13 Ways of Looking at a Leader

Our endless fascination with leadership has inspired an endless parade of leadership books, many of which strive to identify distinctive styles of top-doggery. Whether CEOs can learn to lead from the prescriptions of academics, consultants, and management thinkers is open to debate.

For those wishing to try—or at least to be inspired—here are a baker's dozen of the most prevalent types of leaders. We have also cited a book associated with each leadership style, as well as some real-world examples of each archetype.

1. Adaptive

In normal times, there may not be easy answers, but at least there are answers. In times of crisis or King Kong–scale change, leaders must devise entirely new approaches to doing business. Adaptive leaders rise above the noise to interpret dynamic situations, adjust their values to changing circumstances, and then help their people stretch to meet the unfamiliar without sacrificing their trust, says Ron Heifetz, director of Harvard's Center for Public Leadership. Sam Palmisano, late of IBM, is one such change maestro. Ford's Alan Mulally is another. For more: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, by Ronald A. Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow

2. Emotionally Intelligent

Psychologist Daniel Goleman correlates leadership success with awareness of one's own feelings and the feelings of others. Emotionally intelligent leaders are expert managers of themselves and their relationships with others, and consequently they are masters of influence (but in a good way). Howard Schultz and Warren Buffett fill the bill. Though neural hard-wiring plays a part in emotional intelligence, Goleman believes even nonempaths can learn it.

For more: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, by Daniel Goleman

3. Charismatic

These are the folks who put the I in Iacocca. Charismatic leaders influence others through sheer leaderishness. Ninety years ago, sociologist Max Weber described charismatic authority as deriving from exceptional character, heroism, or sanctity. These days, it is more often a function of personality and, consequently, tough to teach. Though charismatic leaders are tremendous motivators and often run fantastically successful organizations, they tend to suck up oxygen, and their reigns can grow cultlike. Think Jack Welch, Theodore Roosevelt, and Voldemort.

For more: Charismatic Leadership in Organizations, by Jay A. Conger and Rabindra N. Kanungo

Cash Is King: 5 Simple Rules for Creating a Cash Flow Plan

With Opening Day of Major League Baseball over, I breathe a deep sigh of relief as a ticket broker. It means my company, EasySeat, has started shipping all of the baseball tickets that it has been purchasing for the last 7 months. That means cash flow will soon turn positive again.

In EasySeat’s business model, cash is king, and ensuring that we have enough cash to fund inventory and operations is critical to our success. Successfully managing, and understanding, cash flow is not a skill reserved for MBAs. Every business owner should understand their cash flow.

Here are five easy rules for creating a simple cash flow plan:

5 Things You Won't Learn in Business School

While many entrepreneurs boast college degrees and MBAs, most will readily admit that the hard knocks received from starting their own businesses were infinitely more valuable. Here are five lessons you won't learn in a classroom:

1. There is no such thing as failure. 

Businesses can go bankrupt and unsold products can pile up in the warehouse, but every venture is a potential learning experience. Investors get skittish and bail at the 11th hour? You'll know how to better choose strategic partners and negotiate deals going forward.

Couldn't successfully expand into Europe? Use the insights gained into international distribution to craft a more viable strategy next time. Clients indifferent to your sales pitch? Maybe you're trying to solve the wrong problem.

Such learning may seem expensive, but ignorance is costlier still. Knowledge gained through failure is directly applicable to future ventures. So try, fail, and try again until you get it right. Just remember: Only a fool makes the same mistake twice.

7 Most Powerful Sales Tools

It's not about the worksheets: These tools are what really create success sales.The world is inundated with sales tools: worksheets, playbooks, sales scripts, software, brochures, and so forth.

But all of those sales tools put together are insignificant if you don't have the intellectual and emotional tools that truly create success.

Here are seven sales "tools" you need to develop:

1. Patience
If you're patient, you let customers decide at their own speed. You realize that nobody ever got a plant to grow faster by pulling at the leaves of a seedling. If you lack patience, you'll be frustrated whenever things take longer than you'd like. Customers will sense your frustration and hesitate to buy.

2. Commitment
If you're truly committed to both your customer's success and your own success, you'll do whatever it takes (within legal and ethical bounds) to get the job done. You'll banish all thoughts of ever giving up. If you lack commitment, you'll consistently fail to follow through–and will often drop the ball at the worst possible moment.

3. Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm is contagious: If you're enthusiastic about yourself, your firm and your product, your customers will "pick up" your enthusiasm and believe in your ability to improve their lives. If you lack enthusiasm, however, you'll always find yourself surrounded by naysayers and endless "objections."

Managing Risks Means Managing Arguments

So it was Lyme disease that did it! The tick-borne illness kept JPMorgan Chase's Ina Drew out of the office for extended periods in 2010 and 2011.

And it was during Drew's absences, according to a richly detailed account in The New York Times, that the bank's chief investment office, which she ran, began to get into trouble:

The morning conference calls Ms. Drew had presided over devolved into shouting matches between her deputies in New York and London, the traders said. That discord in 2010 and 2011 contributed to the chief investment office's losing trades in 2012, the current and former bankers said.

Whether this really was the main reason for JP Morgan's $3 billion (and growing) trading loss or not, it does at least sound like it could be true. Managing risks — especially the hard-to-pin-down, moving-target risks that any financial trading operation has to cope with — inevitably involves arguing. Which is why managing those arguments, as Ina Drew appears to have done brilliantly during the financial crisis but wasn't around to do for the past couple of years, is so important.

To Keep Your Customers, Keep It Simple

Marketers see today’s consumers as web-savvy, mobile-enabled data sifters who pounce on whichever brand or store offers the best deal. Brand loyalty, the thinking goes, is vanishing.

In response, companies have ramped up their messaging, expecting that the more interaction and information they provide, the better the chances of holding on to these increasingly distracted and disloyal customers.

But for many consumers, the rising volume of marketing messages isn’t empowering—it’s overwhelming. Rather than pulling customers into the fold, marketers are pushing them away with relentless and ill-conceived efforts to engage.

Tumbuh dalam Keberagaman

Satu konsekuensi terbesar yang harus dihadapi dalam era persaingan global adalah keberagaman sumber daya manusia, baik dari internal perusahaan (baca; karyawan dan pemegang saham) hingga konsumen.

Terlebih jika perusahaan Anda terdiri dari beberapa unit bisnis strategik yang beroperasi di sejumlah negara. Maka, mau tidak mau perekrutan sumber daya manusia dari demografis dan psikografis yang berbeda harus dilakukan.

Konsekuensi yang muncul di antaranya adalah benturan-benturan antara budaya perusahaan dengan nilai-nilai yang dibawa oleh masing-masing karyawan.Tak hanya itu,dari sisi pasar (baca; konsumen), keberagaman nilai-nilai juga turut mewarnai aplikasi bisnis di lapangan.

Sejenak saya mengajak Anda untuk belajar dari IBM. Selama kurang lebih 100 tahun produsen teknologi informasi ini telah beroperasi di 172 negara dengan 427.000 karyawan yang berasal dari latar belakang berbeda. Terbayang betapa besarnya tantangan yang harus dihadapi manajemen terutama dalam menciptakan sebuah budaya kerja yang mengapresiasi nilai- nilai yang dianut seluruh karyawan.

Four Things to Get Right When Starting a Company

Most VCs and entrepreneurs believe start-ups are inherently iterative, that a string of mistakes doesn't prevent success, but may even be the path to it.

Generally, that view is correct, but there are a few choices made early on that have implications so deep as to be functionally irreversible, with profound implications for outcomes.

Product and business models are evolutionary by nature, but we see four things a young company must get right:

• The founding team
• The core values
• Where the company is located
• The initial investors (and their terms)

A good company usually begins with co-founders: the notion of a lone Edison willing a giant company into existence is rarely correct. Almost all successful start-ups have multiple founders, from the Central Pacific's Big 4 to Google's Brin and Page. Simply finding a co-founder serves as a critical exercise in validation.

How to Work with Someone You Hate

Working with someone you hate can be distracting and draining. Pompous jerk, annoying nudge, or incessant complainer, an insufferable colleague can negatively affect your attitude and performance.

Instead of focusing on the work you have to do together, you may end up wasting time and energy trying to keep your emotions in check and attempting to manage the person's behavior. Fortunately, with the right tactics, you can still have a productive working relationship with someone you can't stand.

It's Time to Rethink Continuous Improvement

Six Sigma, Kaizen, Lean, and other variations on continuous improvement can be hazardous to your organization's health. While it may be heresy to say this, recent evidence from Japan and elsewhere suggests that it's time to question these methods.

Admittedly, continuous improvement once powered Japan's economy. Japanese manufacturers in the 1950s had a reputation for poor quality, but through a culture of analytical and systematic change Japan was able to go from worst to first. Starting in the 1970s, the country's ability to create low-cost, quality products helped them dominate key industries, such as automobiles, telecommunications, and consumer electronics.

To compete with this miraculous turnaround, Western companies, starting with Motorola, began to adopt Japanese methods. Now, almost every large Western company, and many smaller ones, advocate for continuous improvement.