The 7 traits of a highly effective leader.

In the wee hours of October 28th, a few Harvard students launched a website that would go on to become the biggest social networking site in the world. Of course, it wasn’t similar at all to the Facebook that we use today. It was created with a completely different purpose in mind. To compare peoples photos and vote on who is better looking. The website worked by comparing the Facebooks of nine houses within Harvard  placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the 'hotter' person". What started as a simple practical joke, paved the way for what we know as social media today. And all this was made possible, thanks to the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg and the vision of the Facebook management. Ideas often come from the strangest places. But once you have the idea figured out, what then? Do you have what it takes to lead from the front and become the next big thing. Here are some key qualities that leaders exhibit that separates them from the rest.

1. Inspire Action

A leader leads from the front and inspires people to action. The best leaders clear organizational roadblocks that constrain employees natural creativity and initiative and unleash a tremendous amount of energy in the process. A leader paints the vision for the future which inspires people to do whatever it takes to succeed.

2. Be Optimistic

You don’t want a leader who drags you down and makes you question your self worth. A leader must be one who is optimistic and learns from their mistakes. He/She must help employees grow and overcome feelings of self doubt.

3. Integrity

Employees prefer leaders who are forthright, honest and fair. Leaders need to have integrity and need to treat their employees with the same respect that they would want themselves to be treated.

4. Support and Facilitate your team

For people to do their very best work, they need an organization which allows them to take risks, tell the truth and to speak up without being worried of the consequences. A good leader must pave the way to build such an organization and foster an environment which helps employees do their very best work and get handsomely rewarded for it.

5. Communicate

Communication is the key to a great workplace environment. Leaders must ensure that they have two way communication channels set up, to talk to their employees. They also must ensure that information pertaining to work and business is shared with the concerned employees and there is a healthy back and forth of communication.

6. Confidence

Highly effective leaders, know that failure is not an option. They set up goals which are actionable and allocate resources to get them done. A good leader doesn’t overburden his employees with work, instead he/she takes the onus to ensure that work happens without an employees work life balance going for a toss.

7. Be Decisive

One of the most critical qualities of a leader is decisiveness. A good leader doesn’t sit on the fence, instead he/she makes tough calls quickly when circumstances require it. Once you have all the information needed to make a decision, don’t hesitate - make it. And once you have made this decision, stick with it no matter what.

No matter which organization you are a part of, it is possible to become a more effective leader, inspiring your people to give their very best, every day of the week. Make a point of practicing these 7 leadership traits, and you will be a highly effective leader too.

7 highly effective traits of successful entrepreneurs.

In our last blog post, we discussed some macro level examples of entrepreneurship, and also wrote in length about the hand education plays in developing entrepreneurs. In today’s blog post we’d like to talk about what makes an entrepreneur. They are after all just like regular blue collared workers, but with one major difference - they work for themselves. In order to understand how they became entrepreneurs, we need to look at some of their unique traits, which separate them from the rest.

1. Curiosity

Look at some successful entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. They were curious individuals, who wanted to understand more about computing. Entrepreneurs are like that, they are curious little devils who would do anything to satiate their curiosity. If you want to be an entrepreneur learn to ask questions. The more questions you ask, the more you learn and the more you learn the more knowledge you will have over your domain and this will empower you to take your business ahead.

2. Creativity

You have learnt all you could about the market and the competition, but how do you creatively come up with a solution. That means thinking of a new product or a new way to do things. Consider this, there are a lot of artists on the web, trying to make it big. However, due to the investment involved in running and operating a website, many of these artists don’t have a forum to showcase their talents and earn money. Seeing the need in the market for a solution that can let people sell their skills online, Sampad Swain, the founder of Instamojo developed a product that could allow people like me and you to do just that.

3. Clarity of Vision

Look at what’s happening at Yahoo today. For years the company had been running their search engine as a distant second favorite to Google. But after seeing Google’s mercurial rise to the top not only in search, Yahoo felt it needed to do something more. In comes Marissa Ann Mayer, former spokesperson for Google. She comes in the role of a President and CEO for Yahoo. Why did Yahoo take this drastic step? For years it was in a losing battle against Google, because it lacked vision. Yahoo failed to see that Google had become the de facto search engine and it failed to capitalize on other opportunities in the sea that is the world wide web. Because of their lack of vision, Yahoo decided to get in a top dog to their organization to give it a fresh boost. We’ll just have to wait and watch if it works. But that’s the harsh reality, market conditions and factors change so fast that an entrepreneur must always  stay on track with it and see that the company’s long term vision is met.

4. Communication Skills

An entrepreneur will find that half of his/her day goes in just giving presentations. Presentations to investors, government officials, agencies etc. That’s why communication skills become of prime importance. If Steve Jobs didn’t conduct his legendary press releases for Apple, the company may never have made it so big. Today Apple is valued higher than every other company in the world and this is much in part due to Steve Jobs gift of the gab then just the products.

5. Leadership Acumen

As an entrepreneur not only do you have to believe in your product, but you have to make every stakeholder believe in it more than you do. Entrepreneurs need to be able to work with others closely to achieve company objectives. This means leading and taking charge of people and ensuring that everyone is sufficiently motivated to building the best product ever. Flipkart which began e-commerce services in India in 2007 started only by retailing books. Over the years, it expanded its product portfolio to include everything from electronics to fashion. It has also recently launched its own payment gateway (Pay Zippy) and is well on it’s way to become the online megastore. All this wouldn’t have been possible if not for the leadership acumen within the organization.

6. Love taking risks

LG and Samsung became the first companies to launch curved smartphones. What’s that you ask? That my friends, is a risk. It’s no secret that Samsung has made a lot of money on the back of it’s android smartphones, but even Samsung knows what other manufacturers do, that the market has become too fragmented with too much competition and less differentiation. Say hello to the curved smartphone. It isn’t radically different from the regular smartphone except it’s curved and boasts a better display. Will it work? Is this a gimmick? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain - to get ahead one must take risks and this is even more important for an entrepreneur. 

Are you a natural born leader and a risk taker? Do you want to start a business of your own and join an elite list of entrepreneurs? It’s a hard road ahead but one filled with exciting adventures and countless rewards.

Entrepreneurship: The essentials for success!

In August this year, a young programmer named Patrick McConlogue decided to conduct an experiment. He approached a homeless man on the street and gave him two choices, either to accept his donation of $100 or to accept his offer to learn how to code. The homeless man in question, Leo Grand took him up on his offer to learn coding. For the next couple of weeks McConlogue would spend an hour or so with Leo teaching him coding basics, providing him with the books to study and even giving him his old laptop. Today a smiling and proud McConlogue stands beside his protege Leo at the launch of his  first app, ‘Trees for Cars’ on the iStore and Play Store. The app works by calculating the amount of carbon dioxide saved by car pooling and has already received rave reviews on the web. But what makes this story extra special is the fact that until a few months ago, Leo was just a homeless man with no prospects. All it took was the right kind of motivation powered by knowledge and support for Leo to rise above his situation and make his own destiny.

Leo’s story is the quintessential example of the maxim, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. The truth is we are all entrepreneurs, the difference being that a few among us have learned to catch their own fish while the rest of us still depend on someone to catch their fish.

Take the example of Arunachalam Muruganantham. He hailed from a small town in rural Coimbatore. His family was poor and largely lived an agrarian life. He noticed that his wife would use rags instead of sanitary pads to control her menstrual cycle since the family couldn’t afford to buy pads. He became obsessed with trying to understand how to develop a low cost sanitary pad which could benefit not only his wife but his entire village, and that’s exactly what he did. Day and night he would experiment to try to make a napkin until one day he successfully developed a prototype. Now all he needed was to test it. He would go around the village asking women to try it on, but everyone ridiculed him and called him mad. He finally tested his invention on himself by using animal blood. In time he was able to create a machine that could develop low cost disposable sanitary napkins. Today his invention has saved the lives of many women in rural India and has provided them with suitable employment in his factories.

The moral of the story is that to become an entrepreneur one must forego ones sense of shame and must be relentless in getting to the bottom of the problem, no matter what. Entrepreneurs are those who see an opportunity or a need and try to fill or bridge that gap by developing a solution.

So, how do we sow the seeds of entrepreneurship amongst the youth of today? It can be done through a problem solving approach of education rather than a test based system for grading intelligence. Entrepreneurs have a keen sense of their surroundings and look to use their skills to seal a demand in the market. In this regard, entrepreneurs must,

1. Have a keen understanding of the environment and market forces

2. Have the knowledge to foresee a demand or a need in the market.

3. Have the potential to meet this need with suitable solutions.

Students of this generation are the kinds that like to take charge of their life. Many are attracted to the prospect of entrepreneurship as it gives them the freedom to run their own life and work for themselves, but entrepreneurship is a lot more challenging than that. To become an entrepreneur one must not only take risks but must do so, smartly, thinking 5 steps ahead. It isn’t difficult to succeed in today’s business environment, however one would need to find where the next big opportunity lies and bet big on it.

In the next section, we will cover the traits of a successful entrepreneur and how gaining a sound business sense is the first step on your journey to being an entrepreneur.

What’s in the name? Why everything of course!

A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, contended the Bard of Avon. Unfortunately though, this isn’t the case with a degree like an MBA from a college of a somewhat questionable reputation. Shardul Memon, a vocational guidance counselor from Delhi says, “the reputation of an institution should be checked beforehand, its accreditations and affiliations thoroughly vetted by a student desirous of seeking admission in it. There are so many fly-by-night institutions that spring up all over the country, that promise students a novel MBA degree and overnight sometimes they shut shop, or in some cases get derecognised by the relevant government body which results in embarrassment to the student and fiscal consequences for his/her parents.”

The sad fact is that in a country of the size of India, there are several colleges that are not recognised by the relevant authorities. Says a government official on condition anonymity, “there are so many cities in this country, and so many localities and areas that have so many colleges, that investigating them all is a nigh impossible kind of scene for all involved. The MBA course is one of the most popular courses in the country and therefore makes it a lucrative draw for touts and fraudsters. We do everything in our power to prevent this from happening, but there isn’t we can definitively to prevent the abuse of students’ trust.”

What are the questions you need to ask before enrolling into a college?

There are quite a few things you need to consider before enrolling into a college for an MBA programme. For starters, you need to whet the college’s affiliations by browsing the internet and asking to view the certifications claimed on the website. Secondly, peruse the archived editions of newspapers of the past year and check to see if there is any negative stories about the college you’re considering. Thirdly contact a friend or significant other who has gone to that college and ask them about the reputation of the institution. Meet with professors and academics and confirm the same from them. Making an informed choice will empower you to make the right choice.

Here’s what could happen if you do not check the reputation of a B-school!

26 year old Vasant Kamat shares his story, “I was very keen on pursuing an MBA in Marketing. I enrolled into a course at this college. I did not think it necessary to check the reputation of the course or the faculty. A few months into the course and we started having issues with the faculty. Then one day our dean went missing. Soon we started having fewer and fewer lectures on a daily basis, until one day a circular signed by our dean, in absentia was put up on the notice board, informing us that the course had been suspended indefinitely. When we took offence to this, we were threatened with suspension. We were told to come after a few days to collect our fees, and when we returned to do the same on the set date the building was deserted. If only I had checked the reputation of the college beforehand I would have been saved the blushes. My friends who graduated from the institution in the past years had it a lot worse than me, their degrees were derecognised and some of them even lost their jobs.”

The value of an MBA in the job market can certainly not be discounted. The lure of an MBA often blinds people to doing a little bit of due diligence before seeking admission. It is not uncommon for hundreds of people like Vasant not to check the reputation of a college that seems credible enough to offer an MBA.

Industry insiders say that placements are the basis on which students should judge the reputation of the college they are seeking to get into. Says a senior manager with an executive search firm, “when one does an MBA from a reputed college, chances are that the existing hierarchy of a company have also passed out from the same college. There exists an affinity of sorts between alumni of the same college and this is often a factor that colleges build upon to boost their placement cells and add more credibility to their institution.”