Winning techniques for company leaders–Part III
We continue from where we left last week, discussing techniques that you can use to win as a company leader.
9. Stakeholder Management:
As a business leader, your success depends on how you harness the influence of the stakeholders around you. You have the staff below you, the people above you, your peers at par with you, the suppliers and vendors, other departments, customers, other external interest groups and communities around sites where you operate your business but not forgetting the regulators, competition and government. And most important of all, the board and shareholders. If you cannot balance the needs and interests from your stakeholders, you will be digging your own grave as a business leader. Many business leaders tend to choose only one or a couple of groups of stakeholders that they manage well, at the expense of staff or customers or other groups. That is not effective leadership. An effective and well-rounded business leader will manage stakeholders holistically and will include all of them as he or she makes business decisions and as he or she drives the activities of the business.
In the stakeholder groups, you may find that some of them are quite difficult to manage. You need to find clever ways of managing the stakeholder groups that are specifically difficult. You may need to consult others that have previously been successful at managing such stakeholder groups. You may also find that some stakeholder groups show little interest and are generally inactive. Do not mistake that to signal that you should not engage or manage them. This situation gives you the more reason to engage such stakeholder groups even more actively and regularly because you do need ALL the stakeholders and you need to pre-empt any problems that can erupt from any of the stakeholder groups.
10. Create Appropriate Pressure
– There is an interesting story of how Hernando Cortes, the leader of the Aztecs conquered Mexico in the year 1521. When he arrived in Mexico with his army, he destroyed the boat. And his army asked him how they would travel back across the waters. His answer was, “there is no travelling back here. We have to conquer these people and settle here.” The message was very clear to his army – that the only sure way of survival was to win the battle for if they don’t win, they would either be killed by the opponents or sink in water trying to swim back across thousands of kilometres.
Your team will perform optimally if there is some kind of pressure around them. Pressure breeds speed, effectiveness and efficiency. Place your team in some kind of competition against some opponent. This is why companies operating as monopolies rarely perform optimally and efficiently because they don’t really operate under pressure. Create not just competition between your team and competition but also create a subtle and healthy intra-team competition i.e. members of your team or company must be put in a situation where they compete against each other but in healthy and in subtle ways. For example, make it clear that top performers will get the biggest share of bonus and that only top performers qualify for promotion opportunities. Continuously recognise those who do well, on the spot. Reward good practice and rebuke bad conduct.
To summarise, great leaders are those that manage their teams and business in some methodical fashion. If you are to be a great business leader, you need some frameworks that you can use to be successful as a business leader. Over the last three weeks, we have discussed ten techniques that you can use to excel as a business leader. You have to create an appropriate vision, get the right people and motivate them accordingly to follow and implement a good plan. You need to harness the power of technology and create pressure as you manage your stakeholders effectively so that you do not create unnecessary distractions. Good luck as you excel as a towering business leader.
