Leadership for Who?

  The Largest Cost that Goes Unaccounted                 In an entrepreneurship class, you may learn that many entrepreneurs forget to consider their own time as a cost. In the class I was attending, nearly 70% of the aspiring entrepreneurs forgot to account their own time as a cost. This is an important consideration! Never forget your time! Okay, if you are not an entrepreneur, but a working individual, chances are you’ve been to a meeting. The same concept applies, don’t waste your time (or anyone else’s for that matter).                 I’d argue that in many businesses, the largest unaccounted cost is the cost of meetings. The actual cost and the opportunity costs. When hosting a meeting it is important to consider the cost and compare it to the return on investment. Is the meeting worth it? ·     ...

  War-Time Management There is a famous book written thousands of years ago, still relevant today. It is called The Art of War by Tzu. It is revolutionary for its time because it is the first document to think of war as a strategy, rather than a battle. The Art of War highlights planning, strategy, and communication. The first concept to managing war is “laying plans” according to Tzu (Tzu, 2010). It is amazing that the concepts of war management, laid out by Tzu, are still relevant today, and are applicable in the business world! When a crisis occurs, the first step is to plan, matching the first step in managing a war. This is because war is a type of crisis. A crisis can be defined in many ways, but my interpretation is that a crisis is a dangerous and turbulent time period in which threats are imminent and disruptive destruction may occur and/or have just occurred, in regards to something of dear value such as human life or finances. During a war human life and other things of ...

  The Cause of De-Motivation at Work We’ve all seen them, the shells of once highly motivated individuals, stalking the halls at work. What is the cause of this undesirable behavior? In my experience, it is not laziness, or a willing change in approach by the individual. Rather, it’s the result of a drastic change in motivation. Typically the change in motivation is a not a willing change by the individual who just wakes up one day and decides to stop trying. The change is caused by repeated mental beatings from bully style or uncaring leadership. Managers and leaders need to hear this (trust me I was one of them), it's not the employee, it is you. 1 in 2 employees has left a job to get away from their manager (Nolan, 2024); people quit because of their manager, not the job. Yes, sometimes, its just not meant to be. Even if you’re the manager, giving your best effort, sometimes you just have to part ways. But sometimes it can be handled a different way. You just have to fig...

  DEI – What is it? DEI is an abbreviation for diversity, equity, and inclusion. In recent years, businesses have come under fire from activists on social platforms, for not being diverse or inclusive when it comes to people that work for the business and/or people the business sells too. For example, this week I was shopping at Homegoods and instead of just the typical white Santa Claus, a darker toned “skin” Santa Claus was also available for purchase. This is more inclusive of those with skin color other than white. This means more sales for Homegoods, and support from activist groups. With the rise of social media, businesses were inclined to implement DEI as it meant maintaining and even gaining customer segments, and not being called out for being non-inclusive.                 At first, businesses that supported DEI were praised by the activist groups pushing for it, increasing the businesses po...

  Super Power at Work Gaining Influence ·          Power Up! Power is the actual ability to influence change, no matter if it is through structural, formal power, or just the network and leader follower relationships that those develop (Lussier, 2014) ·          Politics. What a negative connotation this word has these days. Politics is not power, but the “game” that is played to control power. This again, can be through structural, formal power and/or through influential power (Lussier, 2014). Politics can influence how and why leaders who have pre-dispositioned formal power make decisions. Decisions are influenced by politics. This can be a positive, but also could have negative effects. The outcome has to do with leadership. With good leadership politics can have positive influence on an organization. However, with poor or lacking leadership, politics can hinder the capabilities of the organi...