Message #620
"Without everyone embracing what we want to do, we haven't got a prayer."
Jack Welch
To be a good leader, you need Big Ideas. You need one to get your leadership started, and then you need more of them to keep the momentum going.
What is your Big Idea right now?
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The Big Idea is your strategy for growing and improving your business. It's your particular take on how to do something faster/quicker/smarter/cheaper/better.
Is your Big Idea clear to you? Or are you a little befuddled about it? If you don't quite know what your Big Idea is, how do you expect your followers to understand it?
If you want to lead -- to become wealthy and wise -- you need an imagined treasure. You need to see its richness in your mind and communicate that richness to others. You've got to do that and also come up with a treasure map. Not necessarily a detailed map, but a plan that points your people in the right direction.
Your Big Idea must be desirable. It must offer benefits to you, your customers, and your employees. It must also be appropriate. It must reflect your company's capabilities, as well as its particular strengths and weaknesses -- and the plan to achieve it should take advantage of your product's Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
If your Big Idea is good and your map to make it happen is sensible, you will succeed.
The market will ultimately determine if your Big Idea works, but you should test it first -- before you spend a lot of time and money on it -- by explaining it to a small group of trusted advisers.
Assemble two or three colleagues with significant and relevant experience. (You may know such people already. Or you may have to go out and look for them.) Bring them together in person or by phone. Explain your Big Idea as succinctly as possible. Then sit back and listen to them. Don't object to their comments or defend your perspective. Take notes.
Then think about it for a few days. Chances are you will make some significant and important revisions to your Big Idea based on what these advisers had to say. If you do, send personal notes to all of them thanking them for their help and explaining (in general terms) how you plan to modify your plan. Tell them you'll let them know if it works.
Next step is explaining your New and Revised Big Idea to your key employees. Ask for their comments and note what they say. Take another few days to think about it. Then make whatever changes are still needed and thank them for their input.
Now you are ready to put your Big Idea into action. You will do so with a great deal of confidence and energy because of all the extra refining you've done.
(And next time someone asks you what your Big Idea is, you'll have a ready and strong answer.)
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Whether it's your Big Idea or someone else's, there are five very simple questions you can ask that will help you quickly determine its strengths and weaknesses:
1. Whom does it benefit?
2. How great are the benefits?
3. Does it take advantage of the company's market advantage?
4. Will the benefits outweigh the costs?
5. What do we do if it doesn't work?
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It's an endless, thankless, and grueling job to bring costs down. Most executives would rather focus their time and energy on making revenues rise. But anyone who has spent any serious amount of time trying to run a business understands that trimming costs is just as important a task as anything else in achieving profits.
When you want to cut out some nebulous expense, you will often discover that your top people are opposing you. Sometimes, they will be right. Other times, they will simply be resisting change out of laziness.
If you're sure you are right and you can't get them to listen to reason, tell them to pay for the unwanted expenditure out of their own profits. This will convince them lickety-split.
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* Spiders are not insects. Like scorpions and ticks, they are classified as arachnids. Insects have six legs and three body sections; arachnids have eight legs and two body sections.
* There are more than 30,000 varieties of spiders. All of them produce silk but not all spin webs.
* The silk thread a spider produces is stronger than a piece of steel the same size.
* All spiders are meat-eating predators. Though most eat insects, some also eat small animals like birds and mice. They inject their prey with a venom that makes it soft and mushy -- and then they suck it up.
* Spiders have been on Earth for about 400 million years. Fossilized spiders preserved in amber look very similar to those that we have today.
* A spider can jump 40 times the length of its body.
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Something that is "picayune" (pik-uh-YOON) is of very little value or importance.
MMF
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2002
* When it comes to leadership -- real leadership -- reject the currently popular "soft" skills
* The problem with the oft-promoted idea of teamwork in the office
* Living Rich: Fake It Till You Make It -- What can you tell about a red wine by the way it looks in the glass?
* Word to the Wise: Furtive
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