Priscilla Archangel, Ph.D.
Entrepreneur: From Jack of all Trades to Master of One
Whether you’re an entrepreneur with a billion-dollar business and thousands of employees, or under a million dollars in revenue and 10 employees, you’ve had to perform multiple functions as your business grows. Your role has stretched from tactical to strategic and spanned multiple functions and responsibilities. But even as you successfully maneuver these challenges and the business grows, you must evolve from being a Jack or Jill of All Trades, performing functions that exceed your capability and capacity; to becoming a Master of One, performing work that aligns with your purpose and expertise.
This is the challenge for many entrepreneurs who retain such close control over their businesses that they don’t benefit from others’ expertise and in the process limit the company’s growth prospects. Some find it difficult to trust that others will make better decisions in critical areas. But it is crucial to transfer accountability to others who will take on responsibility for aspects of business growth. Continue reading
Plan to be wrong, but still plan
“What if we’re wrong?” That was the question a senior leader asked his CEO as they were discussing business strategies and plans. “We probably are,” she replied, “but let’s move forward nonetheless.”
This conversation was recounted by the CEO of an $18 billion company recently. Like every organization, they were making major corporate investment decisions based on assumptions seeded by the best available information. These were long-term strategies developed to align with forecasts of customer needs and technological innovation, based on trends and predictions, and presuming an appropriate measure of volatility. In other words, they were making an educated guess. Some people freeze, waffle or delay in the face of such massive decisions, but leaders must ultimately take a position and move forward, frequently knowing that they’ll be wrong, or they have only a partial solution. But failing to prepare for the future isn’t an option. Continue reading
You Got the Promotion! Now What?
Jake was elated. His COO had just called him into his office to give him the good news. The executive committee approved his promotion to VP of Client Services. This was the promotion he had been working towards for the past five years. It had even come a bit sooner than expected as his predecessor resigned several weeks ago to take a position with another company. He wanted to call his wife immediately to share the good news, but she was on an airplane returning from a west coast business trip. Instead he had to rush to pick up his two sons and take them to their after-school sports activities. He was scheduled to be on vacation over the next two days and looked forward to the long weekend to get his mind in gear and prepare to step into the new role. It would be effective one week from today and the announcement would go out on Monday. Continue reading
5 Reasons Why You Can’t Fix Every Leadership Issue Yourself
How many times have you had a medical issue you considered to be minor, and instead of going to the doctor, you googled the topic, asked friends or family for advice and visited the drug or grocery store for solutions to address it. All of this only to realize after a period of weeks that you really needed expert help. Even if you had health insurance, you didn’t want to take the time to visit the doctor’s office, get a prescription, go through a medical procedure, or worse, hear news you didn’t want to hear. This “bad news” might range from a firm directive to change your eating or health habits, or worse, a condition left untreated has reached a serious state. It now requires greater intervention, greater disruption of your “normal” routine, and significant stress to manage through it all. You took a risk and now you’re dealing with the consequences.
What similar risks are you taking with you and your team’s leadership effectiveness? How are you developing their leadership capabilities to be able to accomplish organizational objectives? When challenges occur with interpersonal relationships between colleagues, performance and cohesiveness of team members, alignment with organizational goals, organizational transitions and change, are you able to correctly assess your ability to manage these situations? How do you address culture change? When do you determine you need a different approach or a third-party intervention to facilitate the right discussion and help you prepare a different strategy? Continue reading
Supporter or Partner: 5 Steps to Engaging Business Relationships
Supporter relationships are evidenced by business interactions that are more transactional. Supporters focus more on what they are getting, rather than what they are giving. Supporters emphasize the importance of clients’ understanding and valuing their expertise. They tend to receive more crisis calls as a reactionary response from the businesses because something hasn’t turned out as expected.
Partnership relationships are evidence by a shared investment and mutual interest in business results. Partners are engaged with business leaders and contacts. They proactively take the pulse of the business to understand what’s working well and what isn’t. They place more focus more on how they’re helping the business than what they’re getting out of it.
In our business relationships there are many positions and responsibilities that are traditionally considered “supporting” roles to the core parts of the business. They may provide financial services, IT services, technical training, talent acquisition and more. They may perform analyses and gather data insights as a foundation for key business decisions. They may be part of the internal team, or they may be an external professional services firm. When revenues are down and budgets are tight, these groups may also feel the pinch of cutbacks faster than other groups whose functions are considered more critical. In some respect, supporting functions continually strive to justify the added value they bring. But often, having a supporter relationship is not enough. Businesses need a partnership. Continue reading
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