Posts Tagged ‘Leadership’

Guest Post: Key Business Lessons from Chelsea’s Unexpected UEFA Champions’ League Victory

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

Football (Soccer), like many sports has grand lessons for any business enterprise. This because sports teams are complicated business enterprises that are supposed to both entertain (hence are mired in all sorts of strange emotions) and make money applying skills of players with different sorts of talent yet liable to injuries that turn the fortunes of a team upside down anytime in a season.

Chelsea of England has been a great Premier League and European team since it was purchased by Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch, in 2003. In seeking greatness (read, winning the Champions’ League trophy which is as prestigious as the World Cup for European club teams and global players at club level alike), many Chelsea coaches have fallen victim to this objective (the current coach is the 8^th in that period, serving in an interim capacity). The dismissals have come even where other teams would have paid to be in Chelsea’s shoes (e.g. losing the final of the Champions’ League, winning the Premier League and FA Cup etc.)!

At the start of the 2011-12 season, Chelsea paid thirteen million pounds for the coach they much coveted to be released by his club Porto from his contract. This coach was brought in with two key objectives for him, transition the club into a greater club by culling the team of its older players making the team dependent on younger ones, and change the team’s playing style into an attractive one like that of Barcelona and Arsenal. In business parlance, he was the change agent to make the organization better placed to compete in the future.

The way he went about this was wanting from the start. His pronouncements in public about “this project” as he put it, especially on the old players did not help his cause. He completely antagonized those the club depended upon over many years and still had much to give, both in terms of performance and passing knowledge through their experience to the next generation. In the process, he isolated them!

His presence at Chelsea turned into unmitigated disaster given the results which placed the club out of its customary top 4 in the premier league (which comes with participation in the Champions League, thirty million pounds for competing and hence is a boost to a club’s finances, in addition to serving as an attraction for the best players in the world which guarantees staying in the upper reaches of football). He was fired in the middle of the season. Players breathed a sigh of relief on his departure.

His assistant, a former Chelsea player with minimal coaching experience at the top levels replaced him in an interim capacity. Every experienced manager, pundit, and media person at the time predicted nothing but doom for Chelsea. In addition to poor premier league performances (they ended the season 6^th), Chelsea had just lost a Champions’ League game and were likely to be eliminated from the next round. The playing unit was suffering from a total lack of motivation with senior players on the team shocked by the treatment they received. In essence, the club was totally dysfunctional.

The new manager though interim seemed to turn this around. He did a number of things right. He met each player personally, and explained each one’s role he was going to play moving forward in the short period of the season remaining. He decided games were going to be played applying strategies and tactics amenable to the players available vis-à-vis the opponent. Every player young and old alike got a clean slate in competing for a place on the team. The team was going to work and fight for each other. As the media and experts continued to spell the doom awaiting Chelsea game to game, the team went about its business of winning by using the most pragmatic means necessary. In the process, they were either lucky or indeed created their own luck! The manager sought leadership from players within the playing unit. You didn’t have to be captain to lead. It was expected of you as a member of the playing unit to play that role.

In doing so, they reached the final of the Champions’ League when least expected, eliminating arguably the best team in Europe, Barcelona at the semi-final stage. The final was going to be a taller order as they were playing at the home of their opponent, Bayern Munich. All pundits deemed Chelsea a non-issue, handing Bayern the trophy before a ball was kicked. This team was arguably the worst seen at Chelsea in the last eight years, albeit the core of the playing unit having been there in the same period. Matters were made worse by the fact that four of their best players were suspended for the final. When the team won the Champions’ League trophy, players young and old stated clearly that their season was turned around when the prior manager left. Others have stated they will never forgive him for the way he treated them – such was the dysfunctional state of affairs at the club in his presence, and justifies how massive an accomplishment winning this trophy was.

What business lessons are here that we can learn from Chelsea’s success under the prevailing circumstances?  Here are a few:

1)    Recognize that job titles do not necessarily tell who your best leaders are on your team. Some team members are leaders by virtue of what they do and their influence on the rest of the team. For Chelsea these leaders were Didier Drogba, Ashley Cole and Petr Cech (none is either captain or vice-captain on the team). They gave 100% every game, even when the team was supposed to be at its worst. They rose to the occasion in special ways each game. Identify your team members who take pride in speaking through their actions. Reward them accordingly, as you need them and they will come through for you at your hour of need!

2)    Team members who understand where the company has come from and the micro-culture within it can save a sinking ship. The interim manager, a former Chelsea player, brought the team together, with players responding due to the respect they afforded him having been in their shoes before. Do not underestimate the value that can be brought by people who have played a role in the past, especially in times of crisis. Don’t burn bridges with team members who leave, they may come in handy in the future when you most need them!

3)    Create your luck and ride it! Chelsea did so by implementing tactics to suit the players they had on the playing unit in a very disciplined and systematic fashion. Everyone in the team (manager, players, and staff) was on the proverbial same page all the way to the last and most important game of their season! They took advantage of any mistakes of omission or commission by the other team at every occasion. For this, they were crowned champs for the most prestigious trophy in Europe at club level, something they have failed having been to at least the semi-final stage six previous times when they were at their best!

4)    You are as strong as your weakest link. Clarity of purpose is essential to success even when failure is the assured result. Each member understanding their role and how their non-performance will result in sure failure for the whole is fundamental. This has to be set at the top, yet and most importantly it also has to be passed on to the team clearly. At Chelsea, the interim manager accomplished it by speaking to each player individually and ensured that each understood their role clearly as they strode toward the team’s end goal.

Let us know if you have any lessons from the most unlikely victory in the comments section.

GUEST POST: This article is a guest post to the KikScore blog from Eric Akunda who was moved to write this after he saw the victory by Chelsea and then saw the parallels to large companies, small businesses and startups!

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Posts Tagged ‘Leadership’

The Fabric of a True Leader – My Takeaways from the Last 5+ Years

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

As many of the readers of this blog know, my day job has been at a large web services company over the last few years.  Today is my final day of juggling the absolutely exhausting schedule of a demanding full-time day job and simultaneous full nights and weekend entrepreneur with KikScore.  I am very excited for that, however, the only major downside really is I now have to find another excuse for why I am 10 pounds overweight, have no time to work out, am balding and have those dark circles under my eyes!

The substance of this post and the story that provides that substance has been years in the making. In short, this post is about the lessons I learned from an undeniable true leader, my former boss (who also left the company this past November).  Therefore this is a very personal and important post for me for two reasons: 1) to provide a way of saying thanks to him and 2) to share with the broader community some of the incredible traits that I hope we all strive for in leadership positions that we are in or may be in one day.  My tribute to him will only really be complete if I can embody and carry many of these same traits to KikScore and beyond in my career and not end up like the guy from the CareerBuilder ad (great song by the way from one of my all time favorite commercials)!

Instead of a long story, the best way to convey to readers what I experienced and learned first hand is by sharing the traits that he repeatedly demonstrated in his daily work and interactions with our team, management, board of directors, third parties, employees throughout the organization and even adversaries trying to sue the company.   The traits broadly broke down into four main areas:

1) Personality;

2) Management;

3) Strategy; and

4) Interaction with Others.

Just for some important context, I saw these traits and actions of this leader over the backdrop of more than 5 years, 4 different management teams (including 4 different CEOs) and 3 different owners that included two separate private equity firms.  His approach to leadership and managing his team instilled a tremendous amount of loyalty not just with me, but throughout the entire organization and especially with his ability to successfully manage through external crisis scenarios and heavy media scrutiny.  A testament to that is over the last few years there was not one person that had the overall and nearly universal respect of the multiple management teams, middle level management and employee base as well as scores of people outside of the company (even competitors too!) and in the community that consistently and repeatedly recognized and often commented on how phenomenal of a leader and person my former boss is.  The funny thing is I honestly think there are probably more than 20 people today across many of these organizations around the world that would write this very same post I am writing about him because our experiences with him have been so similar.

So based on my last 5+ years, the fabric of a true leader can best be described the following way:

A Leader’s Personality Matters

1) Be the person that sets the example and the standard for others

2) Remain calm during a crisis and when others are in various states of panic because that calmness helps everyone make better decisions

3) Keep everything in perspective, even when going through ups and downs as a company and team

4) Stick up for those people who do not have a voice, they will repay you with loyalty and even harder work

5) Be courageous and have the conviction to present a different opinion (just make sure to back it up with data and facts)

6) Steer clear of the politics for a decision and focus instead on what is the right decision for the business

7) Take the time to laugh and enjoy the moment – laughter can often diffuse the inevitable tense meetings and events that we all experience

A Leader Helps Create and Implement a Strategy

8 Work to create an overall mission/strategy that defines the role for yourself and the people you manage

9) Remain flexible and open minded in the tasks and roadmap needed to execute on the strategy

10) Always game plan so you think two and three steps ahead of decisions/actions taken so a team can adequately anticipate possible outcomes

11) Relentlessly focus on customers and employees for the overall strategy and the decisions that are made in executing on that strategy

A Leader Manages with Common Sense

12) Know the role that you have as the leader of a team and focus on consistently delivering in that role

13) As you manage and lead your team, work to ensure that the team clearly understands the strategy and mission that is to be accomplished and their individual roles in achieving the mission

14) Ask lots of questions, but do not second guess subject matter experts by replacing their recommendations with your own gut feelings

15) Learn to deflect praise to the team and team members

16) Actively promote the careers of deserving team members even if they end up having to leave your team

17) Communicate, communicate and then communicate some more with your team

A Leader Makes a World of Difference to Others Through Their Interactions

18) Set your own high standard for interacting with others and make sure you do not get drawn into reacting to other people’s behavior and negativity

19) Avoid unnecessary escalations where you need to “go over someone’s head” and instead give people the benefit of the doubt

20) Take the extra time to remove the attitude from communication and email – the attitude almost always is counterproductive to everyone involved

21) When in doubt, have a face to face conversation instead of trying resolve items over email, that hardly works

22) Be respectful of others’ workloads even when you are much busier than they are

23) Focus on the person that is talking to you, do not multitask and look at your email when they are asking you questions or talking to you

24) Encourage learning from failure and mistakes instead of pointing fingers

I could probably go on and on, especially with more than 5 years of material but then I would lose probably even more readers than I already have with this long post.  Ultimately, a person is perceived and recognized as a leader for a number of reasons often due to their own merit or in some instances just due to association with certain people in an organization.  This post is about laying out the path to do it on your own merit because that is what I saw first hand for the last few years with my former boss. I am forever better off for being part of a team that had a one of a kind leader that taught me (and many others on our team and beyond): that leaders succeed by standing up for a core set of values, working exceptionally hard, taking care of their people, and caring deeply about customers and fellow teammates.

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Posts Tagged ‘Leadership’

Are you on the right journey for yourself and your business? A Must Watch Video

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

If you have not heard about Dr. Srikumar Rao, he is a well known professor and speaker on business, management, professional development and personal enrichment.  He has given a number of great talks including a recent one at the TED conference that can be seen here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).   The above one is from a talk he gave at Google in 2008.

The reason you should watch this video: it is really a transformational type of video that asks critical and important questions about the journey you, your business, your career and your life is on.  While the video is a little over 45 minutes, it is well worth it.  My wife and I watched it on Sunday.  We highly recommend it to our friends, family and the community.  You will not regret taking the time to watch it.

After you watch it, please tell us what you think.

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7 Tips for Startups & Small Businesses from Our First 200 Posts!

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

On Friday, we passed the 200 blog post mark on the KikScore blog.  For us folks that are working on the blog on nights and weekends, I think that is a pretty special achievement seeing that we hit that 200 posts mark in well under a year’s time since this blog was launched late in 2009!  So to my fellow writers, I say thanks and great job.  But much more importantly to our readers and the community we say thanks.  We hope that the next 200 posts will be even better.

So to mark this occasion I thought it would be nice to give some our our tips and lessons learned for small businesses and startups through our prior posts.  So here they go.

1) Stay Positive & Remember Why You Are In Business – The road for small businesses or startups is paved with many roadblocks.  The key is to keep your chin up and do not let those obstacles get you down.  To that point, we talk about the continual need for small businesses and startups to be optimistic in a post that makes its point from a spilled margarita.  Also in addition to staying positive, it is important that you remind yourself why you are on this entrepreneurs journey.  We actually discuss that need to keep in mind the influences of the entrepreneurial spirit in your day to day business.

2) Launch Early – Every startup engages in that internal discussion of when should we launch our product and when is it really ready?  For every startup it is a little different, but I think we would likely come out on the side of launching as early as you can.  We actually discuss this debate about when is the time to launch your new product and whether you should wait until it is just right.

3) Get & Act on Customer Feedback – As a small business or a startup, it is critical that you have the tools to gather customer feedback.  But perhaps just as importantly, you business needs to analyze and then act on that feedback. This is a post that describes some of the tools that are available for getting customer feedback.  Also we laid it bare to give you an idea about how we were looking at customer feedback when it came to our own KikScore product features.

4) Stay Focused & Have a Plan – With so many distractions for your startup or your small business, it is often a challenge staying focused.  We covered steps to address this issue with two posts that highlighted ways to stay focused with an analogy to the great SNL skit “More Cowbell” and tangible actions that your company can take to keep your team focused.

5) Have the Right Team – This point is so important because without the right team, a company will fail.  The right players, in the right position with the right game plan help increase the chances for startup and small business success.  These points were highlighted in our posts about the US World Cup Team, building the right team, lessons from team building from the NFL Draft, and learnings from the recent Lebron James fiasco.

6) Be a Leader and Roll Up Your Sleeves –  Following on the right team, each of the team players in a startup or small business need to be leaders and be proactive, relentless and constantly trying to push the business forward in big ways!  Wall flowers are generally not the best for startup and small business teams, instead you have to be able to wear multiple hats, improvise when necessary, be creative and always be aggressive.  Our two part series on small business and startup leadership discussed this important topic in more detail here and here.

7) ABP – Always Be Pitching – Our tips to startup and small business is get out there and talk about your business, your product, and get feedback.  Do not be one of those people that is always talking about themselves, but at the appropriate times at networking events, with contacts, with key players and potential mentors talk about your business so you can get different ideas and also potentially get introductions to people and companies that can help you build and grow your company.  We had posts on this topic about elevator pitches and again an internal lesson at KikScore we learned from talking to people titled, Why Didn’t We Think of That?.

We have many more posts and hope to have many more in the future. Please let us know if you have any thoughts or tips for small businesses and startups!

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Posts Tagged ‘Leadership’

10 Leadership Traits and Skills Needed at a Startup & Small Business: Part 2

Friday, April 9th, 2010

This is the second in a two part series on leadership traits and skills that can help increase the chances of startup and small business success.  We discussed the first 5 leadership traits in a recent post. This post covers the next 5 skills.

There are literally thousands of books and probably many more blog posts on how to succeed in a start up or small business.  There are some great sites solely devoted to these topics like the Small Company Blog and StartupNation. Books on leadership in business are also everywhere including ones by like Jack Welch’s Straight from the Gut and Jim Collins who wrote Good to Great and Built to Last. This posts, however, actually tries to bridge these two areas and discuss leadership traits and skills that can help a startup or small business succeed.

In my time at Kikscore and also in conversations with friends, contacts and folks I have met at conferences like SXSW, there seems to be a consensus that the following traits really can help bolster your company:

6. Always Think about Costs:  Spending too much money too fast can kill your startup or small business. Paul Graham, a partner at well-known incubator Y-Combinator lists the failure to control costs as one of the main mistakes that can destroy your business. So it is critical that a startup or small business constantly be thinking about the costs of running their business.  This may sound like it is obvious, but I have found myself at times just saying with our startup – “We can afford that, lets go for it!”  That is dangerous thinking because if that thinking takes over your business, before you know it the business is bleeding money. So instead, for every expenditure a leader needs to ask: 1) Do I really need to spend this money?;  2) Is there a cheaper way for me to accomplish the same goal? and 3) What do expect to get out of this investment?  Then its also important to follow up and assess whether the money was in fact well spent after the fact.  Check out this post on 16 Strategies for Cash Stapped Businesses by Marissa Levin at the Women Grow Business Blog for help in this area. Also check out these 10 Money Saving Tools for Small Business.

7. Be Accountable and Demand Accountability: For startups and small businesses, it is easy to avoid accountability because teams are small and if something does not get done someone else steps in to pick up the slack.  But this lack of accountability can decrease morale, create tension between partners and lead to the business not achieving its full potential. Therefore members of startups and small businesses need to create a culture of accountability for both themselves and the team.  Amber Riviere writes at WebWorker Daily that an Accountability Partner is a good way to make sure you stay on track for your own goals.  Startups and small businesses need to make sure that each teammate serves as an Accountability Partner to each other.  Therefore you can demand accountability for yourself and also across the team.  This skill is also intertwined with Trait #2, Take & Give Feedback! Accountability goes hand in hand with accepting feedback.

8. Have Clear Milestones & Objectives for the Business: The accountability that we just discussed has to be based on something.  It based on clear goals, milestones and objectives for the startup or small business.  As we have covered before, these items are key to keeping a company focused.  The milestones and the objectives, if clearly defined, also allow the various members of a startup or the small business to stay on the same page.  As the Small Company Blog discussed in a recent post, all of this is critical in order to maintain a shared vision of the company.  It is the role of the members of a startup or a small business to measure everything that they are doing for the company against these milestones and objectives.  Even more importantly, it is critical that company goals are reviewed and appropriately updated to take into account new business opportunities or changes in market conditions.  A static set of milestones and goals can be just as deadly as none at all!

9. Over Communicate: In large companies, its almost a staple for managers to be trained to over-communicate to their staff, especially in times of change.  On the flip side, startups and small businesses can slip into the path of having information remain tightly held by founders and owners.  This is one area where startups and small businesses should strive to do exactly what management gurus recommend.  Communicate.  Communicate. And keep Communicating!!! To who you may ask?  To everyone.  Communicate with fellow partners and employees in the company.  Communicate with vendors, partners and outsourced contractors.  And finally, go well beyond so you over-communicate with your customers.  When in doubt, pick up the phone and call or email and check in with your customers. The ability to communicate is critical to a success of a leader at a startup or small business.

10. Always Seek out Guidance:  As a startup or small business owner you should come to grips with the fact that many people have been in very similar shoes as you are.  So why not seek out guidance from those other people about the challenges you face?  Chances are they may have faced the same challenges that you are dealing with right now. Paul Mullan at Bloggertone uses the great saying in a post ““To know the road ahead, ask those coming back” when imploring people to Ask For Directions! The lesson from this is tap into your network and your friends of friends.  At KikScore, we found out first hand that not only does our network help us out with guidance but through a simple 15 minute conversation with a close friend, we discovered a whole new channel opportunity for us.   Startup and small business leaders should not be shy to talk to their contacts in order to get feedback on any assortment of items including strategic goals, marketing, partnership opportunities, management challenges, expansion of operations, hiring and a whole host of other items.  All you have to do is be motivated enough to ask for the guidance!  You will be surprised with how many people will Pay it Forward!

11.  Lose the Ego: This is a quick bonus trait.  As startups and small businesses grow, the dynamics of a team change.  The dynamics of the leadership and management also change.  Often the change can be traced back to growing egos, needs to claim credit and demanding recognition.  Leaders should do everything to lose that ego.  In the end, if they are selfless in their acts and are focusing on making sure they are doing what is truly right for the business and putting aside their ego, that will help the management and the company ease that transition to a more successful and growing startup or small business.  Also it will save the business from the perils of dealing with egos and all of the baggage that is typically created from dueling egos or a super ego in the company.

So these traits and the skills we covered in the first part of this series are some of the key characteristics I have seen in my experience.  Of course, these traits and skills are not the only traits you need for success.  So please tell us what you think about the traits and skills you have seen in successful startups and small business.

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10 Leadership Traits and Skills Needed at a Startup & Small Business: Part 1

Friday, March 26th, 2010

This is the first in a two part series on leadership traits and skills that can help increase the chances of startup and small business success.  There are literally thousands of books and probably many more blog posts on how to succeed in a start up or small business.  There are some great sites solely devoted to these topics like the Small Company Blog and StartupNation. Books on leadership in business are also everywhere including ones by like Jack Welch’s Straight from the Gut and Jim Collins who wrote Good to Great and Built to Last. This posts, however, actually tries to bridge these two areas and discuss leadership traits and skills that can help a startup or small business succeed.

In my time at Kikscore and also in conversations with friends, contacts and folks I have met at conferences like SXSW, there seems to be a consensus that the following traits really can help bolster your company:

1. Embrace Wearing Multiple Hats: Small businesses and startups have in their fabric that they are resource constrained. As a result startups and small businesses that often succeed are the ones where the owners are comfortable juggling multiple tasks that may straddle finance, marketing, technology, customer service, operations and business development. But even more importantly the owners need not just embrace the multiple hats, but also at the very same time constantly be thinking two to three steps ahead to determine when is the best time:  a) that you need to switch hats and put on another operational hat or b) when you need to put on a brand new hat in order to ensure success in a certain area of your business.  At early stages of startups and small businesses, the ability for owners to successfully wear these different hats can even determine whether a company survives or fails.  This trait also dovetails with the fourth trait below because it is also important to know when to put down the hat and instead hire an expert.

2. Take & Give Feedback: Owners and leaders in startups and small business need to embrace literally 360 degree feedback.  This is feedback from customers, from vendors, partners, investors, fellow employees, their management team and even their own families!  A continuous feedback loop from all of these parties ensures that you, your business, your product, your team and your partners are having an open and transparent conversation to put your business in the best position for success.  Instead of shying away from feedback, encourage and embrace it especially from your team and your customers.  At first it may be uncomfortable but in the end if you have some level of detachment and a lack of sensitivity/insecurity to others’ comments you can really grow yourself and become a better leader.  Continual feedback from your customers is also critical for building a great product that customers cant get enough of and keep buying!

3. Focus and Refocus: A startup and small business pulls owners and management in many directions.  As a result, it is very easy to lose the focus of your company and your plans for growth because you let other external factors drive your focus.  It is imperative to have a focused set of objectives/goals for the company.  But as a company you need to do more than just have these objectives/goals.  The best startups and small business keep these objectives/goals in the back of their mind in every action they take.  Even more importantly, they measure what they did yesterday, are doing today and will do tomorrow against these objectives/goals.  That is why it is critical that on a regular basis that startup and small business management track progress of the company and day to day tasks against these objectives/goals. Only by doing this will you be able to have a core focus and also continually make sure you refocus on the most important objectives for the business.  We outlined the importance of keeping your startup focused in a previous post here as well as methods to maintain that focus here.

4. Hire and manage outsourced resources: While your role in the startup or small business may be to wear many hats, a critical job is to know when its time to call in an expert in a certain operational area.  When it is clear that you need assistance for product development, marketing, strategy, customer service or even back office operations, its time to outsource.  Outsourcing can save you valuable time, money and help you focus on your core operations and goals of growing your business.  While you focus, your outsourced vendors can step in and help you. But too many outsourcing arrangements fail.  It is not enough just to hire a vendor to perform an operational function for you.  It is critical to the success of your business that you set expectations, train, and create defined deliverables that your outsourced vendor can understand and meet.  It is imperative to set clear expectations, actively manage the outsourced resources and continually measure the value the vendor brings to your company.  In the hiring and managing of these resources, you have to be comfortable with quickly and decisively terminating outsourced vendor relationships that are not working.  Here are a few tools you can use to help manage outsourced technology developers.

5. Be a Great Teammate: Startups and small businesses are only as good as their respective teams.  Therefore the team dynamic is instrumental in business success.  As a result for your company, it is imperative that you support your teammates and you continually deliver great results in your role on the team.  But that is not enough.  Great teammates are the ones that go far beyond what is expected and are relentless in their pursuit of a great product and phenomenal customer experience.  They step in and fill voids when they may exist but the void is actually not readily apparent.  These teammates think two, three and sometimes four steps ahead and take on the responsibility to address the issues that will come up down the road.  The best startups and small businesses are the ones where the teammates continually push each other so that they can each grow to make each other better.  That in turn makes the company and the product better.  Great teammates also mean your fans and customers are happy!  For tips on building the right team check out this excellent post on that topic.

Look out for Part 2 in this series that will be published next week.  Until then, please tell us what you think about the traits and skills you have seen in successful startups and small business.

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