Success Advice
How to Become a Proven Wartime Leader
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For businesses and society, these crosswinds have created a war on everything: on traditional leadership, on the role of companies, how we live, and how we plan for the future. Success in these turbulent times calls for wartime leadership.
In 2020, it’s business as usual, and leaders will be required to fend off a range of existential threats. These could come from a wide range of sources including increasing geopolitical instability, social disenfranchisement, polarization, macro-economic change, climate change, corona pandemic, and so forth.
The role of a wartime leader
A wartime leader is led by the very specific circumstances of their time. A wartime leader is hyper-aware and ever questioning, constantly articulates and demands adherence to their business purpose, has a long-term guiding vision, has excellent intelligence networks to seek insight and information from a broad range of sources and channels and isn’t afraid to pivot their business or strategy to a responding threat. They can also rapidly refocus people, skills, assets and revenue streams accordingly, and ideally in anticipation of it regardless of the accepted wisdom.
The style of leadership that resulted in business growth and profitability in previous decades will no longer be enough. Leaders will be forced to rethink traditional boundaries of competition, market, and industry along with navigating new pathways to collaboration, development, or service delivery in light of the evolving conditions.
This is an opportunity for leaders to look beyond traditional business metrics such as profit margins and shareholder returns to really consider and create purpose-driven organizations.
A leap beyond social responsibility, this means considering the long-term, positive impact – or legacy, if you will – they will have on all of their stakeholders and touch-points including their employees, their community, and their environment.
Maintaining the same mindset that worked in previous decades will simply not serve us in the future. Will our leaders step up to become wartime leaders or will they surrender to the challenges of time?
“The task of the leader is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been.” – Henry Kissinger
Important aspects of wartime leadership:
1. You Are Not All-Knowing (And you don’t have to be)
Remember this, “The ability to focus, obsess, and chalk out priorities is vital, and this skill is not one that comes easily. It comes from the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn the battlefield.”
Stop predicting how long this may be. None of us know. Instead, focus on what your business needs to do to survive and win the market. Get closer to acquisition than awareness. Focus on what you can do today to be better off tomorrow. These are times of war – living to the next day matters.
2. Over-communicate
None of us know what will happen in the next weeks and months. Last week already feels like a year ago. For your team, over-communicate – especially when working from home, in isolation, and in uncertainty.
Keep the team up to date on as much as possible. Help them prioritize activities that have the biggest revenue opportunities. Have them take care of each other. Teach them how to think like a soldier – doing what needs to get done to get to the next day, helping pick up their fellow employees when they are down, and focusing on the task at hand.
Don’t forget, “A wartime leader has top priorities locked in, and is in a position to specialize in these elements with razor precision.”
“Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.” – Jim Rohn
Conclusion
Just as a chess grandmaster is in a position to see the entire board and not only a couple of moves ahead, so must a wartime leader. The ability to focus, obsess, and chalk out priorities is vital, and this skill is not one that comes easily.
It comes from the ability of a wartime leader to learn, unlearn, and relearn the battlefield.
Understanding the landscape and atmosphere during which the battle is fought is crucial.
Finally, the simplest wartime leader knows the way to lead. The best commander-in-chief knows the way to rally the troops and keep them motivated. Whether it’s down within the trenches or within the room, creating a bond with the soldiers that keeps them going is the mark of an accomplished wartime leader.
Understanding the landscape and atmosphere in which the battle is fought is crucial. If tough decisions need to be made, the resolve required to do so comes from a place of experience and knowledge. It takes courage to make unpopular and problematic decisions and the wartime leader must know that.
What do you think is the defining trait of a leader? Share your thoughts with us below!
Success Advice
How to Alter Your Business Approach With Technological Advancements
Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner.
Technology’s evolution has impacted everything, and business is no exception. Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner. Entrepreneurs unable to do so are being wiped out of the market.
There is no doubt that AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) have taken over the business world. These technological advancements are impacting decision-making, success percentages, and other entrepreneurial aspects.
Adapting to these developments is integral to business success. Let’s explore how you can accomplish these milestones.
Embed the strength of AI and ML.
AI has modified business operations in major ways. For instance, companies have employed bots for customer support. These bots go through an effective learning process via Machine Learning before being able to answer like humans.
Bots can also perform detailed data analytics and make business moves with high success percentages.
ML is used more for the analysis of data chunks and generating successful predictions. This simply means that business owners do not have to worry about large-scale financial losses.
In terms of deployment and usage, a reputed company like Netflix employs machine learning for decision-making.
Blockchain is increasing the count of business opportunities
Tampering of financial transactions is quite common and causes severe monetary damage to customers. With the rise of digital payments, this risk has increased.
Blockchain is used to elevate your experience for monetary transfers. It combats penetrating events to extract confidential customer information.
Most business sectors are using block chain but finance and supply chain management sections have a higher count. These two corporate sections have several monetary deposits and withdrawals taking place.
In terms of percentage, approximately 72% and 5% of finance and supply chain firms have implemented block chain successfully.
Dedicate Yourself to Continuous Learning and Individual Development
You invest in learning some of the very important skills, including digital marketing, financial management, and how to gain customers as an entrepreneur.
You need to set up your knowledge base about doing business on Coursera and Udemy with the basics that are necessary for the business, building further by networking with experts through webinars.
Besides, Agile methodology will introduce elasticity to your company: this review and feedback system with further correction regularly will allow for enhancing efficiency and promptly reacting to the market.
Developing key skills to achieve goals
Running a business successfully is not only about having niche/domain knowledge. Business owners need to have communication / soft skills as well in addition to niche information.
Here are some key technical/domain-related areas that business owners should have a strong grip on.
Data Storage on Cloud: These days, companies do not store their data on physical servers. Therefore business owners should know how data is stored/edited/removed/updated via AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other platforms.
Data Analysis/Interpretation Qualities: These days, data is as precious as gold. Business owners with data analysis abilities make correct predictions. As a result, their ventures grow in volume.
Development/Coding Knowledge
Programming knowledge gives business owners an edge whether the application is developed in-house or outsourced. It assists in getting updates deployed and handling application underperformance without getting professional support every time.
Hacking proof framework
There is no benefit of having an advanced automated system if can be penetrated. Successful business owners have above-average knowledge of cyber security and hacking attempts. They are able to choose top-notch anti-hacking software without much of an ambiguity.
Communication Abilities/Soft Skills
Here are some key communication qualities that business owners should have:
Communication/Conversation: Business owners should use to-the-point sentences in both written and oral communication.
Issue Resolution Abilities: Business owners should be able to drill down to problems and solve them. This is done successfully only if an entrepreneur has in-depth business domain knowledge.
Agile Implementations
It is mandatory for business owners to have knowledge of iterative/agile models. With such a competitive environment, it is impossible for business owners to succeed without adopting an agile framework.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
A productive business venture starts with a clear vision. The first factor making a business successful is the idea behind it. It helps with endless growth and combating competition successfully. Katherine Philips once mentioned that business goals are inevitable if goals are set concretely.
- Goals should be based on smart achievements instead of complexity. Focus on the value that each one of them adds.
- Business objectives should not be vague. Key indicators should be constructed to measure the success/failure of each milestone.
- Be realistic when setting goals. Do not aim at impossible milestones since they can be demotivating.
- Milestones/goals need to be time-bound. Set a completion deadline for each one of them.
- Business goals should not be alien. Owners can think out of the box but not be obsolete / unrelated.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
Business owners cannot succeed without having a network. Some tips help in this case. Attend conferences and professional gatherings to connect with other entrepreneurs.
Here are some other related points business owners should pay attention to.
- Attend meetings and conferences to stay updated with trends and meet business owners who already have well-set ventures. This helps in enhancing the learning curve of new / growing entrepreneurs.
- Being a part of business communities/groups is very productive. When one shares opinions and discusses decision-making tactics, it helps in preventing errors and enhancing success rate.
- Even the most experienced business owners have mentors as learning never stops. Take part in mentorship programs so there is an assurance that you are following the correct roadmap.
Conclusion
There is absolutely no doubt that business dimensions have evolved with technological advancements. Successful entrepreneurs have grabbed these changes in due course of time and continue to evolve. On the other hand, people following old paths and conventional steps fade out of competition. In a nutshell, keep an eye on the processes and practices you follow as these factors decide success rate.
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