Leading to Outcomes

Leading to Outcomes

One of the more successful strategies I have seen managers take in their organizations has been shifting their focus from managing the process to leading to outcomes. In the age of employee empowerment, one of the best ways to allow your team to feel like they have a say in the work is to allow them some flexibility in the process and approach. As long as they deliver the desired outcome, they should be able to define the path. The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it. Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt I would suggest that the act of simply managing for outcomes isn't enough in the current corporate environment. Setting goals and offering flexibility in the approach by Leading to Outcomes is a far more effective approach. If you retain the concept of managing in the approach, you won't achieve the...
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The Offshoring Leadership Dilemma

The Offshoring Leadership Dilemma

In a world that has gone mad for productivity in service-based industries, we are seeing more and more repeatable operations jobs either automated or sent to low cost service centres like India.  Now, as those low cost centres continue to grow and develop the capabilities of their workforce we are seeing more and more movement up the knowledge chain of these "low-cost" resources. In the software industry the trend to oursourcing of junior development and QA tasks started several years ago.  Initially the trend was to write some specifications, ship them off to India, and then expect to receive back a solid working product on schedule and at a fraction of the cost that you would have paid had you done the work domestically. Most companies quickly discovered that there was a gap in leadership and quality with the work that was done overseas and brought back the leadership and design tasks, leaving the somewhat repeatable tasks of coding and testing in...
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