Business Management Life

Sustaining strategic momentum is a leadership function. In our last two-part article, Essentials for Successfully Implementing Your Strategic Plan, we mentioned what leaders do.

“Leaders have a vision. They build a small group of people who share that vision. They have the ability to articulate that vision and to build buy-in from others. Then they implement the vision and the small group of people they have gathered can move mountains and make many, many things happen in an organization.”

Your most important role as leader of an organization is strategy. The best way to sustain the momentum you created by following the guidelines of the Essentials for Successfully Implementing Your Strategic Plan is to continue to deploy the small group of people who share the vision and are engaged in helping you implement it. If they have taken their leadership role seriously, they will have engaged a group of people who share the vision and who are energized to implement the strategies needed to reach that vision. So the amount of strategic momentum you can attain will be directly proportionate to the amount of energy and attention to strategy that is applied by those key individuals who share the strategic vision.

Think of this group of key individuals who share the strategic vision as strategic channels throughout the organization. Those who share your passion should be kept in the know about what’s going on strategically, how it affects them, and how it affects the people they work with. Your role in this effort is to be constantly in front, leading the way. As we said in the last article, you can’t over-communicate the vision; neither can you over-communicate the strategy you are employing to achieve the vision.

The biggest enemy of strategic momentum is distraction. Early in my change management career, one of my mentors taught me tha Read the rest of this post »

One of the definitions of stress is, “the state of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existing equilibrium.” Stress is an integral part of modern day business. Stress could have a negative impact on your physical and mental ability. The body has the ability to cope up with stress. When stress becomes prolonged and stress becomes psychological it becomes a problem.

Prolonged stress results in increased anxiety. It decreases your concentration. It would also make you prone to minor illnesses. Different people may react differently to stress. It may cause some people to eat more. It may also make people less communicative. Some others may lose their appetite due to stress. It may also cause irritability and poor judgment.

Stress may make some people aggressive. It may also make the person who is subject to stress to seek advice of others to get out of such a condition.

There are ways and means to reduce stress. Take a break even if it is for half an hour. Talk to people who are jovial and funny. If you can forget the cause of your worry and laugh for a few minutes it would be a great stress buster. Get some people to assist you, delegate responsibility.

Don’t ever overwork. Learn to relax and take time off from work. If you have a huge work load, just looking at the work load may cause stress. Break into small pieces.

Socializing, just talking to friends and taking the family out, could be some of great stress busters. Exercise could also be an excellent stress reliever. Don’t take drugs to reduce stress. These drugs could be addictive.

I have seen people think of the worst scenario situations. They think of the worst that can happen to them. They come to the conclusion that they can handle such a situation, the stress tends to dissipate.

It is extremely important in life to ha Read the rest of this post »

To understand the corporate value “Accountability” imagine the role of the accountant in the organization.

First a definition; a clear definition of accountability is available at Wikipedia: “Accountability is defined as “A is accountable to B when A is obliged to inform B about A’s (past or future) actions and decisions, to justify them, and to suffer punishment in the case of eventual misconduct”

To simplify the work of the accountant in the organization one could say that he or she registers all transactions that are done during the operation. The work of the accountant in an organization is often called controller which is the role dedicated to monitors internal controls (wiki). At the end of a period, which can be a year, the final statement is prepared where all the operational transactions are summarized into a single overview. This overview may serve different purposes and will be tailored like-wise. A fiscal overview has different guidelines than the operational overview.

The main idea is that an official report is needed to communicate the results.

If an organization values accountability it values: transparency in the operational process. Management and external stakeholders need insight in activities of employees (the set of transaction that have been executed) and they desire measurable results which is communicated by the summary or bottom-line at the end of the period.

Without accountability (as a corporate value) the management would only manage on results. The disadvantage of this method is that the results come at the end of the period. A manager wants more insight in activities and implicit decisions that are taken. It is also possible that the result is not only financial but also productive where the characteristics do not match previous descriptions.

For instance, in the private sphere: you ar Read the rest of this post »