Build A Strong Team For 2010

06/01/2010

By Brian Chernett

2010 will be another a challenging year to be a Leader. The leaders that survive the year will be more aware of the market, will motivate their team to be creative and innovative and will build flexibility into the team to take advantage of opportunities that will present themselves.

Your focus as a leader will need to be on the present and the future. The past is history and, apart from lessons learnt, is not as important. You will need to concentrate business efforts on where it earns real money now, actual cash profits not turnover or potential...

...margins, and on finding the areas where it will earn money in the future.
Doing that means concentrating your business efforts on what the market demands and scaling down areas where demand is poor or declining. Jim Collins, in his classic book Good to Great, talks about 'Hedgehog' companies - those that "know one thing but know it very well". 2010 will be a year for the hedgehogs.

You should be asking yourself, do I have the right team to take the business forward to where we want it to be? As Jim Collins also suggests, it is about who is 'on the bus'. In particular who needs keeping, who needs removing and who is not on the bus that should be. When finding the right people for your team, Collins suggests three practical disciplines -

- When in doubt, don't hire - keep looking. You should limit growth based on your ability to attract enough of the right people. It is not enough to offer better money. Money doesn't bring in better people but it does keep the right people in place.

- When you know you need to make a people change, act immediately but... continued on page two >

 

 

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