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Blog of Strategic,General and Financial Management (English/Spanish)





Strategycorner is now expanding its content to include posts about General Management, Financial Management, Finance Transformation, Marketing and HR Management. Posts will be published in English or Spanish.


At the end of the blog there are different charts about Strategic Management in Spanish. In the archive area you could find a lot of posts about strategy and its execution in English/Spanish.

Jesús Peral
Executive MBA IE Business School, Madrid,Spain


Master in Strategic Management
IDE-CESEM Business School, Madrid, Spain






Find at the end of blog all charts related to Strategic Management topics commented in the posts







Mapa Estratégico Genérico/Strategy Map

Mapa Estratégico Genérico/Strategy Map
Mapa Estratégico Completo

Modelo de Dirección Estratégica/Strategic Management Model

Modelo de Dirección Estratégica/Strategic Management Model
Modelo desarrollado en las entradas 1 a 100. Ver archivo del blog
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martes, 17 de octubre de 2017

Be competent. Don´t expect a miracle


Life is a competency that never is over. To be born and fine is our first victory. From this moment the competency is the norm if you want to be competitive, that is, to have the capacity to compete.

In the organizations and in all the aspects of the human actions who aims to be a leader needs to be immersed in a permanent competency. The society determines our competency, the idea to compete steeps our daily life so it is natural we see ourselves as competitors in our jobs.

In my opinion the competency is a free exercise of preparation in the development of our skills and in the development of our own intelligence. The people who are ready to compete from their childhood take advantage of their own resources and if they lack they manage to get them to face their rivals with the same intentions: to win.

The future leader knows very well his/her goals, he/she knows the effort has to be constant and to succeed you need more than attitude and wish.

The future leader faces challenges and overcome them, for example, excess of confidence, bad habits, conformism and a short intellectual vision. Without the aim of winning the efforts turn out to be useless to become the best, we have to believe we can and we need to do all the necessary to achieve it. But we have to remember that failures will be also in the way so we need to be positive and instead of thinking about frustration we have to consider it as the impulse needed to reinforce the efforts although the time devoted exhaust us, the stress increases and you see the victory far away despite your intents to achieve it.

Competency comes with responsibility there is no room for the pessimism if you want to become a leader, preparation and development are permanent because the leader cannot betray himself and cannot discourage his/her followers. Stagnation will never go with a good leader.

The more you are promoted in the organization more difficult is your responsibility and commitment. The promotion is the personal satisfaction and the collaborators and the organization are the reason for existing.

The competency encourages with the good result to those who strive for being something else that a stagnated person in a dark destiny. The success in the competency is directly linked with tenacity and courage when these are based in the good attitude and personality. To have success expectations you have to put aside the toxic intellectual restrictions which prevent us to develop the best physical, moral and intellectual attributes.

The danger in the career to become a leader is shown when we are stagnated in our plan for the promotion. When this happens you could fall in your conformism and then you are left behind by other that worked harder and consolidated their strategy. Finally conformism becomes a real problem and a barrier difficult to overcome. But when you have mature criteria and your convictions are strong with a high sense of responsibility and dignity your tenacity to be back on track for the promotion doing all the necessary remains unchanging.

If to the contrary the person lacks the mature criteria, strong convictions, responsibility and dignity in front of stagnation then the fact of being overtaken by others becomes a “sick person” for the organization as there is no satisfaction and all will produce disagreements and permanent gossips with regard to his/her duties.

Under the above mentioned situation it is possible the straggler leader reached his/her incompetence and therefore he/she has to make a bigger effort to be reintegrated to the hierarchical flow. The level of incompetence does not mean the person is no longer working but he/she achieved the limit and has the option to change the attitude to keep efficient in front of the followers he/she leads.

On the other hand if we want to be efficient leaders and we don’t achieve a significant progress in our development we will be less reliable. Leadership requires to be constant professional and culturally, aiming high and a lot of effort and dedication. The leader has to be always ready for the changes and to learn how to calculate his/her opportunities.

The leader has to fit in a profile and knowledge which match with all he/she is obliged to know to meet his/her duties without knowing everything. To know what you need to know, professionally, is indispensable for the leader and in the absence you take the risk to make stupidities.

I would say competency is really necessary. Without it the incentive to achieve the excellence will be set aside in a cold and deserted corner. Competing is healthy without reducing the effort you need to make. Laughs, jubilation, pain and tears are part of the competency. Competency manages our destiny as persons. Lack of competency is the main reason for the incompetency.

As a conclusion the competency is not dreaming or gaming is to devote all your efforts to improve and develop our knowledge. It is in our hands but don’t expect a miracle.

 

 

martes, 3 de octubre de 2017

Do you want to influence? Be reliable


Leadership is influence. This could be an accurate definition about leadership. In my opinion, without influence there is no leadership. And influence is based in the trust inspired by the leader to his/her followers. I would say trust is the fuel of leadership as petrol is the fuel of a car. Without petrol the car cannot move, in the same way without trust you cannot lead. Without the trust of the followers there is no influence and without influence there is no leadership. I think this is an infallible equation about leadership.

The leader needs to be reliable to influence his/her followers. His/her effectiveness as a leader depends on this. The reliability of the leader is indispensable to influence in the organizational environment. If a leader is not reliable, the employees will not follow his/her vision and will not participate with enthusiasm to achieve the common goals and finally will not be committed with the organization.

Trust is the pillar for leadership. Leadership is based on the management of relationships and the relationships are based on the trust. Therefore without trust there is no connection between the leader and the followers.

In my experience the capacity of the leader to influence is due to the degree of acceptance in the organization. That is, to influence you need the followers believe in you, in your ethics, integrity, strength, competency.

However the reliability of the followers in the leader does not appear by chance. The leader needs to work hard on it. The actions of the leader will inspire trust in his/her followers.

The leader needs to establish through his/her behaviors, example and congruence, his/her credibility, the influence. You cannot achieve this with an isolated action but with a long way of integrity, ethic, personal congruence and competency. This process could last all the life and is the base for a durable influence that could go beyond the leader´s existence. Hence, we talk about the leader´s legacy.

As I said before without reliability there is no trust, and without the trust of the followers there is no leadership. But before the reliability of the leader, it comes first his/her personal credibility or congruence which makes him/her predictable in front of the followers.

I think reliable leaders are predictable. I would say one of the critical elements of the reliability of the leader is his/her predictability, in other words, others can predict his/her behavior.

When the followers can perceive in the leader stability and determination the trust in the leader emerges.

The leaders that want to be reliable in front of the followers need to set a clear and firm point of view and maintain his/her position without ambiguity. You cannot get the trust of other people by means of appeal you need to do it by means of words and facts. You need to be consistent and coherent with your behavior, with your values and beliefs showing integrity, that´s the only way to gain credibility in front of your teams. If the leader is constantly changing the vision, the instructions or rules he/she will lose reliability and therefore will not be trustable in front of the followers.

In my opinion the best indicator of reliability is the integrity. It is impossible to be reliable as a leader if you are not honest in your work and life. Integrity builds inevitably trust in the other persons. The integrity touches a fundamental aspect of the leader, his/her personality. The personality of the leader is the most decisive factor for the development and growth of the leadership. It is also the area used by the leaders to build influence in the followers. In my view, every reader will have his/her own opinion it is not the talent, the charisma, the intelligence, nor the knowledge the factors defining the leader but his/her personality.

Nowadays where the transparency of some governments and private companies is questioned overwhelmed by the corruption scandals, influence peddling and abuse of power the integrity is the cornerstone for those leaders who aspire to influence in the people. It is true that integrity alone is not enough for achieving the goals and resolving the problems but without it the rest falls down. Therefore integrity is an asset for the leaders.

When we act with integrity people perceive us like reliable persons and therefore we become predictable for them. People know what to expect from us so we reduce the level of ambiguity and uncertainty.

Based on the above could we build, let´s say, an equation for leadership? Let´s try. This equation would start with the coherence what leads to be predictable that in turn creates reliability which at the end inspires reliability in the followers becoming the real source of influence.

On the other hand the people trust in the leader who tells the truth with the focus in their values and beliefs. Therefore, in my view, a fundamental element for the leader to build his/her reliability is the coherence with his/her personal values. Everybody knows that the values define the things in which we believe. The values are essential part of any leader for the effective exercise of leadership. They shape the ethical sense of the person so the framework for the meaning of his/her experiences.

To the extent that the leaders manage to transform their personal values in deliberate actions they reinforce the leadership as they gain coherence. In this way their values act as platforms to renew their goals, take intelligent decisions, face challenges etc.

As a summary I would stress there is no influence as a leader without the reliability the followers confer to him. Without this reliability the leader does not have a base to influence in his/her followers. It is the reliability of the leader what builds the trust. As I said at the beginning of this post the trust is the fuel of leadership.