Warren Buffett: Your business will succeed if you execute this 3-word mission

This blog post by Julia La Roche highlights a simple 3-word mission that the legendary investor Warren Buffett shared with a group of small business owners.

Excerpt from the post:

Speaking at the 20th Graduation of Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses at LaGuardia Community College, Buffett told the graduates: “Tomorrow morning when you look in the mirror after you’ve gotten up, just write — or just put it in lipstick or whatever you want — ‘delight my customer' not 'satisfy my customer.’ ‘Delight my customer.’”

It's a simple three-word mission.

He continued: “Any business that has delighted customers has a salesforce out there that you don’t have to pay. You don’t see them, but they are talking to people all the time.”

Click here to read the entire blog post. Hope you enjoy reading it!

Forget The Myths: Innovation Isn't Created The Way Most People Think

Article shared by Russell Grissett. Thank you!

Tine Thygesen, contributor of this post on Forbes.com, is an entrepreneur and has started and led five internet companies as a CEO and founder.

In this blog post, Tine highlights that actually the myth of the "good idea" is a misunderstanding. Behind any successful new product or company, the idea is actually the easiest part, and is of little importance, relatively speaking. Instead, it’s execution that’s the core of entrepreneurship, whether it’s done by startups or corporate. Successful entrepreneurs and innovators don’t have better ideas than anyone else, but they pursue them more vigorously and actively.

Click here to read the complete post to get more tips and some practical examples. Hope you enjoy reading it!

Paul Anderson's 10 Basic Common-Sense Ways to Think About Management

This excerpt is from a good article published by Forward Online - "Leading from the middle of the storm".

Forward interviewed Paul Anderson, who has handled many turnarounds in his 40-plus-year career. He has gone from automotive to energy to steel to raw materials and back to energy, carrying with him his tool kit of common sense business practices and hard-nosed decision-making. He has not courted the limelight. In fact, it is almost impossible to find anything written about the man. But the results speak volumes: the turnaround of BHP (see “Chronology of a Turnaround”, below) in the midst of both a recession and a corporate crisis, the merger of PanEnergy with Duke Energy in 1997, the spin-off of Spectra Energy from Duke in 2007.

Twelve former employees of Paul Anderson either are or have been CEOs. He thinks of them as protégés. “They worked for me long enough that they must have learned at least some of it from me,” he says. They also show, “I’m pretty good at picking people and at surrounding myself with people who are smarter than me.”

Anderson does have “10 basic common-sense ways to think about management” that he has used with MBA classes and that his protégés must have picked up along the way.

1. Only you and your mother care about the reasons. If you didn’t get the sale, didn’t hit the target, no one cares why. Tell it to your mother.
2. Take responsibility for yourself. Focus on what you can control and don’t blame things like your gender, your race, your religion, your height for your shortcomings. Go back to school. Learn to speak in complete sentences.
3. Seek responsibility, not authority.
4. Make the most of your job, no matter how bad. Figure out how you can learn something from it or use it to get to somewhere else.
5. Make the most out of your marriage. Too many people compartmentalize their lives. Use your personal life to enrich your professional life and vice versa.
6. Start thinking about what will happen if you succeed rather than if you fail.
7. Main-event management—focus on what’s important. Don’t be distracted by things like organizational politics.
8. Listen. That’s absolutely critical.
9. Be sensitive to how loud your voice becomes as you get higher up in the organization.
10. Don’t be seduced by success. You’re never quite as good as you think you are. Julius Caesar had a slave who walked beside him on his triumphal processions through Rome. The slave’s job was to whisper to Caesar, “You are just a man.”

212 Leadership

"212° Leadership" is another great movie and book from Mac Anderson's Simple Truths.

212° Leaders have made the leap from good to great. They are able to not only rally the troops to committed, purposeful action, but also to create an environment where quality and innovation are the norm, rather than the exception. 212° Leadership is designed to make you think...to help you grow...and to provide that extra degree of passion to take your leadership skills from effective to extraordinary!

Click here to see the movie. Through a very simple yet powerful story Mac Anderson shows the difference between good and great leadership, good and great companies.

6 Ways Leaders Can Get Better Results By Not Talking

Article Shared by Russell Grissett. Thank you!

Erika Andersen, author of the book, Leading So People Will Follow, has written a wonderful article on Forbes on "6 Ways Leaders Can Get Better Results by Not Talking".

Erika highlights that by just keeping your mouth closed is sometimes the best possible thing you can do as a leader. She has provided 6 tips on how to stop talking in a way that will actually encourage and allow your team to step into the space that’s created:

• Give people a heads-up
• Invite conversation
• Welcome what they say
• Make it happen
• When you’ve made your point, stop
• Listen!!!

Click here to read the article. Hope you enjoy reading the article!

3 Questions to Get Feedback You Need

- Harvard Business Review Blog Article by Thomas J. Delong

Excerpt from the Article:

No leader improves without feedback. But getting people to be honest about your performance isn't always easy. Give your team a way to supply you with the candid information you need to change by asking them these three questions:

• What should I stop doing? Ask which behaviors stand in your way of success.
• What should I keep doing? Inquire about what you do right, and should continue to do.
• What should I start doing? Once you've stopped unproductive behaviors, you'll have more time and energy for new behaviors.

The author calls this feedback mechanism "SKS", a process whereby we would ask others what we should stop (S), keep (K), and start (S) doing.

Click here to read the complete article.

Sugata Mitra: The Child-Driven Education

Shared by Dr. Vandna Dharmar. Thank You!

Education Scientist, Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education - The best teachers and schools don't exist where they are needed the most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching. 

In case the above video does not play, please click here to view the video.