CEO

CONSERVELOPMENT INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION/ INTERNOVA INNOVACIÓN Y DESARROLLO, S.A. DE C.V.

Entrepreneurship today

Being an entrepreneur is cool. Taking risks when venturing through uncharted waters on a business vessel is a statement of bravery, independence, and vision. However, not all entrepreneurs are created equal. Some are driven by external factors, such as the pandemic, the need to stay at home, the ever-changing marketplace, or a fluctuating job market, while others do so just because they feel like it or motivated by an obvious business opportunity. Some others become entrepreneurs because they feel compelled to respond to an inner call. In this last category are the truly altruistic, energized by transcendental values and ideals. The first category, however, includes many others who march to the rhythm of a more cynical motive: ambition. The aspiration for wealth is its powerful engine of creation, adaptation, and evolution.

Over time, technological change has provided huge entrepreneurial venues for creative spirits. The IT revolution opened the doors of entrepreneurship for many future entrepreneurs 50 years ago. More recently, Artificial Intelligence is empowering Information Technology to a degree never seen before, making it possible to use digital platforms to respond to markets in a better-informed way with incredible speed and accuracy, while allowing us to create previously non-existent niches.

However, regardless of how noble the individual motive may be, how complex the market or how sophisticated the business environment and tools at our disposal, it is still possible to identify in all the basic ingredients of entrepreneurship: an unmet need (a market niche), a way of satisfying it (with a product or service), and an individual (the entrepreneur), willing to take risks to make those two, need and solution, connect.

Becoming an entrepreneur also involves taking risks. Making that decision, rather than simply entering the market through more traditional work in an established organization, involves at least the risk of assuming the opportunity cost of the chosen path, among other more significant and obvious costs. The risk increases significantly when the decision to become an entrepreneur is made in a society that is not ours. Such is the plight of migrant entrepreneurs.

How did I get here?

A cultural heritage… with 3 different flavors

My family has roots in Mexico, Spain and now the United States. Since I was born in the city of Chihuahua, in the largest state in Mexico, very close to the border with the United States, I grew up quite bicultural. Frequent trips across the border, most often on vacation or to buy clothes, appliances or electronics and other specialized equipment for my father’s electromechanical company, made sure my behavior resembled that of many young Americans. At the same time, my Spanish heritage, as the grandson of a Spanish merchant who followed the route of Mexico’s mining towns in the first third of the 20th century, also provided me with a valuable contrast on how to do business in a foreign land, as my Spanish grandfather and his brother did in Mexico for more than 40 years.

Multiculturalism as a business opportunity

The Cambridge Dictionary defines multiculturalism as “including people who have different customs and beliefs relating to a society, organisation or city”. Therefore, being an entrepreneur in a multicultural society means serving markets that are unfamiliar to us, often in societies that are not only foreign to us but are far from culturally homogeneous.

Consumption patterns are value-based, and since different cultures embrace and prioritize values in a different way, it is of utmost importance to become familiar with the culture and core values of the individuals in our target market, in order to maximize opportunities for success in serving them, particularly ethnic niches. A recent finding illustrates this point: Hispanics spend nearly 27% more time staring at a screen per day (cell phone, computer, tablet…) than the average U.S. population. Such behavior is attributed to the strong social and family ties they have. That provides valuable opportunities for advertisers. Additionally, it has been shown that Hispanics in LATAM have a much stronger loyalty towards brands that advertise in Spanish. At the same time, using a U.S.-based company that fully understands the cultures of the target countries often provides a competitive advantage over competitors, native or foreign.

The challenges for an entrepreneurial migrant

Migration

Contrary to popular belief, net migration from Mexico to the United States was close to zero during the past few decades. Only in recent years have more Mexicans stayed in the United States than returned home. According to data from the Pew Research Center (2022), the net total even declined in years as recently as 2019, when more Mexicans returned home than stayed in the United States. However, that has not been the case with the rest of the Latin American countries, particularly Central American, whose large influx of migrants to the United States is distorting life at the borders, while straining relations between the countries.

With notable exceptions, the United States has often reacted negatively to mass migrations to its territory. Over time, however, such migrations have contributed to enriching American society and culture. Hispanic migration to the United States is no different. A notable example of this cultural marriage of convenience is the predominant presence of Mexican cuisine throughout the United States (including the mixture of iconic rituals such as watching the Superbowl, accompanying it with a quintessential Mexican dish, guacamole, as the appetizer of choice).

Market entry barriers for immigrants

Language

The first barrier to market entry, even as a dayworker, and to society for new migrants is language. The deep-seated habit of migrants of taking refuge in ethnic pockets in their own neighborhoods does not help. That slows their ability to climb the social scaffolding toward more knowledge-intensive (and higher-paying) jobs. Very slowly, as they become more culturally familiarized, insecurity begins to subside and they integrate into society. The passage of time and the growth of the Hispanic market are helping. Today, 50% of American college students take Spanish as their second language in school, while 70% of middle and high school students do the same.

But the language barrier isn’t limited to simply speaking the language of the adoptive country colloquially. Each sector and economic branch also has its own terminology and mastering it becomes a requirement to successfully participate in the business world. To further complicate matters, during my early years as a consultant outside my home country, I was often faced with the challenge of having to learn the lexicon of other disciplines, in order to succeed in advising companies and governments in different countries. For example, when working on Sustainable Development projects in the Circular Economy, to my surprise, the term Conservation often meant different things to Biologists and Economists, which forced me to learn the idioms and meanings of both disciplines, so that all my audiences got the same ideas.

Babel is ubiquitous in the business world and migrant entrepreneurs are permanently exposed to it in their adopted country and abroad, so it is better to meet the challenge head-on, becoming multicultural, multidisciplinary, and bi or multilingual, as quickly as possible.

Education

The difference in educational attainment between first-generation migrants and the U.S. population at large is abysmal. According to a report released by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in 2020, while only 8.3% of the U.S. population lacked a high school diploma, 25.9% of foreign-born people in the United States did. This contributes to complicating access to the U.S. market and economic assimilation (even in regular jobs) of first-generation migrants.

On the other hand, understanding market dynamics takes practice. In that, education and experience play a critical role. For a newcomer to the United States, understanding the behavior of consumers and suppliers in such a complex market can take a lifetime. That’s why most first-generation migrants are mostly limited to serving their own when they start their first venture, while their children, educated and raised in the United States, often go much further. Then, there’s also the issue of skills. Many migrants end up deploying the skillset they learned in their home countries: manual labor, painting, gardening, pool maintenance, weaving and sewing, doing laundry, childcare, and other low-skilled (and low-paid) jobs.

Cultural subtleties

Coming from a wealthy multiethnic background, my impression growing up in Mexico was that being bilingual would be enough to be able to thrive doing business in foreign markets. Spanish and English would do the trick for me, given that those two languages are spoken by about a quarter of the world’s population, with many more people speaking English as a second language for business. However, when I moved to Stanford University, I realized that clearly wasn’t the case. While speaking English helped me communicate with people from many different countries, language was not enough. There were many cultural factors that interfered with the successful communication of people from different cultural backgrounds. That became more evident when I started doing consulting work for the likes of Deloitte or The World Bank around the world. To succeed in conducting business with different nations, in addition to speaking the language, I had to master the cultural subtleties of each society. Cultural immersion was required. To my surprise, that was the case even with cultures that according to my then limited experience as a young professional were almost identical to my Mexican heritage: Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Costa Ricans, Argentinians, Chileans, and Mexicans speak Spanish, but we all have evolved our own ways of doing things, in life and in business. The same is true even in my native Chihuahua, where Indian nations survive, with their own rituals and way of transacting and doing business, based on their own cosmogony. Dealing with them in my youth would prove to be an invaluable asset later in life, allowing me to understand that people need to be approached in ways that are culturally appropriate for them.

Markets

Demystifying the market

Markets have layers. In the case of an economy as complex and sophisticated as the United States’, there are markets within markets: the migrant market, the Hispanic market, the minorities market, the general American market. And then there are overseas markets. Each with its own level of complexity.

For some analysts, the U.S. market has been taken by surprise. The growing Latin American diaspora to the country has created many opportunities for established businesses as well as for newcomers. At first, the purchasing power of the Hispanic population was only marginal, but as the number of migrants increased, they became a market force, creating a Hispanic market and offering the market a significant amount of purchasing power (with a population of nearly 70 million people today). Hispanics in the United States have an estimated $2.5 trillion in purchasing power a year according to the Pew Research Center.)

This market evolved with the degree of sophistication and skills of the people in it, particularly consumers, in this case migrants and their descendants. At first, through stay-at-home activities, their commercial endeavors primarily served the nostalgic needs of first-generation migrants (food, clothing, souvenirs). They eventually began adding other services, more common in their adopted country, as households became more solvent and had more disposable income to invest. Over time, they created businesses that compete with those of other minorities (laundries, photocopiers, convenience stores). Finally, as their children have gone to school at institutions of higher learning and have been exposed to more knowledge-intensive jobs, Hispanics themselves ventured into more high-tech businesses, including some very successful venture-capital firms. An additional wave of more affluent Hispanic immigrant entrepreneurs over the past 10 years added yet another layer to the market, attracting foreign direct investment to the United States to create businesses capable of competing in the U.S. market and using the U.S. as a platform to serve markets abroad, particularly in their countries of origin.

Some tools for each market

Fortunately, as in any market, in the battle to succeed as an entrepreneur in a foreign market there are some tools at our disposal, regardless of the nature of the market we serve.

• User-based design
  In the previous paragraphs I dissected the environment surrounding a migrant entrepreneur entering the U.S. market. As in all markets, knowing the customer in depth is essential. What are their needs? And their preferences? In what context will they use what we offer them? What are the most valuable features for them? How does our value proposition best serve its purpose in this market and for these customers? Is it culturally appropriate? Does it support and respect their values? Being thorough in answering these questions would allow us to design better products, services, and experiences.
• Innovation
  Being culturally sensitive can also provide opportunities to differentiate our business proposition. Ethnic niches are particularly valuable for that, given that customers in them are sensitive to very specific values. Once the questions mentioned above have been answered, the search for innovation can begin. What elements of differentiation can give us additional competitive advantages?
• Cross-Cultural Pollination as a source of creativity
  Observation and introspection are two valuable tools for immigrant entrepreneurs. They allow us to not only identify the cultural elements that are relevant to our future clients, but also the cultural subtleties that can and will make a difference for them. It is important to introspect and reflect on how these characteristics affect consumer behavior, to take them into account when designing products and services. We can also enrich our products and services to make them responsive and appropriate to the different cultures present in our current market.

Establishing borders… in a distinct way

Being an entrepreneur in a foreign country is, paradoxically, also about building walls and establishing solid borders, albeit in a different way. Ours will define the reach of our products and services, helping us identify the scope of the market we serve.

Developing a CLEAR sense of purpose

Returning to the beginning of this chapter, as we undertake entrepreneuring, we must be able to answer some fundamental questions: Why am I doing this? What do I want to achieve? Is it a question of financial benefitting? Is it too good a window of opportunity to let go? Is it to advance the state of the art in my field of interest? Am I trying to respond to an inner call? Is it clear to me what that call may be, what internal vocation moves me?

Our purpose and true motives will determine how we will conduct ourselves and our business, so we must be able to clearly identify them, and keep them in mind. The rewards will depend on it and on how we answer the fundamental questions listed above. If we resonate with our answers, we will extract joy from our journey as entrepreneurs, and magic will start to happen.

Once we’ve identified our transcendental motives to become entrepreneurs, it’s important to go further and touch our potential customers: are we really creating value for them? Are we truly trying to serve them by providing easier and better solutions, closer to home, and more responsive to their culture and values? Do we want to serve them or just please them?

Everybody can attempt to be an entrepreneur. But becoming a successful one is a different matter, particularly for migrants. Such is the nature of our quest.

Kindly direct your suggestions and comments to shavico@gmail.com

The post On Becoming Me: My Personal Quest as a Multicultural Migrant Entrepreneur (Salvador H. Avila Cobo- CONSERVELOPMENT INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION/ INTERNOVA INNOVACIÓN Y DESARROLLO) appeared first on XO Leaders.

-Former Chair Federal Election Commission

-California Fair Political Practices Commission

-Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Obama Administration

Many young people decide what they want to be; how they will make a mark on society; and, what kind of job they aspire to early in their lives, sometimes even before high school. I have known people whose lives were so carefully planned that they have determined exactly what they have to do in order to get them to their goals. I thought that I would be such a person – that I would do what my father had been telling me most of my childhood – that I must make a difference in society. While it is not a bad thing to have a motivation, my experience in many different areas and in extremely different jobs has led me to believe that making precise plans and not experimenting with other experiences can actually stifle our ability to make change.

An example of this is my own high school experience. I became enamored with philosophy when of my teachers, in a public speaking class, used philosophy as a way to provide a topic for our speeches. Because philosophy could be about ethics, Justice, government, and analysis, and other arcane issues, I was certain that I would be a philosopher. When in college at the age of 16, philosophy was my major and I delved deeply into phenomenology, morality and political philosophy. I was firm in my desire to get a PhD in Philosophy.

My father, who was a college professor in the sciences, and had a PhD in Physics and Meteorology, strongly dissuaded me from choosing that route. He said that I would end up teaching at a small college in the middle of the country, and would have to keep writing articles to be promoted. He knew that I would hate that, and encouraged me to go to law school instead. He was right. The legal profession was a great choice because it enabled me to do many different kinds of work in many different arenas- from teaching, to writing, to advocacy, and giving advice and mediating disputes.

My career as a lawyer began in a small law firm, representing ( and giving free legal advice to) clients who were in the trades, including carpenters and bricklayers. But what I found particularly meaningful was the pro bono (free) work that I did for immigrant farm workers who were working picking strawberries, which is back-breaking work, but they were not being paid fairly by the big corporate grower that employed them. I sued the company, and was able to get them to agree to increase the wages of the workers. After the settlement, the workers came to see me, driving a long distance to thank me with a tray of delicious strawberries to thank me for my efforts and to let me know what a difference the settlement had made for their families.

Another case that I handled for free was to against a Shopping Center owner for not allowing a group of high school students to ask people at the shopping center to sign a petition against a United Nations General Assembly Resolution. Although I lost the trial in the lower court, it was appealed to the California Supreme Court and then the US Supreme Court, which found that the private owner of the shopping center could be prohibited from excluding peaceful expressive activity to open areas of the shopping center. This case is now a standard throughout the country allowing advocates to petition for their issues.

These cases made me realize that what I really wanted to do was precisely what my father instructed – to make a difference in the community and in people’s lives. After a year at the law firm, I knew that I didn’t want to be in the law to make a lot of money, I wanted to use the law for good, so I left to work in the public sector where I could make change for the community.

While a new lawyer at the County Counsel’s office, I agreed to take on many different legal issues and cases in various aspects of the law – from arguing for conservatorships of the mentally ill, labor law issues, gender discrimination cases, and defending the county in medical malpractice cases, and more. Working on many different issues gave me valuable experience, and enabled me to be promoted to supervisor positions. As one of the very few women in the office, it was not easy to be a supervisor of men who had worked there for more years than I had, but I recognized that even challenging and difficult situations gave me important experience in how to respond to aggression and anger of other employees. And, it provided greater access to and insight into my own boss and how he made decisions. Although he was not a good boss, the insights proved helpful for me, by watching his dysfunction, to understand how to treat employees respectfully and to enable them to succeed. It taught me how to be a leader.

And I did become the head of the office. I was able to hire more women and minorities. And, I knew that the job at a government law office should not be just to defend the government in lawsuits against it, as had been the tradition. Because the job of the government is to serve the community, I thought that the lawyers in my office could use the law to help the community thrive. So I started a “Social Justice Affirmation Litigation” division, to help those subjected to immigration fraud, to ensure educational rights for children who were in juvenile facilities, to sue those who were defrauding seniors, and to sue companies that were injuring the health of members of the public – tobacco companies, and paint companies which knowingly sold toxic paint which had caused lead paint poisoning in children in mostly low income families. The lead paint case, the first in the country, settled for $305 million so several local governments could remove the paint. Because this was a ground-breaking case, I was asked by the new Obama administration to be the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the US Justice Department, to oversee Consumer litigation. I also worked on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, financial issues that had been caused by mortgage fraud, compensation for the responders to 9-11, and many other significant matters.

But being in Washington DC, away from my family took a toll, and I felt that I was not accomplishing enough. And, interestingly, as a woman who had previously had many important jobs, I nevertheless did not think that I was good enough. Most of my male colleagues had gone to elite law schools and worked in previous administrations, while I had gone to a public law school, and had little familiarity with the federal system. But when I left, I was told by many employees that I was the best person ever in my job because I cared about the people in the country and how the laws affected them. These comments gave me more confidence in the work that I continued to do.

I was appointed by the Governor of California to be the Chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission. Though I had worked in government ethics, I had never done campaign finance law. I approached the job as if it was essentially consumer protection to give transparency of political activity to the public. And that transparency is exactly what I fought for during my tenure. We brought the first case in the country to fight millions of dollars of “dark money” whose source was unknown when it was given in an election. We identified the people involved before the election so people could know who was trying to buy their vote.

Because of the notoriety of that case, I received a call from the White House asking me to be an Obama nominated Commissioner of the Federal Election Commission. I was unanimously confirmed for this position by the United States Senate, in 2013. I became well known – including for speaking out publicly on tv, in a documentary, and in the press, about the failure of the bipartisan Commission to do its job to regulate and require disclosure of money in politics, because of partisan stalemates.

In 2017, I returned to California to teach at UC Berkeley Law School, to work as a Mediator and Expert witness, and to work on Electoral issues throughout the world. The many experiences in my career have enabled me to continue to work in areas where I can make a difference in the world.

The post CHALLENGES (Ann Ravel – FORMER CHAIR FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION) appeared first on XO Leaders.

Vice President Kettering Global

KETTERING UNIVERSITY

“I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let you forget you’re a man…”

(1980s ad for Enjoli perfume)

That perfume ad, popular in the early 1980s was something that all women from my generation grew up hearing and can still remem- ber. It featured a beautiful blonde woman going from business attire to a sexy negligee. Today, those images make me bristle. Growing up in a time when women still had limited opportunities, this advertisement seemed to tease, “Yes, you can have it all!” But was having it all reasonable or even something we should have aspired to obtain?

That generation of women grew up to think that we could “do it all” and do it all equally well. We got sold a bill of goods. It meant that we ended up trying to climb our professional ladders, be excellent wives and mothers, not to mention always willing lover, make cookies for school events and keep an immaculate house. Many of us ended up exhausted, feeling like we were always failing and never measuring up to some invisible but palpable standard that was not achievable in the first place. We were often plagued with guilt. Guilt over not spending enough time with our children, not being present enough on the job and not being great partners. On top of all that, we felt very alone in these struggles with little “sisterhood” in the way of support from one another. After all, we were all trying to climb the ladder of success to the proverbial “glass ceiling.” Sometimes that meant climbing over one another.

How the world has changed, and yet remained the same.

Young men and women today inspire me with how they have written their own script for life and work balance from young fathers who choose raising their children over their careers, and young mothers who take less stressful jobs so they can be more available to their young children. I marvel today at women like my Executive Assistant who works from home three days a week to make it easier to spend time with her toddler daughter. My own daughter who earned her PhD from one of the best Universities in the country and gave birth to my twin grandchildren, managed to write a book and earn tenure, because she had a partner who supported her throughout the process. I see women who make the decision to stay in a job less demanding so they can spend time with aging parents, or more time with their children, or work on community projects. I see women who have designed who they are and who they love by their own rules and not those society has imposed upon them. At the same time, I see stress and mental health issues at an all time high and more and more young people exhausted and burned-out. So maybe things have not changed as much as we hoped.

After a 35-year career that has allowed me many opportunities. I have been lucky enough to learn a few lessons worth passing along. I was a not so rich little girl growing up in the inner city of Detroit who found her way to go to one of the best Universities in the country and buy my dream home on one of the Great Lakes in Michigan. Those were dreams my own mother not got a chance to realize or see her daughter finally capture. The main lesson I have learned is that “having it all,” it not what you think it means. My “all” is dramatically different from what I anticipated it to be nearly four decades ago. As a good friend once said to me, “our problem is that you and I wanted to change the world, only we discovered our world was smaller than we thought.”

That is indeed true. I have changed the world, but the world I changed is dramatically smaller than I thought it would be. Yet, from my perspective, my life has been a resounding success! I have had a satisfying and interesting career, lived in some great places, traveled the world, raised two amazing children and have an enduring marriage. I have friends, a spiritual life and many hobbies. As an Online professional working in Higher Education, I have helped thousands of students achieve their academic and career goals by earning their degrees. I have mentored many young people to aspire to dream jobs and during my time as a counselor in private practice, helped many individuals through challenges in their life. I have learned a few things (sometimes not easily) that are worth passing along. Let me offer these items for consideration:

•  Remember you can always change your mind. There are very few decisions that cannot be changed. You can start down a path and take a turn at any time.
•  Take the time to love and enjoy your life.
• Find a hobby.
•  Choose a partner wisely, both of you will change over time and finding someone who appreciates you and can always make you laugh is vital.
•  If you choose to have children, understand they did not ask to be born and need to be a priority for at least 18 years. That is best example of commitment I can think of and it means you have to give up some things in your own life because you chose to raise another human being who depends on you for everything.
•  Write your goals down every year. I use my birthday as a time to sit down, look at my accomplishments and plan the goals for the next 1, 3, and 5 years. You forget what you accomplished in 365 days. Keep this in a special bound book reserved for your plans. If you have a partner, be sure to do some of this together as a couple and create goals for you to achieve as partners in this life.
•  Find a community that supports you and feeds your soul. Whether this is a group of people from your high school or college years, a church, AA group, a knitting group or LGBTQ community. Find a group that you trust and that loves you for who you are and make them an important part of your circle.
•  Find a career that brings you satisfaction and that you enjoy. No one enjoys every minute of every day on the job but when you get to the point that you no longer get up with a spring in your step and joy for the day-CHANGE your job or career path.
•  Start saving money early. No matter how small, remember to pay yourself first and invest that money, whether it is ten dollars or ten thousand. If you start young that money will compound over time and it allows you more options at the end of your career.
•  Do not waste time on regret, understand that it is our mistakes that truly help us grow.
•  Learn to be humble. It takes practice.
•  Give others credit.
• Work on listening with as much intensity as you speak.
•  Exercise and take care of your body.
•  Find a spiritual center in your life.
•  Say thank-you, especially to those who do not often hear it.
•  Give a hand-up to another person who is trying to find their path.
• Pay attention when others need support and be a source of that support when you can.
•  Forgive often-but especially forgive your parents for maybe not being perfect human beings.
•  Remember life is short, we have a limited time in this world and you should find joy, maybe not every moment of every day, but let the joy outweigh the bad and negative energy.

These are not only words of wisdom but lessons to strive to bring you balance and harmony in your life. These things have made a difference in my own life and career. Most of these take time, patience, practice and self-forgiveness to find a way not to be “perfect” but to make your life a never-ending journey of evolution. Finally, the most important thing to remember is to breathe. Breathe in and take in the world around you, holding your breath will make you miss a chance to smell the flowers that surround us every day.

And as for bringing home the bacon. I no longer eat meat… so bacon is pretty far from my universe.

The post LEADERSHIP (Christine M. Wallace- KETTERING UNIVERSITY) appeared first on XO Leaders.

President

GRUPO GARFLO

“I am not perfect and that is precisely why I have a great team”

The Importance of Collaborative Leadership in the Business World

Collaboration and teamwork have always been essential components of success in the business world. A great leader not only acknowledges their own shortcomings, but also values and leverages the strengths of their team members to achieve common goals. It is said that a great leader does not need to be perfect, but rather needs to be able to lead and inspire their team to perform at their best. In this article, we will discuss the importance of collaborative leadership in the business world and how it can lead to success.

Collaborative leadership is a type of leadership that values input from team members, encourages open communication, and promotes a culture of collaboration. It involves working with others to achieve common goals by utilizing the strengths and talents of each individual. Collaborative leadership is particularly important in today’s business environment, where diverse perspectives and inclusive practices are valued and seen as a key driver of success.

The Importance of Humility in Collaborative Leadership

Humility is a crucial aspect of collaborative leadership. Leaders who are humble are willing to admit their mistakes, recognize their limitations, and learn from feedback. This approach allows for open communication and a collaborative environment where everyone’s ideas are considered.

In contrast, leaders who lack humility can be seen as unapproachable, uninterested in feedback, and rigid in their ideas. This can lead to a lack of trust and respect from team members, hindering collaboration and progress.

A humble leader not only acknowledges their own limitations, but also values the strengths of their team members. They recognize the importance of diverse perspectives and opinions, and encourage open communication and feedback. By being humble, leaders can create a culture of collaboration where team members are comfortable sharing their ideas and working together to achieve common goals.

Fostering a Culture of Collaboration

Creating a culture of collaboration requires intentional efforts by leaders to value the input of team members, promote open communication, and foster an environment of mutual respect and trust. Leaders who prioritize collaboration over competition are more likely to create a positive work environment where team members are motivated to contribute their best efforts.

To foster a culture of collaboration, leaders can implement various strategies such as team-building exercises, regular feedback sessions, and collaborative decision-making processes. Additionally, leaders can encourage cross-functional collaboration by breaking down silos and promoting communication between departments.

Effective communication is also key to fostering a culture of collaboration. Leaders should establish clear communication channels and encourage team members to share their ideas and concerns openly. They should also provide regular feedback and recognition to encourage continued collaboration and team cohesion.

Benefits of Collaborative Leadership

Collaborative leadership has several benefits for both leaders and team members. One of the main benefits is increased innovation and creativity. By bringing together diverse perspectives and ideas, team members are more likely to develop innovative solutions to complex problems.

Collaborative leadership also leads to improved decision-making. When leaders and team members collaborate on decisions, they are able to make more informed and well-rounded choices. This also leads to greater buy-in and commitment from team members, as they feel valued and heard in the decision-making process.

Finally, collaborative leadership creates a positive work environment where team members feel respected and supported. This leads to increased job satisfaction and motivation, which can result in higher productivity and overall success for the business.

Collaborative leadership requires a shift in mindset and a willingness to let go of traditional leadership approaches that prioritize hierarchy and control. It is a leadership style that values the strengths and skills of team members, and encourages them to work together to achieve common goals. Collaborative leaders prioritize relationships over tasks, and are able to inspire and motivate their teams to perform at their best.

One of the keys to successful collaborative leadership is creating a culture of trust and open communication. Leaders who prioritize collaboration create an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing their ideas and concerns openly. This leads to greater creativity and innovation, as team members are able to build on each other’s ideas and work together to find solutions to complex problems. Collaborative leadership also leads to increased accountability, as team members feel a sense of ownership over their work and are motivated to perform at their best.

In addition to creating a culture of trust and open communication, collaborative leaders also need to be skilled at building relationships and working with diverse teams. This requires strong emotional intelligence and the ability to understand and respond to the needs of team members. Collaborative leaders need to be able to listen actively, provide feedback, and encourage team members to share their thoughts and ideas.

Collaborative leadership also requires a willingness to take risks and embrace change. Leaders who are able to adapt to changing circumstances and remain flexible in their approach are more likely to succeed in a collaborative environment. This requires a willingness to let go of control and allow team members to take ownership of their work.

Another important aspect of collaborative leadership is the ability to celebrate successes and learn from failures. Leaders who prioritize collaboration recognize that success is a team effort, and are quick to acknowledge the contributions of team members. They are also able to learn from failures and use them as opportunities for growth and improvement.

In conclusion, the importance of collaborative leadership in the business world cannot be overstated. By being humble, fostering a culture of collaboration, and promoting effective communication, leaders can create an environment where team members are motivated to contribute their best efforts. The benefits of collaborative leadership are numerous and include increased innovation and creativity, improved decision-making, and a positive work environment.

As famous philosopher Aristotle once said, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This sentiment is particularly relevant to collaborative leadership, where the strengths and talents of each individual team member combine to achieve common goals that are greater than what any one person could accomplish alone. It is through collaboration and teamwork that great things are achieved, as noted by the famous basketball coach Phil Jackson, who said “the strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”

Collaborative leadership also requires a willingness to take risks and embrace change, as noted by the famous entrepreneur Richard Branson, who said “if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” Collaborative leaders inspire their teams to take risks and try new things, creating an environment where innovation and creativity can thrive.

Ultimately, successful leaders recognize that they do not need to be perfect, but rather need to be able to lead and inspire their team to perform at their best. As noted by former President Barack Obama, “change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” Collaborative leaders understand that they are not the only ones responsible for achieving success, but rather that success is a team effort.

In conclusion, collaborative leadership is essential for success in the modern business world. By valuing the input and strengths of team members, fostering a culture of trust and open communication, and being willing to take risks and embrace change, leaders can create an environment where everyone is motivated to work together to achieve common goals. As the famous football coach Vince Lombardi once said, “individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” Collaborative leadership is the key to unlocking this commitment and achieving success.

The post LEADERSHIP (Héctor Ventura García Flores- GRUPO GARFLO) appeared first on XO Leaders.

CEO

FOUNDERS ENTERPRISES INC./ TRANSPORTES SOTO E HIJOS

“To be a leader, you must first have the courage to admit your mistakes, choose to learn from them, and have the maturity to correct them.”

In this article, I would like to share how I have learned to overcome hardship and created a company that has a life of its own, which will survive, with or without me, for many years to come. I am, and it is, still a work in progress, but I firmly believe that to achieve this goal, my primary function within the company is to be a transformational leader and promoter of change. I will stress during my article how important it is for a leader to learn how to communicate and motivate our team members to allow them to become “the innovators” and thereby set a culture of a company that evolves independently of its owner.

To give you a bit of background, I think it is important to share with you that this has been a long journey that started with my father buying and restoring a burnt-out truck that my family restored. You might ask why a burnt-out truck. Well, because that was the only truck on the lot we could afford. There were no frills, bells, or whistles but a means to start a trucking business.

We have come a long way since then. Today we have hundreds of trucks and three logistics terminals. Our operations span from the USA well into Mexico. Although we are growing furiously and work in many different sectors, our most precious cargo will always be our drivers.

What it takes

Transformational leadership is all about helping our team members on every single level of the organization realize that they are the leaders of tomorrow. I have seen that this transforms their level of commitment because they are part of what we are doing, not a means to what the organization wants to achieve. This, in turn, generates two things; for one, in a low practical way, a much better economic situation for them and their family, but also an increase in the welfare of their communities far beyond what they might be making in our company.

We all have seen companies transform their business models out of need; when they have encountered challenges, some do it successfully others fail. We have all seen the example of Kodak. Time will tell what ultimately happens to this company that changed late and did not take advantage of its privileged position in the market. I believe in a type of leadership that transforms the organization before it is needed through its team members.

One might call it qualities or abilities that the company’s leader should have to initiate this transformation from within the company and for it to become part of the team-spirit character of the company. I feel the most important are:

Enthusiasm: The noun originates back to Ancient Greece “enthousiasmos” and comes from the combination of three words “en” (in), “theós” (god), and “ousía” (essence), meaning “inspired by god’s essence.” It was originally used in a derogatory sense to describe excessive religious zeal. Today both the religious and derogatory connotations are gone from enthusiasm, but the zeal has survived.

To me, enthusiasm springs up when the person passionately discovers his reason for being. I am fortunate to have seen it truly happen a few times. The result is that it makes the bearer of this “enthusiasm” capable of leaving a legacy that transcends generations.

“Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own”

Empowerment: To achieve a transformational company, team members need to be strengthened. One needs to give everyone in the company the confidence, autonomy, tools, and guidance for them to trust that they can make decisions and solve problems by themselves. The transformational leader empowers his colleagues to work for the success of the whole team, not just his/her own. This is an incredible enabler for each individual to reach their full potential, understand their purpose, and give themselves the opportunities to excel. As a team, the organization becomes extraordinary by everyone contributing to a common cause.

It is placing trust in people capable of generating the well-being of others.

Sustainability: One needs to safeguard the current needs of the organization without compromising the needs of future generations within a company. It might seem simple, but I have found that the longest organizations typically think it is reaching the objectives of the next quarter but that the future, the real future, which is the next generation, is just an uncomfortable afterthought. By thinking “real” future, is the only way to achieve a “real” sustainable well-being for all.

“The success of sustainable leadership is not measured by today’s results. But for the ability to generate a chain of conscious and genuine leaders who are constantly committed to building a sustainable future.“

Vision: The leader must be aware of all aspects of the business, such as finances, technology, attitudes, people behaviors, and organizational culture. He is the Captain of the ship, but a transformational ship is a strange ship. It is really everyone around him who make the ship sail; he is just around to remind everyone that they need to work together to be on the best course and adapt faster than the competition.

Organizational transformation, creativity, and innovation are intimately linked and, in turn, are focused on proposing new ideas that can face a future that does not yet exist. This is where vulnerability comes in. Although vulnerable, the transformational organization needs to find the courage to face uncertainty by taking risks that facilitate innovation in a sometimes adverse political, economic, or social environment. Yes, to innovate, it is necessary to be brave to face uncertainty and take the risks that it entails.

“Without vulnerability there is no innovation, because only he who sees the invisible, can achieve the impossible..”

Integrity: The person creating a transformational organization needs to be true to his life’s purpose as well as that of his company. These cannot differ significantly and ideally not differ one bit. When they are aligned, it inspires people and positively impacts both the organization and the community. Only an organization led by a leader who is true to himself will be generous enough, will dedicate his time, can truly empower his colleagues them trust them with authority to achieve extraordinary results.

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even if no one is watching.”

As you can see, the challenges are great, and they are many. It is not easy for all these qualities to exist in a single person, so a leader must surround oneself with an intelligent team with different skills capable of solving adverse situations that help complement each other. In addition, to strengthen your work as a leader, it is crucial to understand the word “Humble.” It is necessary to be honest with yourself and thus be able to identify your areas of opportunity, as well as have the ability to listen to others and trust points of view that become different from your own.

An effective tool that can help put these characteristics into practice is strategic planning in the company of your collaborators. One of the many functions that this tool has is that you will be able to identify your own strengths and areas of opportunity at the individual level as a leader and at the organizational level. That is why humility plays a very important role in accepting comments for the common good of Society.

Within my personal and professional experience, I have been fortunate to live through some difficult stages in my life that have shaped me to become the person I am today. To name a few, I would like to mention the difficult loss of my mother in my adolescence, very early on, having the responsibility of growing the family business, creating the structure it required to become a noteworthy company, suffering my father’s illness and departure, becoming executor of his inheritance, restructuring the company’s shareholding, reengineering the conglomerate of companies we had become, encouraging the culture change of a transformational organization, professionalizing the companies and lately being vigilant of the generational transition I am working on.

Given the experience of all these experiences mentioned above, I would like to recommend the following tips that have been of great support to me and that I consider can also be helpful:

1. Reach out to the right people who have the experience to share with you to develop you and your team.
2. Get involved in subjects that generate value and are aligned with what you seek.
3. Meet people who have businesses that are different from yours and try to figure out how they overcame challenges.
4. Create a council within your company and invite your colleagues to participate. When you do this, let there be people from all levels within the organization.
5. Constantly learn about topics that help you envision the future as an agent of change.
6. Finally, look for consultants and advisors in the areas in which you feel your organization requires support.

One of the biggest challenges I have faced in my career as a leader and as a General Manager of the Group has been the following:

1. Delegate: Letting go of the reins and putting them in the hands of “strangers” is a difficult decision. However, with the passing of time, you will realize that there are people more capable than you.
2. Gender Transition: In this era where there can be up to four generations working together, empathy and compassion are essential. Learning to work with people’s changing expectations within quickly evolving generational gaps has been challenging for me.
3. Transcendence: Without a doubt, the most cherished dream of someone like me is that the company exists for many generations to come. The only answer I can find is to create a culture of continuous autonomous transformation.

As you can see, there are many activities and challenges that someone who aims to create a transformational organization faces, especially in times when uncertainty and change are a constant, but without a doubt, these activities and challenges are part of the development and transcendence. It’s clear that it’s hard work and a long way to go, but to me, it’s worth a try.

For your team to see all this development as a positive impact, it is vital to give them an approach in which they obtain a personal benefit as well as self-realization within the business environment. In this way, each of the members will find his raison d’être and contribute favorably to the common good.

Therefore, if this is the way you choose to go, I would recommend that you design a general plan and a few basic guidelines for what you want to achieve. Try to delegate all the activities you have been performing so far, yes, ALL. Your future focus should not be on the present but on visualizing the future.

I’ll wrap up my article by saying that I am not perfect, but I try to be a good leader. What I do have is a strong will and the firm conviction to lead my company to a place that creates welfare for all my colleagues, their families and for our society. I know that I have an incredible team, that we complement each other, and that thanks to them, our company will be here tomorrow and for many generations to come. For the same reason, my pledge to God is the same as I have for my company: “Serve to help, Learn to teach”… So be it…

“Never Let success come to the head and failure to the head heart.”

Someone once asked me what I would like to be reborn as, and I answered: “A truck driver.”

The post I am not a Perfect Leader, but a Leader with Team Vision (Omar Soto Sepúlveda- FOUNDERS ENTERPRISES INC./ TRANSPORTES SOTO E HIJOS) appeared first on XO Leaders.

Founder/CEO

FIRST CLASS INVESTMENTS

It took me years to realize that I could not do everything myself and that I needed to build a great team. It took trust and a bit of exhaustion in order to relinquish full control. I did not wake up one day a team builder. I gave up management control in stages. I learned slowly the power of culture and team building. The rewards were many fold.

I had three stages of my business career. In the first stage, I spent twelve years in the public schools including ten years in administration. In the second stage, I became a business owner when I opened my first preschool. As that business grew, I had other owners join me. First my wife at the time and later a former school district colleague joined me in running the company. In seventeen years, we built that company to thirteen locations and earned a place in the Top 50 companies in the industry. The third stage of my career was buying a preschool company out of bankruptcy court and building that business with a friend from the Young Presidents Organization. We started with sixteen locations of which we owned none of the real estate and grew to thirty one locations, of which we owned twenty two of the school properties. This company ended up as the thirteenth biggest child care company in the country.

When I opened my first preschool, I knew a great deal about educating young children and running a school but I knew nothing about running a business. I visited other preschools and saw them through the eyes of an educator. Most of these schools had very weak educational programs. I spent two years editing and writing a detailed early education curriculum of two thousand lessons which were used in my schools for thirty years.

In the eighties, there was great growth in the preschool industry, as women became more engaged in the workforce. When I had two schools, I could do everything myself: manage the managers, be a face to the public, deal with licensing, market the schools and supervise instruction. It was tiring but it could be done.

In the late eighties, I had an opportunity to buy several schools from a company that expanded too fast and ran out of money. I bought their four newest and most cash negative schools and two schools under construction. A former colleague from the public schools bought into our venture and joined me. I now had a competent educator and manager as my partner to share the load. Even though I completely trusted her, I had a hard time letting go.

After about six months of underutilizing my partner and over extending myself, I knew that I needed to change things. I then started a long journey of building a strong team. In stages, I continued to see the value of the organizational strength that comes from building a strong team.

First, we invested in a Regional Manager. Then we divided our ten schools between my partner and the new Regional Manager. Second, we began regular staff meetings with the site managers. The site managers that we inherited with our business purchase, did not share our values. The next thing that we did was to develop a formal management training program to bring our own people up through the ranks. This involved extra expense to pull potential managers out of their classroom and train them with our best site managers. Virtually all managers and workers in the child care industry are women and we gave them a chance to advance. It was a great investment in people.

Next we opened our books to the managers. Every manager got a simple report of her weekly child count and her labor costs. Each month she got her school’s financial report. We started giving bonuses to our managers based on their efficient use of labor. We found that this made our schools more profitable.

Additionally, we started to pay bonuses to our managers on enrollment growth and school profit. It is much easier to run a school at about 2/3 full. It is much less work but much less profitable. After all the fixed costs are satisfied, a preschool really starts to make money. Sharing that profit and rewarding the hard work that it takes to fill the schools, made our company much more successful. Now every manager had the financial information for her operation and every manager could share in the prosperity of their school.

The next big step was the evolution and clarification in our management meeting rules. Our Golden Rule was that the best idea wins not the idea from the most senior person speaking. Everyone was encouraged to defend their proposals and listen to others. Our debates became spirited but respectful and we discussed until a consensus was reached. It was not a complete democracy because I still reserved the right to decide what was the “best idea.” However, that option was very rarely utilized.

As our team strength built, my role changed. I focused on real estate, marketing and government relations. My partner who was now president, ran the management meetings and eventually, I only came to the Management Meetings when requested.

In the late 1990s my partners and I sold that company. The acquiring company undid all of our management, training and compensation programs. They cut out all our performance bonuses, management training programs and management meeting rules. Within two years the profit margin was down to 40% of what we produced. This experience reinforced my desire to build even better team management, if I got another chance.

After I sold my preschool company, I went looking with a friend for business to buy. I was not looking for a preschool company, but one found me.

Another of my friend was in the turnaround business and he was hired by a cradle to grave education conglomerate to stave off bankruptcy. When he started, he called me six to eight times a day asking questions. Over the ensuing months, the calls dwindled to two or three per week. Three weeks later, he called and told me that the company had filed for bankruptcy. He told me that the preschool business, Sunrise Preschools, was the only profitable part of the company and I should buy it.

Every big childcare company in the country was looking at Sunrise. It took me two months of daily calls to the court appointed administrator to get in line. Sunrise had oversized inefficient schools with tons of deferred maintenance but it also had a highly recognized name and top quality senior management. It took persistence and excellent work by my partner to secure the purchase in the bankruptcy court.

My partner is a certified accountant and an experienced CEO, but he did not know the preschool business. We divided responsibilities. Among other great accomplishments, he developed the best and fastest financial reporting system in the industry. We both realized the great leadership and culture building acumen of the existing operations manager. We soon made her President.

The strength of the President and armed with timely financial measurement tools, we were in a position to empower and develop a great management team.

Sunrise had been drained of capital by the prior owners. The positive cash flow was taken to fund other failing company enterprises. There was deferred maintenance on the schools, no supplies, or instructional materials.

On the first day that we owned the schools, I sent a letter to every employee saying that we would live by three rules: We would 1. Invest whatever was necessary to build profitable enrollment, 2. Waste nothing, 3. Share the fruit of our labors.

We set up separate monthly meeting of directors and of assistant directors. These site managers developed lists of material and supply needs and as well as deferred maintenance at their school.

The Operations and Regional Managers prioritized the needs and we worked together to fulfill these needs. These managers then accessed the needs of their staff mangers and the Team set up monthly training for these site leaders. Preschool are open twelve hours per day and the site managers wanted better help running their schools, particularly in the hours that they were not on site. The Management team developed the Director in Training Program to train the captains and the lieutenants of the school site. This was so successful that the hiring of all of our managers was coming from within our ranks. Next the Management Team developed the Leadership in Training Program for the sergeants and corporals of school site management. Both of these programs elevated our people and our staff saw clear paths to advancement.

We did invest in growing profitable enrollment. We acquired eight schools from a competitor and improved their property and their operation. We also build twenty beautiful new schools and moved existing operations out of 30 or 40 year old buildings.

In order for our regional managers and school site managers to make meaningful decisions and to effectively operate their school, they needed information normally reserved for senior manager and they needed it quickly. My partner developed and continually refined a financial reporting system that was user friendly for site managers. By 10:00 AM on Monday, every manager had the revenue and cost by age level for the prior week. They got these numbers for infants, toddlers, three year olds, four year olds and school age. This allowed them to know very quickly what problems to fix and what opportunities to grasp. The director received the same information for every school. They knew how they were doing relative to ever other manager and who to ask for advice.

To fulfill the third element of our management creed, we rewarded performance. Regional Managers were reward on the performance of their school and about 30% to 35% of their total compensation came from bonus. School site Directors and Assistant Directors made bonus on enrollment growth, labor control and bottom line and bonus was 20% to 30% of their total compensation. Our base pay for site managers was below market but actual compensation was above market. We never lost a manager to a competitor.

The Senior Management Team was made up of the two owners, the President and the VP of Finance. Our group rules were the same as the Management Team rules: the best idea wins. Our decision making standards remained the same: invest in profitable growth, waste nothing and share the benefits. These two Management Teams managed an operation of 5,000 children and 600 employees.

My partner and I knew that we were not perfect and we did not know everything. Empowering people, giving them the training to grow and the resources to succeed set the stage for success. We gave our management teams the responsibility to solve problems and aligned their rewards with the company’s success. A supportive culture, transparency and collaboration built great team spirit and an effective and successful company.

The post Building a Great Team (Bob Orsi- FIRST CLASS INVESTMENTS) appeared first on XO Leaders.

CEO

AMERICAN TALENT JOBS

In the 90s, Antony had a job as a sales representative for a major trans- national logistics company and was recently appointed responsible for a coastal area of the thriving Costa Rica. For Antony, it was a big step in his budding professional career, and being honest with himself, he had no idea how to achieve the exceptional results that were required of him in that remote tourist town. The first two months were a complete failure in terms of results. His bosses were not known for their patience, and Antony was aware of this.

One afternoon, absorbed in his thoughts, Antony walked from his small bungalow to do some basic shopping at the local store. Already in the store, standing in the cashier’s line, he observed another customer, an older man, who was trying to juggle his purchases and his daughter in his arms. Suddenly, logic prevailed; the purchases rolled around the small store amidst the distress of the sorry father, who made a huge effort to ensure that his daughter did not suffer the same fate. Without thinking twice, Antony put his own purchases aside and quickly went around the store, retrieving what had fallen, which had conveniently landed in every corner of the small store. After the tense moment, and with most things recovered, the situation turned into a pleasant conversation between the young executive and the mature father, who received Antony’s bu- siness card “in case he ever needed to send any packages.” Both went their separate ways. Two days later, Antony received a call at his office. That father turned out to be the director of a huge hotel group, who was visiting the development of a six-star hotel in the area, and who, grateful for the help received, scheduled a meeting to coordinate all the logistics of moving anything needed for the hotel, as everything had to be mo- ved from other areas or countries since it is a small coastal zone. From curtains, furniture, kitchen equipment, and everything else, needed to be moved to the hotel under construction. Antony got tired in the next 24 months of receiving recognitions, bonuses, and awards from that day on for his sales achievements. Why that anonymous customer decided to contract such a contract? Antony asked in one of his meetings, and the answer he received was: “because you showed me respect without knowing me, that made me trust you.” Respect and trust are values that are born individually, but one is the result of the other. Thanks to respect, we begin to generate relationships. And established these, we begin to believe and feel secure. This is trust. Respect generates trust and trust generates long-term relationships. Today we are witnessing a reality in personal and professional environments with a deep crisis of values. And we forget that, just as primary colors are the basis of the beautiful spectrum of colors that surrounds us, values were, are, and will be the pillars of more, better, and more solid relationships between human beings. Back to the roots! When we instill respect in our families and companies, especially in the new generations, we are planting the seed of people who will know how to be reliable and therefore success- ful. If in our personal environment there is an atmosphere of responsibi- lity, within which each member knows their rights, and they…

If in our personal environment there is an atmosphere of respon- sibility, in which each member knows their rights and their duties, we create the ideal environment for trust to flourish and bear fruit. When we trust someone, we assume beyond any doubt that that person will be consistent in their actions and words, uncertainty can be eliminated because there is certainty in predicting their behavior in the most com- plex situations. In business environments, adding team members who give and receive respect, and therefore become trustworthy, will have a positive impact on the organization’s results. Volkswagen – 87 billion in losses -, Enron 638 million in losses, World.com 107 billion in losses, FTX – 32 billion in losses – remind us that even the most reliable and praised companies can collapse in a matter of months or weeks. Why? Because to live values, we must learn to maintain them in our day-to-day lives so that they become part of our lives. It has been shown that 80% of internal frauds are committed by employees at medium and low levels, 20% by executive level employees. However, this 20% is responsible for 80% of the total losses, that is, the smaller number of frauds carried out by the executive level has an economic impact four times higher than that carried out by the other levels in the organization. Aren’t those executive positions in which we usually have the most trust? In 1962, the Nobel Prize in Economics Milton Friedman, in his book “Capitalism and Freedom”, stated that companies should not have any social responsi- bility, and that they should only be accountable to their shareholders. What an impulse he gave to many of that generation of managers! The- se ideas gave legitimacy to business management based on disrespect for colleagues, suppliers and customers, the results we saw there in the great crisis of 2008. That collapse forced us to rethink the way things are done, and today we advocate for leadership based on respect for all components of the ecosystem. Mahatma Gandhi said: “Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.” Trust (which arises from respect) is the basis for decision making and action of indi- viduals and groups within a society or company. They promote positive action for the improvement of each person and coexistence. The recipe for respect is a little simpler than it seems: it has three basic ingredients: tolerance, consideration, and recognition. And it must be applied to co- llaborators, suppliers and customers, the ecosystem does not allow half measures, if you apply it partially you are guaranteed failure.

We’re going a little deeper. Respect is related to social intelligence and is linked to emotional intelligence. It requires being aware of the motivations and feelings of others, observing what makes us different with respect and acting accordingly. This in turn helps us to better un- derstand and guide our behavior.

Many times, you have probably seen someone demand respect, or you have demanded respect yourself. It is important to understand that respect is not something that is demanded. It is only through our res- pect that we can earn the respect of others (also knowing that this does not guarantee it).

And how do we convert that respect into trust?

–  When respect has been established as a way of interacting with others, it is easier to trust them.

–  When trust is established, it is easier to work together to achie- ve common goals.

–  Trust allows for open communication, which leads to better un- derstanding and problem solving.

–  Trust creates a positive environment where people are motiva- ted to do their best.

–  Trust allows for risk-taking, which is necessary for innovation and growth.

–  In summary, respect and trust are closely related, and they are essential for a positive and productive environment in personal and professional settings. Building respect through tolerance, consideration, and recognition will naturally lead to trust,

When you establish respect as a way of interacting with your peers, you are creating a safe emotional space. In that environment, people will feel comfortable giving their opinions, and that’s where trust begins to be built! Clear rules! Play fair. In any relationship, there will be differences of opinion, how you handle them will determine whether you strengthen or destroy trust. An old saying goes, “Better an bitter truth than a sweet lie.” Be brutally honest without exception. No one will respect someone who usually lies to achieve their goals. Few things have as positive an impact on people as the certainty of feeling trusted. Phrases like “I belie- ve in you and I’m with you, I’m on your side, and you have my support” strengthen the bond between people, feed the survival instinct and the limbic system, generate commitment and obligate reciprocity. Lastly, be consistent in your actions in any situation, small concessions in your ac- tions break the trust someone may have in you. It is a basic survival skill to have the respect and support of our loved ones, that environment of psychological well-being and mental health fills us with oxytocin, the hormone of love, happiness, and ultimately social connectivity. Lastly, we should not misinterpret and assume that needing the trust of others makes us dependent on external affirmation, quite the opposite! It is a basic pillar of human relationships, the child needs it from their parents in their growth and development of autonomy, self-esteem and security, couples need it to solidify their relationship, companies need it to achie- ve their goals. The causality consists in that it has a universal character, and the law of causality is the universal law of the material world. This means that there is no single phenomenon that is not subordinate to this law, The law of causality knows no exceptions. If something has happe- ned, look for the cause: without it, nothing arises in the world. Do you want causality in companies? If you nurture the value of respect, you will see the value of trust in its fullness.

The post Leadership (Luis Diego Loaiciga V- AMERICAN TALENT JOBS) appeared first on XO Leaders.

President

ABENSUR CONSULTING

I’m an anarchist.
As wikipedia tells us: “Anarchy is a society being freely constituted

without authorities or a governing body.”

Doesn’t this sound like the web3 world? Web3 promises to create a social universe built on the pillars of decentralization, transparency, where everyone is empowered and accountable. And this is a wonderful promise.

This promise for a better world to be realizable, its members should possess certain qualities and skills. However, I believe we remain very young human beings, and we have not yet mastered the virtues required to build such a world. And it is quite understandable: they are very hard to learn.

Let me share with you an insightful story.

London. April 2003. For the first time in my life, I was a CEO. I had been at the head of a telecom business for 6 short months. It was one of those foggy rainy days, and I was meeting with the corporate coach of my company. She was there to debrief my first 360. Just so you understand, during a 360 exercise, the coach had interviewed several members of my team and key stakeholders, asking them to share their opinion on the quality of my leadership.

To start off the meeting, she asked me: «Eric, what do you think your employees view on your leadership?». With a fake confidence, I said: «A collaborative, conscious leader. A servant leader». She answered: “Eric, you are perceived by your team as… a dictator”.

My first reaction was: I wanted to fire my entire team. She responded with kindness: “Sure that is an option. But let’s discuss option B. What changes can you make?”.

I asked her to observe me during meetings. She noted my tendency to always give my opinion first before asking for my collaborators’ views. And this had a disastrous effect. When you lead a team or an organization, if you give your opinion first, you kill the conversation. Since you are in charge, people will generally not dare contradict you, even if they have a constructive thing to say. This was what we call a « blind spot ». I lacked the sufficient self-awareness to understand why I needed to compulsively give my opinion before anyone else. Looking back now, I knew I did it in order to appear in charge, because deep down, I actually doubted myself. It was the expression of a typical impostor syndrome.

However, of course, my employees did not see that. We judge others by observing and interpreting their behaviors, we cannot see through to their real intentions. We spend our time guessing other people’s intentions, when we barely understand our owns’.

Therefore, they saw me as a dictator. As a result, they were less engaged in their work, they did not feel empowered, and information was not shared. There you have it: we lacked decentralization, engaged workforce and transparency. My telecom company, which was part of the web2 movement, failed to achieve the promises of the internet.

This is my key message: if you want to live in a decentralized and transparent world where everyone is empowered and accountable, you need to master some critical skills, such as self-awareness, active listening and how to give feedback. These are the tenets of a coaching culture which I believe is the secret ingredient that might help web3 entrepreneurs to successfully address their goals.

Today I’m a 58 years old executive coach who still remembers the promises of 30 years ago.

Unfulfilled promises

In the early 1990s, the internet arrived and everything changed. Forever. Or dit it really? When today you type these 5 words on Google: “the promises of the internet”, the first result that pops up is: “How The Promise Of The Internet Was A Lie” (Sean Clarke, article in Medium, 2021). Back then, we all heard the words of decentralization, empowerment, freedom, endless opportunities, autonomy, connections and transparency.

Then, Web2 arrived. Its revolutionary quality laid on the opportunity it gave each and every one of us to create our own content. And we thought this would guarantee the fulfillment of the goals web1 failed to achieve.

Yet again, these promises were not fully delivered. And giant, hierarchical, centralized organizations were created, controlling transactions, owning identities, influencing behaviors for the good and less good, and most of the time without our knowledge.

Today, web3 is making the same promises as web1 and web2.

I ask you these two questions: why would this time be any different? And why did it fail?

At the heart of a revolution, the mindset of its creators should reflect their ideals.

In the same way, I believe the dreams of web1 and web2 were not fulfilled because their values were not translated into their organizational structure and management philosophy.

So, what would such structures look like?

Management revolution

On a regular basis, Gallup surveys millions of employees, worldwide. For the year 2020, they disclosed that 20% of employees are engaged at work. Engaged meaning motivated, inspired, enthusiastic, driven. So as of today, 80% of the global workforce is either neutral or disengaged. Obviously, something is not working.

Even before the 31st of October 2008 when Nakamoto published a white paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, a number of organizations started implementing radical changes in their way of working. They had grown frustrated by the lack of innovation, accountability, and empowerment they internally observed, the lack of engagement of their employees.

In his book Reinventing Organizations (2014), Frederic Laloux studied these avant-guard companies. Their vision was founded on three pillars:

1. The absence of a hierarchical structure,
2. A high-level of transparency
3. The employee’s great freedom to make decisions and express their opinions.

Those three pillars are concrete applications of the web1, web2 and web3 promises.

These organizations are engaged in the journey to self-management.

Managing teams has never been so difficult. Employees are more demanding, ready to switch companies on a whim. It is so easy to compare companies and their benefits. Managers must always be at their peak: managing up, managing down, influencing their peers, using more and more numerous tools to stay always on: slack, WhatsApp, emails, telegram, Zoom or Teams…Unsurprisingly, burn-out among managers is not uncommon. According to a BCG study, only 9% employees are willing to manage teams.

To achieve self-management is becoming a necessity and, a number of changes are recommended. Decisions need to be more collective. Therefore it signifies sharing more information and educating the employees so they can properly contribute to the decision process. In addition, specific conflict resolution is required. Performance review could also be revolutionized with peer-to-peer feedback. Bit by bit, we remove some key tasks from the manager’s responsibilities. The organization becomes flatter. Laloux compares them with a living organism that can perfectly adapt to the never ending changes we all observe. And evidently, Web3 is the most unstable of all industries.

But those changes are difficult to implement and many of those companies, albeit their sincere intention of aligning their work culture with their ideals, have failed. They failed because we, as young human beings, are not prepared and trained to embrace these radical changes.

The necessity of a coaching culture

As human beings, we make up stories and act out on them without ever questioning their accuracy.

We are wired, coded, to be binary.

When we first meet someone, within the first 200 milliseconds our brain has made an unconscious decision on whether this person is safe or a threat to us. A blink of an eye. And this « survival » decision will lay down the grounds of this future relationship. If, for whatever unjustified reason, our decision was to feel threatened by this person, then we make it very difficult to build a transparent, horizontal relationship. We need to feel safe.

As my imposter syndrome story reveals, so many unconscious processes get in the way of implementing the changes required. Those instant decisions we make, those fictitious stories we create are influenced by:

• Our personality traits
• Our education
• Our life experiences
• Our first bosses

And it’s even worse today. Our capacity of creating stories on how others perceive us just got out of control with remote work: why does she not involve me in her decision?… Is he really working or watching Netflix?… His slack message was insulting!… Does she want to take my job?… They don’t like me!…

We are creating more miscommunication, frustration and unnecessary conflicts.

We must master critical skills and transform our work culture before even considering getting into the self management journey.

This is a culture where :

–  I and everyone else are crystal clear and on agreement on what is our mission, what are our values, and what success looks like

–  I and everyone else are fully aware of the impact, both positive and negative, we have on others, and we are committed to address the negative ones

–  I and everyone else feel heard

–  I and everyone else feel safe to give and receive feedback

–  I and everyone else are ready to ask what we need, to be vulnerable

–  I and everyone else are sincerely committed to walk the talk

If those requisites are met, a climate of safety and confidence will be created. And I and everyone else are safe to be who we are, safe to ask questions and learn, safe to make mistakes, safe to contribute, safe to challenge. Everyone learns to behave like a coach. And this starts to resemble a coaching culture.

Conclusion

If we want to deliver the promises of the web3 movement, we need to create an organization that is more decentralized, more transparent, more autonomous, where everyone is more accountable, more empowered.

I believe it is still possible.

We must learn and master self-awareness, active listening, how to give feedback and create a coaching culture. Then we can change the way we work to self-management, or we will fail. Again.

This is the opportunity of a lifetime, I should say a century-time.

You can start today, now.

After reading this article, you may join a friend, a colleague or a loved one for a casual conversation. Just be a better listener: stay focused, don’t interrupt, suspend judgement, ask open ended questions to clarify, summarize back what you heard to them and then you can share your thinking. They will feel heard!

This may not guarantee the success of your web3 project. But I guarantee it will make you a better human being. And if that is not a start to build a better world, what is?

The post Leadership (Eric Abensur- ABENSUR CONSULTING) appeared first on XO Leaders.

Founder & CEO

AIM GROUP

“The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.” – George Will

Some people think a leader should have the complete set of skills, characteristics, and abilities to single-handedly handle any problem, challenge, and opportunity that comes along. To me, the “perfect leader” is a myth. I certainly don’t fit into that category. I am definitely not a perfect leader. Most of the time, I am not even a leader. I’d describe myself as someone who strives to be a well-rounded person who makes decisions through the support of a great team. Over the years, this has enabled me to take many more good and average choices than bad ones.

Almost right out of college, I was responsible for leading a team with people thrice my age and decades of experience. I had a deep-seated feeling of being an impostor. To say the very least, I was immensely underprepared for the responsibilities I had been given, and I only had a minimal understanding of the challenges I would face. Furthermore, my boss felt it was better for me to learn through “trial by fire” than for him to waste time teaching me. Fearing being exposed as a fraud, I overcompensated with a know-it-all attitude, only half-listening to those who offered their advice. What I should have done was to tell them that I desperately needed their advice, but I didn’t.

Here is a shout-out to you: I thank you for your patience and for never making me feel less, accepting the flaws I tried to hide but which must have been painfully apparent to you. Thank you for saving my ass more times than I can count, for guiding me without making it too obvious, and for giving me time to build my skills as a leader.

To you, who have taken the time to read my article, I would like to share a bit of what they taught me.

Trust, Respect, and Imperfection

Trust– I work the hardest on gaining people’s trust. I stand up for my team. I never blamed them for something I was responsible for. We share our successes. I let them know I don’t have most of the answers and show them I need them more than they need me. I am not perfect in my score, but in most cases people have rewarded me with their trust.

Respect– Through this trust, it gives us the ability to create. It is empowers us to dare try new things and, through that, do incredible things together.
Imperfection- I show them that I don’t have all the answers. I want them to know that I have made more wrong decisions than most. It is up to me to teach them where I failed, and it is up to them to make their own wrong decisions… and live with it. That is evolving. In recent years I have even become very explicit when I tell them that I want them to make mistakes. My reasoning is that it’s only teams that never push themselves are the ones that never screw up. Striving to be perfect fosters micromanagement, criticism, and stalls change. Going for greatness is only achieved through accepting that we will never be perfect. I want them to reach for the stars.

I have found that the organizations that I’ve led and the many companies I now Mentor, just work better when there is Trust, Respect, and an acceptance of imperfection.

Organizational Fairness

CEO’s are paid to decide on the organization’s strategic priorities, such as resource allocation, investments, client care service levels, employee compensation and wellness, promotions, profit margins, and as a result, shareholder dividends. What I have learned is that for an organization to be successful, it is just not possible to base decisions on short-term win-win for everyone. Long-term win-win is much more feasible, but because of the lack of trust and an ever more impatient society, people seem predisposed to expect to get the short end of the stick.

Organizational injustice is in the eye of the beholder, and leaders are scrutinized for needing to be “fair” in ways that seem unfair to me. As a young leader, I honestly worried too much about pleasing everyone. I contorted to find ways to do what was impossible to do, i.e., pleasing everyone, and I, therefore, did worse because of it. While everyone wants to be treated equally, not everyone is equal, and not every contribution holds equal value.

Comparing the first team I had with the next, the people who reported to me were my junior in many ways, including experience, executive seniority, and education. I went from a team needing very little of me to a team needing much more time than what I could possibly give. In the beginning, it felt great to be “needed,” then quite quickly, I became unable to do my own job. I had a couple of disastrous quarters and had to learn to set clear boundaries. I implemented team meetings and almost completely canceled all the one-on-one conversations.

I learned a lot from that experience too. Any team that you head should know that you are there in two aspects alone. The first thing I am always going to help them with is to make suggestions in case they encounter something they can’t make sense of. That is sharing my perspective. It is not the same as taking the decision for them. If they are responsible for the outcome, the decision is theirs to take. If they want someone else to make the decision for them, when they report to me, they will quickly find out that they are wasting their time and mine. The second is to help get cooperation flowing in case of internal unwillingness to act.

I might not be a perfect leader, but I don’t see myself as an incompetent leader; I am just an incomplete leader. I know I don’t have the intellectual capacity to make sense of everything. I don’t have the capability to foresee all the repercussions of my decisions. I am not always able to create a vision of the future that everyone wants. More often than not, I lack the experience to translate my dreams into concrete actions. Last but not least, my interpersonal skills are not always able to foster the commitment necessary to get people to give everything they’ve got.

The 4 C’s

After learning to apply different management theories and reading hundreds of books, I have arrived at the conclusion that there are four important roles that together make up a successful management team. These roles are: Creator, Champion, Custodian, Caregiver.

What I find interesting about the management roles is that I believe that no one can fill these four roles simultaneously, as they have contradicting objectives. In very general terms and only to give you a few examples: If you are quick to act, you can’t be slow as well. You can’t be creative and go “by the book” simultaneously. Some look for effectiveness, others for efficiency. There is long-term versus short-term. Perfecting my understanding of it, I feel, has made me a better support for my teams. I can now predict where I’ll need the help of others and how to better support each member of my team individually. Through this, I have learned to form successful diverse teams.

That said, I don’t feel like I am a flawless leader who has figured it all out. The more I know, the more I know what I don’t know, but the moment I figured out that it was all right to be open about both my strengths and my weaknesses, I was able to allow myself to start really relying on others to make up for my lack of perspective on certain aspects of the business. I became a better leader for it and certainly a much more successful business owner. As they say, “numbers don’t lie”.

Most leaders I support in my consulting business call me because, to some degree, they feel trapped in the myth of needing to be a perfect leader, and it’s a heavy burden that only leads to becoming a bottleneck for the business. I don’t swap them out for a “professional” management team; I teach the people already working in the company how to support the owner and the owner how to be a leader.

How many times have you felt uncertain about what the results of a decision you’ve taken will be? Have you ever felt uncomfortable because the IT or the Marketing person was using concepts that were unfamiliar to you? Would you dare to admit that you don’t have a full picture of what is going on in the organization? Do you even know the names and birthdays of all your employees, if they have children or are married? You probably did when you started your business, but do you know it now? If you recognize any of this, please send me an email (gustav@ aimsmg.com). We might have a good basis to talk. It’s time to put that myth to rest and take action, not only for the sake of frustrated leaders but also for the well-being and continued growth of your organization.

Well, I am not Superman. There is only one of those around, I am not him, and he probably wouldn’t know the first thing about running a successful business.

What I do know is that it is not possible for a person to single-handedly handle any and all problems. That being so, it takes a mature leader to realize that people need each for the business to grow.

In business 1 + 1 is not 2, it often is less, but it can be so much more.

The post Perfect leader (Gustav Juul- AIM GROUP) appeared first on XO Leaders.

CEO Founder

NAKED REVIVAL INC

Lao Tzu’s “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Or, Stephen Covey’s “Begin with the end in the mind.”

Once the buzz of these pithy didactic saying and stories wears off, do you actually believe them?

We’ll come back to these quotes in a few pages.

Baseball is arguably America’s most iconic sport; in the game, a moonshot is a home run hit that reaches a great height and distance.

In the world of entrepreneurship, and most notably tech, a “moonshot” is an extremely ambitious and innovative project. Much like how we can visualize a heroic home run sending the crowds into a frenzy, we can hear the Nasdaq bell ringing or see Time magazine’s cover about an entrepreneur reaching the zenith of their pioneering pursuit.

This chapter is about entrepreneurial moonshots, with two crucial/ parallels to baseball.

What comes before that apex of glory?

How many strikeouts, hours of practice, lost games, injuries and meltdowns must one endure and learn from before that one big moonshot is achieved?

How close does an entrepreneur come to burning up in the sun, so to speak, on the way to the moon?

And what is the foundation that guides them on that journey?

It starts, indubitably, with an idea.

As one of rock’s most ambitious, innovative musicians, Peter Gabriel, once said, “All of the buildings, all of the cars, were once just a dream in somebody’s head.”

Making or doing what others believe impossible begins as a wisp of thought conjured up in the deep cauldron of one’s mind. Maybe as a dream that awakens one in the middle of the night, maybe as a thought that strikes like lightning, or maybe as inspiration captured through our senses as we observe the world around us.

Elizabeth Gilbert puts it perfectly:

“I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us — albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.

Ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners. (I’m talking about all ideas: artistic, scientific, industrial, commercial, ethical, religious, political.) When an idea thinks it has found somebody — say, you — who might be able to bring it to fruition, the idea will try to get your attention.

Sometimes — rarely, but magnificently — there comes a day when your defences slacken, your anxieties ease, and you’re relaxed enough to receive the magic. The idea, sensing your openness, will start to do its work on you. It will send the universal physical and emotional signals of inspiration (the chills up the arms, the hair standing up on the back of the neck, the nervous stomach, the buzzy thoughts, that feeling of falling in love). The idea will organise “coincidences” to tumble across your path, to hold your interest. You will start to notice all sorts of signs pointing you towards the idea. The idea will wake you up in the middle of the night and distract you from your everyday routine. The idea will not leave you alone until it has your full attention.

And then, in a quiet moment, it will ask, “Do you want to work with me?”

An entrepreneur, a pioneer in any medium, has two choices. “No, I don’t want to,” is an option, but “yes, I’m going after this moonshot,” is often where we unlock our deepest lessons and potential as a human being. For when we say “yes” our spirit makes a choice to “sign a contract” of which only we know the terms and can hold ourselves accountable to.

The rest of world will not care about our contract; if they even know about it, they may criticize and doubt us until we’ve made the impossible possible.

Which means, of course, that it was never impossible to begin with, and the only limitations were of the mind and zeitgeist.

Which brings us back to the proverbs shared at the beginning of this chapter. With no real road map to guide us, we have to meet ourselves where we are right now — knowing what we know (and don’t know) about our pursuit, believing in it and ourselves, knowing where we want to end up, and taking the first step.

In Start-up Land, nothing is ever a straight line. It’s critical that you have some basic principles in place before you start your moonshot — because things don’t always go as planned. If your guiding principles are solid and clear, they can act like a compass to help you navigate the inevitable surprises and sudden changes.

If you envision a house, these principles are the foundation on which the house is built. If the foundation isn’t properly established and solid, the house won’t survive shifts in the ground or bad weather. Over time, your house will deteriorate. In a moonshot this foundation include:

1. Establish your visions – “Why” and the Why behind your Why
2. Establish your guiding principles and core values
3. Establish your objectives
4. Establish what is essential—personally and professionally
5. Mindset

The first thing to get crystal clear on is: Why are you starting this moonshot in the first place? This underlying “why” is rooted in your emotional make up. It is part of understanding who you are and why you do the things you do. For instance, your motivations can be rooted in insecurity, feelings of not being enough, and/or the need to prove someone wrong. Insecurity can be a powerful motivator, but if not managed and understood, it can lead to self-destructive behaviour.

As Tim Glover, author of Relentless, says:

“Being the best means engineering your life so you never stop until you get what you want, and then you keep going until you get what’s next. And then you go for even more. Relentless is about never being satisfied, (it has) a dark side… They get what they want, but they pay for it in solitude. Excellence is lonely.”

Knowing the why behind your why will help you be objective in your decision-making so as not to be victim to your own blindspots, so you are doing things that support the main “Why” of your moonshot and not your ego.

What’s the reason for your company to exist? What is its singular purpose?

Your “Why” is true north on your moonshot compass. It keeps you focused on what is essential so as not to get distracted along the way.

Establish your Guiding Principles and Core Values

When you’re launching a moonshot, just like building a house, understand that it’s going to take longer and cost more (maybe a lot more) than you originally thought. To paraphrase Prussian Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

Of course, I don’t view launching your business as akin to facing an “enemy,” but the point is still powerful. You’ll face many different and unexpected scenarios as you build your moonshot. In order to navigate the challenges and make the best possible adjustments for each scenario, your Guiding Principles and Core Values should be established early and understood by your entire team.

Values are qualities or standards that act as the foundation for our principles and guide our behaviours.

Principles are the rules that lead to our actions.

Establish about a few key Core Values and Guiding Principles to help guide your decision making early. Add new ones over time.

Here are two Core Values and two Guiding Principles:

Core Values:

– Continuous improvement

The desire for continuous improvement in everything we do. We’re all on individual journeys personally and professionally.

It’s important to find peace and acceptance wherever we are in any given moment, and with whom. Simultaneously, we must focus on con- tinuous improvement — to be the best that we can as individuals and as a company. This includes our personal lives, our relationships, our goals, products, customer experiences — everything.

-Action

Seek knowledge and feedback. Reflect. Apply the lessons you’ve learned. Do better next time.

– Gratitude

We practice gratitude daily.

We must have a commitment to gratitude and allow it to guide our thoughts and actions. Let us be grateful for those who host us in their beautiful cities when we travel; those who cut the grass, take out the trash and make the coffee; those who raised the people who are responsible for our freedoms today. Let’s be radical about our gratefulness every single day.

Guiding Principles

– Action: Say, “Thank you” regularly. Check yourself when you’re feeling negative about a situation and count your many blessings.

– Always Follow the Process.

Following the process keeps team members accountable and reduces errors. When there’s a process to follow, and people follow it, it helps you address issues as they arise; you can correct your course and get the desired result.

Focus on the Most Important Task First.
Even if it’s something you don’t want to do, you should always do the most important task first.

Establish your Objectives

Everyone needs Objectives (even the founders and CEO) and everyone needs to know what they are. Objectives are usually simple, easy to define and measurable.

An objective doesn’t have to include how it’s going to be accomplished. Moonshots are usually new territory and the how may not be clear at the start. The person assigned an objective still has a lot of freedom to figure out the best way to achieve it, as well as the flexibility to try creative solutions if their first plan doesn’t work.

Making objectives public (at least within the team) allows everyone to know what everyone else is responsible for, and creates a sense of accountability. With public objectives, everyone can rest assured that everyone else is working as hard as they are; it’s the ultimate accountability.

Objectives that are anchored by realistic and agreed-upon timelines keep your team focused on required tasks. Team members will feel much better about the company and their day-to-day work when goals and objectives are clear. Establishing fewer objectives will increase the possibility of success.

At my first company, Naked, we established objectives very early on. We borrowed from Entrepreneurial Operating System® to define our key objectives as “Rocks” according to four distinct parts:

• The What — What is our goal? It should be easily understood by all.
• The How — What do we need to do in order to accomplish the objective and what do we need to do to get there?
• The Results — Are there measurable steps we can take along the way that lead to successfully reaching the objective? Establish relevant KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure results that will lead to success in the objective.
• The Reflection — Afterward, we reflected on what went right and wrong with our steps, KPIs and process. We’d discuss this openly as team members and assess what we might need to change for the next set of objectives.

Setting objectives is a foundational pillar of building a business but it’s important to approach objectives with an open and, dare I say, flexi- ble mind. The Marshall Goldsmith expression — “What got you here won’t get you there” — comes to mind. Factors change and you need to be able to pivot and adjust your objectives as needed to propel the business forward.

Establish What is Essential

Essentialism, to focus on what matters most so you can give your best to it, is paramount when it comes to striving for your moonshot.

Your moonshot Essentialism is established by your “Why” and your Objectives, and it’s personal as much as professional. Choosing to focus on what’s essential provides us with the time, creativity and clarity to execute our business and maintain a healthy balance in our lives while doing it. But our time at the office isn’t all that needs to be accounted for. Time spent with family, friends, extra-curricular activities, health, dating, etc., all factor in. All the things we do affect us mentally, emotionally, financially, socially and physically.

As entrepreneurs building a business, we need to prepare for this by understanding that:

A. We can’t do all the things we want and give our business the amount of time it needs to be successful;
B. The time we spend on non-business-building activities should relieve and refresh us, not create additional stresses that then carry over into our business.

We can’t control every single thing that happens, but we can certainly make choices about what and who is essential to us and build a structure into our life that focuses on that. Organise your personal life, establish work routines that optimize your performance and focus, and learn to say “No.” Opportunities will come up all the time.

If it’s not a “Hell YES!” then it’s a “No.” “If I do this extra thing now, can I do it as well as I could two years from now? Will I be present while doing it?” There will be time down the road to do other things and give more of your talents and effort to others.

Mindset

Part of the moonshot foundation is mindset. Our inner judge, shadowself, or inner critic is an ever present voice often taunting and striking down our noblest thoughts. How you interact with your own thoughts is the true X-factor of your moonshot. Can you listen to your inner critic, allow its concerns to be voiced, but choose the best possible thought instead? Can you practice self-compassion in the face of self-judgement? Can you embody grace and reverence for the process in the face of hardship and let down? What about acceptance of your moonshot’s worst nightmares and darkest days? Can you push forward trusting that you are on the right path? Can you be open to the possibly of landing in a different, better place all together?

The answer of course is yes, you most certainly can. By following your why and principles, doing what’s essential, and keeping constant watch over yourself. Through the practice of radically accepting what is and has been and letting go of that which does not serve you, as you move forward. Through consciousness meditation practices to clear your mind and detach from incessant negative thoughts, by having positive honest mentors, and by continuing to cultivate your personal development.

Although you can change the world for the better with your moonshot, it’s ultimately a journey of self-cultivation with no destination. As Tony Robbins says, “It’s not about the goal, but becoming the person capable of achieving that goal.” It means that much about you will change along the way…that red hot sun will burn up a great deal of you, and you’ll be reborn, again and again. You will ascend to the “impossible” heights of your potential in a world of infinite possibility.

The post Making the impossible happen (Joel Primus- NAKED REVIVAL INC) appeared first on XO Leaders.