Life Lessons from Extraordinary People

We know you are out there gearing up for a new year and we thought you would be motivated by this blog post by Harvard Business Review with "10 Extraordinary People and Their Lessons for Success".

Here's our favorite by Historian David McCullough:

 

McCullough on hard work: “When the founders wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they didn’t mean longer vacations and more comfortable hammocks. They meant the pursuit of learning. The love of learning. The pursuit of improvement and excellence. I keep telling students, ‘Find work you love. Don’t concern yourself overly about how much money is involved or whether you’re ever going to be famous.’ …In hard work is happiness.”

For more lessons on success from Maya Angelou, Sandra Day O'Connor, and more, go here.

The Supa Group Team
thesupagroup@gmail.com

Top 10 Lessons Learned from Failure (Part 2 of 2)

In order to succeed, you need to know how to fail

An article in the December-January 2013 issue of Worth magazine (a go-to resource for our company) caught our eye and we wanted to summarize for you.  The 10 lessons they capture were adapted from The Wisdom of Failure:  How to Learn the Tough Leadership Lessons Without Paying the Price from a seven year study of 1,000 managers and executives across 21 industries.  These are powerful tips that we wanted to share that can help you both in your career and in your personal life.

Disclaimer: no copyright infringement intended.

(See Prior Post for Part 1 with #1-5)

6.  Competition Can Destroy Your Company

Competition, amongst employees or whole departments, can easily backfire.  When Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a developer and provider of seed corn products, discovered biotech methods (creating seeds in a lab as opposed to a field), the company decided to incorporate both techniques.  But after collaboration between the two divisions failed miserably, the firm pitted farmers against scientists to see who came out on top.  The result?  The internal competition tore the company apart, forcing Pioneer to lay off 25 percent of its employees and ultimately be rescued by DuPont.

7.  Don't Be a Power Hog

Micromanagement and hoarding responsibility are two common characteristics of ineffective leaders.  A survey of managers showed nearly 45 percent of managers admitted to both.  The effects are significant: on the leader (getting fired), the employees (stunting growth) and the company (losing employees).  Mattel's Jill Barad, for example, went from the first female CEO of the Fortune 500 company in 1997 to out of a job in 2000 in part because of her obsessive and controlling management style.  You'll do better by trusting and respecting your employees to handle delegated tasks.

8.  Stay Engaged or Get Out

Disengaged leaders are characterized by an insular and aloof attitude.  It's not just that they no longer have their finger on the pulse of the company.  Jared Heyman, for example, launched a marketing firm Infosurv in 1998 at 20 and by 32 was burned out.  He left the company to a manager and began to travel the world.  Employees hardly noticed Heyman's absence because he had always worked behind a closed door.

Be the type of boss who can really impact employees by making sure you are engaged in your own work and interacting with your staff.

9.  Check Your Ego

There's a running joke in Silicon Valley:  What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?  God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.  According to 70 percent of the execs we talked to, self-absorption is the most damning mistake a leader can make.  Why?  A self-absorbed leader defines success based on personal achievements.  A great leader defines success based on his team's achievements.


10.  Balance is the Key Ingredient

The ability to maintain balance between the lessons learned from your success and the lessons learned from your failure gives you the wisdom to prosper as a leader.  Knowing what to do must always be balanced with knowing what not to do, and personal experiences should be considered alsongside the experience of those around you.  "The ability to recognize and learn from one's own mistakes is the first step," Gerry Shaheen, a board member at Ford, says.  "But the ability to learn from other's mistakes is genius."

Take these five lessons into consideration when you are strategizing how you want to execute your personal goals and vision as a leader.

Que Fagan

Blogger in Chief

The Supa Group

www.thesupagroup.com

Top 10 Lessons Learned from Failure (Part 1 of 2)

In order to succeed, you need to know how to fail

An article in the December-January 2013 issue of Worth magazine (a go-to resource for our company) caught our eye and we wanted to summarize for you.  The 10 lessons they capture were adapted from The Wisdom of Failure:  How to Learn the Tough Leadership Lessons Without Paying the Price from a seven year study of 1,000 managers and executives across 21 industries.  These are powerful tips that we wanted to share that can help you both in your career and in your personal life.

Disclaimer: no copyright infringement intended.

1.  Avoid the Seduction of Yes
The universal "yes" takes three forms: an inability to decline new opportunities, a refusal to admit failure, and attempting to be all things to all people.  All three destroy careers and companies by leading to the overcommitting of resources, cash and talent.

Take MySpace:  In a misguided attempt to get hip, News Corp. purchased the floundering company for $580 million in 2005, and spend years (and millions more) trying to reinvent the website to compete with Facebook.  It was a disastrous move: News Corp. sold MySpace in 2011 for $35 million.

The firm could have saved itself huge amounts of time and money if it had been able to admit defeat before six years had passed.

2.  Don't Think Outside the Box
It's practically the most tiresome cliche' in business--"think outside the box"--and it may also be the most misguided.  The number one cause of business derailment is thinking "outside the box"--and ending up in business where you don't belong.

Don't pursue new ideas for the sake of pursuing new ideas.  Rather, be very aware of the business you're in and the value proposition you and your company offer.  You can still think creatively within you own business environment.

3.  Effectiveness Matters More Than Efficiency
Ideally, you want to be both effective and efficient, but many leaders fall into the following traps:  being efficient at the expense of being effective, or being efficient at the wrong thing.  That's what killed Pets.com in 268 days.

Only when you know you're doing the right thing can you move on to doing things right.

4.  Don't be the Workplace Bully
This advice might seem obvious, but bullying at the office often occurs when money and egos are at stake.  Look at David Sokol, who, in March 2011, went form the heir apparent at Berkshire Hathaway to unemployed amidst revelation of some shady stock purchases.

After Sokol resigned, reports circulated of Sokol's brass-knuckled office style, including a monthly ranking of his aides in the order he would fire them and his suggestion that the company fire all employees in poor health or going through a divorce.

Take a lesson from Warren Buffett and cut out toxic employees.

5.  But Don't Be the Pleaser Boss Either
The pleaser boss wants everyone to work in harmony, and as a result, has an excessive fear of conflict. Of course, destructive conflict should be avoided--but leaders must be careful not to swing too far in the opposite direction lest they snuff out creativity and individual initiative.

Brenda McManigle of the Center for Creative Leadership stated, "Conflict can lead to better decision making, expose key issues, stimulate critical thinking and fuel innovation."

Take these five lessons into consideration when you are strategizing how you want to execute your personal goals and vision as a leader.

Que Fagan
Blogger in Chief
The Supa Group
www.thesupagroup.com