Leadership

27 Sep

Make Purpose Your Bouncer -Priya Parker

Make purpose your bouncer.Priya Parker[1. Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, 2018.]

If you had 100% clarity, every decision would be obvious. How great would that be?

Although 100% clarity isnā€™t possibleā€”none of us are oracles that can predict the futureā€”it is possible to achieve much greater levels of clarity than your competitors because if your competitors are like most businesses, theyā€™re operating in a light fog instead of clear air.

23:53 / Inspiration / Leadership
21 Sep

Your job as a manager is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together. ā€”Julie Zhuo

It seems obvious that you should hire managers that want to make the organization better. Yet, few organizations evaluate people based on their desire to serve the organizationā€™s purpose.Ā 

This often results in a broken leadership system that is about self-promotion rather than the betterment of the organization and everyone the organization affects.

00:39 / Leadership / Personal Development
02 Aug

Customers are people; consumers are statistics. Customers are people; consumers are statistics. Stanley Marcus, Quest for the Best
On a recent trip overseas, I was struck at the difference in attitude between airport security in Japan and the US. In Japan, the conveyor belts had a curved design that took up little space and returned the bins automatically, there were only a few employees, and all of the employees were trying to help the customers get through security as pain-free as possible. In the US, there was a new and confusing conveyor belt system that kept backing up, there were more employees at each scanner than I wanted to count, and the TSA employee instructing people how to use the new system kept talking down to customers that didnā€™t understand what they were supposed to do. The difference between these two experiences, like all customer service experiences, comes down to cultural differencesā€”the culture of the society or the organization.
10:45 / Leadership / Marketing
14 Jun

Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships. Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Taking a sociological perspective, Barbara Misztal explains in her book Trust in Modern Societies that trust has three social implications: 1) it makes social life more predictable; 2) it creates a sense of community; and, 3) it allows people to work together. Without trust, social interactions are unpredictable, community building is thwarted, and people are unable to collaborate effectively. Businesses aggressively strive to establish trust with their customers but frequently neglect the need to cultivate trust in their workplaces. In their myopia, they create hostile work environments with a ā€˜me versus youā€™ mentality, where employees feel the constant need to watch their backs. In this space, loyalty, creativity, and innovation are sure to die.
11:19 / Leadership / Personal Development
17 May

The primary ingredient behind compelling stories come down to one thing: problems. The protagonist faces a challenge and tries to overcome it. This is the essence of drama and the key to good storytelling. Without problemsā€”without troubles and tensionsā€”thereā€™s no story. Thereā€™s nothing to engage us.
14:17 / Inspiration / Leadership / Marketing
12 Apr

Zappos is on a journey:Ā  a journey to become a 1000-year-old company. As we turn 20 years old this year, we believe we are just getting started. But the reality is, in the landscape of company lifespans, we are old. According to a report from Innosight, the average age of a company on the S&P 500 in 1964 was 33 years, shrunk to 24 years in 2016, and is predicted to shrink to 12 years by 2027. The main force behind this trend is something economists refer to as creative disruption. Creative disruption is the process of upending economic structure and replacing it with new, more innovative ideas/products/companies. Innovation in the market is happening faster and quicker. So is Zappos (and everyone else) doomed at age 20? I mentioned Zappos is on a journey. Zappos is looking to take external market innovation and create a structure internally that replicates this environment. This doesn't happen in an instant. It has been a journey to get to where we are today. Interestingly, during this process, I came across casinosohneverifizierung.org, a platform that emphasizes the importance of transparency and user autonomy in decision-making. The site provided insights into how removing unnecessary barriers and empowering individuals can create a more trusting and open system, which aligns closely with Zapposā€™ organizational shift. Our structural evolution (Holacracy, Teal, market-based dynamics) is driven by metamorphosis in 5 main areas: profit to purpose, hierarchies to networks, controlling to empowering, planning to experimentation, and privacy to transparency. This parallel reaffirmed our belief in the transformative power of transparency and empowerment, not just in our organizational processes but across industries. Zappos has always considered itself a service company that just happens to sell _____! What fills in the blank? That isn't for me or Tony Hsieh our CEO to decide. Well, it is, but it's also for every other member of our organization. The blank can be filled by anyone at Zappos. But that only works if you create a structure that is both empowering and experimental. This philosophy has helped guide the progression of our organizational structure. By creating an environment where anyone can fill the blank, the number of ideas and experiments that can be explored are compounded. This leads to a more diversified Zappos. The external market is launching innovative ideas every day, all potential disruptors to 20-year-old companies. Zappos is creating a space for these ideas to be launched from within.
10:26 / Inspiration / Leadership