Leaders make things happen which on their own would not happen. It is the privilege and responsibility of a leader to make their organisations the best they can be, to harness the creativity of their people, and, most of all, to make sure their organisations and their people are in time for the future.
Ideas do not always come from big speeches and deep ideas…they can also come from little snippets of conversation.
Here are snippets from conversations at the World Economic Forum that I had attended at Davos.
I hope that you would be able to draw wisdom from them and create value from them:
- The world ahead will not be about companies that win and companies that lose. The world will be about nations that win and nations that lose.
- The nations that win will be nations where there is social mobility – so that talent can emerge and develop and blossom – and nations that can deal with technology, because technology will be the biggest enabler and the greatest differentiator of all factors. As mentioned in “The Leader, The Teacher & You”, the potential of nations is determined by geography, demographics, and technology, but how well nations realise their potential will depend on their economic policies and their political culture.
- Time, talent, and energy are badly managed in the great majority of organisations – this is mostly due to management not reducing organisational drag.
- ‘A’ performers are not simply better than the rest – they are A LOT better than the rest. ‘B’ and ‘C’ performers, even if they work well together, cannot produce ‘A’ performance’. Most companies employ ‘balanced’ teams throughout the company by building comprise a mixture of ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ players. Companies should instead think about being unegalitarian; that is, they should form and deploy ‘all-star’ teams. ‘All-star’ teams must also be led by ‘A’ leaders as they cannot function effectively under poorer quality leaders.
- Supervisors create work; therefore REMOVE unnecessary supervision. Eliminate excess supervisors. Liberate unproductive time. Remove excessive emails & meetings – these leave very little time for getting real work done.
- ‘No one ever washes a rental car’ – make sure your workers are engaged in their work.
- CEOs must make sure their employees know the direction of the company, the behaviours and values expected must be made very clear – communicate, communicate, communicate.
- To win, a company must simply work harder, move faster, and embrace constant change.