StrategyDriven Business Politics Practices Article | Managing Up Scapegoat Technique

Business Politics Practices – Managing Up Scapegoat Technique

Every good leader understands that the notion of managing up is a farce. Subordinates simply don’t possess the positional authority to “manage” – set priorities, established schedules and due dates, and direct actions – superiors. Any competent subordinate understands they are unable to manage upward and simply refuse to even try. Both the superior and subordinate understand the lexicon of managing up simply represents effective upward communication and nothing more.


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Disclaimer

The preceding experience and observation-based findings do not represent legal or professional advice for your specific situation. You should seek counsel from qualified individuals relative to your individual situation and unique circumstances.

Neither StrategyDriven; its principals, partners, and employees; nor any person acting on the behalf of them (a) makes any warranty or representation, expressed or implied, with respect to the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of the information contained in this article, or (b) assumes any liabilities with respect to the use of, or for damages resulting from the use of any information disclosed in this article.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Benefits of Private Yacht Charter - Exclusive for On-The-Water Cruising Experience

Benefits of Private Yacht Charter – Exclusive for On-The-Water Cruising Experience

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Benefits of Private Yacht Charter - Exclusive for On-The-Water Cruising ExperienceYou desire an undocked, strategic customer social engagement or executive team building event on a yacht charter with private crew and explore the South of France. Antibes is popular for yachting. As it is near Nice airport, embarking and disembarking charter yacht is easy for tourists cruising towards the South. Therefore, to book a private yacht charter Antibes look for a reliable charter broker. They will even offer expert advice about the key attractions you must see, while cruising.

A private yacht charter Antibes with a whole crew offers a lot of benefits, which you will not enjoy on commercial cruise line. It will offer an exclusive and memorable relationship building meetings on-the-water.

Leave concerns on the land

Before departure, you will need to discuss meal and activities with the crew. Everything from fully stocked bad, food and beverage selection and onboard water equipment [snorkeling gear, kayaks, paddleboards, fishing tolls, etc. will be taken care of prior you arrive.

Flexibility

There will be no itinerary dates or durations pre-planned. The time you go island hopping and come back will depend on you. It does not matter where you desire to undock, take the pleasure in cruising personalized itinerary according to your comfort and convenience. With every sunrise new story needs to be revealed and with every sunset extraordinary memory to be created.

All access passes

With a private yacht, you can easily gain access to pristine beaches and intimate coves, which commercial cruise ships cannot. Moreover, crewed charters can access secluded anchorages and hidden harbors, which self-skippered yachts cannot. It is an all access pass enabling you to enjoy unfiltered views, fresh air and minimal distractions. You can get closer to nature in a very personal way.

No stress of packing

You are accompanied with near and dear people, so there is no concern about dressing, so all-inclusive private charter meeting becomes less stressful in terms of packing. Moreover, you will dine most of the time onboard, so you get a chance to determine the dress code.

Customized menu

With personal gourmet chef to prepare meals onboard as per your preselected menu offers the freedom to dine without any concern about picky eaters, allergies, and dietary restrictions accompanying your meeting cruise. Moreover, all the spirits and meals are selected by you in advance, so you don’t need to struggle with choosing a menu. Just relax as reservation is also not needed.

No boating experience is needed

Fortunately, with private yacht charter you get a trained crew. You don’t need any boating experience because the crew does all the tasks onboard. You enjoy the cruise and VIP services offered.

Unlimited activities

While it is warm, you can go snorkeling and explore the underwater. Take spouses and significant others kayaking or you can even enjoy a cooking class from onboard gourmet chef. The yacht will also be equipped with latest technology for entertainment. You can even plan a wild night on the shore in some foreign city and return back but let the captain and crew know about your whim. They will cooperate happily!

With private yacht charter, indulge and relish a dream meeting!

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Marketing Automation| 3 Marketing Processes Your Business Should be Automating Right Now

3 Marketing Processes Your Business Should be Automating Right Now

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Marketing Automation| 3 Marketing Processes Your Business Should be Automating Right NowThere isn’t enough time to do everything, yet most small business owners try. When it comes to marketing your business, there are things you can do to automate some of these processes. Automation helps you make sure everything is done, ensures everything is done at the right time, and helps give you more time to focus on tasks that can’t be automated. If you haven’t started automating some of your marketing processes yet, give these three a try first.

Lead Generation and Tracking

There’s a “contact us” button on the website, but just getting potential customers to contact the business is the first step for lead generation. Emails should be responded to immediately. Even a 30-minute delay can decrease the chance of the email leading to a qualified lead. Instead, start automating lead generation, so emails are responded to immediately. These are form responses, but there are ways to make it sound more personal for the customer, so they know they’re important to the business.

Along with automating these responses to generate more leads, use automation to track the leads. It’s possible to use white label reporting software to generate CRM and other reports automatically and have them sent to your email address. The lead management software tracks everything, then sends a PDF with the information neatly arranged, so it’s easy to keep an eye on lead generation for the business and how effective the current marketing processes are.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is used by just about everyone today, so it’s an excellent way to generate new leads for a business. However, to get the most from social media, it’s a good idea to post every few hours. This ensures posts are seen, but it can be difficult for someone to do all of this by hand. Content needs to be created or curated, then posted on social media websites at just the right time to have the biggest impact.

Instead of spending a couple of hours every day just curating and posting on social media, automate some of this. Automating software can find content that your potential customers might be interested in and automatically share it at set times. It’s still a good idea to post original content periodically, but this makes it easy to post more and to keep the business in the view of potential customers.

Email Marketing

Automation is great for sending emails as soon as a customer reaches out, but there’s more that can be done here. Email marketing campaigns, when done right, can be highly effective. Use automation to make sure an email campaign is more effective by sending out emails at exactly the right time. Evaluate your current email marketing plan to see how it can change and improve with the use of automation and find out how much time you can save. When emails can be written at any time, even months ahead, and sent out at the perfect time to grab a potential customer’s attention, they can lead to a lot more conversions.

There’s no need to try to do everything on your own. Instead, try implementing these automation techniques to reduce your workflow, make your marketing processes more effective, and to bring in more leads for your business. Automating the right tasks can make a huge difference in how much time you spend on marketing and can leave you with more time to work on tasks that just can’t be automated.

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article |Data Management|Stop Drowning In Data And Create An Optimisation Plan

Stop Drowning In Data And Create An Optimisation Plan

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article |Data Management|Stop Drowning In Data And Create An Optimisation Plan One thing is certain – Big data is big business. As the ways in which we can gather information have expanded almost infinitely, so the data we have stacks up and up. We’ve been promised the earth by understanding our customers better – enhanced profits, more repeat sales, higher average transaction values, loyal brand advocates. And while it’s true that data can deliver all of that, for most businesses, it doesn’t. Because data is a tool like any other, and when it’s misused or not used to its full potential, you’re not likely to see the results. Most businesses collect data without any clear idea of why they are collecting it, and their marketing strategy gets stifled under the sheer amount of available information. Instead of driving the data and mining it to find the relevant parts, it drives them. Learning how to effectively use data is highly individual to each company and their operations and KPIs, but there are some building blocks for good data hygiene and usage that work across all sectors and business types. So, how can you stop drowning in data and start using it to your advantage?

Closing The Feedback Loop

Often we believe that we should be coming up with a lot of colourful looking reports covered in pie charts and bar graphs that we can point to as concrete evidence of macro trends affecting our operations or changes in customer experience. But what do all those colourful reports actually show? Data in and of itself is literally just a bunch of numbers, and all the reporting you like isn’t going to make much of a difference to your bottom line. The most important output is actually the insights that only shrewd analysis can show, and this is the single most important function of the modern marketer. Seeing meanings, patterns and stories is the important part, not the raw data itself. Knowing what all these metrics mean for your business and what action should be taken is the only thing which makes data collection worthwhile.

Make Sure You Measure The Right Thing

The symbiosis between overarching business strategy and analytics can be a tough balance to get right, because both should feed off the other. What you measure should be dependent on what you want to optimise in line with the wider goals you have for your business. But equally, what your goals are should be at least partially dependant on the customer feedback that you amass through your data. Skew the balance too far one way or the other and it’s not going to work in your favour. Setting good metrics for your business is absolutely key to the success you’ll get. Look at things such as which channels drive the most conversions for your business, which landing pages on your website have the lowest conversion rates, what your average order value is in different segments of customers. Underpinning all of these metrics need to be two important things – a great CRM system which can allow you to use these insights to create dynamic marketing campaigns which really respond to individual customer preference and history, and a strict attention to data hygiene and legal practices. Ensure that you’re on the right side of the law when it comes to data collection and storage, and seek out advice from experienced professionals with a track record of legal matter management. The penalties and the damage to your professional reputation can be majorly severe if you get this wrong, so make it a matter of good practice.

Use Segmentation Effectively

Taking action on your data should all be driven by customer segmentation. Not only understanding your customers and their different backgrounds and preferences, but even allocating groups a persona to bring their journey to life and help you see how better to help them. Your knowledge of the goals set out in your business plan should guide which group of customers you look at first, but try to use the data you request to enhance your understanding of each group. This approach allows you to dig a lot deeper and come up with far more creative solutions.

Remember To Add Context

Data is never an island, and if you insist at looking at very narrow ranges of statistics in isolation, the picture that emerges is hopelessly skewed and will never give you an accurate base to work from. A better understanding of context can help you to make much more informed decisions. Make the connection between the figures you’re seeing and what they really mean for your business. Interpreting data badly can be very harmful to your operations and in many cases it would have been better not to collect it at all!

Pull Together Your Optimisation Plan

With the insights you have managed to gather, putting them into some form of actionable plan is the most important part. Six Sigma has a particularly useful concept which can be directly applied to using data insights in this way. The Define Measure Analyse Improve or DMAIC process can be very instrumental in shaping your approach. First, you define the problem that you are trying to solve, known as your hypothesis, set out your relevant stakeholders and the scope of your analysis. Then, you can measure the relevant data fields and use basic analysis to spot any anomalies. The third step is to analyse correlations and patterns within your data set using your visualisation skills to bring it to life. Improvement then corms from using these insights and coming up with a few options to explore. Finally, you control the change by using strategies like multivariate testing and monitoring KPIs to see the impact of what you’re doing. It’s then possible to make responsive adjustments in real time to ensure that your campaigns are fluid and provide a shifting technique to overcome any barriers and generate the best possible return on investment. With a little more careful planning the feeling of being overrun by statistics will be replaced by a focus on only the most relevant metrics to get you to where you need to be.

StrategyDriven Management and Leadership Article |Leadership Skills|7 Skills Required for Exceptional Team Leadership

7 Skills Required For Exceptional Team Teadership

StrategyDriven Management and Leadership Article |Leadership Skills|7 Skills Required for Exceptional Team LeadershipThere are many types of managers but it takes a certain skill set for a manager to consistently lead their team to long-term success. While skills can definitely be taught (growth mindset), exceptional team leadership requires abilities and characteristics that do not come naturally to everyone.

Why are leadership skills so important? Quite simply, they set the mold for ‘the way we do things around here’, which has a huge impact on the culture and success of an organisation.

Think you have what it takes? Want to know what distinguishes great team leaders from mediocre ones? Here are 7 skills all exceptional team leaders naturally possess.

Effective communication

To be an effective team leader, communication is key. Good communication is an essential component of achieving goals and contributes hugely to positive working relationships. Conflict at some point in any team is inevitable, but an exceptional leader has the expertise to ensure everybody has a voice and feels heard. They are able to quickly diffuse any conflict.

Good communication skills involve really listening, keeping it short, asking questions, noticing body language and repeating back a summary of what has been discussed. Active listening is often seen as a soft skill, but it is fundamental to being a great leader and drives employee engagement.

Communication is becoming increasingly difficult when it comes to managing remote workers in the digital age. But great leaders always make time for small talk with everyone and use video technology to communicate with the remote members of their team.

Transparent and trustworthy

Good leadership is built on a foundation of trust, which requires a certain level of transparency. Being transparent doesn’t mean sharing everything on the google drive or divulging everyone’s salary (though some businesses operate with more openness than others).
Broadly speaking, good leaders will share information and not keep facts secret to build up their own sense of power. There are many good reasons team leaders should practise transparency, but most importantly it helps to foster better relationships with staff. Along with effective communication it encourages employees to share their ideas too and this is essential for innovation.
Ultimately, the sharing of information is essential for employees to make better informed decisions.

Knowledgeable and confident

A leader must be able to motivate and inspire others to achieve common goals. They must also be able to communicate effectively and manage conflict. While there are many different leadership styles, all influential leaders share one crucial trait: they are continually learning and growing. One way to ensure that leaders have the skills they need to be successful is through trainer certification. By becoming certified, leaders gain access to the latest research and best practices in team development. In addition, trainer certification provides leaders with an opportunity to network with other professionals and learn from their experiences. Trainer certification by Langevin is one of the most respected in the industry, and it can help leaders take their skills to the next level. With trainer certification, leaders can build exceptional teams to succeed.

To be a credible leader you have to be able to support your team and problem-solve. Knowledge and confidence are just two of the attributes required to foster respect from your employees. People like to work with leaders who are confident and know what they are talking about.

Effective delegating

Great leaders know they need to delegate in order to get work done, but also understand the importance of delegation in relation to improving opportunities and staff development. Delegating isn’t about dumping the work you don’t fancy doing onto someone else.
To be an effective leader you’ll need to demonstrate your ability to roll up your sleeves and pitch in with the workload. You also need to be mindful not to hold onto your work. Motivating and inspiring team members relies on effective delegation and this means delegating authority, as well as tasks.

Exceptional team leaders aren’t afraid of succession planning and will delegate responsibilities to help build the careers of their team members. Great managers surround themselves with highly successful people.

Energise employees to achieve

One of the key skills and competencies requested by those recruiting for team leaders is the ability to motivate themselves and members of their team. Employees can have all the expertise in the world, but if they’re not motivated, then productivity and business success won’t come easily and employees won’t achieve their potential.

Every team member will have different motivators. A great team leader knows this and works with individuals to understand what these are and successfully motivate them.

Give continuous feedback

Giving and receiving feedback on a continuous basis is key to engaging people and keeping them on track. The annual appraisal is an outdated management tool and by its nature is often an event dreaded by employees who feel a whole year of ‘constructive criticism’ is about to be dumped upon them.

Great leaders give feedback on a continuous basis to address issues and guide employees, as well as to give positive feedback which helps to boost confidence and ability. Good leaders are able to deliver difficult feedback constructively and effectively with the right intention (to help employees improve what they aren’t doing so well). For employees to be receptive to feedback it needs to be delivered frequently with care.

Fair, ethical and honest

Being honest, fair and ethical are crucial character traits of an exceptional team leader. Acting with integrity and not engaging in behaviour in the workplace that is toxic will impact positively on how you are regarded by employees in your team and across the entire organisation.

Being fair, you don’t have favourites and you abide by the same rules you impose upon your team. Importantly, exceptional leaders will always question whether they have personal bias to ensure that they don’t subconsciously develop any.
While these are all management skills that can be learned, the truly best leaders will find all of this comes naturally.