Tag: leadership

The 5 Skills of Great Innovators

October 13, 2011 Blog, Business and Management no comments


Steve Jobs (bless him) associated calligraphy with beautiful fonts in the Macintosh (source)

Ever wondered how disruptive innovators like Steve Jobs (Apple), Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com) and A.G. Lafley (P&G) behave?  What are the traits of these great entrepreneurs and business leaders?

According to INSEAD Professor Hal Gregersen (who co-authored the book “The Innovator’s DNA” with Jeffrey Dyer and Clayton M. Christensen), they have what are called the five discovery skills as follows:


Executing with Strategic Speed

August 24, 2011 Business and Management no comments


Achieving speed doesn’t just mean being fast (image source)

You’ve heard of the saying “more haste less speed”. Apparently, this is true not just in life but in management.

Ed Boswell, former CEO of the Forum Corporation, shares in this clip from Harvard Business Review (HBR) that the most efficient firms pay attention to speed, pace themselves well, and take care of the people factor. By doing so, they can achieve up to 52% higher profit and 40% higher sales than the rest.


Employee Engagement: Lessons From Universal Studios

July 20, 2011 Business and Management no comments

Universal Studios Grand Opening - 28 May 2011
Managers should lead by example and be there when it matters (Universal Studios Singapore)

Leadership and management are two of the most difficult tasks any manager needs to do in today’s organisation.

The new rules of work mandate that hierarchical ways of bossing people around will no longer work. Against such a backdrop, how can you and your leadership team engage your team members more effectively and impactfully?


Head or Heart? Dilemmas in Management

November 5, 2010 Blog no comments


Source

One of the most difficult and perplexing challenge facing leaders and managers today is the trade-off between using one’s head and one’s heart. Should decisions be made purely on a bottom-line basis, or should they be done in the interests of all stakeholders?

As you would have guessed, there are no easy solutions to this, considering the dynamics of the modern organisation and its multiple demands.


The Art of Good Governance

March 20, 2010 Blog no comments


(Source: SCCCI)

How should board directors carry out their duties as arbiters of public trust? What should companies do to boost performance while ensuring that sufficient safeguards are in place? In an age of increasing dissatisfaction over how companies and charities are governed, how does one balance the need for innovation with control?

To find out the answers to these questions (and more), I signed up for a talk organised by the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry yesterday by Mr JY Pillay, Chairman of the Singapore Exchange, who spoke about corporate governance and its implications for both public-listed firms and Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Mr Pillay is one of the movers and shakers in Singapore, and has helmed various leading organisations as the former chairman of Singapore Airlines, Temasek Holdings and DBS Bank, amongst others.