THE ALIBABA MINDSET

Today’s article will be focused on a man I admire so much, the brain behind The Alibaba group, Jack Ma. I will be focusing on the entrepreneurial mind-set he had before the dream of Alibaba came to a reality. Before we dive in, a little introduction about the group will be perfect.

Alibaba group is one of china’s largest e-commerce companies. For those who haven't heard of Alibaba, Its is more like the Ebay, Amazon, Paypal and Yahoo of China all in one. To have an in depth knowledge about the company, you can click here. It currently has ten other subsidiaries (a few of which are not included in the picture. click here to view them all) which are also doing perfectly fine. Alibaba recently launched an IPO (Initial Public offering) on Wall Street New York stock exchange worth $21.8 billion which is the highest the stock market has ever recorded in the history of stock market trading and its is currently worth more than Amazon and Ebay combined and currently Walmart. Now who wouldn't be interested in the brain behind this organisation? Well, I am!

Jack Ma, a former English teacher from Hangzhou, China has valued these three sets of people; Customer, Employee and Shareholders in the past 15 years of business career. He is, currently worth $23 billion and one of the new faces of the Forbes list of world's most powerful people.

What then is an Entrepreneurial mind-set?

An Entrepreneurial mind-set is/are a set/sets of attitude/attitudes held by an entrepreneur. Since an entrepreneur is at the heart of the business, He/she has to have some certain attitudes before going into business. Here are some of the attitudes of Mind-set an entrepreneur should have. I will be relating these attitudes to our role model for today, The Humble Jack (as I like to call him). 

1. Need for Achievement
2. Individualism
3. Control
4. Focus
5. Optimism

 THE NEED FOR ACHIEVEMENT: This is basically a preference for challenge and an acceptance for personal responsibilities for outcomes. Jack Ma’s mission (and the mission of Alibaba group till today) is to help smaller businesses prosper. He identified the need and accepted it as a responsibility for him to create a platform where smaller businesses can conduct their own businesses. This came out of the frustration of trying to carry out his own business from his small apartment in china and he decided to make it his priority to help other small businesses prosper. Note that I highlighted the word 'help' and 'his priority', because he saw a need first, before the personal end gain. Jack ma said Most people that try to be an entrepreneur today think about the end gains first instead  trying to identify a need that is both beneficial to yourself and the society in the long run.

 INDIVIDUALISM: is a need or often a preference to go against the norm. When Jack Ma discovered the idea of creating a platform for smaller businesses to trade back in 1996 in Silicon Valley, it seemed like a stupid idea to others. He told his idea to some of his friends and some venture capitalist in the US and most of them thought it was stupid. Bringing trading and commerce to the internet then was going against the norm in China. Jack Ma said that he once thought of being a General in the army, because that was the norm then. He later gave it a second thought and chose to do things differently, forgetting about the past and looking the future and a better China. (Your present idea should not just satisfy a present need, it should also be subject to changing developments for growth in the future).

Some people may have read or heard these things a few times, but for those that have no come across these points, here is an insight into developing an idea for a business or an organization. These attitudes are also applicable not just for entrepreneurs, but can also be directed towards organizations seeking innovation by focusing on satisfying a need and doing things differently.

Since I am not the only writer here, The remaining part of this article will be posted soon.

Until then, Stay Focused and Bring about the change that you want to see!

Bukola Komolafe

Bizlead Writer

Email: bukola1405@gmail.com

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GARAGE TO GLOBAL

I first heard this statement made in a TV commercial for an investment bank here in the U.S, “We help transform companies from garage to global”. This prompted me to ask myself the question; “How does a company transform from a garage company to a global company?” Over the coming weeks I will be focusing on factors that will help transform your business from a garage to a global company, this first post is a bit skeletal but I promise to improve on this and give you more insights and in-depth analysis that will help us become better leaders and businessmen in our different endeavors.

We all start here (Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the Garage)

And all want to get here (Google Headquarters in Mountain View California)

 

Becoming a global business involves a lot of process, a lot of trial and error, going through different iterative phases of business models. Before you get to the garage there are steps you first need to take to be certain of the viability of your idea/product/service. I Have highlighted some of these steps below:

1.    Validate your Idea (Ask question, create a survey, Research, Prototype and Test)
2.    Create a brand identity/Brand yourself
3.    Create a Unique Value Proposition (Business Models and Business Development)
4.    Marketing and Advertising
5.    Management Team (Leadership, Structure)

These are some of the few factors distinguishes a business, in these series, my main focus would be on the branding, marketing and advertising aspects a company’s  development into a global entity.

VALIDATE YOUR IDEA: 
So eureka, you've found this wonderful idea that came to you whilst bathing. Good for you! Now before you rush and start pouring your money with that of your loved ones on this seemingly great idea. You need to validate the idea to know its viability in the market; validating your idea entails you asking relevant questions from people you trust and value their opinions, and writing down their advice and feedback.

Asking yourself cogent questions such as, Will I use this product? What problem does this product/service solve? Will I pay for this product/service? One important way of validating your idea is carrying out a survey, because your friends may not want to hurt your feelings, hence only give you positive feedback, but by carrying out a survey using a well-planned out questionnaire you'll be able to get feedback from different users, arming yourself with a relevant data to make a better cognitive decision.

So you've validated your idea, and you've concluded from your research that it’s a viable product or service and you've built a prototype, tested it and everything is looking great and you are ready to launch.

• BUT WAIT DO YOU HAVE A BRAND AND BRAND IDENTITY?
• DO YOU KNOW THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE?
• WHAT IF A COMPETING IDEA/SERVICE SPRINGS UP, CAN YOUR BUSINESS MODEL BEAT THEIRS, TO ACHIEVE TOMA (Top of Mind Awareness)?
• WHAT IS YOUR UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION?

Which leads to my next point of building a brand, in my subsequent post I will discuss the power of a brand and what brand equity is, but for now let’s go into the basics of creating a brand around your business and idea.

 

CREATE A BRAND IDENTITY/BRAND YOURSELF: 
The brand identity of a brand consist of the brand, Identity and Logo.

• Brand: the marketing-dictionary.org defines a brand as a "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers." In short form a brand is the public image of a business, production or individual.
• Identity: visual aspects that form part of the overall brand.
• Logo: A graphic design that is used as a continuing symbol for a company, organization, or brand. It is often in the form of an adaptation of the company name or brand name or used in conjunction with the name.

Creating a unique brand is essential to the success of your business, a distinct brand identity, whose core values, vision, mission and unique value proposition are will communicated to your target audience, consumers, customers and clients will help distinguish your company from other companies especially companies with competing product/service.

We would rest here for today, and continue the journey to global dominance in my next article where I will focus on creating your UVP (Unique Value Proposition) and Business models that are flexible and adaptable to different business environment and government policies. 

Fashola Ayodeji 
Bizlead WriterEmail: dejifash@nd-interacktiv.com
Twitter: @fashfc      

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THE COOPERATIVE ALTERNATIVE

As business leaders, we search for new structures, new insights and new ways in which we operate. We seek to be innovators, to break new grounds and this has led me to view new strategies in which some organizations has employed to command results which are different from the conventional methods. One of these new strategies is known as the Cooperative Alternative.

 In an organisation, the conventional method of management is structured in a way of strict hierarchy; Chief Executive Officer (CEO), General Manager (GM), Manager, Assistant General Manager and employee and all the decisions  made follows this order and the least in the hierarchy (employee) has no say in the decision making process. The Cooperative Alternative was developed to invest in employees/workers and also in communities but this method is not fully considered when employing conventional methods of Management.

HOW DOES COOPERATIVE ALTERNATIVE WORK?

A Cooperative is a group of people (also known as workers owners), who work in favour of the employee. They seek to give everyone in an organisation an equal say with the benefit of shared profits. In general they seek to build a better world.

A Union known as the united steel workers were responsible for the development of what is known as the ‘union co-model’ (Cooperative alternative). They believed that there was the need for a new business model that fostered participation and empowerment which in my opinion guarantees a level of high profitability and productivity. 

This Union developed a unique business model where the workers owners i.e the cooperative elects a union committee and the board of directors,  the union committee also elects a larger union and finally the board of directors elect the management. I would say its more like a bottom-up approach to electing leaders and making decisions in an organisation. The picture below better explains how this work:

In this type of business model, the management runs the business and every worker owner is part of the general assembly while the union committee represents the workers to the larger union. The larger union takes into consideration what is right and fair for the workers in the business which also implies that when the management is not in line with the vision, values and objectives of the can get fired.

THOUGHTS ON LEADERSHIP

In my humble opinion, the cooperative alternative is a good idea, it seeks to shift attention from just making profits from shareholders to creating value for and once value is created I believe profitability is insight and inevitable. This alternative is built on employee participation and empowerment; it makes the workers more interested and involved in building up the business. The workers are willing to be committed, they see the business as part of who they are, integrate the values as theirs and they are constantly motivated in the pursuit of excellence and contribution.

In my view, that’s what leadership is all about, it is focused on how to motivate individuals, instill commitment that isn’t forced or falsely adopted. It is about growth, about change, productivity and improvement.

Finally, while the cooperative alternative is a good on there are also flaws with it but the idea is not to focus on the bad side but to see how as business leaders we can be innovative and open minded and consistently seek change in the way businesses are run in our country for maximum productivity.   

Chinwe

I would like to hear the thoughts you all have, your perception and ideas.

For more:

http://www.uk.coop/what-co-operative

http://www.co-operative.coop/corporate/widermovement/

NEXT:

We will look at various organizations that are associated with the corporative alternative and seeing the reason for their success.

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LESSONS FORM THE TITANIC (CONTINUED)

Taking off from where from where we stopped  on this last week, talking about common mistake made in leadership (Misleadership and Situational Leadership), I will be focusing on  Governance and Stakeholders by starting with the statement below.

"The speed of the ship was one of the causes of the disaster, but the captain was following the standard procedure of the last quarter century to “keep course in clear weather, to maintain speed, and trust to a sharp look-out to enable them to avoid danger”. It was standard practice to maintain speed and course through ice treacherous waters when the weather was clear.” People mistakenly believed that the improving advancements in construction and safety features made it unnecessary to update regulations that no longer strictly applied” (Kelly, 2013).

One of the  features of sustainable success in an organisation is a proper synergy of Leadership and Governance of stakeholders in an organisation. Many organisations have focused more on the bottom-line (making profit) and traded away their social and environmental responsibility, while some have devalued good ethical behaviour for wealth. This article evaluates leadership and governance issues in relation the Titanic.

GOVERNANCE 

A few Governance issues that led to the end of The Titanic were;

• The regulations of the shipping industry (Board of Trade): The  minimum requirements for lifeboats aboard a vessel; The British Board of Trade required all vessels (ships) over 10,000 metric tons carry a minimum of 16 lifeboats. The Titanic had twenty lifeboats aboard, exceeding the requirement by four devices. However, the Titanic’s total mass was over 40,000 metrics tons (64), considerably more than the classification criteria. The British Board of Trade had not updated the lifeboat requirements in over twenty years. 

• Staff Training and Development: Although there was potentially enough capacity for 1,178 people, only 705 were saved. Almost 500 empty seats were left unused on the launched lifeboats. This was partially due to the lack of training of staff with evacuation procedures. No official drill was ever conducted during the voyage and only one had been completed prior to launching, when somr of the staffs were absent.  Moral: It’s important that organisation engage their staff in proper learning, training and development to avoid hazardous mistakes in future due to lack of .

.

RESPONSIBILITY

Responsibility - the defined task of an individual, a duty or obligation is a key role of leadership. Irresponsible would be the proper term for the actions exhibited by some of the wireless operators.As passengers were charged for sending and receiving of messages and were also generous with the tips, so  were the wireless operators very keen to handle as many passenger messages as possible. 

The Californian,(which was also on the Atlantic ocean that night) stopped for the night due to the threat of icebergs, had attempted to warn the Titanic that there was ice ahead but was told by the Titanic operator to let be allowed to concentrate on sending passengers’ messages. The Californian's operator reacted by turning off its wireless and going to bed. Later in the night the Californian’s officers saw distress signals in the distance and informed their captain who after some debate decided to take no action, not even to wake the wireless operator (Rayment & Jonathan, 2011). At the time of the sinking, Titanic sent distress call for rescue, the Carpathian was the one who got the message and decided to respond but it took them 2 hour to get to the Titanic. This would have not being the case if the wireless signals of the Californian was not turned off, as they were only 19NM (nautical miles) from the Titanic and the Carpathian who responded was 56 NM.

The Neglect of duty has cost many organisation great loss; mostly financially; but in the case of the Titanic lives were lost. It is therefore important that every individual in the organisation knows and understands their duty and ensure the feedback is being sent to a superior to ensure proper accountability for individuals’ actions. The operators were key stake holders in the Titanic, they were responsible for receiving and sending information, this type of responsibility is crucial and proper attention and supervision should have being kept on the, by a superior (the captain of the ship)

STAKEHOLDER 

The investigators discovered that the Titanic had sufficient lifeboat capacity for all the first class passengers, but not for their other two classes. In fact, most third class or steerage passengers had no idea where the lifeboats were. It is very important in business to recognise that all your stakeholders count, especially if you the organisation deals with life (airline, manufacturing industries, food etc). Every organisation has to be aware of its moral and ethical side of the business to avoid corruption and loss of life.

“On average, each lifeboat could take up to 68 people. In total they could accommodate 1,178 people, almost half the amount of people on the Titanic. The shortage of lifeboats was not because of lack of  space, neither was that of cost consideration, rather, the White Star Line Company preferred to have the deck with grand views of the sea, which would have been blocked by installing more lifeboats” (Fu-Lai Tony Yu, 2012).

The case of Titanic is one that reveals the need for good leadership and governance in terms of ‘responsibility’ and a sense of stakeholder awareness. Stakeholder theory must answer two important question ‘What is the purpose of the firm?’ and ‘What responsibility does management have to stakeholders?’ (Maak & pless, 2006).

It is much needed that in all organisations when it comes to; ethics, transparency and accountability, there must be constant review of rules, regulations and standards to ensure professionalism, excellence and the security of lives and properties.

Remi Ademiju

BIZLEAD writer

07456958256

remiademiju@gmail.com

@remiademiju

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LESSONS FROM THE TITANIC

Titanic is a ship and a story that virtually everyone knows about (well, I want to believe so). What leadership and management lessons can we actually learn from it? This is what we will be discussing for the next few weeks. 

 The subject of governance mostly relates to accountability with finances, ethics and morals. But the governance issues with the Titanic was more of an accountability with regulation for professionalism.The titanic disaster was one that could have been avoided, just like many other disasters going on today in organisations. Before we go into details of the leadership issues and common mistakes in leadership, Here's a little story of the "Love ship", (as I like to call it).

JUST A LITTLE STORY:

On the 14^th of April 1912, The Titanic set out on her maiden trip from Europe to America (New York) with 2,223 passengers and crew on board. Despite several warnings of icebergs that were received from other ships by the Titanic, they were ignored and kept going at full speed, just four days into the journey, an iceberg was sighted 450m ahead, all attempts were made to prevent a collision with the iceberg, but it was to no avail. The collision with the iceberg resulted in the damage of the rivets holding the metal sheets together; and to cut the long story short, the ship sank in under 2 hours and 40 minutes. 

Of the 2,223 people on board, 1517 (68 per cent) died and only 706 (32 per cent) survived (Rayment & Jonathan, 2011). However, Titanic was not the only one out there on the North Atlantic Ice field, The nearest ship which was The Californian, which was at 19 NM (nautical miles, about 35km) from Titanic and had already turned off its wireless at midnight. The Carpathian, which was another ship 56 NM away, received the rescue call and headed its way to The Titanic. When Titanic launched a signal flare, the Californian that was traveling nearby did not take it as a rescue signal and left without stopping and at 4:10am, Carpathian arrived; 2hr 10 min after Titanic sank.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

From this short story, it is quite obvious that the Captain showed signs of nervousness and also appeared to be indecisive. For example he did not issue a full call for evacuation nor order his officers to load the lifeboats, He did not adequately organize the crew, He withheld crucial information from his officers and crewmen and gave ambiguous and impractical orders. He could have just done all of these, the moment he knew the ship was going to hit the iceberg. but instead, he panicked and waited too long to take an immediate action. Two leadership mistakes common to business leaders; Managers and CEOs to be precise are;

• ð  Misleadership: Most leaders and people in the position of leadership mislead when they have wrong information, but sometime it is out of character/attitude (e.g fear, anxiety, anger amongst a few). The moment the situation becomes chaotic some leaders become anxious which makes them make wrong decisions or make the right decisions at the wrong time like the captain of the Titanic. 
• ð  Situational leadership: This is actually a leadership theory. Situational theory is an act of changing or creating a decision as a result of the change in present situation. It recognises the fact that leaders don’t have to be stiff, but flexible as diff'rent strokes are for different folks. A change in situation is common because, things might sometimes  not go as planned, But instead leaders are not meant to allow the change in situation influence them negatively as it was in the case of the captain of My love ship :). 
• Lesson: Maintaining a state of calmness is the key to overcoming situations similar to that of The Titanic. Stay calm, Think, Strategize and Take action. It is rather easier said than done but this is the wisest thing to do. (I also think this is applicable to everyone else as well)

These are just a few major leadership mistakes or issues I have observed, and I am sure there are numerous lessons to learn from this story that we are all familiar with (I presume).  You can kindly drop your comments, contribute to this post on the comment section and try to stay calm in a "manic panic" situation . I will focus on governance (Board of Directors) in the next issue and thereafter stakeholders.

Remi Ademiju

BIZLEAD writer

07456958256

remiademiju@gmail.com

@remiademiju

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OVERVIEW AND MISSION STATEMENT

We live in a world where knowledge is key, where everything answers to knowledge. In order for people to grow, they must be willing to learn. BIZLEAD is an avenue for Business minded people to grow, to acquire knowledge, to think and share information and experiences. Here, we take a look at management and leadership in relation to business. We look into the minds of great mentors, of great Business Men, what makes business work, we look at productivity and improvement and we get to understand principles, strategies. BIZLEAD is set to open up our minds, to get us thinking, to get business right because we are heading towards change. So we employ you all to join us on the amazing journey to change, be imparted with knowledge, participate in discussions, Learn new things from amazing minds and stories and bring about a change that you want to see in our generation. 

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