Business Level Strategy – Leadership Traits

“Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and action.” Good leaders are thus known to be people with a good attitude that puts them into action and helps them achieve their goals. So are you an entrepreneur, a leader of both?

So let’s take a look at an important aspect of a good Business Level Strategy – Leadership Traits. See also this TEDxLingnan University video where Anna Wong talks about the Feminine Traits That Make A Good Leader:

Who are entrepreneurs and leaders?

Entrepreneurs are defined as people with a set of skills that helps them identify a user’s need and provide solutions for it. Entrepreneurship is a skill that involves innovation, risk, creativity, and strong marketing skills which a business entrepreneur must have to launch a business.

Leaders, on the other hand, are people who not only help implement available resources in an effective manner but also motivate others for accomplishing a common task. It thus goes on to say that all entrepreneurs are not leaders, and all leaders are necessarily not entrepreneurs. However, if an entrepreneur is a good leader also, the success rate of a venture becomes much higher.

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Steve Gory, Onsego EdTech expert

Onsego has designed a self-paced online GED prep course. The GED Testing Service recognizes this course as entirely aligned with the latest edition of the computer-based GED test.

Steve Gory is Onsego’s EdTech expert, and under his guidance, the Onsego team developed a highly entertaining but still very affordable GED® prep course.

The GED test is for adult learners who couldn’t complete high school, and it offers them the opportunity to earn a credential that is nationally and internationally recognized as equivalent to a standard high school degree.

Onsego’s GED prep course presents the GED study content in bite-sized video lessons that cover just one GED topic, followed by a small quiz so the students can see if they understand the topic. Later, there are numerous comprehensive practice tests as well.

There are four individual, separate GED sub-exams, so there are also four Onsego courses that cover these four subject fields: Mathematics, Social Studies, Science, and Language (writing and reading combined). The courses can be followed as stand-alone courses per subject field or as a total GED program.

The entire material can be taken in any order. After subscription, the students can learn any topic they prefer. So there’s no set plan or order that they must follow. Everything is accessible right away and on any device, from smartphones and tablets to laptops and desktop computers.

The Onsego GED prep course also includes courses that teach how to stay motivated, how to tackle test anxiety, testing strategies, and how to use the Texas Instruments 30XS calculator so effectively that even students who don’t get Math at all can still score sufficient results. Amazing!

Students can take the GED test at an official, state-designated test center or in an online proctored format. At a test center, they can bring their own hand-held version of the TI-30XS calculator, but if they take the test online, they cannot bring the calculator.

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Gary North-Y2K Guru – Reflections 2 Decades Later

It’s been almost two decades now but New York Times Magazine referred to him in those days as “Gary North-Y2K guru.” ABC featured him in a prime-time head-for-the-hills news story and Wired called him “a historian and early leader in the Y2K preparedness movement.”

His name is Gary North and the media had anointed him as their official Year 2000-survival poster boy. But who was spinning whom then? Let’s take a closer look and learn from the mistakes made some two decades ago:

“My concern about Gary North was that there were a lot of innocent citizens out there who were taking his information as the unadulterated truth,” gripes Steve Davis, co-author of Y2K Risk Management: Contingency Planning, Business Continuity, and Avoiding Litigation (John Wiley&Sons). “Y2K just came along and fit his agenda perfectly. While Y2K was considered a real problem with real consequences, its uncertainty provided the perfect cover for a whole slew of millennial panic profiteers.”

Unfortunately, the details of North’s agenda were not revealed because reporters were too busy lapping up his end-of-the-world sales pitch when they should have been checking his background. If they would, they’d discovered that North was using the Y2K problem to promote his larger agenda of Christian Reconstructionism. (more…)

Corporate Branding at Akzo Nobel – Interview with Nathalie Quéré

Let’s take a close look at Corporate Branding at Akzo Nobel – Interview with Nathalie Quéré.

Can you introduce yourself, Nathalie? What’s your background? What are the most important tasks you have as the head of corporate communication?

My name is Nathalie Quéré and I have been of Head of Corporate Branding at AkzoNobel since March 2012. I am essentially responsible for all aspects of the AkzoNobel brand, which includes raising global awareness and ensuring that our businesses all over the world use and promote the brand in the right way.

Some time ago, AkzoNobel went through a rebranding process, what were the reasons for this transformation? How does it affect your corporate communication?

Following the sale of the company’s pharma activities and the subsequent acquisition of ICI, AkzoNobel wanted to express its new strategic direction by developing a new brand positioning and identity.

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Scott White, VP Sales at Rackspace

Scott White, VP Sales at Rackspace, RealCo Seed Fund Program Mentor, is a San Antonian who has spent the majority of his career at Rackspace. He grew up in different roles within the company including sales, marketing, and service delivery. His career has taken him to London where he ran international sales.

He spent a short time at a healthcare cloud startup but remained in touch with Rackspace and eventually decided to return. He is currently responsible for sales in the Americas as well as operations, marketing, customer care, and service delivery. Scott shares his deep content knowledge as a distinguished mentor for the RealCo Seed Fund Program.

What was your greatest life accomplishment and what did it teach you?

I played a significant role in the growth of Rackspace, taking the company from 10 million to several billion. I started there when I was 20 years old, and watched the company grow from a tiny company to a company of thousands of people.  In hindsight, you can not remember all that you learned but you know that you are a much different person at the end.

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Brand Preference – Joost Augusteijn, Rabobank, on How to Enhance it

Joost Augusteijn is a Brand Strategist at Rabobank, the Dutch bank that has the highest credit rating in the world of all privately owned banks, awarded by the rating agencies Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, Fitch and DMRS. So here we’ll take a closer look at Brand Preference – Joost Augusteijn, Rabobank on How to Enhance it.

Moreover, the cooperative structure is an important asset and selling point for Rabobank. I talked with Joost Augusteijn about the bank’s sponsoring strategy, creating brand preference and internal branding. In the Netherlands and abroad, Rabobank became the “official sponsor” of three-sport disciplines cycling, field hockey, and equestrianism and has created long-term partnerships with top sports teams.

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Shared Value Examples – Jos van Haastrecht, DSM

Creating Shared Value (CSV) is a recently developed corporate strategy that encourages leading companies to identify new areas of growth and profitability while building sustainable, scalable solutions for challenges such as access to healthcare, education, and nutrition, alleviating poverty, while simultaneously promoting environmental sustainability. In this article, we’ll look at Shared Value Examples – Jos van Haastrecht, DSM.

This strategy was introduced by Harvard strategy guru Michael Porter in cooperation with Mark Kramer in January 2011. Since then, this concept was widely discussed and some leading businesses are already implementing it.

One of these leading companies is DSM who recently rebranded itself and put sustainability and Creating Shared Value at the heart of its business strategy. I asked Jos van Haastrecht, DSM Branding Director to join me in writing this post so we can hear firsthand what CSV is all about and, more importantly, how DSM communicates this strategy to stakeholders and shareholders.

Bea Stanford: Why does DSM believe that its continued success will be driven by creating shared value; what are the most important projects (products) and innovations? (more…)

International Celebration of World Water Day (WWD)

The Netherlands was host country for the international celebration of World Water Day (WWD). This year the event highlights water cooperation, and this theme was also the subject of the recent so-called Water Mission that resulted in signing up a collaboration agreement between the USA and The Netherlands.

Check also this video on 2018 World Water Day (March 18, 2018):

Shaun Donovan who chaired President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and Melanie Schultz, the former Dutch Minister of Infrastructure and Environment, agreed to share knowledge and best practices. Donovan said. “The Dutch are no strangers to the forces of nature and I’m certain we can benefit from their experience in disaster mitigation, infrastructure management and a variety of approaches to sustainable community development and planning”.

Donovan is coordinating the rebuilding of areas in New York and New Jersey that were hit by Superstorm Sandy e few years way back and his task is hugely complex.

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Kasia Bialek About Advancing her Career by Moving Abroad

Kasia Bialek works in a senior position for one of the most popular global brands and to get this job, she became an ex-pat and relocated to Germany. Like many highly-skilled ex-pats, she has a higher income as a result of that move and she definitely advanced her career. We talked with Kasia Bialek about the challenges and rewards of moving abroad for a better career path.

Q. Kasia, 5 years ago you moved abroad to pursue your career. Since then you got promoted, increased your earnings, and improved your work-life balance.

Why did you decide to leave your country, Poland?

Well, I didn’t plan it; I was quite happy at my last position in Poland but realized that I had achieved everything that was possible in my last position within the company. I am the kind of person who needs and likes challenges and loves to learn new things. I was at the stage that I should start to look for a new job.

Then I got the possibility to move to our headquarters in Germany. It was a chance that life brought me. I could have chosen to start to look for a new job in Poland or use this opportunity, stay in touch with the people I knew, and start an international career. I chose the second option.

Q. People say, changing a job is stressful, and changing a job and a country seems like the most difficult challenge you can take in your work life. Is that so? (more…)

What is the main reason that Strategic Alliances fail? Interview with Jean-Marc Vogel

Jean-Marc Vogel is a well-known sales executive who carries quite a few years of experience specifically in the Strategic Alliances domain. He exerted his expertise successfully during the past decades BMC Software, Oracle, Mercury Interactive, CAST, and HP Software. In this interview, we talk with Jean-Marc Vogel about “What is the main reason that Strategic Alliances fail?” 

Jean-Marc received several awards in the categories Best Sales Results and Best Alliance Manager. Currently, he holds the position of Director of Strategic Partnerships at eNovance. He simultaneously is one of the founders and treasurer-honorary president Adalec (the French Association for Alliances & Channel Directors.

Jean-Marc shared his extensive work experiences in building partnerships and strategic alliances. He is a skillful sales executive and I have learned quite a deal from him working on many accounts for quite a while. Our chat was long so I will publish this in two sections. We conducted the following interview with Jean-Marc Vogel:

Q: What is Strategic Alliances all about? From your field experiences,  how can we make a partnership successful?

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