- 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!
It is through a combination of excellence in strategic thinking and leadership impact that senior managers in Irish operations have continued to win new mandates from their global headquarters. The skills and abilities that generate these management successes are not however relevant only to leaders in multinationals.
In an increasingly globalised economy, every senior executive, regardless of the size or focus of the business in which they operate, needs to cultivate global best-practice capabilities in both strategy and leadership.The Numbers - €122.5bn, €19bn, €7.4bn via 260,000
Let me tell you what they mean. In 2012, according to this excellent IDA infographic, 260,000 staff in multinationals (MNCs) in Ireland created 122.5bn in exports, earned 7.4bn in salaries and their organisations spent 19bn in the Irish economy. Of the 145 new investments in Ireland in 2012, 66 were companies who invested for the first time. To me these numbers tell us two things: 1. The IDA is doing a fantastic job in marketing Ireland abroad, attracting Foreign Direct Investment and, in turn, stimulating our economy 2. MNCs already established on these shores have just as much economic impact as those investing in Ireland for the first time. In fact, according to the figures, around 55% of the 2012 investments came from companies with a presence in Ireland already The country leadership of our multinationals are doing a great job of growing their global mandate. Why? Well, to begin with, local managers in MNCs have decision-making authority when it comes to issues that impact their business in Ireland. In fact, almost 70% of respondents in Merc Partners’ Executive Expectations survey are of the view that they have significant autonomy to take decisions. Take, for example, Yahoo!, the global internet search engine. They have grown from a small team with feet on the ground in Dublin since 2003 to a multi-lingual, multi-cultural workforce who earlier this month announced a further 200 jobs for their Dublin HQ. This investment is undoubtedly a vote of confidence in the Irish leadership group and a comment on the country strategy they are pursuing. There is one cautionary note however. The Merc survey asked what skill gaps are hampering progress at an organisational level; the most frequently cited shortage? Leadership Skills. Over the past year we have been working with international experts to investigate how leaders operating in both foreign and Irish-owned multinationals have grown the global footprint of their business. Our findings have given us a skills blueprint by which all senior managers can enhance their own capabilities and drive growth in their organisations. Our redesigned Senior Executive Programme focuses on the two critical pillars of strategy and leadership. It launches on 14th May and places are at a premium. If you’re interested in discussing whether this programme could drive return on investment for your organisation please contact me at alistair.tosh@imi.ie or +353 (0)1 207 8495 Alistair Tosh is Director of Executive Education at the Irish Management Institute and is a specialist in leadership development. [post_title] => The leadership blueprint: what all senior executives can learn from Ireland's FDI successes [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-leadership-blueprint-what-all-senior-executives-can-learn-from-irelands-fdi-successes-6 [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-05-11 21:47:23 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-05-11 21:47:23 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.imi.ie/news-and-events/?p=1155 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) )Related Articles
Mastering Executive Presence and the Billionaire Booster Seat
Appearance is a significant part on how people perceive you, and thus how they will treat you.
When Mark Zuckerberg entered the US Senate hearing about Facebook’s role in the 2016 election and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, he brought one special item with him.
It wasn’t a lawyer (although he had plenty of those), it wasn’t a coach (although it seemed like he had had plenty of that). No, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world wanted something that wouldn’t make him seem small sitting in his chair – so he brought a cushion.
What Zuckerberg and his team knew was that appearance is a significant part on how people perceive you, and thus how they will treat you. But he wouldn’t have founded and now be running the behemoth that is Facebook if he didn’t know he also had to go beyond this surface level.
In front of some of the most powerful people in the world, never mind just the United States, Zuckerberg demonstrated how he has moved from social awkward teen to a fully-fledged CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He wasn’t perfect – the online memes tell you that – but the truth is that the stock price of Facebook went up significantly on his performance.
Was this because he had a silver bullet fact that destroyed all the arguments against Facebook? No, indeed he admitted to the mistakes they made.
Was it because the Senators were out of their depth in terms of their knowledge of social media? Maybe, but Zuckerberg counteracted most interactions with solid answers, and deflected the probing questions for later answering.
Was it because he brought a cushion? No, but it is part of the story…
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IMI Talking Leadership Podcast: Paula Mullin – Executive Presence
Why do certain leaders have the ability to really engage, inspire and move people to act?
We talk to Paula Mullin, IMI Connect Lounge Speaker and Executive Coach, about Executive Presence and what it can teach leaders in how they should package themselves in order to drive their business, and teams, to success.
Hugh Torpey is the Content Manager at the IMI. This article is based on a Connect Lounge talk given at the IMI by Paula Mullin for IMI Members. For more on IMI Membership, go here.