Category: Ideas

Categories
BLG Leadership Insights Ideas Leadership On the Edge Proactive Leaders Proactive Stories

You Are A Great Leader (in your own mind)

As a leader/boss it’s not easy finding out what others really think of you.  Your options run the gamut from the semi-unethical (eavesdropping) to the completely and utterly illegal (wiretapping).  In order to stay relevant within your own organization you must be connected with everyone from top to bottom.  We here at the Bacharach Blog can’t sneak into your office and do your dirty work for you but what we can do is give you some hints as to what those you lead really think about you.

Recently Dave Logan, the best-selling author of Tribal Leadership, put out a list of the 7 Things We All Wish We Could Tell the Boss. I am not sure he made the list for leaders, but it actually serves that purpose quite well.  Logan covers everything from “You’re nothing like Lincoln, Churchill or Clinton” which hits on the idea that you might only be a great leader in your own mind to the more self explanatory “Great leaders listen and you don’t”.  So instead of wasting thousands of dollars on pesky legal fees defending yourself against an invasion of privacy lawsuit, check out Dave Logan’s 7 Things We All Wish We Could Tell the Boss.

Oh and just to cover our bases our lawyers really want me to reiterate DO NOT ILLEGALLY WIRETAP YOUR EMPLOYEES.

Categories
BLG Leadership Insights Ideas Leadership On the Edge Managerial Competence Proactive Leaders Proactive Stories Social Media

How To Avoid The “Worst” List

As a businessperson there are some lists you want to be on. Everything from the famed  Fortune 500 all the way to the not-so-famed 100 Best Small Business Podcast of 2010. Just as long as “Best” or “Favorite” ends up in the title, you’re usually good to go. On the flip side there are some lists in the business world you really want to avoid. Perfect example? Business Insider’s The 18 Worst Companies In America.  Business Insider’s list is based on the American Customer Satisfaction Index which reports scores on a 0-100 scale at the national level.

As a leader why should you care about some dime-a-dozen Top 10 list? Everyone in the biz knows that lists like these can be challenged for any number of reasons (methodology, sample size, bias etc.) but guess what: The average consumer who sees it on Yahoo does care. They don’t check into the methodology, they just see that you only got 60 out of 100 for customer satisfaction. With so many different companies offering the same services for roughly the same price, it is imperative that you as leader make sure to never give the consumer even the slightest opportunity to not choose you.  The old Hollywood axiom that “any press is good press” does not apply here.

The idea of positive PR is more important than ever. Negative information shoots seemingly at the speed of light across the world via our new/old friend the internet. The best way to avoid a negative “meme-a-lanche” is to be proactive. Get ahead of the problem by focusing on customer service, community relations and most importantly, employee engagement. If you know what your employees are feeling, thinking and doing then you can try to pinpoint problems before they become company wide. Customers don’t just deal with computers and web pages, they deal with people, and it’s those people, your employees; that make those experiences either good or bad.

Check out the list and see for yourself how your opinions of somefamous company’s might be changed, shifted or even questioned for the very first time. Because no matter what you thought before seeing the list, there is now a seed of doubt planted in your mind that could have been avoided with a little proactive leadership. Oh and it doesn’t hurt to hire a really good PR firm.

Categories
BLG Leadership Insights Ideas Leadership On the Edge Proactive Leaders

10 Things the HR Department Won’t Tell You

Things are tough all over. With unemployment hanging around 9.6%, you need every advantage you can get to keep the job you have or to get a new one.  In a recent issue of Woman’s Day magazine Kimberly Fusaro lays out the 10 Things the HR Department Won’t Tell You . The list includes things like how background checks have become more stringent for new job applicants all the way to something as simple as your personal hygiene (i.e. if you want to get and keep the  job, don’t stink up the room).

Leaders today demand so much out of their workers, in many cases they demand that employees do 2,3 or even 4 jobs at the same time. So leaders need to make sure those they are hiring can handle the pressure and get the job done. Some of the items on this list aren’t very PC and in fact a couple of them seem downright illegal. But no matter where they fall on the morality/legality scale, they appear to be facts of life, and most of us in the business world need to be aware of them in order to stay head of the game.

I don’t work in HR, I don’t know a lot of people who do. If you do work in the wonderful world of HR, drop us a line and let us know if these rules deserve a key to the executive washroom or if they should get a pink slip.

Categories
BLG Leadership Insights Ideas

Avoiding Leadership Mistakes

Leading a company is hard enough, but starting one can be near impossible. Making mistakes both big and small are seemingly built into the process. Check out this article from The Wall Street Journal’s Rosalind Resnick about the Top 10 Mistakes Start-Up Entrepreneurs Make and maybe, just maybe, you can make your start-up experience a little bit smoother.

Picture Credit: Reuben Whitehouse