| | JUNE 202119CIOReviewSurrounding yourself with positive people who believe in you is pivotal to achieving success and greatness.3-CHANGE IS INEVITABLE AND IN MANY CASES DESIRABLE IF IT LEADS TO BETTER RESULTS. I learned that things don't always go as planned so you have to be resilient in times of change and hardship to be able to not only survive but also thrive with limited resources. You need to exemplify the best qualities for you to perform at your best and for others to learn from and admire. Being resilient and resourceful are key lessons I apply in creating a business that can do more with less and can be innovate in times of uncertainty and great market fluctuation. A resilient and nimble business is a viable and sustainable one. Without resiliency and the ability to disrupt your business with new innovation before being disrupted, it would be a matter of time before someone else comes along and makes you irrelevant.4-GIVING UP IS NOT AN OPTION WHEN TOO MUCH IS AT STAKE. My children excelled in everything they tried because of their incredible discipline and persistence. Hard work and patience does pay off and incremental progress can often lead to significant breakthroughs. It might take years for an idea or a business to succeed, but it takes daily hard work. So it is important to ask yourselves where you would like to be in the next few years, but most importantly what you will be doing this afternoon to make that happen. That's the one area that many people do not pay enough attention to. In our business, it takes obsessive, maniacal focus on the target, the purpose and the customer to get things moving, and keep them moving. Interestingly, people do not often fail because they are not well-trained or because they lack skills. It is often the case that people and organizations fail because they lack the discipline to stand up and try again after experiencing failures.5-USE FAILURE AS AN ADVANTAGE BY TURNING IT INTO AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN AND GROW. While failing is a difficult fact of life, it can be the key to your success. It is important to keep your sight on the target while managing to put one foot in front of the other inching closer and closer towards that finish line. This is how great organizations maintain their competitive advantage and how successful people get things accomplished with seemingly flawless outcomes. People who are afraid of failure tend to gravitate towards their comfort zone by taking the "easy shot" because of the appeal of its predictability and the assurance that they will succeed. In the process of doing so, they miss out on achieving their real potential and greatness in life and career. Greatness can never be achieved within your comfort zone. People who are able to overcome their fear of failure and push the limit of what's possible are the ones capable of realizing their potential and making great things happen. This is easier said than done of course! It takes discipline, dedication, and practice.6-SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD. This great philosophy in communications made it easy for me to clarify things with my teams and make sure there are bidirectional channels of communications to ensure openness and transparency. And because people communicate differently, they also should be communicated to differently depending on their style and abilities. Knowing people's preferred commutation style helps in getting your message faster and more clear.7-FINALLY I LEARNED THAT EVERYONE IS A HERO. There is a hero inside all of us ­ that wants to help, inspire, lead, and change the world. It is important to accept and advocate for others around us. This is the first step towards getting them engaged. As leaders we have a duty to enable people to unleash their inner hero ­ to set the stage for them to perform on and shine. With that in mind, innovation leadership is different than the traditional leadership in the sense that you are a leader of leaders. You enable your team to do great things by providing three important things: direction, protection and reward. Yes, create a strategy, but more importantly provide a purpose and guardrails. Knowing what makes people tick makes it easy for you to get them excited about your direction so you can rally the team behind a common purpose. Show them what great looks like and they will follow you. Then give your team a lot of room to be innovative and do great things ­ they will amaze you! This is how you can inspire action, lead change, and make a difference.
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