Today 8000 people will die of aids. Today 11000 people will become infected with aids (mainly women and children). 115,000,000 people will die by 2015 (just 7 years away)
Aids is our generations leprosy www.one.org
Month: September 2006 (Page 1 of 3)
I'm serious. I went to the Global Leadership Summit and Andy Stanley said that he learnt to cheat the church and that we should learn to do the same. Anyway, as is the very nature of sort of day, we were subjected to a torrent of great leadership material. The challenge for me is now to incorporate my key lessons, into what I am being as a leader.
Bill Hybels – Life Cycle of a Leader
Quote
"4 Statement grid for key leaders. They must have
– Intelligence
– Be Energetic
– Have Relational IQ
– Have a win or die spirit""If we lead well, people live!"
Lesson
The life cycle of me as a leader (our influence) should go up and up to my dieing day.
Andy Stanley – Focused Leadership
What he meant by cheat the church was that we shouldn't cheat our family of our time, rather we should cheat the church of our time. It wasn't a money thing.
Quote
We spend more time in our organizations because we love progress and because we are afraid. If I don't it wont … is an example of being afraid.Lesson
I need to play to my strengths and delegate my weakness, and the less I do the more I can accomplish.
Jim Collins – When business thinking fails the church
Quote
Building something great is not a function of your circumstance; it is a function of your choices and discipline.Lesson
And this is reflective of my thinking this week, I need to ensure I continually develop to become a great leader and learn from other leaders.
Bono – An exclusive interview www.one.org
Quote
I have always thought smack in the middle of a contradiction is a great place to be.Stop asking God to bless what you are doing. Find out what God is doing because it is already blessed.
Lesson
I am compelled to be generous with my resources. How can I lead others to do the same?
- The manager administers; the leader innovates.
- The manager maintains; the leader develops.
- The manager accepts reality; the leader investigates it.
- The manager focuses on systems and structures; the leader focuses on people.
- The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
- The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
- The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
- The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader has his or her eye on the horizon.
- The manager imitates; the leader originates.
- The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
- The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.
I believe every business needs great leaders and great managers! Trying to segregate the functions of a leader from that of a manager is very problematic. Most people can have some qualities of leadership in one area, but not in others. Does that make them a leader or not?
I guess the key question as always is; what am I doing to become a better leader?
Agree, disagree, have a question? – Post a comment now.
Vision, Mission, and Strategy. Typing these three terms independently in to google returns over 1.5 billion hits. Even as a group of words over 20 million hits are listed. Little surprise that the observations of what these words represent is as varied as opinions on life itself.
Most experts say you must have Vision and Mission statements. If your people don't know where they are heading they will get lost. It's difficult to disagree, unless you have read vision and mission statements for companies and then talked to the people on the ground to see what really happens.
So I thought, just to add to the confusion, I would give my inference on Vision and Mission, to which I am sure many people will disagree.
FIRSTLY – Whatever you do it must be relevant!
Vision – Is timeless, it is what you want to be, and what you are. For agóge it drives what we want to be in 10, 50, 100 years time. "We will live people matter…" is a philosophy rather than a goal.
Mission – Is timebound and specific. It is what you want to do and achieve now. Mission is a fighting term in my mind, this is where we are taking the battle. It is a broad goal that changes as the business grows and adapts.
Strategy – Is the translation of the Mission into specific actions and goals. It is the determining of what you will do when and how to fulfill your Mission and Vision.
So why do I put all this down in this post? Well because this week is a focus week for me, a week in which I base myself away from the office to read, think, reflect and review how things are going. Not just work, but people, and me. As I have engaged the brain this week, I am really happy with our Vision and Values, but I think our Mission and Strategy is very much lacking.
Is the agóge mission clear and the strategy compelling? I think not.
“The story is told of the battle of the Midianites near Mt. Gilboa. Gideon, during his personal reconnaissance of the enemy, noticed that their sentries were nervous.
To create panic in the enemy lines, Gideon planned a night attack with a relatively small force. Each of his 300 men was issued a trumpet, a pitcher, and a torch. Convinced that the Lord was on his side, he gave the battle order. The men lit the torches, hid them in the pitchers, slung their trumpets, grasped their swords, and quietly went to predetermined positions.
When the Midianites changed their watch at midnight, Gideon gave his signal. His men blew their trumpets and waved their torches. In the resulting panic in the Midianite camp, tribe fought tribe while Gideon and his Israelites stood and watched. And thus the battle was won by the strategy of an observant commander who understood how to confuse the opponent.”
With some stretch here are some thoughts that could apply to business competition.
- Personal reconnaissance gives the leader a feel for the right plan of attack, too often leaders don’t have a clue what is happening in the market place.
- Gideon did not attack a larger army head on, rather maneuvered to their weakness.
- He was clear on the actions required of his men. They all worked as a team.
Above all it comes down to using the right maneuver for the situation. He was mobile, flexible and superior at the critical point of attack.
Quote of “Sun Tzu – Strategies for Marketing”
- The manager administers; the leader innovates.
- The manager maintains; the leader develops.
- The manager accepts reality; the leader investigates it.
- The manager focuses on systems and structures; the leader focuses on people.
- The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
- The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
- The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
- The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader has his or her eye on the horizon.
- The manager imitates; the leader originates.
- The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
- The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.
I believe every business needs great leaders and great managers!
Trying to segregate the functions of a leader from that of a manager is very problematic. Most people can have some qualities of leadership in one area, but not in others. Does that make them a leader or not?
I guess the key question as always is …
What am we doing to become a better leaders?
It has been said 'The best way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start with a huge one'. I am sure that Mike Pero might have personally learnt this lesson after sinking $10 million into Origin Pacific. The full-blown disintegration of Origin Pacific last week, confirmed New Zealand’s domestic aviation market has become fully mature.
No one, other than a huge multi-national, has the resources to compete with Air NZ. They, along with Qantas who choose not to do regional, are the Super Powers [see previous post] in the domestic market and there is simply no room for ‘secondary [ugly] powers’, like Origin. In the ‘business guerrillas’ camp we have small niche operators like Air2there, Sunair and Sounds Air. Each has very niche markets that Air NZ simply doesn’t care about or is too small to enter.
BIG question – Can you become BIG without directly competing with the Super Powers?
Short answer – No!; but the road of business is littered with companies that tried.
There is a place for specialists with a niche market, but ultimately they have to be prepared to stay as “guerillas”.
If you are not happy being a guerilla, then sooner or later you are going end up in the middle ground. To stay there and grow to be BIG, you will have to take it to the Super Powers. Once you reach the never never land of the Secondary Powers, you now must compete in price, service and features. If you can’t compete in that position for a prolonged period of time and if you can’t continue to grow month on month, you are near stuffed!
Now here’s the challenge if you want to be big, somehow you need to grow and yet maintain the nature of guerilla warfare. Making very strategic decisions about the markets, even specific customers you want, the service you will offer and the prices you will charge. If you can continually move the battle front, the Super Powers will struggle to fully understand what you are up to. They will respond with a defense that is already irrelevant as you have move to the next battle field and target.
In my opinion Origin was doomed to failure before their first flight left the ground. They tried to behave and act like super powers, then align themselves with super powers like Qantas, rather than establishing profitable niche markets and attacking and growing through guerrilla warfare.
Agree, disagree, have a question? – Post a comment now.
It has been said many times that the best defence is a good offence, and interestingly enough I think that this may well answer a comment to my last post.
So how does a company that sits in the small (guerrillas) section move from there to the ultimate goal of being 'big' without passing through the medium size? …
Firstly, I think that it is important that the market that you are small or ugly in, is not fully matured. If it is you need to create or enter a new market. Secondly you must continue to grow, and by grow I mean primarily organic and then acquired. The most effective way and decisive way to grow big is to seize, maintain and exploit the initiative in a market that is either not fully matured or is a speciality.
A current example in the NZ news at the moment is Pumpkin Patch's result. They started as a small business and have grown to be a big business by NZ standards. They now have branches in Aust, UK and have launched into the US. Their strategy is to continually grow and add stores (similar in principal it seems to Michael Hill). They are continually on the offensive pausing only when entering new countries to get the delivery and marketing right. Once they nail that they rapidly grow again.
So to answer specific questions drawn from the comment …
- Medium sized – You need to pass through ugly to get to big, but I think you can actually get to big in one market and then realise you are small in another and expand again.
- Too long – Too long is measured by growth. If you don’t have growth into new markets and products and regions you will become irrelevant. This, in my opinion needs to happen at least every 6 months, if not 3 months.
- Risk – yip. Once you get to a crtical mass that Big brings the risk reduces significantly
- Acquisition – I think organic when small primarily with the aid of acquired.
By being on the offensive causes the competitors to react, by being defensive it causes you to stop growing. If that happens you are destined to be ugly (the never never land) or a guerrilla.
Some interesting lessons in this line of thinking for me and my role over the last couple of days.
BOOM! The door flew open, they burst into the house and within seconds seemed to occupy every space. The noise told of chaos and energy blended into one. Immediately the tranquillity was replaced with a racket that would rival a sonic boom over Canterbury. Then I realised they were searching for me, I knew I didn't have long till they found me. After an extended period of silence I knew my time was up. My family just got home.
Was that 1 1/2 hours I ask myself? Where did that time go? I was planning to make it productive time, nailing a few things before my week began but instead I had surfed the net randomly and enjoyed for the most part, the silence. On this occasion my thoughts were not clearer as I lacked the disciplined thought that should accompany silence to make it productive. It was relaxing nonetheless.
I am reminded that I function better when I have times of silence and solitude. I seem to live with audio cluttering much of my life through radios, tv, mp3 and people. I love music and audio and conversation but there are times when I need to mute them and have space to focus my thoughts.
When I have times of quiet I usually manage to assimilate my small thoughts and ideas that I continually have and make them into a coherent and better thought-out plan. Without times of silence, solitude and disciplined thought, I don't see the big picture, the related priorities and I become driven by the small things. Yesterday during my time of silence I just relaxed. Today, as I head to Wellington, I will make some thinking time happen and see what happens…
The expectation of change is gone, the heavy machinery that once littered the road side has moved on, the surprise changes in road layout are no longer. Finally after spending enough money to feed a small third world nation for a year, and after 10 years we have a 4 lane road from Long Swamp (just north of Huntly) connecting to the 4 lanes at Mercer, then snaking all the way into Auckland and beyond.
An element of excitement and anticipation made the drive interesting and revealing the first few of times I trundled up to the city of sails and homeward on the new road. Now that excitement is replaced by familiarity, the unknown layout and speed limits changes are replaced with the undemanding and effortless click of cruise control. For years I was excited by the prospect of speed and ease and time-saving which are all rewards that the new road has brought, yet now it feels like something is lacking. It feels like Auckland just grew, stretched its arm deeper into the Waikato and took the liveliness out of the roads, replacing it with repetitiveness and simplicity.
I miss the ever shifting landscape that construction brings and how it often provided a welcome divergence in my thinking to questions and opinions about their efforts and floundering.
The new road is fantastic but without the interest and excitement that continual change brings, it is now is just one more piece of road.
Even when driving it would seem I need change, adore change and miss change.