Harvard Business School Professor Bill George, whose previous books include True North and Authentic Leadership, has a new book on the market called “7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis.”
His view is that we should see a crisis as a chance to develop and enhance leadership skills.
The Professor of Management Practice at HBS and the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, believes that no one can be an effective leader in a crisis by attempting to go it alone. Leaders must be the first to recognize this reality and plan accordingly, he says.
His seven leadership recommendations are to:
- Face reality, starting with yourself.
- Don’t be Atlas; get the world off your shoulders.
- Dig deep for the root cause.
- Get ready for the long haul.
- Never waste a good crisis.
- You’re in the spotlight: follow your True North.
- Go on offense: focus on winning now.
It makes sense to me!
In my last post I spoke about the Word of the Year winners for 2009. Part of the Word of the Year process also involves highlighting new words that have come into common usage during the year. There are a number of categories and I thought that it would be interesting to see the newcomers in the business category. They were:
Freemium – a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content
Funemployed – taking advantage of one’s newly unemployed status to have fun or pursue other interests
Zombie bank – a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support
A couple of thoughts occur.
Regarding the Freemium business model, I think it is a problematic model to pursue because as people get used to getting something for nothing from a particular source they are, it seems to me, reluctant to pay for anything. I would guess that the number of business that succeed with this strategy are in a very small minority indeed.
Regarding the second word – Funemployed – I doubt that very many people find fun in unemploment. Some clever person invented the word, but I doubt that it reflects reality for very many people. It seems to me that it is a myth – a bit like the Celtic Tiger, but a myth that will not take so long to be seen as such.
As for the Zombie banks, one might ask: is there any other kind?
If those involved were to look exclusively at Ireland I expect that NAMA would be top of the list. It exists, but the question is: will it work?
Business, Economics, Productivity, Recession, Strategy | ffullard | 
January 25, 2010 11:00 pm | 
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