Why do the goals that you’ve set out for your team to accomplish matter?

At first, the answer to this question might seem obvious – the goals you’ve established are meant to ensure your organization’s continued profitability, to increase or sustain your market share, create a new demand for your products or services, and so forth.

And yet, if we examine this answer closer, it becomes clear that the measures above are merely the outcomes of your organization’s shared efforts and not the real driving force which motivates your employees to contribute their full talents and abilities. For that, employees require something deeper and more meaningful – a noble cause which they are internally driven to rally around and bring to fruition.

Our noble cause is that shared purpose that allows us to move past focusing only on the ‘how’ and seeking to answer the ‘why’, fostering a deeper sense of meaning in what we do and an understanding of how our efforts can impact others beyond our office walls.

It’s the reason why some companies have managed to thrive and expand their market base despite the uncertainties present in today’s global economy, because they’re not simply Click here to continue reading »”Have You Tied Your Organization’s Goals To Your Noble Cause?”

With the month of September now underway, there’s an unmistakable feeling of renewed energy and determination in the air. As children return back to their school routines and the summer break now nothing more than a fond memory, perhaps it’s only natural that there’s this collective drive to take on the challenges before us with spirited enthusiasm.

Of course, how organizations view challenges – either as an outcome of being in competition with others or as an opportunity to push themselves further in order to move one step closer to reaching their full potential – plays a key role in how they approach not only overcoming these obstacles, but the level of creativity and innovation they foster within their workforce.

With this in mind, here are four steps leaders can use to ensure their organizations are not simply reacting to what challenges come their way, but that they have a clear understanding of what their organization needs to do to succeed:

1. Set clear goals independent of what your competition is doing
When it comes to the ability to consistently surprise, delight, and transform customers into loyal advocates, there are few companies that succeed at this as well as Zappos and Apple. Their ability to “deliver happiness” and release unexpected ‘must-have’ technologies respectively, are clearly not mere responses to the challenges they incur from their competition. Instead, these measures are a result of addressing what goals they have for their organization, of what they wanted to create or accomplish that would make them stand out and succeed in their respective fields.

Take Apple, for instance. Can anyone say the iPod, iPhone and iPad were created in response to something their competition was doing? Or were they more in Click here to continue reading »”Are You Using These 4 Steps For Organizational Success?”

I am delighted to announce that following a second round of jury voting last month, my blog was awarded 2^nd place in the “Business and Career” category for the 2010 Canadian Weblog Awards. I can tell you that it’s quite the personal achievement to have a jury of your peers go through a list of hundreds of nominees and select your blog as one of the top business blogs in your country. I want to take this opportunity to thank both the organizers and the jury for this honour, as well as my readers who have been the driving force in pushing me to excel to such a degree.

On a side note, the beginning of the new year marks the release of the January Leadership Development Carnival over at Dan McCarthy’s blog “Great Leadership”. Among the many contributions to this month’s edition is my piece, “Are You Fitting Employee Personality Into Your Leadership Puzzle?“. I’d like to thank Dan for once again compiling a great resource of articles on leadership and management for everyone to enjoy.

Again my thanks to everyone involved with the Canadian Weblog Awards for this recognition.  I’m looking forward to building on this success in the months ahead.

This past August, I shared the exciting news with my readers that my site was the recipient of three nominations for the 2010 Canadian Weblog Awards.  For those who are not familiar with this competition, the Canadian Weblog Awards (CWA) is a juried competition that looks for the best Canadian bloggers in a diverse range of categories and styles.   Yesterday, I received news that my site has been selected as one of the top 5 finalists in the following two categories:

• Business and Career
• Best Designed

According to the CWA site, there were over 450 nominated sites for the various categories which were reviewed and scored by 49 jurors, leading to the top 5 finalists for each category.  These top 5 finalists will now go through a second jury round over the month of December, after which they will announce the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners on January 1st, 2011.

Considering the number of nominated sites, it’s truly an honour to be held up as one of the top 5 blogs representing the best from my country in these respective categories.  I’d like to extend my congratulations to the other finalists in this year’s Canadian Weblog Awards, along with my thanks to the jury for selecting my site as one of the top 5 finalists in not one, but two categories.