Greatness in leadership stretches beyond business success as the organization evolves to become more collaborative, ethical, trustworthy, transparent and mindful toward the needs of its workforce. In return, leaders at financially successful organizations must diligently earn respect from the workforce. The position itself does not generate respect from employees automatically. Or worst, employees end up showing hypocritical respect in front of leaders merely as a workplace obligation. Neither serves well for the long-term growth of the organization as a collective body of individuals apparently working together with due respect. So what can leaders actually do to draw real respect from their colleagues and become truly great leaders? The answer lies in transforming their own selves to win respect:
Raise the Bar on Work Ethics
Great leaders let their actions do the talking and consistently prove their value by maintaining reliable and trustworthy character. Setting this tone encourages employees to respond in a similar manner. And over the long-term, consistently following the practice of strong work ethics from leaders innovates the organizational culture. This culture forms the common standard for employees to return the same high levels of respect to their leaders as they receive, not as an obligation but as a product of honing an ethical workplace culture.
Lead, Don’t Leach
Leaders are indeed the face of the organization. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Larry Page have all received critical acclaim for revolutionizing the technology industry. However, their achievements were backed by hard work and efforts from their workforce. Sponsoring high potential employees enabled these leaders to discover the best in their workforce capable of delivering great results. Passionate employees want freedom and control over their own actions in fulfilling organizational responsibilities. Recognition Addicts cannot forcefully draw respect from employees. Admiring qualities of the workforce, appreciating their efforts and giving them significant control over to dictate their own ways to perform work to yield tangible results naturally returns respect for leaders.
Establish an Executive Presence
Powerful role models are destined to receive respect. Establishing an executive presence and avoiding actions that question the integrity and tarnish the reputation of leaders is the symbolic trait of great leaders highly respected within and beyond their organization. An executive reputation that makes their presence felt the moment they walk through the door naturally encourages employees to respect leaders not only for their character, but also for their superior position.
Take Responsibilities for their Actions
Great leaders are never afraid of taking risks. Leaders are also well positioned to blame their colleagues for the wrong decisions. This blame game passes through multiple layers of workforce hierarchy until discontent, resentment and hate spreads through the organization. The willingness to accept challenges and strong desire to take that valuable leap of faith embodies successful leaders. Greatness is achieved when leaders take full responsibilities over their decisions and actions that lead to costly mistakes that occur because of their risky actions. Employees cannot possibly fire leaders or even point fingers at them for taking the wrong turns. Instead, admitting mistakes ensures everyone is onboard through the sharp turns. And this collaborative journey of trust thrives on exchanging respect, the most significant of which comes in the share of the leaders themselves.
BENEFITS OF BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION WITH CLOUD COMPUTING
The power of cloud computing is driving business model innovation for early stage start-up firms and large enterprises alike. Business models define and integrate distinctive business operations to generate revenue streams. For large enterprises, switching between business models is inherently complex, risky and costly. At the same time, start-up firms have the agility to transform business practices and strategies with minimal business risk. Cloud computing technologies present these companies with unprecedented opportunities to optimize an innovative business models that create unique value propositions for their target market.
The cloud driven enterprise market is experiencing rapid digital and mobile automation and the consumer segment has embraced the cloud led social media culture. Business organizations are ultimately forced to adopt cloud computing for a number of reasons:
- Enhance collaboration with external partners.
- Competitive differentiation through vertical integration.
- New deliver the market and channels.
- Competitive advantages through specialized services.
- Rebalanced mix of products.
- Flexible pricing models.
With these capabilities organizations can leverage six key cloud attributes to drive business model innovation:
Cost Flexibility
Cost flexibility is the primary business driver of cloud computing for small and midsize business (SMB) organizations. The ability to trade large CapEx with small, affordable OpEx allows organizations to focus investments on core business operations and resources. Offering cloud-based services and products with a pay-as-you-go pricing model is appealing for consumers encouraged to make the purchase as a low-risk trial option before committing long-term budgets.
Business Scalability
Agility is the key competitive differentiation for start-up firms and cloud technologies allow these organizations to scale these resources on a whim. Business organizations leveraging these capabilities to optimize resources in accommodating unpredictable and varying demand spikes that add considerable value to the business bottom line without incurring unnecessary and underutilized CapEx.
Market Adaptability
Rapid response to fast changing economic environment comes with the ability to changing accommodate market demands. The inception of cloud computing has paved the way for organizations to adjust business models to complement these market demands by rapidly altering business operations, products and services to align with changing customer preferences.
Masked Complexity
Without third-party cloud services, business organizations are required to set up and maintain the complex IT network for maximum service uptime. This necessitates ongoing investments in in-house expertise and expensive hardware. Cloud computing veils these complexities for end-users, promises maximum service uptime and shrinks total cost of ownership so that the workforce can focus on mission critical business operations instead of just keeping the boat afloat.
Context Driven Variability
Successful organizations focus on delivering consumer centric business services. User preferences in the present age of technology are more diverse and fragmented than ever before. Enterprise grade computing and analytics capabilities allow organizations to deliver services based on specific preferences of individual customers. These capabilities available as cloud services empower business organizations to tailor marketing efforts and diversify service offerings to expand customer base.
Ecosystem Connectivity
Cloud networks serve as platforms to share valuable information, products and services that help expand business operations. External collaboration with customers, vendors and partners allows business organizations to leverage collective experience and value propositions in the form of skills and services to fuel business progress.
Cloud computing allows business organizations to pursue and deliver solutions that are otherwise impractical. For startup firms, leveraging these capabilities and business advantages levels the playing field with their larger counterparts by improving, transforming and creating innovative business models for sustainable profitability.
For help with your cloud computing strategy, call Conscientia Corporation at 480-626-0063.
TOP FIVE WAYS TO ESTABLISH COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP
Organizational philosophies in the present age of technology revolution center around collaborative leadership development. Innovations automating mundane business operations have streamlined the processes but expanded departmental silos in the increasingly complex and ever-shifting ocean of technology-driven enterprise landscape. At the same time, the power of collaborative leadership in maximizing the potential of collective brainpower has created unprecedented business value for organizations operating under the “silo mentality”. This transformation prompts a strategic approach toward establishing collaborative leadership in achieving collective organizational goals:
Bring Humans ahead of Technology
Instead of presenting technology deployments as an end-goal, successful leaders use technology as a facilitator and a key enabler to organizational success. Effective collaboration strategies focus on leveraging technology innovation to optimize the organization’s expertise, knowledge-base and experience. Capturing and communicating the combined wisdom of all stakeholders necessitates changes in the organizational culture. Using technology to foster this change by addressing human issues that come in the way of technology-driven collaboration kills the silo mentality and helps align the entire workforce around the organization’s business missions.
Encourage Collective Visioning
Contrary to the popular opinion suggesting organizational success results from the vision of individual leaders, founders and CEOs, visioning is actually a shared effort. The vision of organizational goals effectively communicated across the top management and through to front-line employees is critical to engage effective collaboration. Performing business operations to achieve these goals requires employees to take part in the creation of this vision. This involvement instills the same levels of motivation toward organizational success as shared by dedicated leaders and company founders. The shared vision brings all employees on the same page, encouraging collaboration in creating as well as pursuing this vision.
Nurture Diverse Thinking
All too often leaders encourage managers assign mission-critical projects to the most adept employees within the organization. While prioritizing employees with equally high levels of expertise seems appropriate, the best outcomes with collaborative projects require diverse thinking from all stakeholders. A team of high-caliber employees with similar knowledge base and training tends to become insular in its outlook. Establishing a team consisting of employees with varied levels of skills, experience and knowledge causes each member to consider unique perspectives, ideas and possibilities that an adept professional would naturally ignore. The resulting experimentation with new ideas opens doors to innovative solutions to otherwise complex business problems.
Establish Trust
Team collaboration thrives in the environment of trust and confidence. Trust in the reliability, honesty and integrity of the workforce is honored and returned in the form of collective efforts in achieving the expected results. Cynical and suspicious employees are naturally disinclined toward collaborative efforts. Great leaders demonstrate their trust in the workforce by encouraging ongoing knowledge sharing and communication even though only a few ideas are eventually put into action. These practices encourage employees to collaborate by presenting their knowledge and ideas knowing that they will be valued and well-considered.
Develop Relationships
Developing healthy relationships within the organization forms the basis of collaborative leadership. When leaders force individuals to form teams and get on to work immediately, individual members are not able to establish effective collaborative efforts immediately. Giving them time to know each other, sharing strengths and weaknesses, developing common understandings and building strong ties ultimately yields collaborative efforts in the right direction.