Leadership

Creating a Culture of Empowerment

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One of my favorite quotes came from Steve Jobs: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

That mantra is extremely important as a driver to building a high-performance team and culture. Whether you are a 5-person company or a 5,000-person company, you need to really give some thought to why you are hiring the people you choose to hire.  You also need to consider how you create opportunities for idea sharing and innovation in a practical way that includes all levels of the corporate ladder.

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Diverse Thinking Drives Better Decisions

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I had the pleasure of attending Domo’s annual conference, Domopalooza, out in Salt Lake City this week.  It was a great show, and Domo is doing amazing things with their product in the coming year which I’ll delve into more on the Analytics Neat podcast on Monday, March 19.  From a content perspective, a Keynote with Omar Johnson, the former CMO of Beats by Dre and current Founder of Opus, really stood out to me.

During his discussion, Omar said: “When you have a diverse team you get different points of view.  When you get different points of view you make better decisions.”  Whether you are a 5-person company or a 500-person company, this is some of the best advice you can ever adhere to.

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Meeting Framework to Build Open Communication

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One of the most common complaints as a leader tends to be: I can’t fix what I can’t see.  In a fast-paced environment, or if your organization is growing leaps and bounds, you might find yourself heavily removed from the minutiae on a day to day basis.

Things that you might have typically been involved in are now being managed by leadership that you trust; leaders that you are creating a clearing for so that they may grow in their roles and build their teams.  However, the feedback loop isn’t always what you’d like it to be, or perhaps is simply being overlooked as people are running around in their daily jobs.

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