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"It doesn't matter if you are a small business owner, manager, CEO, employee, or aspiring entrepreneur; you want to be the best you can be. You don't have to be a billionaire in order to be at the top of your game. In fact, you have more in common with the world's most successful business leaders than you may think—you are probably already using some of the strategies they use without being aware of it.
To help you raise and sharpen your self-awareness there are seven key strategies that all leaders use, regardless of their industry. These steps lead to what I describe as 'world domination.' All of the seven strategies build and support each other, forming strong pyramid. As you read about these strategies, imagine how you would use each one when building your business or career."
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"We are all investors. We invest our time, our energy, our money. We invest every single day, as citizens, as consumers, as businesspeople. At its core, done well, investing is aligned with the same principles that govern natural systems. It involves connection, exchange, and mutual benefit: we humans invented this activity, to serve our own needs, our communities, and our planet. For any business endeavor, wise investing—of human capital, social capital, physical capital, and financial capital—is at the heart of success. [...]
We need to reengage with investing in its essential, connected form—to reintegrate our professions with the real world, instead of the world on the screen. But how?"
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"After years of being asked to do more with less, managers are increasingly aware that they cannot produce the results that are expected of them with the organizations they currently have and the methods they currently use. Cutting wages and benefits, and requiring people to work harder with fewer resources can only go so far.
Interestingly, the best solution to this problem involves the same people who have been bearing the brunt of the cost so far: front-line employees. Every day, these people see many problems and opportunities that their managers do not. They have plenty of ideas to improve productivity, responsiveness and customer service, for new and better products and services, or to enhance their organizations in other ways. Yet organizations generally pay little attention to soliciting these ideas, believing there is not much value in them.
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It is time to change the way we run our organizations. Today, a growing number of organizations are becoming very good at promoting front-line ideas, and as a result are reaching extraordinary levels of performance. Rather than being directed and driven from the top, these idea-driven organizations are directed from the top but driven by ideas from the bottom. Their collective experiences allow us to ferret out what works, and what doesn't when it comes to managing front-line ideas. In this article, we provide a brief overview of the most important principles involved in creating such an organization."
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"It is one of our saddest economic statistics: More than half small businesses fail within a few years of startup. Unlike the cheery pictures presented in advertising or the success stories showcased on Shark Tank, a significant percentage of fledgling enterprises sputter and eventually die. Only 1 in 43 has any employees after 10 years. These startups don't create much economic value. The vast majority don't even earn as much for their founders as those people could have earned working for someone else. Dreams die, jobs are lost, and communities lose their vitality.
It does not have to be this way. In fact, if we want a robust economy with job growth, we must do something about it. I think that the solution is deceptively simple: entrepreneurs should stop thinking so much about the idea behind the business and focus instead on how to lead it."
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"I think we are sitting at a rare moment in history where we have an opportunity to change our nation and our world. Everything seems to be broken economically, socially, and politically. All the numbers are headed in the wrong direction. But the Bible says, where there is no vision, the people perish. We've got to have a vision that's larger than ourselves. We've got to be about we, and not about me; what we have to give, not just what we have to get. We need to turn traditional thinking on its head, and present a new vision for America."
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