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06 February 2009, 23:08
Diversity: Leaders Not Labels by The 21st cStedman Graham
Three steps you must take to succeed in the 21st century
The 21st century is a performance-based culture. What matters is how people are able to interact and produce results. As the world becomes more global and technology brings us closer together, our environment has become more diverse. The 21st century demands that you have a vision of your future unclouded by your past.
The pace of change is faster than anytime in history, and we must transform with it. Your transformation from a follower -- or someone’s label -- to a leader in this competitive climate is a must. We are moving into an ownership society where we must become more accountable for how we are viewed and defined. The pathway to freedom is realizing progress begins with you. Today, you must learn how to break out of the box that keeps you from growing to your full potential, and change the way you think about your possibilities. You must move from your history to your imagination. When we focus on performance and strive toward excellence in our lives we shed the relevance of external labels based on race, gender, age, ethnicity, lifestyle or physical ability, and we free ourselves to proactively live our lives.
International commerce really doesn’t care about race, creed, gender or lifestyle. Its main concerns are survival, profitability and control of its destiny. Diversity is ultimately about our role in moving civilization forward and freeing ourselves to forge alliances we’ll find beneficial and profitable as we navigate through our changing world. In many ways, the expanded global marketplace is an equalizer. It offers advantages to people of all backgrounds. It puts them on a level playing field. The type of person who will succeed in this new work environment is someone who can transcend race and build relationships -- someone with a spirit of cooperation who is tolerant of others. It will require people who think before they react and who understand the consequences of their actions. It calls for self-respecting people who feel good about where they came from and don’t apologize for who they are. And it calls for people who will continue to grow and develop and who will bring value to themselves and those they represent.
To succeed in the 21st century, you must:
1. Invest in yourself.
2. See beyond the labels.
3. ee yourself as a citizen of the world.
When you reach that point, you find yourself able to excel and create opportunities and to focus on what you can do, as opposed to what you can’t do. You create more opportunities and build momentum for constructive growth. You are able to reinvent yourself every day and organize your life around the world, instead of just allowing the world to organize itself around you. You are leading instead of being led. You are willingly expanding your horizons and becoming flexible enough to continue to grow.
I encourage you to explore different cultures and their experiences to help you understand that everyone has had their own challenges and issues. You see that the process for growth and transformation are the same for everyone, and hard work, sacrifice, talent and self-motivation are the tools for the future.
You start by taking more control of your life and becoming more accountable to yourself. When you attain this, you will be self-owned, and that’s an achievement you can always savor because you earned it through your hard work and unique talents.
Stedman Graham is chairman and CEO of S. Graham and Associates, a management and marketing consulting firm based in Chicago. He is the author of 10 books, including two New York Times Best Sellers. His latest book is Diversity: Leaders Not Labels -- A New Plan for the 21st Century.
http://www.successmagazine.com/Diversity-Leaders-Not-Labels-/PARAMS/article/544/channel/22
ENJOY!
Margarita Nomeikiene
Content
02 February 2009, 17:43
Seeds of greatness exist within each of us by Robert Stuberg
Your growth as a leader starts right now, wherever you are at this very moment. You don’t have to be president of a billion-dollar company to be a leader. You can begin with your present relationships, your family and friends, your community associations, your school or your place of work. Developing your leadership skills can prepare you for larger challenges in the future.
If I were to ask you to think of leaders you admired and those who had an influence on your life, who would come to mind? How about your parents or a particular teacher or coach who had a significant influence on you? Or maybe a mentor at work?
For most of us, leadership is a day-today matter of how we strive to do our best, as well as how we get others to do their very best. Leadership involves our responsibilities at work, in the community, at church or in our families.
Great leaders are often all around us. Very often, it is people closest to us who are doing great deeds with little means. The seeds of greatness exist in any of us who strive to lead, even in the most modest undertakings.
It’s quite possible that, until now, you haven’t really considered yourself a leader of any kind. Whether or not that’s so, you may be surprised to learn just how many ways you, indeed, are a leader, especially to those closest to you. You could be a leader to a group or maybe only one or two people. It could be in your work, in a special interest you have or perhaps the quality of a relationship you have with someone, such as your children or loved ones. There are people around you looking up to you, believing in you as a role model and as a leader.
Believe me when I say you are already a leader in ways you may not be fully aware. Never underestimate the influence you have on the lives of others.
"The ability we have to make our world better starts with how we live our life."
You can read more there http://www.successmagazine.com/Developing-Everyday-Leadership/PARAMS/article/527/channel/210
Or you can wait, i'll bring to you.
ENJOY!
Sincerely,
Margarita Nomeikiene
Content
26 January 2009, 17:15
Success Stories - Adam Slutsky
Rare and fortunate is the entrepreneur who is so successful that his very first business is not only parodied on network television, but the joke goes on to become something of a national phenomenon. But that is exactly what happened to Adam Slutsky not long after he started his first business at the ripe, old age of 25.
It was back in the '90s, the seventh season of Seinfeld, and Kramer gets a new phone number. People begin dialing it by accident, thinking it is Slutsy's business, and so Kramer finally decides to go with it.
Answering his phone: Hello, and welcome to Moviefone. If you know the name of the movie you would like to see, press 1.
Indeed, Adam Slutsky's first entrepreneurial venture was a little business called Moviefone, which he eventually sold to AOL at the height of the dot-com boom in 1999. Selling price? A cool half-billion dollars. Those were the days!
That Slutsky has created not one, but two businesses that routinely gross more than $100 million a year really should be no surprise. He caught the entrepreneurial bug early and has run with it ever since.
Back in college, at Cornell, he started out selling T-shirts to make some extra money, and by the time he got to Columbia Business School, he knew that entrepreneurship was for him, even if all of his classmates were s et on conquering Wall Street.
It was not long after he graduated and started working that the chance to pitch some business ideas to a group of investors presented itself. Moviefone was but one of 10 ideas Slutsky suggested. The immediate challenge with Moviefone is one familiar to any entrepreneur: You may have a cool idea, but how in the heck are you going to make money off of it? "It's all in the execution," Slutsky says.
Eventually, he and his partners decided on a short, 15-second ad at the beginning of the phone call, hoping it would be unobtrusive enough that people would hang on to get the info they wanted about the movie they wanted to see. Good thinking, that.
It turned out the embedded ads had a direct result on how many people went to see a movie; movies that were promoted in the ads showed a consistent 20 percent increase in business.
With results like that, Moviefone was able to expand to 30 markets fairly quickly, and then make the leap to the Web in late '94. In fact, Slutsky says, "Moviefone made history in another way once we went online. We sold the first-ever online, e-commerce ticket, for a movie in Los Angeles in 1995."
Within a few years, near the height of the Internet boom, Slutsky says, "Companies began to pay extraordinary sums for dot-com businesses that didn't even have a viable revenue model." (Think Pets.com) "So what Moviefone offered was actually unique and valuable at that time: An online business that not only made sense, but made money."
Not surprisingly then, a bidding war ensued for Moviefone, with AOL winning. As part of the deal, Slutsky went to work for AOL, but not long thereafter, AOL famously and disastrously merged with Time Warner, and the entrepreneur knew it was time to move on. Corporate gigs are not his bag.
After taking some time off, Slutsky's entrepreneurial bug-bite began to itch again. Fortunately, he could afford to be picky about his next venture.
He decided there were three criteria he wanted in his next business, and notes that entrepreneurs could use these principles when analyzing their own opportunities and options:
1. The business had to have a smart, viable business model that generated sufficient income. "Remember," he says, "this was a time [2000] when lots of Internet businesses had no viable business model at all." Slutsky was looking for a fairly new business that generated at least $20 million a year. "You need enough money to make the business grow," he notes.
2. The business needed to have a strong convenience value for the customer. Slutsky is a big believer that people will pay for convenience. "That's what Moviefone offered —convenience."
3. The management team had to believe in marketing. "With tech companies especially," he says, "stakeholders tend to believe in the technology above all else. But I know that in order to grow, sales and marketing are vital."
All of this led Slutsky to a company called Mimeo.com. "Mimeo offered a strong convenience and value proposition: online printing and overnight delivery." In the old world, Slutsky explains, "People would go to their local copy shop, make copies and then overnight them. In this digital age, that is terribly inefficient."
Mimeo allows customers to go online, create on-demand documents, print them and then distribute them anywhere—all from the convenience of their desks.
Slutsky clearly is onto another winner, with Mimeo revenue now topping $100 million, and the number of employees totaling more than 500.
There is no telling what Act III will look like for the entrepreneur, but if past is prologue, a few things are certain: Whatever he does, Adam Slutsky will be innovating, leading and making things more convenient.
And this entrepreneur won't be copying anything.
From http://www.successmagazine.com
Enjoy!
Margarita Nomeikiene
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