Richard Branson on Decision-Making For Entrepreneurs

Editor's Note: Entrepreneur Richard Branson regularly shares his business experience and advice with readers. What follows is the latest edited round of insightful responses. Ask him a question and your query might be the inspiration for a future column.

Q: What were your most important managerial decisions -- the ones that changed your business? -- Volodymyr Kravchuk, Kiev, Ukraine

A: Most good chief executives or entrepreneurs only make three or four key decisions every year. Running your business's day-to-day operations and managing your team can take much of your time, so there are usually only a few that stand out -- the game-changing decisions that can make or sometimes break a business.

Looking back over my career, which now spans more than four decades, there were many occasions when I got it right and a few when I did not. A few guiding principles helped; these are the things I would have liked to have known when I was just starting out.

1. Trust your instincts.
There have been many occasions when I have led our team into markets that industry experts told us to avoid because the competition was too fierce or the cost of entry too high.

This was the case when we launched our airlines Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Blue (recently rebranded Virgin Australia), in 1984 and 2000, respectively. On both occasions, my fellow directors were nervous about our chances for survival, given the strengths of our competitors -- namely their market share and fleet sizes and experienced personnel. But I felt that our competitors had become complacent; that passengers wanted something different. With the right energy, focus and flair, we could make our mark.

Virgin Atlantic went from strength to strength, and now carries over 5 million passengers per year. In the case of Virgin Blue, we backed the plans of a former Virgin Express executive and entrepreneur Brett Godfrey, who first presented his ideas to me sketched out on a beer mat. After launching the business with just two Boeing 737s, we have built Australia's second biggest airline, and now have a fleet of nearly 90 planes.

2. Focus on your customers, not your critics.
It wasn't just our team that occasionally worried about our stepping into tough markets. Over the years, our critics fretted about Virgin's expansion into airlines, financial services and mobile phone services. What did our company know about these industries and how would we manage the complex issues?

Related: Richard Branson on Embracing Change

I rarely paid attention (which also drew criticism from some analysts). My answer was always to focus on the customer experience, ensuring that we offered the best service, most innovative products and best value.

This worked especially well in mobile services, where most companies still require customers to sign contracts that are difficult and expensive to exit. We revolutionized the market by offering a pre-paid model. Our position was radical, but we were selling exactly what a number of younger and newer users wanted. Our businesses grew quickly in the U.K., Australia, Canada, France, South Africa, the United States, and more recently in India, expanding our customer base and brand far and wide.

3. Always support your team. 
In previous columns, I have discussed how crucial it was for me to find great managers to run our businesses. Day-to-day management has never been my forte, and my early decision to step back from operations gave me the freedom to focus on our main challenges and opportunities.

This meant that I had to learn to trust the management teams, and to support them when they saw an opportunity. When Matthew Bucknall and Frank Reed came to us in 1999 with the concept of a family friendly health club, we decided to invest. Very quickly, they impressed all of us with their innovative approach to customer service and team building.

Related: 10 Time-Management Tips That Work

Soon after we opened the first few clubs, Nelson Mandela called me, asking if Virgin could rescue a chain of South African gyms. That seemed a stretch, because we had only a handful of locations in Britain, but Bucknall and Reed were confident, and such was our trust in them and their team that we signed onto the deal. And they were right: Virgin Active South Africa is one of the key drivers of that business's growth.

4. Know when to say goodbye.
It can be very difficult to know when to sell, since as a founder and entrepreneur you become very attached to your business and your team. Look into whether selling will be good for the overall health of your company, or if you need objectivity, ask trusted advisers to do this. But brace yourself -- the answer might be yes.

We have sold a number of Virgin companies over the years. Probably the most notable occasion was in 1992, when we sold Virgin Records to EMI and used the cash to expand Virgin Atlantic and other companies in the group. It was a very emotional day for me -- at one point, I broke down in tears. Looking back, it's clear that we sold at the right time and the decision made sense for Virgin as a whole. That secured our group's future and gave us a war chest for investing in new businesses.

Selling is difficult, and you will be tempted to hold on too long. This is one of the biggest mistakes an entrepreneur or chief executive can make.

I held onto Virgin Megastores for too long. Despite the warnings of my management team, I could not bring myself to sell the business until a few years ago. By that time, DVD sales had collapsed and the whole industry had been revolutionized by Apple's iTunes store. You can't get them all right!

Finally, when you are facing a difficult choice or must make an important decision on behalf ofyour company, keep in mind that the answer might not always be yes or no -- sometimes there are other options. Your job is to lead your team in the search for the best solutions, which are not always the easiest ones.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222739

It's thursday, which means team night @nepartners http://ow.ly/8YHrd

FOR LEADERSHIP GROWTH.

MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE’S SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS

By themselves, significant moments do not alter a person’s behavior. Events certainly can make powerful impressions on us: they stir our emotions, capture our imagination, provoke our conscience, or bring revelation. However, events do not automatically transform us, and the feelings they evoke usually are short-lived.

Leadership breakthroughs happen when we seize the opportunity presented by a significant event to adjust our thinking and to change our patterns of action. For example, having a heart attack could have brought me nothing more than pain. However, I used the experience as a springboard to change my thinking about my physical health. Prior to the heart attack, I considered exercise to be a nuisance and dietary restrictions to be a drag. After suffering the heart attack, I reevaluated the importance of a healthy lifestyle. I contemplated the implications of ignoring my health, and I thought about how poor fitness would shorten my life and would limit my influence. I modified my mental attitude toward nutrition and physical fitness, and I took practical steps to build exercise into my weekly routine.

The tragedy for many leaders is that they let major life experiences slip by without learning from them. Once a pivotal moment alerts you to the possibility for a better future, I suggest embarking on the following four steps to bring about positive change.

1) Embrace Bottom-Line Thinking

When touched by a significant life event, project yourself into the future by asking yourself the following questions: How will my life improve by making a change? What is at stake if everything remains the same?

2) Generate Reminders

I agree with Samuel Johnson: “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” For instance, physical fitness isn’t rocket science. Indeed, the formula is amazingly simple: eat healthier and exercise more often. Yet, breaking a bad habit involves reminding ourselves of the action we need to take and what’s ultimately at stake. Generating reminders may include creating visual mementos, setting calendar prompts, asking friends to provide accountability and encouragement, or celebrating progress made.

3) Find a Model

I started off as a lousy public speaker, but I was committed to improving. For that reason, I began to study, in detail, the great communicators within my circle of friends and colleagues. I listened intently whenever they spoke, and I observed their strengths. Then, I incorporated the lessons learned into my own style and delivery. Progress came slowly. In fact, I’d estimate that it took me eight years to become a polished public speaker. However, by modeling myself after other skilled communicators, I eventually gained competence myself.

4) Adjust Your Surroundings

To translate the momentary inspiration of an event into life transformation, we must limit our exposure to negative environments. The people closest to us have tremendous influence over our lives. To make the most of pivotal moments in our lives, we often need to reevaluate our relationships and to cut ties with unhealthy acquaintances. 

CONCLUSION

Pivotal moments in life stir our emotions, but they don’t necessarily affect our day-to-day motions. In fact, if you wait until you feel like making a change, then you’ll never experience personal growth as a leader. The next time you’re touched by a significant life event, look for ways to adjust your thinking and behavior so that instead of temporary enlightenment, you experience lasting breakthrough. Remember: leaders develop daily, not in a day.

John Maxwell Company

SUCCESS How Bad Do You Want It

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=DriSmFYnUeo

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Productive Simplicity = 

(Life + Goals) - Distraction

Every bit of advice on life and time management can be broken down to a single fundamental idea: know what is important to achieving your goals, focus accordingly, and ignore all else.  Do you have stuff in your home that you do not use?  Get rid of it.  Do you have features in your product that are not essential to your customer’s needs?  These features are only adding complexity to your product and confusing your customers in the process.  Mercilessly eradicate all the needless clutter, distraction and time sinks out of your life and suddenly everything else, the important stuff, becomes far more manageable.

The whole concept of doing less as a way of accomplishing more is actually quite simple.  The hard part is figuring out what you want to accomplish and then identifying the tasks that are truly important to get you there.  Many people also confuse urgency with importance.  Never drop a task of high importance for an seemingly urgent inconsequential one.  During most tasks only 20% of the activities surrounding it are truly important; the other 80% are just excess trivialities that can be ignored.  One of the most vital skills you can have in life is figuring out which one is which.

Productive Simplicity = (Life + Goals) - Distraction

http://www.marcandangel.com/2007/12/26/productive-simplicity-life-goals-distraction/

What is Your Leadership Style?

Leadership is less about your needs, and more about the needs of the people and the organization you are leading. Leadership styles are not something to be tried on like so many suits, to see which fits. Rather, they should be adapted to the particular demands of the situation, the particular requirements of the people involved and the particular challenges facing the organization.

In the book “Primal Leadership,” Daniel Goleman, who popularized the notion of “Emotional Intelligence,” describes six different styles of leadership. The most effective leaders can move among these styles, adopting the one that meets the needs of the moment. They can all become part of the leader’s repertoire.

Visionary. This style is most appropriate when an organization needs a new direction. Its goal is to move people towards a new set of shared dreams. “Visionary leaders articulate where a group is going, but not how it will get there – setting people free to innovate, experiment, take calculated risks,” write Mr. Goleman and his coauthors.

Coaching. This one-on-one style focuses on developing individuals, showing them how to improve their performance, and helping to connect their goals to the goals of the organization. Coaching works best, Mr. Goleman writes, “with employees who show initiative and want more professional development.” But it can backfire if it’s perceived as “micromanaging” an employee, and undermines his or her self-confidence.

Affiliative. This style emphasizes the importance of team work, and creates harmony in a group by connecting people to each other. Mr. Goleman argues this approach is particularly valuable “when trying to heighten team harmony, increase morale, improve communication or repair broken trust in an organization.” But he warns against using it alone, since its emphasis on group praise can allow poor performance to go uncorrected. “Employees may perceive,” he writes, “that mediocrity is tolerated.”

Democratic. This style draws on people’s knowledge and skills, and creates a group commitment to the resulting goals. It works best when the direction the organization should take is unclear, and the leader needs to tap the collective wisdom of the group. Mr. Goleman warns that this consensus-building approach can be disastrous in times of crisis, when urgent events demand quick decisions.

Pacesetting. In this style, the leader sets high standards for performance. He or she is “obsessive about doing things better and faster, and asks the same of everyone.” But Mr. Goleman warns this style should be used sparingly, because it can undercut morale and make people feel as if they are failing. “Our data shows that, more often than not, pacesetting poisons the climate,” he writes.

Commanding. This is classic model of “military” style leadership – probably the most often used, but the least often effective. Because it rarely involves praise and frequently employs criticism, it undercuts morale and job satisfaction. Mr. Goleman argues it is only effective in a crisis, when an urgent turnaround is needed. Even the modern military has come to recognize its limited usefulness.

Now, check out this video of  Jeff Weiner the CEO of Linkden! Lead by Inspiration

Adapted from “The Wall Street Journal Guide to Management” by Alan Murray, published by Harper Business.

N.E. Partners: 9 Black Belt Techniques for Fighting Laziness at Work

Laziness can ferociously creep up on us at work even when we’re consciously committed to getting things done.  It’s a byproduct those evil shiny objects passing through our periphery just begging for attention.  We try to fight them off, but sometimes it’s an arduous battle we can’t seem to win.  After all, being lazy is what our unconscious minds would rather being doing anyways.  

Not all is lost though.  With the help of a few black belt techniques, laziness can be conquered.  You just have to game your mind before your mind falls victim to the lazy game.  Here’s how…

Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.
- Anne Frank

1. Fully Understand the True Consequences of Being Lazy – If you are habitually lazy on the job there’s a good chance that you’re not fulfilling all of your responsibilities.  If you’re not fulfilling your responsibilities then you’re not doing your job, and thus, you’re not worth paying.  It’s only a matter on time before your superiors notice this and eliminate the dead weight.  There’s a pretty good article on About.com entitled “How To Get Fired.”  Take a quit look at this article and ask yourself, “How many of these points pertain to laziness?”  Similarly, if a self-employed person gets lazy, you can be fairly certain they will not be self-employed for long.
2. Never Lose Sight of the Whole Elephant – I’ve heard people use the phrase “take one bite of the elephant at a time” more times than I can count.  It is true, breaking up a large project into a series of smaller, bite-sized milestones is a smart way to hone your concentration and keep yourself motivated in the short-term.  However, it is never wise to completely lose sight of the whole elephant (the big picture).  After all, the whole elephant is the only reason you started working in the first place.  At some point you want to get promoted, land that full-size contract deal and have the opportunity to get ahead of the pack.  Those are big picture goals, goals that motivate long-term drive.  You must always remain cognizant of the fact that a bit of laziness now on a few small tasks may snowball into a lengthy stretch of missed opportunities in the future when the judge compares your performance to that of your peers.
3. Don’t Stop Doing… Start the Next Related Task – Once you stop, laziness kicks in and it’s hard to get going again.  The key is to complete a task and then immediately jump to the next related task.  I consider a related task to be any task with a similar type required mental thinking.  Your mind can transition seamlessly between related tasks because your efforts on the previously completed tasks have already geared your mind for the type of work required in all the subsequent tasks.  The sooner you forge ahead, the more confident you will feel going into it and the more productive you will be.
4. Do Work for You Too – Far too often I see competent, hardworking people only doing work for someone else, usually their employer.  When the workload is extremely light (or the day comes to and end), they get lazy and do less instead of transitioning their attention to accomplishing something for themselves.  If all you’re hard work is spent growing someone else’s business and all your free time is spent being lazy, you will never grow a business of your own.  Avoid laziness by spending your down time working for you.  The more you accomplish for yourself, the more motivated you will be in all walks of your work life.
5. Setup Physical Barriers Against Distractions – Distractions lead to laziness, and unfortunately, distractions are friggin’ everywhere!  If you’re like me, you love to check your favorite blogs and reddit.com 50 times a day.  How do I conquer the urge?  I setup a physical distraction barrier by unplugging my internet connection while I’m working.  If you’re like my wife, Angel, you are prone to spending too much of your “work at home” time watching Lifetime movies.  How do I conquer her urge for her?  I hide the dang remote!  ;-)  In all seriousness, sometimes you must setup physical barriers between yourself and the distractions that attempt to overpower your conscious will to work.
6. Actually Schedule In Late Afternoon Goof-Off Time – One of the most effective anti-laziness tricks I’ve implemented actually involves scheduling in goof-off time each afternoon at 4PM.  By doing so, I have slowly eliminated my spontaneous urges to check my favorite blogs and news sites because I now know I have a scheduled time to do so.  This may seem odd, or even somewhat counterproductive, but it has actually skyrocketed my early morning through mid-afternoon productivity levels.  So even though I’ve committed to being lazy in the late afternoon, the entire early part of my day (when my mind freshest) is spent in the zone without the physiological urge to slack off and succumb to laziness.
7. Coach Yourself Out Loud… Inch by Inch – This is another one that sounds strange (literally), but truly is an effective self-motivation method.  Break the task you’re currently working on into a few smaller, logical steps and then coach yourself through them out loud.  “You have to get this done!  This step is so easy!  Let’s do it right now!”  When you complete a step, congratulate yourself on a job well done.  “That was great work!  You’re on fire!  We’re going to be finished with this in no time!”  I find that coaching myself out loud through each step actually makes me more cognizant of my forward progress, thus motivating me to work even harder on the next small step.  Success is just a game of inches.  Every small inch of forward progress is a grand accomplishment, because at some point you will be able to add up all those inches.  When you do, you will find yourself in the end zone… Touchdown!
8. Take Mentally and Physically Active Reward Breaks – Taking a short, productive break in between every solid hour of work is something I strongly recommend, but only if you spend your short breaks doing something that actively stimulates your mind and body.  Inactive activities promote laziness and mid-day fatigue.  Take a quick stroll around the office, get up and talk to someone you enjoy speaking with, or crank-up your iPod and listen to a song that motivates you.  Whatever you do, stay active and alert.
9. Refuel Your Mind and Body with Premium Everyday – You are what you eat!  If you eat like crap, you will feel like crap.  If you feel like crap, you will produce crappy work.  Don’t sell yourself short of your full potential.  Refuel your mind and body with premium,healthy food and 8 hours of sleep each night.  Most unhealthy eaters who don’t receive enough sleep are unsurprisingly lethargic in every waking hour of their existence.

Article taken from: http://www.marcandangel.com/2008/06/23/9-black-belt-techniques-for-fighting-laziness-at-work/

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