very good at it!
IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business - what would they be?
NM: Not everyone will, but anyone can.
IMI: What does this mean?
NM: Most organizations think of work in boxes. As in engineering does this and marketing does that. Or, even more personally as Tom is responsible for delivering X and Susan is responsible for Y. This is to put work into neat little boxes to create some type of measurability. It’s a relic of the industrial era when the way to profitability and market performance was on efficiency and productivity. But if you look around your workplace, you’ll notice the most obvious truth. Most things are not failing because so and so didn’t do such and such. It’s because of a gap. A gap between organizational silos. A gap between understanding. A gap between the organizational boxes. In order to close the box, you need to organize not around boxes but around purpose. Organize not by “who should be here” but who wants to be here. And while not everybody will rise up to solve the situation, create new products, etc … what you’ll discover is an amazing reserve of talent that exists. Things you didn’t know were possible will happen. Because anybody can.
IMI: Where should we look for further information?
NM: Visit my website nilofermerchant.com
Nilofer Merchant is a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference taking place on Thursday 9 October. If you are interested in attending click here to register.
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Sydney Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Leadership at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where he teaches courses on Leadership and Strategy. He is also the Faculty Director of the flagship Tuck Executive Program, and has experience working with executives at a number of other prestigious universities around the world. His latest
bestselling book is SUPERBOSSES: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent. He will be a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference on 29th September 2016.
IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business – what would they be?
SF: Great leaders create other great leaders.
IMI: What does this mean? SF: Imagine a world where the work you did really mattered. Where the person who you call your boss changed your life by helping you accomplish more than you ever thought possible. Where your own opportunities would multiply in ways you may have been afraid to even dream of. That’s the world of “superbosses”, leaders with an incredible track record of generating world-class talent time and again. By systematically studying business legends and pop culture icons like Lorne Michaels, Ralph Lauren, George Lucas, Larry Ellison, Miles Davis, Charlie Mayfield, and Alice Waters, what superbosses actually do comes into focus. And anyone can do these same things. Superbosses identify, motivate, coach and leverage others in remarkably consistent, yet highly unconventional and unmistakably powerful ways. Superbosses aren’t like most bosses; they follow a playbook all their own. They are unusually intense and passionate — eating, sleeping, and breathing their businesses and inspiring others to do the same. They look fearlessly in unusual places for talent and interview them in colorful ways. They create impossibly high work standards that push protégées to their limits. They partake in an almost inexplicable form of mentoring, one that occurs spontaneously and with no clear rules. They lavish responsibility on inexperienced protégées, taking risks that seem scary and foolish to outsiders. When the time is right superbosses may even encourage star talent to leave so they can then become part of a strategic network of acolytes in the industry. IMI: Where should we look for further information? SF: I put together a list of interesting articles related to this subject: Superbosses aren't afraid to delegate their biggest decisions The rise of the superbosses George Lucas: Management Guru? The Power of Feeling Unthreatened Hire People and Get Out of the Way Sydney Finkelstein is a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference taking place on Thursday 29th of September. To register for this event, please click here. [post_title] => "Great leaders create other great leaders" Six Word Wisdom from Sydney Finkelstein [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => great-leaders-create-great-leaders-six-word-wisdom-sydney-finkelstein [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-05-11 19:54:28 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-05-11 19:54:28 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.imi.ie/?p=16058 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) )
Kevin Empey
Related Articles
Leadership Essentials for the Changing World of Work
It is not an easy place to be a leader at any level today. In an age of increased pace, expanding possibilities and disruptive competition, leaders are faced with rising expectations from all fronts – from boards, executives and shareholders as well as from staff, business partners and customers.
wing down any time soon. So, how do we deal with this is as leaders?.
It is not an easy place to be a leader at any level today. In an age of increased pace, expanding possibilities and disruptive competition, leaders are faced with rising expectations from all fronts – from boards, executives and shareholders as well as from staff, business partners and customers.
On top of working flat out to run and grow the current business, we are told we need to transform and prepare our organizations for emerging technologies, rapid change and the so-called Future of Work. And all this doesn’t look like slowing down any time soon. So, how do we deal with this is as leaders?
(Picture source)
Slowing down to move fast
The temptation is to speed up ourselves, trying to keep up with all the moving parts and control them. For most that will be a sure-bet way for more stress and burnout; features of modern working life that are becoming far too common as it is.
Surely it would be preferable to be able to thrive and adapt to this changing world of work rather than just cope and lurch from one ‘always-on’ weekend to another? And in doing so, wouldn’t this also make life better not just for ourselves and our teams but also for others who live with us outside work?
One place to start is to acknowledge that this is an issue and that your own leadership model that has served you well so far may need an upgrade for what lies ahead. As Marshall Goldsmith wrote in his book of the same title, “What got you here, won’t get you there”.
1. Be Yourself, With Skill
There is a temptation to think that there is some perfect leadership style or persona out there and that you need to somehow change your DNA that has formed the person and leader that you are today. Trying to copy others wholesale is not sustainable and people will see through it, adding to your complications.
Being self-aware of your own leadership strengths and skills as well as being open and mindful of your blind-spots and emotional triggers is a necessary place to start. It is much easier to manage stressful situations when you are acting in a deliberate way as your self-aware self.
2. You don’t need to have all the answers
You won’t have all the answers with the pace things are moving so let’s get that monkey off our back and dispel the illusion that we do or that we need to pretend we do. We are in the age of the authentic leader and this should help somewhat in ending the pretence of perfection and in having all the answers for everyone demanding them of us.
Showing vulnerability and openness is an essential building block of trust and will invite others in to share the load. Followers will respect rather than doubt you and, most importantly, they will follow your example.
This will create a safe environment where problems as well as innovations and opportunities will be aired freely without the fear of ridicule or blame. Change will be something that is embraced rather than avoided.
3. Show the way and let them get on with it
Being vulnerable does not mean being weak or un-clear. The adaptive leader sets clear ground rules and parameters, clarifies and explains the purpose and direction but then lets their teams get on with it.
In a supportive environment of trust and clear goals, employee will respond and thrive. You need other leaders and employees around you that will seek and accept autonomy and accountability because you simply don’t have the time to be everywhere and on everyone’s case.
With some space and process provided for regular review and open, safe feedback, the team can course correct and hold each other to account, often without you in the room. This agile and accountable team working culture will reduce the time you spend on supervision considerably allowing you to focus on other things.
4. Identify your own ‘best boss’ habits
What are the simple human behaviours and habits that made your best boss memorable and motivating to you ? What would your team say to the same question?
Identify these trade mark habits that come naturally to you and use them often. Encourage other leaders working for you to do the same and you will be creating leaders to help you deliver your goals as well as creating the working culture you want to see.
5. Show appreciation and provide feedback
To re-enforce an agile, accountable and trusting working culture, feedback is essential. There is no time for problems to fester and develop. Celebrate success and shift the balance to re-enforce the behaviours you want to see rather than over-dwelling on what you don’t want to see. People will soon figure out what is the right way of doing things under your watch.
Generate a climate of enablement and empowerment rather than control and compliance – this shift alone will unleash talent, performance and engagement in your teams.
These ‘Future of Work’ nuances required for leadership today, combined with what we all know from our own experience about the age-old and enduring qualities that simply make up what it is to be a “good boss”, will help leaders thrive in the new landscape and will also allow others in their care to do the same.
Kevin Empey is Programme Director of the IMI Senior Executive Programme and also Managing Director of WorkMatters Consulting. He has been named as a future of work influencer by Silicon Republic.
