Karajan passed away at 81, and his obituary in The New York Times described him as “probably the world’s best-known conductor and one of the most powerful figures in classical music”.  Why was he so special?

He started his career in the 1930’s with prodigious skills, hard-work and ambition, but that’s not what made him a multi-millionaire Super-Star.  What made him achieve unparalleled greatness in the world of classical music is the amazing standard of Leadership he attained.

At the beginning of his career in the 1930’s, he was a highly-demanding and “directive” conductor, explaining in great details to his musicians how he wanted them to play, and then rehearsing dozens of times the difficult parts of symphonies and operas. Extreme hard work… (watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R-rV2VWhK0)

While he was still young, Karajan started to learn how to ride horses. One day, his trainer told him “tomorrow, you will learn how to jump obstacles with your horse”. Karajan did not sleep the whole night, as he could not figure out how to have such a huge animal take off in the air and pass over a 1.50 meter-high hay… The next day, he rode his horse towards the obstacle, quite terrified and unable to do anything… and the horse just jumped over the bar… all by himself. The lesson Karajan learnt was of tremendous importance for his career: “there is so much an orchestra can do if you trust it to go for it all the way; the conductor really has only to manage 2-3% of the time.” (watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjLhOnWzP0I)

And indeed, the vast audiences watching Karajan conduct in the second part of his career were amazed to see him so restrained in his gestures. Musicians were also surprised at the beginning… Traditionally, brass players are the ‘loud mouths’ in orchestras, and once, in London, a trumpet player dared to ask him: “Maestro, with all due respect, when should I start playing my tune?”, as Karajan’s gestures were limited and rather imprecise… And the Chef just answered “when you can not hold it anymore”… Journalists were also mystified. And one questioned Karajan: “Maestro, why don’t you give precise indications to your orchestras?” Karajan finally shed light on the apparent magic: “because that’s the worst damage I could do to them: then musicians would not listen to each other.” (watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaGkyeL82xA)

While fully empowering his orchestras, Karajan remained highly demanding all his Life. But he knew really well how to thank his players for the extra hard-work he commanded, with sincerity and wit (watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mGXgi0DNUA)*

A poignant testimony to Karajan’s exceptional leadership is his last concert, when he was extremely weak already (he died a few months later). Although his body could hardly move, the orchestra played a music that all critics deemed divine… (watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV9v9EGqqxo)

Karajan once said: “those who have achieved all their aims probably set them too low.” How about you reconsider your aims in Leadership, and try and figure out:

• how much more you can get from your team by doing less yourself?
• what you can do to have your team-members listen more to each other and play as a team?
• how you can motivate them to take more initiatives?
• How you will measure progress?

You may like to share your intentions up-front with your team first. And start with small steps, keeping in mind what Patton said: “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results”.

Your rewards? May be not a private jet, a yacht and castles… in the short-term at least! But most certainly more time to focus on what matters most… to achieve Greatness, whilst demonstrating care towards your subordinates and followers. What are you waiting for?

I adapted the statement for use in one of my own programs once. Only this time I used it as three out three will never make a ‘great’ leader. That program though was not on leadership, it was on innovation.  

Just play with me a little bit. Do this simple thing. Look around you. Look at any three people. It is guaranteed that at least two of the three you looked at will not do much over the next five years. They will be in the same position and the same chair and doing the same job, whether in your company or another one alike. It is also guaranteed that at least two of these three have been doing this for the last five years as well.  

Doesn’t that scare you? After all if any one of those three read this, they would be looking at YOU!!  

A promotion here and there, a carrot to keep you seated, that’s all!! You fell for it – you settled for mediocrity – my guess is you wanted to……… 
 

The question is why is it so? Why is it so? Why is it so?

WHY IS IT SO? 

Why are we so ok with it? 

There is no single answer, however, as a start I will answer this through this article and through many more over the next few weeks. Look out. 
 

The first answer is that organizations, at large, are designed to create this. Then they spend their entire lifetime and executive time and meeting time and strategy time in preservation. 

Somewhere in your office and probably close to you – is your CEO. Somewhere around him is a CFO. Then lurking around is HR Head and Sales Head and may be a couple more heads of departments. There have to be, they have been in the company too long!! 

Every now and then they all go into a boardroom. Meet and discuss issues. Debate decisions. Come up with a common answer in the name of collective decision making and Synergy. The group is a fair mix of representation from all departments. So its balanced. This balanced group comes up with decisions that impact your entire life over a period of time and result in you being in the situation I described above! 

That’s brings me to my first point – the first answer to Why IS It SO?

Your biggest enemy to think, to innovate your life, individually or as a corporation, IS BALANCE.  

If you balance things, then you imbalance thinking. 

Think about it.  

Lets take an example here – lot of you in any organization would be talking about numbers, growth, sales – now tell me what is better – a great sales person who has excellent relationship skills and very satisfied existing customers but no innovation to find new ones – or a salesperson with lousy relationship skills and so dissatisfied customers but extremely innovative to keep adding new ones – What’s better. It is not possible to have both in one person (Very very rare, I’ll prove it later) – so what’s the answer. You will probably, actually most definitely say, “balance”…  

What is better – an organization who keeps the customer absolutely comforted and unconfused – where the customer Finds the products of use and of a certain predictability. Knows he can count on you for that particular requirement at any time. Or a company that is so innovative that it keeps a customer completely confused with new products, changing models, upgradations – what is better? Again your answer will be “balance” 
 
 

You see for at least seven generations – your father to grandfather to his great grand father – we have been taught balance. Balance is the enemy of progress and innovation. If you balanced it, you killed it, some part of it for sure. 

I’ll just get to how it ‘seats you down’ in your life but first a small thing on balance – my view on the two situations above. 

In the company that I ran and very successfully – we never saw a single day of negative cash flow or losses and never had to borrow a single penny – and in 2008, apparently the time of doom – we were billing the highest ‘per day fee’ in the country – In this company we never cared for confusing customer. So be it. Those of you who are customers, will know, you heard of all sorts of programs etc and might have been confused on what really is our core competence – you see if we balanced it with careful communication and stuck to core things – we would have never developed the great programs that we did – and had the success we have. To take it a step further, we never balanced how we conducted programs. It had to be extreme!! 

As regards salespeople – my preference was always the innovator. Even if he or she sucked at relationship building. If we could create products that were the best – if we could deliver it better than anyone else – the customer will be happy – confused happy but happy. 

There is balance all around you – take a look – you got married and decided you need a secured job for balancing life – you got a job and decided you need to settle down in life – either ways, whatever meant to you more, you destroyed excellence in that area by balancing it. I was reading the Pete Sampras’s book yesterday. He says he never balanced anything. From age 7 to age 31, only tennis – lived alone, sacrificed family for distraction, no serious relationship, nothing else at all – you can call it foolish – it also is the greatest level of excellence achieved. At age 32 he married – he realized that tennis is coming between achieving excellence there. On a night, still at the peak, winning a US Open, he quit. 

I am not saying you can only do one thing at a time – that’s not innovation – you do 140 for all I care – though don’t balance them. 

If you want to be a Sales Head, HR Head, Whatever Head, or CEO or CFO, then go be – don’t accept balancing by becoming a part of some non-sense committee or board or additional responsibility. Don’t balance it with creating further happiness at home or taking the family for a vacation or buying a new car to prove you are doing well or by gaining some adulation from a couple of subordinates or by receiving a call from a consultant who is massaging your ego with enlightenment in your market value or by seeing your name in a newspaper or by whatever whatever whatever  (do all of this if you want it  but NOT TO balance non-achievement). The moment you balance it or rationalize it or release it through some mechanism – you no longer pursue excellence (for yourself) – you gave up on what Pete Sampras didn’t. Yes there is a price to pay. So what, pay it. 

My very accurate guess is that this article will have no impact on you and you will continue to balance things – you are so deep into it – so blinded into it – that you’ll miss the picture. BUT be aware of this – you are where you are because you made peace with it – so next time you see some 10 year younger person – taking a leap ahead and endangering your existence – Don’t Crib – just do what you do best – Balance!!! 

It’s not just you. It’s our organizations. I wrote that they are designed for this. Obviously if most of the individuals are busy balancing, then collectively what will they create – a balanced organization – a joke!! It doesn’t work – 75% of Fortune 500 companies – are not in the list after 20 years. 84% of companies who balance things and rationalize markets by mergers and acquisitions move out of the list in less than 10 years. That’s how quickly it all fails. The fall is inevitable. It’s not just a decision making error. It’s a failure to think. 

I am no fan of ‘small is beautiful’ but am convinced beyond doubt that ‘enormous is ugly’. Not to say that you don’t create large organizations but to say that you break them up for agility, or else, collapse. Large organizations creates centralization – they create committees and subcommittees and boards and bodies to make essential decisions – in the process unknowingly (and though they think the opposite) they have centralized almost everything with someone or the other – and killed innovation and creativity at even mid-levels. Therefore you will often find in these large companies – Ford. GM, IBM or say even our government organizations – loyal employees been there for years and you will find the innovative, sparky and creative smart people that they are constantly seeking – but these youthful people will keep leaving – they are frustrated by lack of expression and innovation and creativity – they are sick of lack of speed – However. Sadly, they too will eventually strike a balance!! 

There are very few large organizations who stand the test of time. They eventually design themselves to failure. By that logic any merger to create a larger and more synergetic organization WILL FAIL. Any attempt to balance, individual or organization, will eventually defeat the purpose. 

I was reading an interview yesterday of the Chairman of Glodman Sachs. He was asked to name one, just one, merger that he thinks has been successful in our entire corporate history. His reply was that nothing spectacular comes to mind. Can you imagine this is coming from a guy who makes his life on mergers – he gets 5% on merging and another 5% when it doesn’t work for demerging. 

See around – Jet Airways buys Sahara to capture market share – defeated. King Fisher buys Air Deccan to consolidate the industry – borrowing money for survival. Indian Airlines-Air India – lets not even go there. TATA buying Corus and Jaguar and whatever – If they merge it to be one company – it’s over – guaranteed. Almost all of Google’s acquisitions – Orkut or anything – is all dead. Bharti merging with MTN to create one single largest company – is the beginning of a collapse. I bet you we’ll see it within 20 years of it. 20 years in business world is not overnight, neither is it eternity. 

We constantly in our boardrooms talk about entrepreneurial spirit!!! That’s just another name for innovation (be good enough to think on your feet and keep moving).. BUT by creating centralizations of decision making and committees and boards in large organizations or by creating centralization of thought processes in YOUR head (of being in control of ten things and balancing them all) – We Kill Innovation or entrepreneurial spirit. We kill our own progress. We kill our own achievement. We kill excellence. By excellence I only mean the level to which you could have succeeded. As I said this article is unlikely to have an impact on you. You will be doing your next balancing act within minutes from now. You are so used it. You will be killing yet another time. I don’t know what but I know one thing – that is that the seat you are sitting on will be yours for quite a while. It’s nice, safe, comfortable and secured. It’s well balanced!! 

The online business directories are a good place to start doing a bit of advertising, after you have set up your website and have done some SEO.

The business directory’s main purpose is to get a high-quality flow of traffic to the website, giving you the opportunity of sales leads and helping your website rankings within the search engines. This will in turn improve your business.

Submit your business to the best business directory in order to make your website popular on the web. Ensure you think about who to list with, because it is essential that the directory have good traffic.

There are different types of directories:

Link Directories

These directories generate reciprocal links to gain page rank. These directories just list rows and rows of web links. The majority of link directories are free, allowing you to start creating your own link building campaign which is a great part of SEO. They will normally require a reciprocal link from your website.

Ex: http://www.freelinksdirectory.net/

Commercial Directories

Commercial directories come in various formats, such as Yahoo, Yellow Pages or even your local directories. Some are free, some have free and paid options, and others are monthly or annual subscriptions.

Each directory listing is a chance for you to showcase your business. If you can add multiple web links and can write lots of text, do it! Write original text with keywords relating to your industry or business.

Once you have created your listing and it goes live on the directory, go back and review it. 

Some of the benefits of business directories:

1. Enables your website to rank well in search engines
2. Your company gets a high-quality permanent one-way back link to your site.
3. Improve your web site Link Popularity
4. Provides direct advertising exposure for your business or organization in a variety of ways
5. Promotes your company name to potential visitors and career centers
6. Enhances your company’s name recognition among prospective potential clients
7. You can always suggest a new category to the business directory through their contact form

Advertising your business in the general business directory, local business directories or niche directory is a good way to promote your business.  If your business link is not listed on the business directories, you could be losing valuable customers and targeted internet traffic.

Online business directories are an inexpensive and effective way to maintain your business standing. The price of registering on an online business directory is regularly less than advertising in the traditional directories.

Listing with an online directory means your website will get picked up by search engines more often. As well, you can list your business in industry-specific business directories, and make changes to your listing any time you need.

The future of green is local — and entrepreneurial. At TEDxMidwest, Majora Carter brings us the stories of three people who are saving their own communities while saving the planet. Call it “hometown security.”

Privacy on your Facebook account is an important topic that each user must learn and know about. The more information you post, the more information becomes available.

Make sure you know how your profile is viewed by the public and which users can see your account. You can choose the privacy settings for everything you do in Facebook. You just have to know how to do it.

Facebook’s privacy settings are extremely detailed. You have the ability to modify almost every part of your Facebook account. Unfortunately for most users, this level of micro-management makes Facebook’s privacy settings complicated.

So here’s how you start:

In your account, click on the Home button and it will display the Privacy Settings:

But how does it work? Here we explain in more detail how to manage all these settings.

How you connect with others: 

These settings determine how people can find you on Facebook.  People searching for your name or sending you a message can be controlled through settings to Friends Only, Friends of Friends, Everyone or you can customize them.

Timeline and Tagging:

Control who can post, what your friends post, and even review a tag before they appear on your timeline.

You might also want to know how to:

Share on Facebook

Info Accessible to Your Friends

This is the setting that affects users privacy the most, and most people don’t realize it. No matter how tight your privacy settings are, you’re still sharing some of your content and information with a group of people. With this setting you can set exactly what information is available to apps and websites.  

Friend Lists

If you don’t want to share every detail of your life with all your friends, you can create lists, such as Family, Best Friends, Business etc.) Share the information you think is relevant for each group. Once you set the groups up, it’s easy to add new friends.

Have you ever wondered how much information about your company is online?

Or, has your company done something relevant or important in the past years or months, that is worth sharing on online outlets besides via the social networks?

Do you want your company to be more well-known, and to make it more real and tangible? If the answer is yes, then you should consider creating a Wiki Page on Wikipedia.

Wiki – a technology for creating collaborative websites – comes from the word Wiki, meaning ‘’quick’’, and pedia – encyclopedia, and provides links to guide the user to related pages with some additional information.

Ranked in No.6 in the Global Rank on Alexa (http://tinyurl.com/3wq9ngo), Wikipedia has now become one of the world’s most important sources of online information, playing a key role in the public perception of any company.

To set up your Wikipedia account:

One of the first things to remember when opening an account, is that most of the content will be written and edited by people outside your company (anonymous Internet volunteers, people of all ages and cultures, etc.) What is contributed (the content) is more important than the expertise or qualifications of the contributor.

1. Go to www.wikipedia.org , click your preference language and once you’re in, on the top of your right side, go to Create an Account:

2. Once you have all the set up done and confirmed, you can start working on the central pages of your Wiki. Read the Help section carefully to learn about editing and creating categories with sub-categories. As well, if you write something wrong or inappropriate, or disrespect the Community rules (even inadvertently!) Wiki can take down your page.

2. Start to get the feel for writing. Create an article in your own area and only move it into the ‘’live’’ Wikipedia once it’s ready. Double check that your article hasn’t been written before, because sometimes it can be under a different title.

4. When you start writing about your company, make sure the tone you use doesn’t reflect any purpose of selling any of your products or your company. Wikipedia won’t publish this.

5. Once you have your content ‘’live,’’ avoid editing your own articles. Just review and update them using the appropriate channels such as article talk pages.

6. Make sure to be always aware of the recent changes in your page. It will help you to manage any vandalism or false information.

7. Submit Copyright violation information in your content, to prevent any legal issues in the future (remember your page will be accessible to all kinds of volunteers).

You don’t have to create a perfect Wiki Page. It is usually a collaborative project with people pitching in to make it better by collecting and sharing information. Start by adding some fun stuff to your Wiki. Be creative with your content!

If you are concerned about the fact that people outside your company are able to edit and contribute to your Wiki page, there is a way to manage this. Unfortunately, you can’t control what people are saying about your company, but you can provide links to further and correct information, and even suggest new sections. This should be done on the article discussion page- the space where editors can discuss potential edits before they are made. It is not recommended to edit what others are saying on your Wiki page, as there is potential to start a fight, and have it all blow out of proportion.

Despite this, Wikipedia is still a credible source of information from the Internet, and a valuable tool for garnering more visibility for your company.

TED’s Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation — a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness. And for TED, it means the dawn of a whole new chapter …

Activist Caroline Casey tells the story of her extraordinary life, starting with a revelation (no spoilers). In a talk that challenges perceptions, Casey asks us all to move beyond the limits we may think we have.

Work-life balance, says Nigel Marsh, is too important to be left in the hands of your employer. At TEDxSydney, Marsh lays out an ideal day balanced between family time, personal time and productivity — and offers some stirring encouragement to make it happen.

Building your reputation is essential to run a successful business. You need to make sure your clients and customers believe in you.  

Whether it’s a new customer or an existing client who needs information or solutions, you need to provide professional service. You need to interact with your prospects and customers, giving you an opportunity to show value.

Social media sites are another way to build relationships and trust, especially Facebook and Twitter.

On an initial meeting with your prospect, you can address them by their first name to build rapport.

Tips to start building trust in your customers:

1. Get the contact information of the people who come to your website. Follow up with them and offer them something valuable in exchange (e-mail marketing will help you in this).

2. Show your value anytime, using newsletters, blogs, social media platforms, and good customer service. Try to be more accessible and allow your customers to reach you easily.

3. Help customers to get what they need. Understand what your customer needs and desires before selling your product.

4. Listen with genuine interest to what the others have to say to you. The more you listen, the more you become acceptable to them.

5. Ask open-ended questions. You have the opportunity to educate your prospect about your product or service by asking questions like: with who, where, what, when and how.

6. Keep your promises. Always tell the truth to keep confidence in your services. Follow through on delivering what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it. There’s nothing that will destroy business relationships faster with clients than broken promises.  Have no favorites, forgive mistake and be generous.

7. Offer Quality. You cannot expect to earn your clients’ trust if you provide low quality services. People want value for their money. You should strive to add value to your customers.

8. Always maintain a professional appearance. First impressions count and help build trust, demand quality, be personable but not overly familiar.

The benefits of being trusted are enormous. People have confidence in those they trust. Employees will be more motivated when working for a trustworthy boss. Customers are more likely to write orders for sales people they trust.

If you follow these steps you and your business with grow and excel. Working on it is just a discipline!