What’s Your Leadership Style?
Leadership is something that fascinates me. I am consistently inspired by those who are able to lead, yet remain calm and empower their teams and organizations. Leaders have learned a variety of skills and use them all in an integrated way to connect with their team. One of the many skills is the understanding of people. Your team, after all, is made up of people. How you connect with them will determine how willing they are to support your vision and fulfill the mission. This is true whether you are the leader in a small committee or whether you run a multi-national corporation. The leader’s role is to inspire and empower and excite their team members to want to support the vision and fulfill the mission.
Objectified
As someone who has a background in various aspects of design, my mind and imagination are very visual. I recently discovered a documentary film that discusses industrial design of everyday items that we use and experience. The idea behind those items is that people may not realize that they had even been designed. They are what they are. But there much deeper thought into these everyday products. The film looks at the experience that the product will offer, how people will become attached to the product emotionally, and how and why people are attached to these material products. It is a fascinating look at design, at the thoughts and processes that designers go through, and those designers are influencing our lives with their products.
Is Seeing Believing
his last weekend I came across an interesting documentary which brought illusion, psychology, behavior, and business together. All of these subjects are interesting in themselves, but when combined, it creates an even more interesting dialogue. Illusion was used as an example to show that our eyes see one thing while our brain sees another. In fact, we only see 10% with our eyes.
Determining Product Lifecycle Valuation and Devaluation
In any line of business, a product brought to market has a defined lifecycle. The lifecycle of a product has a valuation point at the beginning and a valuation point at the end of the cycle. But what determines the value given to a particular product? How does the value, over time, adjust with the lifecycle?
Valuation of a product is based on many factors, many of which can be considered subjective. A few of these factors may include brand perception and awareness, and the exclusivity of the product. These factors are emphasized through marketing campaigns which allow the target market to accept those subjective perceptions as truth. Once the target market has accepted the marketing put forth by the company, the product may take off and expand in popularity.
Can Too Much Positivity or Optimism be a Negative?
Image by subadei via Flickr Just a quick thought – while positivity and optimism are very important characteristics to have, is there a tipping point? Lately, it seems it has caused an “analysis paralysis”, stalling my creativity, making it harder to put them to paper. Maybe I am thinking too much. What are your thoughts [...]
Small Victories Can Amount to Big Change
Image by law_keven via Flickr There is something to be said about accomplishing small tasks and small goals and as they add up together can create more momentum than getting one big win or accomplishing one big goal. Usually, to accomplish a big goal, a series of smaller goals must be set. An Overwhelming Goal [...]
How Persuasive Are You?
One of my top passions and area of study is the brain, behavior, and psychology of people. I find this area of research aboslutely fascinating because it gets down to the core of why people behave and act as they do. Furthering this, I apply this knowledge to business, concentrating on the service industries. Why? [...]
