Mark Stevens, CEO, MSCO

It’s time to stop believing the pabulum served up to you about “good management” and start breaking through to the true drivers of growth.

Growth in your career. Growth in your company. Growth in your life.

Act now on this Management Manifesto:

1 – Wash your brain of consensus building. It is for elementary school teachers. Every time someone tells you they want to engage in consensus building, walk out the door – tell them you have real work to do.

2 – Reject everything that comes to you packaged as “conventional wisdom.” The fact is that conventional wisdom is an oxymoron – once it is conventional, it is yesterday’s fish.

3- Unless you are recruited by the NFL, forget about team building to generate business ideas. The really successful business people –

Steve Jobs, Phil Knight, Bill Gates – developed the Big Bang ideas and passed them off to a team to do the work.

4 – Never accept No for an answer – 100% of the time when people tell you something can’t be done, it is because they are uninterested or unskilled. Prove them wrong. Imagine what the naysayers said when they heard that Walt Disney was going to build the most popular resort in the world on swampland in Florida.

5 – Never fool yourself into thinking that hard work alone brings success. Maybe for donkeys, but not for humans. To race past your peers, you will need: Combat Eyes; Serial Skepticism; Cartoon Imagination; and Monster Ambition.

6 – Ignore motives - if you think about someone else’s motives too much, you are in their heads to such a great extent that they should charge you rent.

7 – You need a Killer App, if your interests are personal-professional . It was Teddy Roosevelt’s “big stick” and Ronald Reagan’s skill as “the Great Communicator.” It is why they win and it is how you win.

8 – The bigger the company or business unit, the longer it can postpone the inevitable – size masks difficulties and disguises the company’s complacency, deception, fear, and failure to act. To prevent this and to achieve perpetual growth – you have to declare war.

9 - Strong leaders establish a compass for their people to pursue in the course of their work and provide the motivation to exceed established goals.

Do you do this? Are you confident your people can get the job done in ways that elevates your business to new levels? Or just the

opposite? It’s possible that you’ve just looked in the virtual mirror and come to some conclusions about your leadership.

Three Strategies for Successful Change Leadership

Jonathan Gilbert, PMP, Director of Client Solutions, ESI International

Managing change without employee engagement is like building a roof without the walls underneath. You have a strong top, but the rest of the structure collapses under the strain. In today’s climate, change is inevitable. Many companies have to realign their organizations to meet their business goals. At the same time, change instills a sense of fear in people, an automatic, neurological response to transition that virtually everyone experiences. If left to its own devices, the human brain is capable of all kinds of mischief.

There are three powerful success strategies for leaders to offset the wave of uncertainty that change brings to any organization.

1 - The Rules of Engagement – Change management is best handled in a simple, three-step process:

•Identify the change;

•Engage the employees;

•Implement the change.

It is imperative for business leaders to give all three steps equal weight. Implementation is relatively straightforward, and many times leaders dive directly into step three without giving the other two much thought. Instead of only giving lip service to the first two steps, make certain that you identify the specific change and garner full engagement from employees at all levels of the organization. The benefit of engagement is twofold: people are not blindsided by change; and involving people will often lead to a better response to the change you ultimately implement.

2 - A Culture of Trust – In order to follow the three-step process of change management, an organization must have a culture of trust. Since change is always happening, you must maintain a high level of trust at all times. Do not assume that once you are through this process, change won’t happen again. Most likely, it will happen on a continuous basis. Undertake trust-building measures to ensure the highest possibility of success as you navigate your organization through uncertain times.

3 - Leadership with Vision and Empathy – Leaders can only develop the necessary level of trust to maintain long-term organizational health if they understand their employees’ situation. As companies restructure, a well-regarded leader who has a capacity for empathy will

create an environment that is conducive to effecting the desired change. Mark Twain once said: “Some of the worst things in my life never happened.” We all have the potential to inhabit an imaginary world of our own making, driven by the thought and emotions evoked by fear created in response to an uncertain future. A true leader understands his followers’ concerns and helps them see the bigger picture.

Indeed, nothing lasts forever. Organizations, and the times they find themselves in, change. The good news is that a constant state of flux leaves room for things to get better. Leading with a steady hand and an open mind can increase your chances of organizational success.

With a solid roof and an equally strong structure, your organization can flourish regardless of the storms swirling around you.