Working Harder And Smarter During Tough Times
The pandemic, supply chain crises, a possible recession—you might think we’re passing through particularly difficult times, but we’ve passed through difficult times before. At any point, a major event could hit and throw your life and business out of whack. When this happens, you can’t just drop everything and give up. Leaders have no choice but to keep working through challenges if they want to succeed. The stronger you remain, the better you’ll come out of it.
In our current climate of uncertainty and oncoming challenges, my advice is always the same: Even when work gets hard, work harder.
Overcoming adversity can make you stronger.
Click the Forbes logo to read the article
Creative Work Is Best Done As A Team
I encourage leaders to drive greater creativity and innovation by encouraging teamwork at all company levels.
I’m a firm believer in not doing everything myself. After 25 years at the C-level, there have been many times when I ended up taking on tasks on my own, but it’s often more of a struggle to operate that way. I prefer to tackle creative work with the help of a supportive and diverse-minded team.
In a world where competition has increasingly become a game of generating the best and most ideas, the best creative work is often done in teams. Therefore, I encourage leaders to drive greater creativity and innovation by encouraging teamwork at all company levels.
Teamwork Boosts Creative Thinking
The old saying, “Birds of a feather flock together,” perfectly illustrates our tendency to seek out people with similar perspectives, but this can dampen creative thinking. Harvard economics professor Richard Freeman noticed the tendency of scientists to work with those who were similar to them. Chinese scientists in one lab, Indians and Europeans in two others. He analyzed the publications put out by similar-minded scientists and found that papers with more diverse groups of authors received more public citations and prestige. Diverse input is a strength.
Click the Newsweek logo to read the article
Being A CEO Requires Creativity: Three Tips For Building A Creative Environment
These days, it seems we find a new crisis around every corner. The pandemic, broken supply chains and, now as we approach 2023, some experts are predicting an oncoming recession. But on the opposite side of uncertainty is innovation and the foundation of every disruptive decision. Leaders who can be creative, adaptable and open-minded in the face of uncertainty will be the ones who take advantage of those opportunities.
While today’s CEOs highly benefit from creativity, that doesn’t mean only creative CEOs can be successful in an uncertain climate. Anyone with a foundation for great leadership—meaning they’re organized, dedicated and open-minded—can surround themselves with creative counterparts to pass ideas by. This allows the less-creative executive the opportunity to build the environment they need to innovate and stay competitive, even during times of uncertainty.
Click the Forbes logo to read the article
Three Ways To Check More Than Just Boxes When Adding Diversity to Your Organization
Immigrating to the U.S. as a child gives you an entirely new perspective on what it means to add diversity to an organization.
People talk a lot about diversity — sometimes so much that I wonder if we still remember why. When leaders assemble diverse teams, the conflicting understandings of normalcy can lead to some friction — but as long as people are open-minded to the idea that their normal is not the only possibility, that friction can yield great results. A multifaceted, multicultural team can deliver some very unique and creative solutions in the workplace.
But when leaders hire people for their diversity simply to meet some standards of compliance, they might end up with more than just healthy friction. Unless these hires understand the benefits of bringing together diverse minds for more creative innovation, they may also bring conflict into a team.
Diversity should do more than check off boxes for your corporate diversity requirement; inclusivity for decision-making roles should go beyond basic divisions. Immigrants, like myself, know that diversity of class and culture can bring many benefits to a collaborative effort. To do diversity better, we need to go back to the source of its importance-bringing more diverse perspectives to work together and generate better ideas for business and society.
Click the Newsweek logo to read the article
How to Stay Calm in a Crisis and Lead Your Team Through Anything
Calmness is the key to leading through a crisis — leaders who stay calm can get their teams through anything.
The pandemic brought a wave of global uncertainties: supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, inflation, rising prices and an oncoming recession. Crisis after crisis has characterized the 2020s.
When facing so much uncertainty, it can be easy to worry about the future. That worry often then becomes doubt, which can quickly spiral into panic. And when we panic, we usually rush. But try to take a step back and think of your last rushed decision that ended up being a good one; panic is never a good foundation for making healthy decisions. Calmness, on the other hand, is the key to leading others through a crisis. Leaders who can stay calm can get their teams through anything.
Click the Entrepreneur logo to read the article
Leader v. manager: How managing a company is different from leading a board
In the corporate world, when we finally make it to CEO, we become company leaders. This is not a position many people know firsthand—if Zippia’s estimate of over 38,708 chief executive officers in the U.S. is correct, that means CEOs make up just 0.0001% of the country’s population. C-Suite executives and vice presidents also experience the feeling of knowing what it takes to be a leader, but not all leadership is alike.
COMPANY LEADERS MANAGE THE COMPANY
Click the FastCompany logo to read the article
How To Drive Your Board To Be As Effective As Possible
Even during the best of times, the future is always uncertain. That’s even more apparent right after several recent periods of disruption: pandemics, recessions and supply chain issues. In the past, boards and board formation may not have meant much to company leadership, but today, a well-designed board with the right collection of skills and experience can get a company through a crisis and significantly impact its success.
Additionally, engagement in the workplace has never been more urgent, and this is just as true for boards. More-engaged teams are more resilient and able to withstand bigger challenges. A Gallup meta-analysis found the most-engaged teams were 21% more productive than the least-engaged ones. Diversity—in race, gender, age and socioeconomic background—benefits any team, including a board, but engagement is what makes those diverse board members the most effective.
Click the Forbes logo to read the article
How to Best Recruit Board Members Outside of Your Industry
The value of board members from outside your industry cannot be understated – here’s why.
ew individuals are experts in everything. Even the cumulative expertise in most businesses could use input from more experts in diverse areas. This is why we have boards — a panel of experts in areas that fill in the gaps in our existing company knowledge base.
But even once we find the right group of experts from our industry to take a seat on our board, we would still stand to benefit from the wisdom of more diverse perspectives and experiences. Their range of successes and failures becomes additional resources to put together more tried and tested strategies in the face of new challenges.
Outside board members can bring a lot to a company, but to find the right ones for the job, we need to know what to look for:
Related: How Board Members Can Help You Through a Recession
Click the Entrepreneur logo to read the article
How A Diverse Board Can Help Your Company
Diversity is more than a buzzword. Back in 2015, McKinsey & Company called it “a competitive differentiator that shifts market share toward more diverse companies over time.” McKinsey’s research also found that companies scoring the highest for racial, ethnic and gender diversity are more likely to have financial returns above national industry medians.
There are benefits to age diversity as well, including increased productivity and reduced employee turnover, both of which can affect a company’s bottom line. Even socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, mindset and cultural background are ranges of diversity that can arm any team, including a company board, with a competitive advantage.
Click the Forbes logo to read the article
How Board Members Can Help You Through a Recession
With recession looming, having a strong board is now more important than ever.
First, COVID-19. Then, health mandates. Add in choked-up supply chains, the Russia-Ukraine war, rising prices, interest rates, and inflation. Economists are starting to unite around the prediction — a recession is inevitable.
No one has a crystal ball, and the future seems more uncertain than ever, but if we break these problems down (e.g., pandemics, war, and rising food and fuel prices leading to a recession), we realize that many of us have lived through similar challenges before. Either we made it out on the other side alive and thriving, or we made mistakes and learned what not to do. These insights are valuable for getting through this next round of uncertainty.
Alone, a business owner can see issues from a limited amount of angles. Especially as first-time leaders, it can be hard to think outside the box with little experience to reference. But, with a board, its members’ expertise can help in more informed decision-making. Leaders can lean into the diverse range of expertise their board members have — their “been there, done that’s” — to tackle challenges and opportunities better and get their company through even the toughest of times, including the oncoming recession.
Related: Building a Better Board: 5 Things Every New Board Member Should Know
Click the Entrepreneur logo to read the article
