Leader is like a Captain

Driving an organisation to its goal is a bit like being a captain.

You set the goal, choose the way and steps to get there, set the tasks for your team - and lift their spirits.

A recent HBR article reflects on making good decisions.

Center versus business unit

Business units do their job on the front line, close to the customer whereas the center is the one who can see the big picture. It can set the broader goals, and it keeps the organization focused on winning.

The way I've come across this phenomenon, I would now strongly go for the centralized option. For it seems to be that only with the bigger picture can one tell between different choices, which of them will benefit the organisation most. The sub units tend to sub-optimize and their aim is easily focused on the short term revenue/goal.

Dreaming about brilliant leadership

On the other hand, I still dream about tools that would steer the whole organisation to one commonly set direction without the parts wanting something of their own. - Have you found that toolkit yet?

Nick Morgan wrote a nice article in Forbes. In Leadership Is All About Emotional Persuasion he points out a few things defining successful leadership:

Persuasion means changing someone's mind. If the mind isn't changed, the person hasn't been persuaded. -- So a leader's job is to change minds, to push followers to make new decisions.

Something alike can be found in Pentti Sydänmaanlakka's thinking. In his book on intelligent leadership (Älykäs johtajuus Talentum 2004), he, too, defines leadership as a process: "Leadership is a process where the leader effects an individual or a group in order to reach the common goal" (translation mine).

A heart-warming example in Sydänmaanlakka's book names a few principles regarding leadership:

Emphasize the meaning of the customer

Give room to people who make things happen

Acknowledge competence

Inspire yourself and everyone to top results

Function versus function

Who actually does the balancing act between product development and marketing during the design of a new product? Let's assume marketing is the function to tell what the customers want, and the R&D project has some slightly different goal - who will bring the common goal to decision-making?

Cross-functional decisions seem too often to elude in compromise solutions, not to mention the frequent need to be revisited because the right people were not involved from the start!? On the other hand, if we would really act customer-centric (not just talk about it), shouldn't this problem vaporize away, this instant?

Inside versus outside partners

Good decision makers recognize which decisions really matter to performance. Knowing that together with the commonly shared goal are, in my experience, the main elements to make any organization prosper.

Good decision makers, a.k.a good leaders think through who should recommend a particular path, who needs to agree, who should have input, who has the ultimate responsibility for making the decision, and who is accountable for follow-through.

Good leaders thus make the process routine. And, as the result, they gain better coordination and quicker response times.

In times like these, we need good leaders.

Taxation in Twitter?

From the Finnish perspective it looks awesome: behind the Atlantic they're already using social media to help people file their tax returns!

Okay, it's a tax consultancy business.. And sure, the taxation differs from what we have here in Finland. Plus, we Finns in Twitter are so few..

A question to you: do you remember seeing another article, say in six months, about this agency and its thoughts on social media? I really hate the constant search; browsing all the tags and link lists and bookmarks and coming out empty handed, all the same =(

Mashable wrote about a Twitter team of fourteen, ready to serve on this new channel. I guess here, in the middle of the snow, the first ones of us only start to stretch our boundaries towards the new media.

So it seems quite a wild thing to handle questions concerning taxation with only 140 marks. But let's take a look at the tweets:

Hi Mike. Which browser are you using? Site is up and humming along. Let me know how we can help. ^sg

Isn't that just the basic customer service on how to use our products? We could do that.

Tax councelling in Twitter?! Or any other public conversation? We're are being careful since the information in taxation and our customership are private. On the other hand, where the customers share topics in conversation there they seek for advice with each other. And if there is no one to know for sure, they're bound to find also some wrong answers. So wouldn't it be just great to make sure the advice given is correct?

The team is taking the service to new channels (to broaden its funnel) where new customers can be addressed and forwarded to the real answer, longer than just the famous 140 marks.

Where's my refund? Good question. Here's an answer: http://bit.ly/dr5wbB ^C

This is multi-channel at its best, Twitter, a blog and a community site.

Mashable was also pondering whether the team will have enough resources once the rush heats up as the April 15th draws near. All the best to you, Twitter Team!

By that time we are only starting our business here in Finland. The pre-filled tax returns start arriving in mail after which you're supposed to check and correct the income and the deductions. This year you can file rental income in the web. Stay tuned.

Passion will spread your wings

Welcome to my blog in English. Thanks Nathan for your support!

My first post is loosely based on my previous post(F). I am a co-writer in a team blog Lupa palvella(F).

The name translates nicely to License to Serve! The team is spectacular: we share the passion for our work and our customers. Or should I say, for our customers and, hence, our work.

Ken Auletta picked up 10 things Google can taught us.

Passion wins

Focus is required

Vision is required, too

A team culture is vital etc.

If more officers could let their thoughts be broadened like this, who knows how marvellous it would get to go to a government office. There are no limits to good service, if you start with thinking about your customer.

Change calls for new thinking, new leadership

YLE(F) and the Police(F) have been the first public sector offices to enter and engage the areas of the social media. YLE, our national broadcasting company, is sharing content in new ways and challenging the audince to co-creation. The Police seems to have started by meeting with its primary audience - and is doing a great job, I might add! In a country of 5 million, Facebook community of 1.5 million the Police has reached a fan club of over 36 000 fans.

Leadership is under constant change. The world is so complicated and there is so much information that .. we need motivation and to free our natural creativity. - Mikael Jungner, CEO, YLE.

Passion for customer to lead the business

Steve Denning is about to publish an interesting book, Radical Management. In my public sector perspective, (For full picture, please read Steve's original seven principles) there are four wonderful steps to success:

Client delight, which demands

Continuous innovation, which can be brought up in

High-performance teams, increasing well-being; resulting

Higher productivity, thanks to clients and teams

Vision and courage to management

Vision and courage will lead the way to new ways to find and offer help to the customers in need.

A team that is allowed to use its own passion will inevitably exceed the expectations set upon it. - Mikael Jungner

I recently wrote about the concept of shopping malls: Instead of all the government agencies building up their own sites (and silos), how about going out there, where the customers get together?

Virtually they are there having conversations about different topics of their interests and needs. And the officials? We should be there, too. Not controlling or supervising but listening and offering the advice when and where needed.

Learning new ways to address the customer needs, organize our services and offer customer value in new ways.