Random Notes for Corporate Leadership

 It may appear that improving efficiency automatically improves competence. But that may not be the case.  Either for an individual, team, or a system.  While the other way is true; that is,. improving competence improves efficiency.  Let us say there is a task that a team member takes one day to complete. Let us say you can buy a tool that can do it in one hour.  The net result is increased efficiency of both that team and that member in terms of overall productivity.  However, did that increase that team member's competence? That depends on what that team member does with the gained time.   I encourage leadership to focus on competence and treat it as capital reinvestment.  With new technologies emerging every day to solve various problems, it is important to invest in training and continuous learning.   More importantly, it is important to have competence in your metrics for success. Otherwise, it is easy to miss that contributing factor.

We understand that many tasks in today's world require great collaboration.  A complex system will have many components, integrations, and sub-systems managed by many members of a team.   However, that does not mean everyone knows everything or everyone can "get it done" when it comes to a specific item.   As a manager, when assigning tasks, or, as is more common, asking for things to be done, it is essential to establish ownership.  I am sure you have seen emails exchanged with many people in the To field and with single line delegations like, "Can we fix this?" "Can we make sure this does not happen again? "Can we find the root cause?" etc,.  The issue with such shared allocation of responsibility is the bystander effect.  No one seems to know who is taking up the task or at least some part of it.   Furthermore, it gets worse when managers randomly start asking questions to one team member about why "we did not do that" referring to su

I think it is important to be sensitive to how you or your sales team are connecting with your potential clients.   One common issue happens during initial sales meetings, when teams are still warming up, is that the nervousness leads to strange introductions and crazy declarations.  This derails the whole meeting.  It is possible some of the audience may not notice, but it is also possible some do.  This could also lead you to miss out on the nuances and details of certain line of inquiry or miss the context behind the words.  It might help to take few deep breaths before the meeting, recollection your true intentions, your faith in your experience, and determine to be genuinely interested in listening to what your clients want. Nervousness and anxiety are contagious.