Leadership Is About Emotion

http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2013/12/15/leadership-is-about-emotion/
Meghan M. Biro

Make a list of the 5 leaders you most admire. They can be from business, social media, politics, technology, the sciences, any field. Now ask yourself why you admire them. The chances are high that your admiration is based on more than their accomplishments, impressive as those may be. I’ll bet that everyone on your list reaches you on an emotional level.



This ability to reach people in a way that transcends the intellectual and rational is the mark of a great leader. They all have it. They inspire us. It’s a simple as that. And when we’re inspired we tap into our best selves and deliver amazing work.

So, can this ability to touch and inspire people be learned? No and yes. The truth is that not everyone can lead, and there is no substitute for natural talent. Honestly, I’m more convinced of this now – I’m in reality about the world of work and employee engagement. But for those who fall somewhat short of being a natural born star (which is pretty much MANY of us), leadership skills can be acquired, honed and perfected.

Let’s Take A Look At Tools That Allow For Talent To Shine:

Emotional intelligence. Great leaders understand empathy, and have the ability to read people’s (sometimes unconscious, often unstated) needs and desires. This allows them to speak to these needs and, when at all possible, to fulfill them. When people feel they are understood and empathized something, they respond PERIOD and a bond is formed.

Continuous learning. Show me a know-it-all and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t have a clue about being human. Curiosity and an insatiable desire to always do better is the mark of a great leader. They are rarely satisfied with the status quo, and welcome new knowledge and fresh (even if challenging) input. It’s all about investing in yourself.

Contextualize. Great leaders respond to each challenge with a fresh eye. They know that what worked in one situation may be useless in another. Before you act, make sure you understand the specifics of the situation and tailor your actions accordingly.

Let Go. Too many people think leadership is about control. In fact, great leaders inspire and then get out of the way. They know that talented people don’t need or want hovering managers. Leadership is about influence, guidance, and support, not control. Look for ways to do your job and then get out of the way so that people can do theirs.

Honesty.  Not a week goes by that we don’t hear about a so-called leader losing credibility because he or she was dishonest. Often this is because of pressure to try and “measure up” and it’s not coming from a place of being real – often this relates to fear of not being accepted for your true self. We live in age of extraordinary transparency, which is reason enough to always be true to your core – your mission will be revealed, your motivations will show by your behaviors. But it goes way beyond this. It’s an issue that sets an example and elevates an organization. If you have a reputation for honesty, it will be a lot easier to deliver bad news and face tough challenges. Are you inspiring people from your heart? 

Kindness and respect. Nice leaders (people) don’t finish last. They finish first again and again. Ignorance and arrogance are leadership killers. They’re also a mark of insecurity. Treating everyone with a basic level respect is an absolute must trait of leadership. And kindness is the gift that keeps on giving back. Of course, there will be people who prove they don’t deserve respect and they must be dealt with. But that job will be made much easier, and will have far less impact on your organization, if you have a reputation for kindness, honesty and respect.

Collaboration. People’s jobs and careers are integral to their lives. The more your organization can make them a partner, the more they will deliver amazing results. This means, to the greatest extent possible, communicating your organization’s strategies, goals and challenges. This builds buy-in, and again is a mark of respect. People won’t be blindsided (which is a workplace culture killer) by setbacks if they’re in the loop.

Partner with your people. As I said above, people’s careers are a big part of their lives. That seems like a no-brainer, but leaders should have it front and center at all times. Find out what your employees’ career goals are and then do everything you can to help them reach them. Even if it means they will eventually leave your organization. You will gain happy, productive employees who will work with passion and commitment, and tout your company far and wide. This an opportunity to brand your greatness.

Leadership is both an art and a science. These tools are guidelines, not rigid rules. Everyone has to develop his or her own individual leadership style. Make these tools a part of your arsenal and use them well as you strive to reach people on an emotional level. Be Human. This Matters.

Meet The Top 30 Social Salespeople In The World

http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2014/03/19/meet-the-top-30-most-social-salespeople-in-the-world/
Meghan M. Biro

“Never underestimate the fondness of people and organizations for the status quo,” Enterprise 2.0 author Andrew McAfee warns businesses. People are naturally resistant to change, and while that’s not always a bad thing, I’ve encountered my fair share of people resistant to the massive changes and opportunities that social media is creating in business and the workplace.

Salespeople, in particular, seem to have a set of rules and values that they are adamant about sticking to, which seems a bit counterintuitive to me, given that today’s buyers complete some 70% of their purchase before contacting a sales representative.  Those in the know recognize that social media offers talented salespeople the ability to get to know today’s buyers better than ever before. These unique skills are becoming critical for HR and Talent Management pros to be aware of.

My own encounters with reluctant salespeople are backed up by new research from KiteDesk, an intelligent prospecting and social selling platform provider, which tells the story of an industry on the cusp of massive change. Apparently, less than half of frontline salespeople are using social media for prospecting, monitoring conversations, interacting with customers or gathering intelligence. Meaning, the majority of salespeople are ignoring social to help them relate to, and engage intelligently with, buyers.

With this in mind, KiteDesk commissioned influencer marketing agency Evolve!, Inc. to research the best and brightest in social sales, in order to give salespeople ready access to the people who do social selling well. Their research uncovered the 30 most influential social salespeople online:

 

I’ve gathered five lessons from these top social salespeople to help those who are still afraid of the transformative powers of social media take steps towards becoming more effective, efficient social sales professionals.

Lesson 1: Meet your prospects on the networks they actually use

To join the ranks of these trailblazing social sellers, you’ve got to use the tools available to you to connect with prospects where they are on social media. Koka Sexton, Senior Social Marketing Manager at Linkedin, says: “Look at any of the prospect’s social media profiles, like Twitter, LinkedIn, and maybe their blog. During the buying cycle, don’t rely only on email and the phone to stay connected. Engage people through social media as well to make sure you are covering them from all sides.”

Lesson 2: “Socially surround” prospects using all the tools at your disposal

Millennials, Gen X and Gen Y professionals, are now buyers.  “Even if they are not using social media as a place to participate, they grew up on social networks and are definitely influenced by it,” said Green Leads CEO and CMO Mike Damphousse.  “We practice a strategy called ‘social surround’ where we use multiple sources of social media and even online advertising on social media to influence and gain intelligence about a prospect. Once we feel they have been sufficiently influenced, we engage them one-on-one.” Social sales evangelist and entrepreneur Jill Rowley has mastered the art and science of using social media networks strategically to find, listen to, relate to, connect with, engage and amplify a potential buyer, the buying committee and their sphere of influence.   She explained:  “I will connect on LinkedIn, follow on Twitter, RT and/or favorite a tweet.  I will figure out whom my buyer trusts and learns from and I’ll #SociallySurround them as well.  I leverage the technique of ‘I see you tweeted about Jay Baer’s awesome book Youtility, did you happen to also read Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk?’ I use Google alerts extensively to track mentions of both my potential buyers and customers.  I want to stay engaged with my customers because they are my best source of leads, referrals and ADVOCACY!”

Lesson 3: Not all social media is created equal – choose your networks carefully

Front line sales people know that peers using social to sell are leading the pack. But getting them to actually engage or do research on social media prior to a sales call is challenging because it’s so time intensive. “So much so,” added Jeb Blount, CEO at SalesGravy, “that I have watched salespeople spend tremendous amounts of unproductive time on sites like LinkedIn with nothing to show for it. Sales managers fire salespeople that don’t sell. So it doesn’t take salespeople long to get a clue about where they should be spending their time.” Jeb sees the lack of education –the know how to get the best return on their time investment -and a lack of easy-to-use, at-your-finger-tips tools that provide intelligence for lead generation, prospecting, and engagement as the two biggest impediments to social selling across an organization.

Lesson 4: Get your higher-ups on board

Sales trainer and author Shane Gibson adds another barrier to social sales adoption: c-suite executives. “Executives who come from another era of marketing, communications and leadership…don’t understand the value of empowering entire teams to be social communicators – they just see the risk or they outright see it as a liability.”

Lesson 5: Measure and hype your success stories

So how do you overcome these barriers?  According to Sean Burke, Chief Revenue Officer of KiteDesk, “The holy grail to social sales adoption within an organization is a combination of evangelizing success stories and the ability to track the reach, efficacy and business impacts that social selling delivers.” The Top 30 social salespeople were culled from a list of more than 500 social sales evangelists, which was vetted and scored using a proprietary formula that considered things like engagement, social footprint, popularity among insiders and more. You can take a look at the top 100 social sales experts on KiteDesk’s blog to learn more from the social selling pros.

on Bede Moore

Bede Moore Aims to Bring Online Retail to Indonesia

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/archive/bede-moore-aims-to-bring-online-retail-to-indonesia/

Indonesia, as well as the rest of Southeast Asia, remains a hot spot for technology startups and e-commerce. Both local and foreign forces are eager to take a shot at the e-commerce business in a region largely untouched by industry giants such as Amazon.com.

Indonesia has a few e-commerce websites, such as Rakuten, Gmarket, Tokobagus and Blibli. 

The latest player comes from a German company called Rocket Internet, which recently launched Zalora and Lazada Indonesia. Zalora is a fashion e-commerce site, while Lazada is a general retail site with a focus on electronics and gadgets.

Lazada has also been launched in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, making its focus to the Southeast Asian market obvious. As a promotional strategy, Lazada is offering free delivery to customers’ doors.

Sydney-born Bede Moore is the co-founder and managing director of Lazada Indonesia. 

Moore was a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group when Rocket Internet made an approach in November last year to start the e-commerce company in Jakarta. Moore, a Harvard graduate with a major in Indonesian history, said he always wanted to work in Indonesia, so he accepted the challenge.

While still at university, Moore shared his room with a rather well-known tech personality: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. At the time, Facebook had not been invented yet, but Moore did get a chance to see how Zuckerberg, a computer science student, built something that people had never seen before.

Having seen how his former roommate changed the way the world communicates was a valuable experience. Moore, however, says in developing Lazada, the challenge really lies in providing acceptable payment methods and accurate logistics, which has become his obsession. 

The Jakarta Globe spoke to Moore about starting Lazada from scratch, how to handle skeptics and — of course — about his famous former roommate.

The small number of credit card owners would seem a particular challenge to getting an e-commerce business going in Indonesia. What are your strategies?

Yes, we [Lazada] are in five countries and I think I am in the best one. Indonesia is the most interesting market to be operating in. I think probably the Philippines and Indonesia are the most difficult. The difference is the Philippines has a couple of islands whereas Indonesia has more. The part of this business that I run is operation and customer service. These are the most difficult ones in terms of this market because there are a lot of Indonesians who are online and active, but the difficulties is the payment and how you get packages on time.

How do we bring the level of customer service that we believe in. In terms of the time that we have been around, the changes are already seen in the market. We have cash on delivery in 104 cities across the country. That really didn’t exist before as a customer option. We introduced that and it’s really popular with our customers.

Are your products going to be different from those on other e-commerce sites?

The real advantage is the range. We are not just electronics. We have eight different categories ranging from home living to cosmetics. It should be an online single shopping experience. We are making all of these products [available] to people in Indonesia now who have the money but can’t get access to them. We are making that possible.

Orders are delivered by Ningrat and First Logistics. Are these part of your company?

No. They are partners. We are working with these companies to make flawless execution. We are building a new mode of commerce in this country, and if you look at successful commerce across the globe, it has something to do with delivering the goods correctly. JNE has also come aboard to support us. To be honest, most of them are smaller products, getting products to people in Balikpapan, and we are also able to get a treadmill to a man in Papua. The challenge is to make sure that every part of the delivery works flawlessly. And to do that in a country where no one has done it before, obviously you’ll have difficulties.

Seeing that payment methods can be tricky, why did Lazada decide not to use PayPal?

PayPal is nominated in US dollars here, so if I were an Indonesian consumer and saw that my purchase is being converted to US dollars, I might be more unsure about it, right?

How do you handle criticism that Lazada is a copy of Amazon.com?

It’s not something that particularly concerns me. I think what we are trying to do is to be a general retailer online. If being a general retailer [means that] people think we’re Amazon, that’s fine, it’s their interpretation. What I think we are doing is getting hold of a bunch of products and trying to bring those to various people in this country. You can call it Amazon, I think that is retail. We are just doing it online.


Tell us about your former roommate.

It’s a funny story. It’s a good time for our room. There’s Samyr Laine, who is an Olympic triple jumper who is going to compete in the Olympics in a couple of days. It’s unfortunate because I contacted Mark 10 days ago, I wrote to him and said, ‘We have to go to the Olympics and watch Sam jump.’ It was a very interesting experience, I was his roommate in my first year. We were very different. I started at Harvard as a student of general history, and then I moved into colonial history. Obviously Mark was doing computer science, and Sam was doing government.

In freshman year he was working on another big project, Synapse, a music player app that learns about your listening habits. Back in 2002, it was a very interesting thing. He was negotiating with various companies about whether or not he was going to pursue that. In sophomore year, he roomed with Chris Hughes, who is in the film [“The Social Network”] and that was when he came up with Facemash and Facebook.

Did you know that you were going to work at a tech startup?

No. I get it from my writing days in ABC in New York in 2006. I found it fascinating to see with five huge monitors to track Web traffic. Obviously I have known the behind-the-scenes story of Facebook, and I know it’s a business phenomenon. It’s new, compared to palm oil, it’s a new commerce. I thought it’s great because I can be in a country where I want to be, in a new industry with new, young people.

Entrepreneur Profile: From Harvard to Indonesian E-Commerce with Bede Moore

http://www.powerretail.com.au/insights/entrepreneur-profile-harvard-indonesian-e-commerce-bede-moore/

• 22ND JANUARY
• CAMPBELL PHILLIPS
• 
  

Bede Moore’s professional and educational history has seen him travel the world. Now running his own e-commerce business in Indonesia, Moore explains how he went from sharing a room with Mark Zuckerberg to starting businesses in South-East Asia.

Australian ex-pat Bede Moore is the kind of entrepreneur that combines practical savvy, a deep business education and a penchant for the intrepid.

Moore’s journey has taken him from sharing a room with Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University, to starting retail brands for Rocket Internet in Indonesia. Now he’s started his own company, Vela Asia, which aims to provide services and solutions to other retail brands operating in the region.

While he was perhaps best known for his prowess as a rower during the Harvard years, Moore went on to work for Boston Consulting Group before being picked up by Rocket. His story typifies that of the worldly entrepreneur, and one can only wonder what project Moore will set up next.

Recently, Power Retail conducted an interview with Moore to discover a little more about his story.

Bede Moore

·      Australian Businessman and Entrepreneur

·      Managing Director and Founder, Vela Asia and Director of the Australian Indonesian Youth Association

·      Previously: Managing Director and Co-Founder, Lazada.co.id

What led you to consider moving to South-East Asia to pursue your career?

I studied colonial and Indonesian history, first during my undergraduate degree at Harvard and then for my MPhil at Leiden, where I was awarded honours. While I was studying in Leiden, I was looking at Australia’s relations with Indonesia during the Independence period, and I became really interested in the country and its history. I did research trips to Indonesia and decided I wanted to return at some point.

After my masters, I decided I didn’t want to go into academia, so I started working for the Boston Consulting Group (alongside Iconic co-founders Adam Jacobs and Cameron Votan) and did a lot of work for them in retail and industrial goods. My partner and business co-founder, Susie Sugden, was also working for BCG, and we asked them to move us to the Jakarta office in 2011. We worked briefly at the BCG office in Jakarta and were then headhunted by Rocket Internet to launch the local version of The Iconic, Zalora Indonesia. We then moved across to found Lazada Indonesia, which is now one of the largest e-commerce players in the country.

Rocket was an excellent experience and we learned a great deal, and it inspired us to become entrepreneurs. In late 2012, we decided to launch our own business, Vela, which provides end-to-end e-commerce services for brands, manufacturers and retailers.

Were there any major challenges you had to overcome in making the move?

Absolutely. In my experience, it is very easy to underestimate the difficulty of operating in these markets. Customs and expectations are very different from the West and it takes a great deal of time to understand them and be sensitive to them. Given my academic background, and a brief period working for BCG here, it was certainly easier to start operating as an entrepreneur, but it’s a never-ending process of learning. I think the biggest challenges in e-commerce have been the industry’s novelty, the lack of critical infrastructure (eg payments) and the immaturity of the logistics market. These are issues which directly impact all e-commerce entities here.

Our advantage as a company is that we have now got more experience operating in this environment than almost anyone else. It is simply through time and experimentation that we have come to understand how to work here, what things work and what things don’t. This is the value we bring to our clients: we know more about how to do e-commerce in Indonesia than almost anyone else.

What were your initial thoughts about the South-East Asian market, and has this changed over time?

We knew from the outset that Indonesia was going to present a huge range of opportunities. In fact, one of the things that surprised me early on was how few people have tried to come here and to take advantage of what is occurring. I think that’s because they are nervous about entering, which was part of the driver for setting up Vela – we knew foreign brands and manufacturers would want to work with a company that could provide them international levels of service in a developing market. The interesting thing is how quickly attitudes are changing.

Two years ago when we first started working in e-commerce, people would say, “Oh, Indonesia’s not ready for e-commerce. It will be at least ten years until it works here, if ever.” Now we are run off our feet speaking to major retailers who want to find out how quickly they can get online. It’s been an amazingly rapid change and it has certainly confirmed our earlier convictions.

Timeline:

• August 2011: Moved to Indonesia with BCG
• November 2011 – September 2012: Co-founded Zalora.co.id and Lazada.co.id
• September 2012 – present: Launched Vela

What is Vela and how did the opportunity come about?

Vela provides end-to-end e-commerce services to both local and international clients. We offer turn-key e-commerce services to Indonesian and international companies operating (or desiring to operate) in the Indonesian market by providing all the functions a business requires to operate in e-commerce – we offer website development, online marketing, order management, warehousing, distribution and reverse logistics. Companies can pick and choose specific assistance they require (eg. online marketing or warehousing and distribution) or they can simply outsource their full e-commerce sales channel and we will operate it on their behalf. We also provide market entry assistance to companies looking to enter Indonesia for the first time.

In terms of the opportunity: my co-founder, Susie Sugden, and I were both working in e-commerce in Indonesia and we saw that there was a huge gap in the market for companies who needed help establishing and operating their e-commerce presence. The market is still quite young and there is a capability shortage, and we recognised that companies would require assistance navigating a new mode of commerce. It’s been an incredible ride.

What technology or other challenges have you overcome in creating this business?

As you might expect, Indonesia is a developing economy across all fronts, and technology here is no different. In building Vela we have focused on developing new technological solutions that address critical gaps in the market and which ensure a better experience for our clients’ customers. We’ve developed two market-leading products: Hari Ini (“same day”) and DART (Distribution and Retail Tracking). Hari Ini is the first real-time package tracking system in the country and it is used by our own courier fleet inside Jakarta.

One of the big problems caused by bad infrastructure is that deliveries are often late, and this bad customer experience is compounded by the fact that none of the major couriers are able to offer real-time tracking. By having our own couriers and providing up-to-the-minute information about packages, we are directly dealing with one of the key customer experience challenges in Indonesia. 

Likewise, our DART system provides our clients with real-time information about their orders, their inventory and our performance. This was another huge problem working with local suppliers – it’s impossible to get reliable, quality information about how your vendor is performing. We think that transparency for our clients is a vital part of the service we offer them, which is why we developed a tracking system to all them to see what we’re doing at any moment.

What unique aspects of Vela are there that may not appear in an equivalent western market business?

In building Vela we have tried to bring internationally-competitive levels of service and transparency to our clients, which is a unique approach in this market. What makes us different from a services provider in the West is that we also need to accommodate for the unique challenges presented by the local market. The best example is probably courier management. In Indonesia, courier performance is patchy and unreliable and On Time Delivery (OTD) is very low compared to developed markets.

One of the specific services we offer is to manage the distribution providers (including doing many of our own deliveries). This means managing multiple couriers, identifying their strengths, trading volumes between them to ensure optimal performance – it’s a data-driven and time consuming process that is not really necessary for e-commerce players in developed countries.

What challenges are you currently facing and how do you predict this may change in the next 12 months?

I’m not sure if you would call it a ‘bad’ challenge – we are growing very quickly and need to be nimble to address all the needs of our various clients. This is a great challenge to have and we feel confident it’s not going to change anytime in the next 12 months. If anything, the growth is only going to get faster.

5 Reasons Why Long-Term Employment Is Dead (And Never Coming Back)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/03/20/5-reasons-why-long-term-employment-is-dead-and-never-coming-back/
Jacob Morgan, Contributor

A few decades ago there was an implicit contract between employees and the organizations they worked for.  As an employee, you would be loyal and committed to the organization you worked for – giving it your labor and your attention.  In exchange that organization would take care of you for life.  In fact, working at an organization for 20, 30, or over 40 years was really not that uncommon.  Then, once you would leave that organization you would get a pension.  Some of these long-term employees still exist but they are a rare dying breed on the verge or retirement (or have reached a point where they too now need to switch jobs). Contrast that with people like my 22 year brother who doesn’t even know what a pension is, and neither to most other people his age.

Long term or life-time employment as we know it today is completely, utterly, and unequivocally, 120% dead, and it ain’t coming back…ever.

The latest numbers from the bureau of labor statistics show that the average tenure was 4.6 years based on data released in January 2012.  

For workers over 65 the average tenure was 10.3 years  and for workers between 25-34 the average tenure was 3.2 years.   If you combine this data with the fact that large organizations are more rapidly getting replaced by other incumbents, then you have a bit of an “interesting” situation.

But why is this happening?  There are a few reasons.

Globalization

Our access to opportunities is no longer limited to our physical location like it was decades ago.  Today, you can be based in Beijing yet still have the opportunity to work for the hottest start-up in the Bay Area (which for many eventually means re-location).  More opportunities and access to organizations all over the world means more choice, more freedom, and less commitment to one organization.

I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but with the massive sweeping layoffs that many larger organizations go through, the incentive to work there shrinks dramatically.  This means that the idea of seeing companies as “stepping stones” to better opportunities is pretty much the norm.  The new workforce is growing up seeing these things happening first hand so they are very aware of this and preparing themselves accordingly.

Accelerating rate of change

Not only is the world of work changing but the rate at which it is changing is accelerating .  This creates more market turbulence and instability.   This heavily ties into the theme above about large organizations and job security.  However, market turbulence affects all organizations and all industries.  In more dynamic and turbulent conditions there is no such thing as long term stability. People get tossed around from place to place, companies go under, new companies emerge, and this cycle happens increasingly more often.

New loyalties

Instead of being loyal to a particular company, many are now loyal to specific people they work with .  When these people leave they usually bring their “friends” with them.

Changing expectations 

Today the levels of employee disengagement appear to be staggeringly high.  This means that new employees start out working for an organization with a very positive outlook.  However, once they start to feel like they are not appreciated, not enjoying their jobs, etc.  They start to look elsewhere.  Consider the many opportunities that are now present through crowd-funding sites like Indiegogo, disrupting businesses like Uber or Lyft, the ease of starting your own business, or even becoming a full-time freelancer on sites like oDesk or Elance.  The mind-set of lifetime or long-term employment doesn’t even exist for many employees today. They simply expect to be at an organization for a few years and then move onto the next thing.

So, now that we know that long-term employment is dead, what should organizations be doing to adapt?  This is a topic that I’m going to explore in my next post.  In the meantime I’d love to hear your thoughts, experiences, and feedback around this.  Are you noticing this trend at your organization and if so, what are you doing about it?

3 Hal yang Membedakan Antara Leader dan Manager

http://startupbisnis.com/3-hal-yang-membedakan-antara-leader-dan-manager/

Untuk membangun sebuah organisasi yang sukses, perlu ada berbagai orang yang memainkan peran berbeda dalam organisasi agar organisasi  dapat berjalan lancar.

Beberapa peran dapat ditentukan dengan mudah sementara yang lain mungkin memiliki batas-batas yang lebih membingungkan, misalnya, apa perbedaan antara Leaders dan Managers ?

Anda dapat menjadi manajer dan leader pada saat yang sama, tetapi hanya karena Anda seorang pemimpin fenomenal tidak menjamin Anda akan menjadi manajer yang hebat, dan sebaliknya, jadi apa perbedaannya ?

Dalam bukunya “On Becoming a Leader”, Warren Bennis menulis tentang perbedaan penting antara beberapa pemimpin dan manajer. Berikut adalah beberapa hal penting dari buku ini, serta insight dari Gene Wade, pendiri CEO UniversityNow, dan Peter Drucker.

1. Leader melakukan inovasi, sedangkan manajer mengelola.

Ini berarti bahwa seorang leader atau pemimpin adalah orang yang datang dengan ide-ide baru dan menggerakkan seluruh organisasi ke dalam fase berpikir untuk maju. Orang ini harus terus-menerus  mengembangkan strategi-strategi dan taktik baru . Dia harus memiliki pengetahuan tentang tren terbaru, penelitian, dan keahlian.

Di sisi lain, manajer mempertahankan apa yang telah ditetapkan. Orang ini harus mempertahankan kontrol dan mengatasi gangguan dalam organisasi yang mungkin ada.

Dalam bukunya The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Management: Lasting Lessons from the Best Leadership Minds of Our Time, Alan Murray mengutip Drucker bahwa seorang manajer adalah seseorang yang menetapkan target yang tepat, tolok ukur, analisis, dan menilai kinerja. Manajer memahami orang-orang yang bekerja bersama mereka dan tahu mana orang yang terbaik untuk tugas-tugas tertentu.

2. Leader menginspirasi sementara manajer bergantung pada kontrol.

Seorang pemimpin adalah seseorang yang menginspirasi orang lain untuk menjadi yang terbaik dan tahu cara yang tepat mengatur tempo serta kecepatan untuk seluruh kelompok.

Kepemimpinan adalah bukan apa yang Anda lakukan-tetapi apa yang orang lain lakukan sebagai respon dari Anda. Jika tidak ada yang muncul di barisan Anda, maka Anda bukanlah  seorang pemimpin.

Dan jika orang memutuskan untuk ikut dalam “kapal” Anda karena Anda telah menginspirasi mereka, maka itu berarti bahwa Anda telah membuat suatu ikatan kepercayaan dalam perusahaan. Ini adalah hal yang penting karena jika bisnis berubah dengan cepat dan membutuhkan orang untuk percaya dalam suatu misi, maka orang ini bisa menjadi pilihan yang tepat.

Adapun manajer, Drucker menulis bahwa tugas mereka adalah untuk mempertahankan kontrol atas orang dengan membantu mereka mengembangkan aset mereka sendiri dan mengeluarkan bakat mereka yang terbesar. Untuk melakukan ini secara efektif, Anda harus tahu orang-orang yang bekerja dengan dan memahami kepentingan mereka serta passionnya.

Manajer kemudian menciptakan keputusan tentang gaji, promosi penempatan, dan melalui komunikasi dengan tim.

Mengelola proyek adalah satu hal, memberdayakan orang lain adalah hal lain.

3. Pemimpin bertanya “what” dan “why,” sedangkan manajer bertanya “how”.

Untuk bertanya apa  dan mengapa Anda harus mampu mempertanyakan mengapa orang lain melakukan tindakan-tindakan tertentu yang terjadi. Kadang-kadang ini mengharuskan Anda menantang atasan.

Ini berarti bahwa mereka mampu stand up untuk manajemen ketika mereka berpikir sesuatu  yang perlu dilakukan bagi perusahaan. Pemimpin tidak selalu benar tentunya.

Jika perusahaan Anda mengalami kegagalan, pekerjaan leader adalah untuk datang dan berkata, “Apa yang kita pelajari dari hal ini?” Dan “Bagaimana kita menggunakan kegagalan  ini untuk memperjelas tujuan kita atau mendapatkan sesuatu yang lebih baik?”

Sebaliknya, manajer tidak benar-benar berpikir tentang apa artinya kegagalan.

Tugas mereka adalah untuk bertanya “bagaimana” dan “kapan” untuk memastikan mereka melaksanakan rencana yang sesuai. Drucker menulis bahwa manajer menerima status quo dan lebih seperti tentara di militer. Mereka tahu bahwa perintah dan rencana yang penting dan tugas mereka adalah untuk menjaga visi mereka pada tujuan perusahaan saat ini.

Meskipun untuk dua peran mungkin mirip, “Para manajer terbaik juga para pemimpin,” kata Wade. “Saya pikir Anda bisa melakukan keduanya, tetapi Anda harus meluangkan waktu untuk mengolahnya.”

Sumber : Vivian Giang, Business Insider

Why This Man Gave Up His $40M Company To 'Fix' Coffee

agricultural business inspiration

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hollieslade/2014/03/03/why-this-man-gave-up-his-40m-company-to-fix-coffee/?utm_campaign=forbestwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
Hollie Slade

“When I was a teenager I thought that money, fame and success would be the solution to everything,” says Michael Jones. A serial entrepreneur in his mid-40s, Jones founded Implantable Provider Group in 2004, a healthcare company that buys medical implants like pacemakers, gives them to hospitals and collects reimbursements from insurance carriers.

The company grew rapidly and in 2010, IPG raised $25 million from Sequoia Capital, the Menlo Park-based venture firm whose portfolio reads like a greatest hits of Silicon Valley’s best known companies – Google GOOG -0.4%, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn LNKD -0.97%, Apple AAPL -0.11%, Whatsapp – to name a few.

With the Sequoia deal under his belt and IPG growing at 1,300% year-on-year, Jones as founder and president was snapping up accolades at every turn, including securing the number 5 spot on Forbes’ America’s Most Promising Companies list in 2011. “IPG was tracking to be a $40 million company,” yet it felt hollow, says Jones. “It didn’t quite have the allure I thought it would,” he says. This period of, “chasing shiny stuff,” as Jones refers to it now, seemed transient and lasting satisfaction kept slipping through his fingers.

Michael Jones, Founder and CEO of Thrive Coffee

“Being on the Inc. 500 had been an obsession of mine since I was 16,” says Jones. “I vividly remember August of 2008 when that happened – people were calling me, emailing and giving me high fives.”

But out at dinner with friends only a week later, no one mentioned it. “I thought, is it over already? It must be over already.”

Jones decided to stop and think about this. “The things like that I thought would have been mountaintop experiences, that euphoria would last only about a week,” he says. “I wanted the next phase to be about adding value.”

In 2011 he left IPG, taking a sabbatical to think about what to do next. Jones’ father-in-law is a coffee farmer in Jamaica and Jones began thinking about why the coffee market is so volatile and what could be done about it.

“I just kept thinking about why something that was $4 per pound in Jamaica could sell for $80 per pound in Japan,” he says.

He found that individual farmers who own less than five acres each collectively grow more than 70% of coffee consumed globally. At the mercy of global trade, small-scale coffee farming is a harsh mistress – prices for java beans regularly hurtle up and down, depending on weather conditions and the futures market, making it hard to eke out a living and giving producers little incentive to invest in the quality of their crop.

Jones decided he wanted to bring his entrepreneurial verve to coffee farming and develop a new model that would make the whole enterprise more profitable and innovative.

Coffee has continued to increase in price, with people paying more for a cup of joe today than ever before, yet that hasn’t translated into better conditions for coffee farmers. “It all pales in comparison to the economics,” says Jones. “Coffee is the number one or two export in many countries, if we could increase the price farmers get for their coffee we could move GDP,” he says, something that would be much more effective than increasing aid, thinks Jones.

His interest in coffee meant Jones was soon introduced through a friend to Ken Lander, a retired lawyer from Georgia. Lander, his wife, stepdaughter and the youngest three of his seven children had moved to a coffee farm in the cloud forests of the Costa Rican mountains in 2005. He’d hoped to live off his U.S. residential interests but when they lost much of their value during the 2008 financial crisis, Lander was forced to try his hand at to making money selling coffee.

Now fully exposed to the volatile market, Lander quickly realized the difficulties farmers face in the current value chain. He met Alejandro Garcia, a fifth generation coffee farmer who’d recently returned from the U.S. where he’d saved $40,000 over two years working in a restaurant to strengthen his family’s struggling coffee farm.

Experimenting with ways to make more money from their crop, Garcia and Lander opened cafes serving the coffee they’d grown to tourists. Through this they began to realize the possibility of selling their coffee at retail.

Jones hooked up with Garcia, Lander and a growing cohort who’d built a following of 3000 coffee aficionados across the globe using coffee grown by twenty local farmers called the San Rafael Sustainable Coffee Initiative. With ambitions to run a similar project at scale, Jones and Lander created Thrive Farmers Coffee, a revenue-sharing operation through which farmers receive ten times more profit than even Fair Trade standards.

By cutting out the middleman, putting a brand around it and selling quality coffee direct to businesses, Jones worked out they could make five to ten times more on their crop, allowing farmers to improve and expand their farms. Farmers who partner with Thrive produce SCAA specialty grade standard coffee. Only 20% of coffee worldwide is of this quality, says Jones, and this higher quality equates even more monetary benefit.

Coffee producers in Central America are set to earn much more for their crop with Thrive Farmers Coffee.

“It wouldn’t leave me that if someone could take that and make it scalable would it be possible to change the world of coffee,” says Jones. He saw parallels between how changing the supply chain in the medical sphere, for example in selling hip replacements, had created value and driven growth at IPG.