The diagram above is an excellent rendition of the current debate on executive leadership. I find this particularly entertaining, as I have been following this topic for well on 30 years now. Hence I have coined the terms principle-/value-based leader, Upside-down Leader, or UDL for short. If your executive boss is the leader on the…
We are living in a globalised world where money flows freely between countries and where investors have a wider selection of investment options than ever before. That means that a wise investor should not be looking only at one country for returns, but also at the opportunities worldwide. With that in mind, here are a…
The Wits School of Accountancy headed by Professor Nirupa Padia hosted a seminar on 18 September titled ‘The Chartered Accountant as an Entrepreneur’ which explored the skills, training and character traits required by chartered accountants to be successful entrepreneurs. The keynote speaker was Brian Joffe CA(SA), one of South Africa’s greatest entrepreneurs who founded the…
There’s a problem in marketing and it seems to be getting worse: too many marketers have mistaken activity for achievement. Being efficient has triumphed over being effective. Seduced by a host of shiny new tools and techniques, marketing has lost sight of its strategic purpose – to create sales, protect margins, reinforce loyalty − and…
Besides being good for your brand, good social impact business practices are good for everybody! Social impact is more than just a catchphrase we hear bandied about on special days observed by the United Nations. Social impact is also no longer confined to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), non-profit organisations (NPOs) or even basic corporate social investment…
Why is office etiquette important? Surely, we can behave, dress and speak the way we want? Not really − we must consider that we are sharing common areas, from basement parking lots to meeting rooms. There is a certain level of common courtesy that is critical in order to have a sound and conducive working…
Have you ever opened a company’s website and read for a few seconds, then wondered, ‘What do these people actually do?’ Workplace jargon is everywhere. We hear it every day and we probably use it every day. But we tend to forget that we’ve each built up subject matter expertise in our own areas of…
The temptation is to jump to the conclusion that South African business is fraught with malfeasance, but thisanalysis seeks to illustrate that while there has no doubt been unethical behaviour, the majority of failures have been through a combination of bad luck, tough conditions, one-off unanticipated events and poor judgement. READ ARTICLE
Today’s workers are more engaged and stay with their companies longer if they have stronger team relationships. Work has become highly decentralised, with more employees telecommuting and collaborative tools surpassing face-to-face communication. As a result, Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace found that 85% of the global workforce is either not engaged or actively disengaged…
Every leader understands the importance of his first hundred days in office and his final months on the job. Very little attention has been focused on the time between those stages − on how chief executives can make the most of the middle years of their tenure. How can CEOs build on early successes? How…