Monday, January 19, 2015

People Do Not Follow Programs, But Leaders Who Inspire Them



Employee motivator - an interesting word combination which stopped you for a while to analyze all your “motivators” and “demotivators”. And you’re sure to experience both in your life.

Very few people think that most of their, as well as, company’s success depends on the leader. As Erskine Bowles said: “Leadership is the key to 99 % of all successful efforts”. It’s a reality, leader is a person who gives you wings or in the worst case drops you down. Once I read “Everything rises and falls on leadership”, so true. I’m quite sure everyone practiced this in his life and not just once.

Leadership is a hard process, not earned in one day, it’s an everyday hard work. The better leader you want to be, the more you should work.

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it” - General Dwight Eisenhower

We call people “great leaders” not because of their inner power, but the great ability to empower and inspire others. As John Maxwell stated “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way”. From the first sight nothing difficult, agree?

Before becoming a leader you spend all your efforts for self-growth – not an easy process. But when you are a leader you help others grow – even more effortful and more difficult work.

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others” - Jack Welch

Now when I experienced both good and bad leaders’ influence, I can say that good leadership doesn’t depend on nationality, skin color, age or gender. In the process of becoming a great leader one should be good personality first of all.

While motivating an employee, you've got to engage not only his mind, but also his heart.
And how this could be done? Firstly make believe in you. Belief is everything! It would be likewise a good idea to readily listen to your employee and value his point of view – normal human behavior – nothing more!

Leadership, as everything in our life, can be taught as well as influence can be developed.

Friday, January 16, 2015

Year in Review - 2014 Record-Setters




A great year passed, another one awaits. It really passed so fast and now I think if I should continue my monthly acquisition reporting another year. It was quite interesting for me to see the world’s giants becoming even more powerful with every new deal. I don’t remember any deal to be unworthy. Correct me, if it’s not so.

Google was the winner by the number of deals made in 2014. AT&T made the “mammoth” deal of the year. I cannot, but express my personal opinion - I consider Oracle the best deal maker of the year, as my career changed with one of its acquisitions during 2014. 


I pulled together the best deals of 2014 and all the mentioned acquisitions are game-changing purchases:



Google

  • Google Buys Nest ($3.2 billion)
  • Google Buys Skybox Imaging ($500 million)
  • Google Buys Deepmind ($500 million)



Facebook

  • Facebook Buys Oculus - $2 billion
  • Facebook buys WhatsApp - $19 billion



Oracle

  • Oracle Buys Micros Systems - $5.3 billion



Microsoft 
  • Microsoft Buys Mojang - $2.5 billion



Apple

  • Apple Buys Beats - $3 billion



Lenovo

  • Lenovo Buys Motorola - $2.9 billion



Comcast

  • Comcast buys Time Warner - $45 billion



AT&T

  • AT&T buys DirecTV- $48 billion