All businesses need a business problem solving strategy . . . .

Here is mine and it’s just four words . .  ”YOU ARE THE PROBLEM”.

Your business is a direct reflection on you. Problems in the business are problems in you. Staff imitate you.

What excites you excites them. What disinterest you disinterest them. Your interpretation of balance is their interpretation of balance.

Here is the longer version of this strategy . . .  ”What is the problem within you that is causing the problem in the business?” Address the problem in your own life and the problem will disappear in the business. Once you have it mastered your own problem, the business problem will disappear permanently (which is unlike with any other externally imposed solution).

You are an entrepreneur. When do you grow a business? From a platform of abundance or scarcity? . . . . .

Genghis Khan built one of the greatest empires from scarcity.

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Genghis Khan surrounded himself with people that had two characteristics i.e. they were brilliant in their own right and they were loyal . . . . . . . . .

Loyalty is not a strategy. If people continually do business with you you cannot give them a customer card and call it a ‘loyalty card’ – rewards and loyalty are not the same thing. more »

In business people want to be led; they appreciated and value leadership . . . . . . . . . They will buy into being led if the leader is confident and has a clear direction and strategy; it is better to be led (and make some personal and probably superficial compromises) than not to be led at all.

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Management Structure

Genghis Khan had a unique chain of command  . . . . .  every man was an officer who could make a decision. Unlike his enemies who had a centralized command system of ‘do, stop, wait’, his army was broken into hierarchical groups of units who independently could exploit any opportunity that came their way as long as it tied into the overall master plan of ‘defeat and destroy’.

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As an entrepreneur I have benefited for lessons of leadership and business from Genghis Khan . . . . . . . . . .

I love stories of successful leaders like Genghis Khan. He conquered ¾ of the known world in 1215.

I find his strategies useful for my business LIVEOUTLOUD South Africa.

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Leadership and Management with technology . . . . . . . . . .

Technology is the fastest growing luxury sector in the market today. This is where the big money is being spent.  This can mean a state of the art home entertainment system or even a diamond studded cell phone.

The savvy business leader or manager should harness the competitive edge of technology to lead his business into 2013. Never before has it been so inexpensive to harness technology to set you apart from the pack i.e. hardware or software applications that offer real value (not gimmicks)

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NOW 2013 is the time to lead . . . . . . . . . . Did business leaders actually ‘lead’ from 2008 to 2012?

I think not! On the contrary, we were led by the numbers and by circumstances. We were reactive. We adapted or we died. This period for business leaders and managers was all about survival.

Like Winston Churchill who led Great Britain through WWII we got ourselves and our companies through the mayhem. Winston Churchill was subsequently defeated at the polls in 1945 when the sounds of victory were still in the air; his heroic and stoic war time leadership was rejected because the world had changed!

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There is an old saying, “Too many chiefs and not enough Indians”  . . . .  It arrived at the Live Out Loud door, coughed, spluttered and fell down stone dead. We observed a moments silence for the death of this old adage and then got on with the business of running our company.

For this reason everybody is a chief at LIVEOUTLOUD. Each staff member is an expert in their field and the rest of the staff rally around that person offering suggestions and support. I am not the CEO when a truck needs to be unloaded – so I can help. I am not the CEO when the next magazine cover needs to be designed, – so I can suggest. I am not the CEO when the flow-through for our next event needs to be designed – so I can play devil’s advocate.

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