Social Entrepreneurship

Symptomatic of a new work culture?
The importance of doing something meaningful

Social entrepreneurship

The importance of mentors

Blabla

The best leaders gain power by giving it away

 

Leading through a vision

The best leaders gain power by giving it away

The whole article by Hugh Arnold for the Globe and Mail is available at this link.

Myth #1 = "successful senior leaders spend the majority of their time making decisions, directing subordinates, allocating resources, and resolving conflicts." 
Myth #2 = "the more senior the leader’s position, the more power and authority she or he has to impose their will on others."

Reality = The necessity of delegating & empowering
In fact, the reality of effective leadership is almost completely at odds with this stereotype.
Highly effective leaders [...] achieve success by unleashing the energy of the organization by creating an environment that generates a sense of commitment and engagement in their people. And they do this by giving away – not hoarding – the power and authority of their own positions.
Effective leaders recognize that people are motivated to work hard when they feel a sense of personal responsibility for effectively performing activities that they care about. But a sense of personal responsibility is impossible without a significant degree of autonomy. Effective leaders recognize this by empowering their subordinates – giving them plenty of room to exercise judgment and make decisions about how they get their work done.

The importance of a vision as a rallying point =
But while delegation and empowerment are necessary conditions for effective leadership, they don’t tell the whole story. Empowerment can actually lead to chaos if it is not accompanied by clarity from the leader regarding:
1. Where we are going – the vision
2. How we will get there – the strategy
3. How we will conduct ourselves – the organization’s core values

Hiring the right people = 
 An effective leader must also ensure that people possess the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve what is expected of them. This in turn requires leaders to carefully select the right people, assign them to roles to which they’re suited, and to ensure they have the right training, development and coaching to accomplish what is asked of them.

Downsides of charismatic leadership =
Thinking of leadership effectiveness as giving up power and authority also provides insights regarding the downsides of charismatic leadership. While charismatic leaders can often be effective in the short run, they are rarely successful in creating teams and organizations that endure. [...]


To summarize =
Leaders are responsible not for doing the work, but for getting the work done through others. And the true challenges of leadership involve getting people to do things that they otherwise would have been unwilling or unable to accomplish on their own. Real leadership is exercised not by giving orders and directions backed up by threats or intimidation. Real leadership is exercised by articulating an exciting vision of the future, getting people effectively aligned with that vision and then inspiring them to work harder and accomplish more than they ever imagined they could. And that only happens when leaders give up some of their formal authority and truly empower their people to take initiative and experience the challenges and rewards of putting themselves personally on the line to accomplish great things.

Hugh Arnold is adjunct professor and former dean at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management (@rotmanschool), where he teaches leadership in the Rotman MBA (@RotmanMBA) program as well as in a number of the school’s programs for executives.
 

Getting started!

First, you need to be in the clear about what it is you want to do/create.
You should be able to explain it in a way that a 10-year old understands.

You need to seat down, think for a second and articulate the following:

1. your idea in 4/5 words (new connection, object, service...)
2. your vision in 3 5-word sentences (where you take people to)
3. what you do for your clients in 2 5-word sentences (how you get them there)
4. your track record (what have you implemented, created...)

5. your market (size)

6. how you will seduce your market

7. what will you do better than the competition (your 'unfair' advantage)

Business model = how do you monetize it?

Once I have all this, I will say: "Now we're talking"

Establishing connections

Interesting article, particularly the section about the role of the different communication tools, mainly the difference between email (more coercitive) and tweet.

Jacob Hall | March 21, 2014

[...]
How do you keep those connections healthy and alive without looking desperate or crazy?
[...]

Follow up and follow through
1. Stay organized.
To avoid future embarrassment, [Michael Robin] now writes her name on every business card she collects.
2. Forgetfulness is failure.
Not trying is the only surefire way to fail.
3. Context is key. "I try to take some sort of a note about the context of when and where I meet a person," says Brian Behm [...]
When he does get in touch, he can bring up the specifics of their meeting and stand out from the crowd. "It makes for a much warmer connection," he says.
4. There really is an app for that. Contactually "[is] that connects with your email and lets you know if you haven't talked to someone in awhile."
5. Be useful.
A few months later, she forwarded him an article that was relevant to his panel and their conversation. [...] "The compliment and the article link were very noncommittal way of reminding him that I exist," she says.
Email Etiquette
Yes, there are right ways and wrong ways to send an email. Knowing the difference can save you a major headache.
6. Say no to mass emails. "The first thing you should not do is send everyone a mass email,"
7. Know when to fold 'em. Robin also says that you shouldn't sweat it when a connection doesn't work out. Once an email has been sent, leave the ball in the other person’s court for awhile.
Tweet Responsibly
When it comes to staying in constant touch with everyone you meet, Twitter can be your best friend.
8. Maintain soft connections. Facebook and LinkedIn imply a strong connection. "Twitter is my water cooler," Behm says. "It's my most casual connection. It's a soft connection. It's very easy to click 'follow' and check in every once in a while."
9. Make use of Twitter's tools. Don't let Twitter be a passive tool. Robin suggests creating a private Twitter list of everyone you meet during SXSW so you can keep up with what they're doing and saying. The occasional retweet will remind them you exist and find them interesting.
10. Tweet now, email later. Twitter may be a soft connection, but Magic says that it's the best way to transform something fleeting into something lasting. "If I showed up in someone's email on regular basis, it might be a little weird. I may not have enough business conversation to be inbox-worthy," she says. Tweeting at someone can lead to email, and email to lunch, and lunch to a real working relationship. "It's low commitment," Magic says. "If I tweet at someone and they don't like me or don't know who I am then they have no obligation to deal with me. Email comes with a slight obligation and that can be a negative."
Hometown advantage
If you live in a start-up friendly city, SXSW doesn't have to end with the trip back home.
11. Continue networking. Seeking out local events hosted by start-ups and companies in your area, says Paddock, and "model yourself after a great networker. Watch what the pros do." Be on the lookout for parties, demonstrations and other social functions that would allow you to rub shoulders with the people you may have already met at SXSW. By regularly attending their "office hours" at a local coffee shop, Paddock made connections at Mass Relevance before it exploded.
12. Have them come to you. Why go to someone else's networking event when your company can sponsor its own? "The networking effect isn't just getting something, but giving something to somebody else," Paddock says. "[The pros] get a lot out of their network by being generous with what they do."
Don't Force the Friendship
You've got something special on the line…so don't screw it up.
13. Patience is a virtue. Once you've forged a professional relationship, the last thing you want to do is rush things. "You shouldn't ask for stuff early," Magic says. "Let it evolve on its own." Correa agrees: "Some people are only interested in the now. They want to be your friend now. They want to be your partner now. They want to do business now." Over-eagerness can poison an otherwise strong connection. "If you have a hope for something bigger in the future," she says, "You should take it slow and try to not push for something right away."
14. Be picky. Don't confuse a crowded network with an effective one. Robin says that you should take your time selecting who you want to add to your circle since a finely tuned network of friends and partners will get more accomplished in the long run. "I wait to extend LinkedIn invitations until I've decided which people are the most meaningful to me," she says.
15. Send happy grams. Robin recalls making a vital connection on the show floor and taking her to a booth giving away free pedicures. "Since then, we've exchanged Instagram pictures of pedicures and we plan to do it again," she says. "We kept that one little memory alive throughout the year so we could look forward to meeting again in March." If you want to make a lasting impact, make sure they know you genuinely care. "Try to do something special to say that you cherish this connection," she says.

Jacob Hall

Jacob Hall is a writer living and working in Austin, Texas. He writes about movies, books, games and technology.

 

Why Good Leaders Don't Try to Turn Apples into Oranges

Here you go: because it's a waste of time!

A good leader is someone who can lead. Obviously.
Leading means getting other people to do things they would otherwise not do.
Do you necessarily need authority and charisma to do that?

I was recently listening to Simon Sinek exposing his circle theory. It doesn't matter what you do, how you do it, what matters is why you do it. Therefor the title of his book: Start with Why.  I have a friend who kept saying: "Unless you give people a good reason to do something, they won't do it."
I found Sinek's explanations about Apple's success and what made Apple such a unique company not so convincing I have to say. I wasn't too convinced with the way he articulated Apple's answer to the question "Why?":

I am more inclined to define Steve Jobs' genius - and this is whom we are talking about when we are talking about Apple, no one else - in this vision he had of how he would revolutionize the way we interact we computers, music. He introduced new media (plural of medium, understood as " intervening substance through which impressions are conveyed to the senses or a force acts on objects at a distance", so the element in between, in that case: between us and the world).