Good General Principles Trust Your Workers
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These are good business principles to live by. Involve your workers, and better yet, make them feel like they are a vital part of your organization. Read this with your employees. My boss did this when I worked at Fond du Lac...and we got some good debate going.
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A Leadership Book Worth Reading
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Flight of the Buffalo discusses the fact that the business world has changed. To stay competitive business leaders must also change and change the way our businesses operate. The only things that are constant are that change will continue to impact the way business is done and the speed of this change will continue to increase. How do you satisfy (retain) that current customer, or acquire that next customer in this continually changing competitive environment? First, as a leader you must learn to learn and learn at a faster rate. The foundation for all change is learning. Second, it is important that changes be made to the organizational culture in order to accomplish the changes required by the organization to allow employees to lead. The culture needs to change to remove the mentality that we are all victims because we have no control over any of the tasks required to make the customer happy, to one in which we all have ownership of the problems our companies/customers face. There are a number of obstacles that stand in our way as leaders. Many leaders within our companies hesitate to empower their employees and give them responsibilities for fear that they will not have anything to do themselves. Anyone who struggles with relinquishing control and trusting their coworkers to share in the responsibilities of the organization should read this book. Although the book discusses many important aspects of leadership and developing a culture in which employees do lead, the book lacks in two areas. First, many of the concepts presented in the book were repeated numerous times. As I read the book I felt like I had already read that page. Secondly, the book does not do justice to the concept of letting employees lead. It does discuss at detail how the leader's mentality has to change to effectively lead an organization where the employees lead, but it does not discuss when this is appropriate. The book is subtitled "Soaring to Excellence, Learning to Let Employees Lead," and it may have been the author's intent not to discuss the ramifications of this change on the employees, but instead focus on the real problem, the leadership, for which the author does an excellent job at detailing. After reading the book I am left with many questions: Does every company need to change to a flock of geese to remain competitive, or are there situations where the lead buffalo is a necessity to running the business? What if employees do not want to take on the responsibilities of leading the organization? Are there changes within the employee reward system to effectively deal with this change in the organization? How do we as leaders handle resistance to this new system? The book only brings us half way in our understanding of how to let employees lead.
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Flight of the Buffalo
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The "Flight of the Buffalo" is an interesting book for managers and leaders of today society. The idea that let the people who work with the product, own the responsebility of fixing the problem is a fresh outlook. The difference in being a manger and leader is spelled out so clearly, that the most elementry person can grab the idea. This book focus on "how can you run an organzation from the clouds?" In todays ideas, you have to meld three things together, what the employees want, what the buyer wants, and what the bottom line is. This book explains you can manage these items yourself or you can lead you people in finding ways they can do it for themselves.
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Insightful!
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James A. Belasco and Ralph C. Stayer have written an insightful book, the title of which derives from the authorsâ vision of traditional companies as a milling buffalo herds. The bookâs central metaphor follows from this vision â Modern leaders must transform their companies from buffalo herds to flocks of geese, in which each bird takes a turn at the head of the V. Their straightforward prose is peppered with real-world examples, and Belasco and Stayer display a refreshing willingness to reveal their own past leadership shortcomings in explaining the concepts that they propose. Many of these concepts boil down to a simple, and hardly original axiom: Empower your employees. But by presenting these ideas in a down-to-earth style thatâs illustrated by entertaining anecdotes, the book brings life to advice that otherwise might seem cliché. We recommend this book to professionals new to management, and to more experienced executives looking for an accessible introduction to the rationale, theory and practice of employee empowerment.
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Good solid material especially for the owner/manager
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If you started a business like I did, with little formal training in management and perhaps some bad examples along the way, you'll find this book to be an exceptionally useful book. The authors have a variety of practical experience behind them in starting and running companies of different size and they share their struggles and lessons learned along the way in a very direct and practical way. I'd highly recommmend this to anyone who wants to move to a participative leadership style and get results.
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