THE WORLD NEEDS A GREAT LEADER NOW

Mar25

Great leaders are best found during crisis. We only need to think Churchill, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and we could name many, many more – all found in the time of greatest need.

Yet the world is experiencing one of the longest and most difficult global downturns in living memory, yet we are struggling to find, those inspiring and visionary leaders who will lead us out of the dark times and back towards recovery.

The world needs a great leader now. Who will be the world next great leader? Where is he/she coming from? When will he show up?

If we ever needed a strong leader for this world, we need one now, but the issue is we only need to look along the front benches of the political world power houses and I have to say we are not spoilt for leadership talent.

America ditched Mitt Romney and made it bet on Obama. UK is still struggling with to have a natural leader from a 3 man team of Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and a faltering David Cameron.

Germany and Europe are banking their hopes on Angela Merkel. Russian has gone back for Putin. Is there a natural, inspiring, visionary leader in the roll call?

Maybe we have to turn our searchlight to the world of sports, or perhaps the religious world can also give us a leader. Let me hear your views?

YOUR DIGITAL BRAND

Mar21

social_media

Have you ever searched for yourself online? If not, try it. Make sure you are logged out of all Goggle or other search engine accounts, clear your internet browser’s history and cookies then search your name online to see what comes up. Are you surprised by anything? Do you see things you would want your relatives, friends or future employer to see? If so, you’re in good shape. If not, you have some work to do to clean up your digital brand.

Online searches are becoming just as important as your credit report when it comes to your personal brand. When you apply for a credit card or any other credit facility, the bank or finance company is required to do a standard credit check. Likewise, when you apply for jobs, employers are looking at your digital brand to help determine whether you are a good fit for their organisation.

Don’t believe me? According to research 37% of employers are using social media to research job candidates. Facebook and Linkedin are the top two social media networks used by employers.

Cleaning Your Digital Brand

How can you clean up your digital brand? Start now. Be conscious of the type of things you post on social media networks and who might see them. No matter whether your profile is public or private, posts can be found. So keep it clean. ‘’Keeping it clean”” means not using provocative photos or language, not demonstrating bad communication skills and not defaming your own character. If you want to tidy up your social media profiles, start with your photo and work your way through status update. What you post can say a lot about you, and you always want to put your best foot forward. Some posting and status updates can come off very wrong to potential employers if they are browsing your timeline.

Growth of Social Media

Social net works are growing every day. According to recent research social networks and blogs now account for nearly a quarter of the time that people spend on the internet. With the internet’s rapid growth, protecting your digital brand is becoming a critical part of building your reputation. With a few keystrokes, anyone can find out where you live, where you are from and view anything you have on your twitter, facebook, or linkedin profile.

I don’t mean to take the fun out of expressing yourself on social media, but when you’re posting your next photo or status update, ask yourself, “How would I explain this to my boss, my friends, my relatives?’’

Keep the fun in your expression online but watch what you post as it forms part of your digital brand.

Adapted: NSBE

BANKS AND VALUES

Jan31

Background

There is no doubt that 2012 was a difficult year for financial institutions and banks. Again financial institutions and banks found themselves too often in the news for the wrong reasons. This damaged trust in banks, which was already at low ebb.

The behaviours which made those headlines in 2012 underlined how banking as a whole had lost its way, and had lost touch with the values on which banking reputation and trust were built.

Over a period of almost 20 years, banking has become too aggressive, too focused on the short-term, too disconnected from the needs of their customers and clients, and wider society.

There was a tendency to pursue short-term profits at the expense of the values and reputation of the organisation; a tendency to choose profit over values-driven business.  In doing so banks damaged their ability to make long-term sustainable returns.

Values-driven business

But banking will only be valuable business if it is values-driven business; banking will be valuable business if banks operate to the highest standards of behaviour with integrity.

There is no choice between profits and values-driven business in banking business and to place them as opposites fundamentally misunderstands the problems facing the banking sector.

Banking business is built on having a firm commitment to strong values. This is not something banks should do for public relations or political benefit. It should not be a window dressing gimmick. It should be how banks should be run to become valuable and sustainable institutions.

Banking Reforms

The time for reform is now. Banks should reform and the reform should be values-based reform. Banks should look afresh at what they want to achieve and how they want to do it. Banks should reflect on their history which shows how banks and what banks can achieve when grounded in strong values.  And by remaining grounded and committed in strong values, then banks can be institutions that does the right thing for colleagues, customers and clients, and indeed all of their stakeholders.

Agreeing and having a strong commitment to strong values is one part of the equation, the easy part of any banking reform. The difficult challenge is to ensuring everyone in the organisation live by them all of the time.

Aside making sure every staff is aware of the values, banks should make sure the values play apart in how bank measure individual and business performance. Performance assessment must be based on the ‘WHAT’ and ‘HOW’. Bank must ensure they reward people for making the bank money in a way consistent with their values. Rewards should be link to the upholding of the values.

Conclusion

Banks have been around for centuries. Their success and longevity has been based on integrity and its attention to customers and clients. When Banks have forgotten that, they have paid the price. If Banks continue to combine the right values with the right strategy, banks will build more successful business in the years and decades that follow.

No bank can continue to be successful – nor do they deserve to be successful – unless they live by their values. The business of banking is values-driven business.

Where is Your Inspirational Space?

Dec10

Do you find time to get inspiration? And do you know how to become inspired? Some of us depend on other people to inspire us, and at other times we need to find inspiration for ourselves. I wonder what you do to find inspiration? I want to share what works for me:

  1. I need to be in a tidy spot. And I am a typical creative person, thus meaning I need to clean first…
  2. My head works best bright and early or very late at night.
  3. I need coffee and some snacks.
  4. Traveling really gets my inspiration working.
  5. Talking to someone, while having a white board close by to draw ideas on.
  6. Reading… I read a lot, the best fuel for knowledge and inspiration.
  7. Writing. I do write a lot to. Not all of it useful, but the fruit of this seed is ideas.

Finding my inspirational space is becoming more important to me as writing is getting more and more important in my life. But having inspirational space is not only for writing; it is for finding ideas, cleaning your thoughts and opening your mind. I use this time to reflect as well to balance my ideas to work in real life. But when inspiration is running on empty what do I do?

  1. I look at what I have done so far – Not what is left to do. You get more inspiration from what you have achieved so far; instead of looking at all you still have to do.
  2. A little progress is still progress. If you write one page each day, you will have a massive book in a year. If you do a little housework it is a little bit cleaner. Small steps are great.
  3. Do – Nike must have one of the best slogans in the world. “Just do it” – this is so true. I could plan my life to my grave, but to move forward I need to act.

Some dreams are small, some are life changing, do dare to follow some of your dreams. And one of my best tips for inspiration is to share your knowledge. Teaching other people what I already know is one of my best inspirational sources as it gives great meaning and purpose to my life.

By Gina Abudi, on December 5th, 2012

Do You Really Need to Say Thank You?

Nov21

John, the CEO of a sales organization, sent an email to Tim, an employee several levels below, to complement him on his performance in a recent meeting. Tim did not respond to the email.

About a week later, he was in John’s office applying for an open position that would have been a promotion into a management role, when John asked him whether he had received the email. Yes, Tim said, he had. Why, John asked, hadn’t he responded? Tim said he didn’t see the need.

But Tim was wrong. John’s email deserved, at the very least, a “thank you.”

Tim didn’t get the promotion. Was he passed over solely because he didn’t thank John for the positive feedback? No. But was Tim’s lack of response one piece of the Tim puzzle that convinced John he should choose a better candidate? Undoubtedly.

Before you accuse John of being trivial or over-sensitive, before you condemn his poor hiring judgment, consider what saying “thank you” represents.

On a basic level, it communicates that you received the email. While there’s a lot of advice that discourages writing “thank you” emails because they contribute to email overload, I disagree. I answer every real email I receive because I want to avoid the recipient’s “Did Peter get my email and what’s he thinking?” angst. It takes three seconds to respond “thanks” and it completes the transaction initiated by the sender.

But an email that contains emotional content — like a compliment — deserves something longer: a real, thought-out “thank you” as opposed to a simple I-received-your-email “thank you.” When you offer a real thought-out “thank you” to someone, you’re acknowledging her effort, appreciating her thoughtfulness, recognizing her intent, and offering feedback on the impact of her actions.

Still, it’s more than that. Those things are rational, but saying “thank you” is mostly an emotional act. It connects one person to another. Saying “thank you” doesn’t just acknowledge someone’s effort, thoughtfulness, intent, or action. It acknowledges the person himself.

Acknowledging other people is a critical responsibility — perhaps the critical responsibility — of a great manager, especially in sales. Actually great manager is too high a bar. I might say it’s the critical skill of a good manager but even that’s understating it.

Acknowledging each other is our basic responsibility as human beings living in community with other human beings.

Go ahead and argue: We’re all too busy at work and in life to spend time exchanging pleasantries. If John needs so much stroking, he can’t possibly be a good CEO. He’s out of touch with the digital age where no answers are the accepted norm. If Tim is doing his work well, that’s all that matters. People are paid to do their jobs and they don’t need to be thanked. Saying “thank you” to your CEO for a nice email is nothing more than brown-nosing.

I would disagree with all those arguments. It doesn’t take long to say “thank you,” but it does take caring. John is an excellent CEO, with a staff, board, and shareholders who love him and for whom he delivers a high growth rate and excellent results. Not answering someone’s communication — text or email or phone call — is not an accepted norm, it represents a fundamental breakdown in communication about which I often hear people complain. Tim might be good at certain aspects of his job but he’s not “doing his work well,” if he’s not acknowledging the people around him. And, finally, saying “thank you” isn’t brown-nosing, it’s nice.

This all becomes more obvious if you take away the digital element. How would you feel if you complimented someone in person and he just walked away from you without saying anything? Weird, right?

Saying “thank you” — sincerely and with heart — feels good. Not just to the person receiving it, but also to the person offering it. And that’s part of work too. It’s hard to remember, as we process our hundredth email, that behind each message is a person..

Tim made a mistake by not appreciating John’s effort or acknowledging his sentiment. I don’t want to make that same mistake.

Peter Bregman  (HBR Blogger)

BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES VERSUS BOTTOM-LINE DEMANDS

Nov6

More often than not, Christian businessmen or professionals seem to operate in two separate worlds; a deeply personal, private, spiritual world and a very public, demanding, competitive business world. For most part, these two worlds clash in their values, beliefs, and principles, and Christian are caught in the middle. This dilemma commonly presents itself as an internal struggle between right and wrong.

If you trust in God’s principles, you must have the courage to live by them. Biblical principles and bottom-line success are not opposites. Yes, Christians can do what’s right and be successful. Yes, they can be both ethical and profitable. And yes, they can honor God, serve others, and fulfill their professional obligations.

God did not call Christians to be victims of circumstances. God calls Christians to grow closer to Him by courageously working through their dilemmas. He wants Christian to prosper, to be valuable leaders, and to serve as models to help others.

When Christians integrate Gods principles with their unique talents, skills, and character, they create powerful partnership for being successful in the world without becoming of the world.

God’s wisdom, their spiritual core, is the source of strength, purpose, and direction. God’s wisdom, their spiritual core also serves as a balance to their skills and abilities. The Christian character is the aggregate sum of who they are as they courageously follow through and do what’s right over time. Their overall productivity is the legacy they leave behind.

Like diamonds, godly leaders should brilliantly reflect God’s nature in all circumstances and shine brightly in the toughest times.

Global Financial Crisis: Five years on and no end in sight

Oct24

Background

The global financial crisis, triggered in 2007 by the United States housing bubble bursting, has recently passed the five year mark with no end in sight. The crisis, described by many commentators as the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, is unlikely to pass without causing more pain for ordinary middle class people and those in the lower economic strata.

The Start of the Crisis

The start of the crisis can be dated back to August 2007 when the French global banking group BNP Paribas terminated withdrawals from three hedge funds citing “a complete evaporation of liquidity”.

The bursting of the US housing bubble followed and caused the values of securities tied to the US to nosedive. In the modern “global village” it rapidly hit financial institutions worldwide.

The crisis exposed the unsustainable situation created by US government policies that encouraged home ownership with loans for sub-prime borrowers, the overvaluation of bundled sub-prime mortgages based on the assumption of a perpetual increase in the value of real estate, and questionable trading practices.

The situation was worsened by over-complicated mathematical formulas used by financial markets and the lack of adequate capital holdings by banks and insurance companies to cover their exposures.

The uncertainty about the solvency of banks and other financial institutions led to the tightening of credit, international trade declined and economies across the globe shrank.

Government & central bank Action

Governments and central banks responded with unprecedented fiscal stimulus, monetary policy expansion and the bail-out of banks and other financial institutions. The net effect of this was the shifting of debt burdens onto the shoulders of taxpayers worldwide, especially in the developed world.

Over time, the eye of the storm morphed into a sovereign debt crisis, particularly in Europe. Fears for sovereign debt defaults by several European countries, and eventually even by the US, remain real.

While central banks are flooding cash-strapped industrialised nations with money it helps governments to reduce their debt load. At the same time however it also erodes the value of people’s income and savings. Some commentators refer to this process as a massive upward redistribution of wealth. And, especially at the bottom of the economic pyramid ordinary people are also at the receiving end of austerity measures taken by governments aimed at softening their deficits.

What governments are effectively doing to lower their debt levels in real terms is what has been done since the time of Cleopatra in Egypt when she replaced gold coins with much cheaper copper coins: they are devaluing their currencies.

Inflation Dangers

In the process huge inflation dangers are waiting in the wings. A poll conducted in September by the German companies Faktenkontor and Toluna found that one in four Germans is already trying to protect his or her savings from the threat of inflation by investing in material assets.

Governments and central banks are constantly buying time by fighting the debt crisis with monetary injections of previously unheard of proportions and the side effect is a slow but dangerous devaluation of money.

While official inflation rates are still moderate (1.7% in the U’S and 2.6% in the euro zone) they are based on consumer price indexes and do not reflect what is happening with major asset purchases such as real estate. This “unofficial” category of inflation in asset values is already taking place in the financial markets and new price bubbles are being fed with cheap money from central banks, as well as by investors and savers fleeing into what they regard as safe material assets.

It is also a reality that in the present extremely low interest environment, even the lowest inflation eats away at people’s reserves and savings.

In the US the Federal Reserve prime rate has been at zero since the end of 2008, and has just been extended at this non rate by chairman Ben Bernanke.

In the meantime US government debt has exceeded the $16 trillion threshold with inflation about the only viable option to reduce it. The alternative of a massive saving through austerity measures and higher unemployment rates is politically most unattractive.

In the wake of the strong global integration of economies in the 1990s the competition for export markets has increased currency devaluation. One of the symptoms of this is the increasing talk of a currency war between the US and China and to a lesser extent Europe. It also creates a gap between the financial economy and the real economy.

Payday will come

For the investor and especially middle-class people attempting to provide for retirement and create wealth for future generations, the biggest challenge has become not return on investment but rather retention of value.

How and when the end of the present financial debt crisis will come about is almost impossible to predict. What is certain is that the settlement of the debt burden cannot be avoided for ever.

One way or another payday will come and it looks to be inevitable that a substantial part of that tab will be picked up by the middle class.

by Piet Coetzer

Communication Skills vrs Technology

Oct13

Business leaders are typically great communicators and this is the number one quality they looked for in future leaders. They also recognise and value this precious skill in others.

A great communicator is someone who is comfortable talking to anyone, anywhere in the world. Someone who could make things happen across international borders and cultural barriers, someone who could walk into a room anywhere in the world and fix a problem, delight a customer, secure a partner, or close a deal.

Lack of communication skills or Inability to interact, articulate or persuade can have immediate and potentially consequences for any business. The combined effect over time can be an eventual loss of competitiveness and a negative effecton the bottom line. At the personal and career levels, smart and talented people lacking these skills will find the odds stacked against them. But when outstanding communication skills are married with brains and talent, the sky’s the limit for career oriented persons.

What this means is communication is the single most important business asset, absolutely essential to any company that hopes to grow and prosper.

But technology is rapidly dumbing us down. It’s quietly alienating us from one another and robbing us of our precious and unique gifts of face-to-face direct human interaction. Technology is robbing us of this precious skill of communication. Nowadays we email, we text, we tweet, we socialise online.

Many of us don’t read as much, nor socialize the way we used to, nor value speaking skills the way we once did.  All these are leading to the gradual loss of the art of conversation we once valued and cherished, and the steady erosion of our capacity to interact effectively at a very personal level. The more we rely on technology to do our talking for us, the more we can expect to see the costof that reliance in our business results and performance.

Excellence in business communications should be as routine as excellence in business performance. In successful corporations, communication is performance.

If you cannot communicate, then you cannot sell a product or service, command a room, run a meeting effectively, persuade investors, inspire employees, align team members, or compel key audiences. If you cannot communicate then it means that if you have a good idea, you might not be able to sell it. If you have a vision, no one will hear it. If you have a strategy, no one will follow it.

Unlike business people, politicians have long understood the value of leadership communications. In fact, word power is their entire stock and trade. Millions of people vote politicians who are able to  articulate their vision and  clearly define problems and solutions, simplify the complex, rationally debate any issue, This is not the kind of thing you can do with just text messages, e-mails, and tweets

Maybe business people should borrow from the experience of politicians. The question here is, can you walk into a room anywhere, anytime, and make things happen? Wonderful things unfold when people talk face-to-face in private offices, conference rooms, boardrooms, corridors, auditoriums.

It is time to capitalize on the huge added value that leadership communications brings to business proposition or transaction. We should not allow technology – the promise of this age, to rob us of this key skill.

SOLVING INEQUITIES IN THE WORLD.

Oct10

The past

Years back, students graduated from schools with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

40/50 years back, graduates left campuses knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities around the world and knowing nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

They learnt a lot at campuses about new ideas in economics and politics and exposed to the big advances being made in science and technology.

But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity, reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

The present

These were the days gone by. But how about the now – 21st century.

Thanks to advances in technology (TV, internet etc) students know or should know more about the world’s inequities than the classes who came before them and they should be taught to think – about how in this age of accelerating technology, they can take on inequities in the world and solved them.

Millions of children are dying every year in developing countries from diseases (Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, and yellow fever) that had long ago made harmless in developed countries. If every life has equal value then some lives should not be seen as worth saving and others not. All lives deserve the priority of the world.

The question

The question we have to ask ourselves is how come that the world is not able to save these children with all the resources at its disposal. The answer is simple albeit harsh. Market forces do not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So children die because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

So the next question is how can we face this challenge? How can we as nations do the most good for the greatest number of people with the resources we have at our disposal?

Creative Capitalism

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.

Complexity – Barrier to Change

The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity. Complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter. To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact.

If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.

Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and making the smartest application of the technology.

Sharing to Inspire

The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of our work and share our successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.

But if we want to inspire more people to participate; we have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.

We can’t get people excited unless we can help them see and feel the impact.

Conclusion

Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past.

The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.

We can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them. We shouldn’t let complexity stop us.

We have technology that earlier generations never had. We have awareness of global inequity, which earlier generations did not have. And with that awareness, we also have an informed conscience that will torment us if we abandon these people whose lives we could change with very little effort.

We have more than they had; We must start sooner, and carry on longer.

Knowing what we know, how could we not?