Great leadership is the single most important determinant of business success.\u00a0 Without it few businesses can prosper and while it\u2019s not a guarantee that you\u2019ll overcome all the external factors pushing against your business, it is the surest way to give you the best chance.\u00a0 The best thing about it is that it is one of the easiest things to affect, because it\u2019s down to you.<\/p>\n
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The ten things that mark out a great leader are:<\/p>\n
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Having a direction and being clear about it is actually much more important than fussing over getting precisely the right direction or to keep changing your mind as you try to find the perfect solution.<\/p>\n
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It’s sometimes surprising how many people in leadership positions aren’t natural communicators, but whether it comes to you naturally or it’s something you have to work at, you MUST do it – frequently; ideally in small groups in regular short bursts.\u00a0 If you don’t tell people things the gap will be filled with rumour and speculation.\u00a0 Use clear, simple messages, frequently.<\/p>\n
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No matter how bad it gets, never forget the customer.\u00a0 You can control and cut costs all you like (and that is important) but you need to sell stuff.\u00a0 Delighting customers takes very little incremental additional effort so do it. Never let your standards of customer service slip.<\/p>\n
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Every small child learns that life isn’t fair and the situation you find yourself in may also feel like it’s not fair.\u00a0 This doesn’t mean your shouldn’t be.\u00a0 In troubled times people need to know that they’ll be treated fairly, that decisions you make are based on logic and analysis.\u00a0 This doesn’t imply weakness.\u00a0 Be tough, as tough as you need to be, just be fair with it.<\/p>\n
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Deming’s ‘Plan Do Check Act’ cycle was never more appropriate than when times are tough.\u00a0 Think things through, do them, check that they’ve worked and take corrective actions if it hasn’t worked as planned or cement it in place if it has.\u00a0 Find out more about PDCA in the Operations Resources section.<\/p>\n
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It’s not about what you think, what you say and what you do – it’s about what people hear, see and understand.\u00a0 It’s essential that you know if the message is getting across to the audiences that need to hear it.\u00a0 If they don’t understand then you have to do something different.<\/p>\n
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Just as the Plan Do Check Act cycle implies, not everything works out the way you intended and anyway the external world is continually changing.\u00a0 The most important thing is to remain focussed on the objective – if the plan’s not getting you there, change the plan.<\/p>\n
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While it’s true in any environment, that every situation provides an opportunity to learn something, this is especially true in difficult times.\u00a0 It’s likely to be a set of circumstances that most if not all of your managers are unfamiliar with.\u00a0 Don’t be tempted to blame people if they get things wrong; learn, move on and focus on acting as a team.<\/p>\n
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You can’t do it all yourself.\u00a0 No really, you can’t.\u00a0 Break tasks in to manageable pieces and then allocate them fairly amongst the team.\u00a0 When times are tough this will almost certainly require asking people to step out of their comfort zone and to complete tasks outside their functional area.\u00a0 This mains you need to check on action regularly and communicate often.<\/p>\n
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Even if you’ve been through this cycle many times before you don’t have a monopoly on all the good ideas.\u00a0 Listen.\u00a0 Listen to your management team, your employees and your customers and don’t be afraid to take external advice.\u00a0 You still have to make the decisions; by listening to others and adopting new ideas where appropriate you increase the chances that your decisions will be good ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Great leadership is the single most important determinant of business success.\u00a0 Without it few businesses can prosper and while it\u2019s not a guarantee that you\u2019ll overcome all the external factors pushing against your business, it is the surest way to give you the best chance.\u00a0 The best thing about it is that it is one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,6,8,7],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knowledge-snippet","tag-change","tag-change-management","tag-improvement","tag-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/northlightassociates.com\/Blog-page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/northlightassociates.com\/Blog-page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/northlightassociates.com\/Blog-page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northlightassociates.com\/Blog-page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northlightassociates.com\/Blog-page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/northlightassociates.com\/Blog-page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36,"href":"https:\/\/northlightassociates.com\/Blog-page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/northlightassociates.com\/Blog-page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northlightassociates.com\/Blog-page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northlightassociates.com\/Blog-page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}