5 Reasons You Should Never Call Yourself a Leader.

Are you a leader or a manager? My guess is you are a manager. Because leaders are few and far between. It is a really sad mess we've ended up with in the whole leader/manager semantics. One definition of a leader according to the free dictionary is a "person who leads". That is obviously a ridiculous circular statement. Here's my 3 cents worth of why you should adamantly oppose the term leader when it comes to your or your direct reports' formal titles:

Alexander the Great (Wikipedia)

1. A leader is born, a manager is trained

I have been hiring and managing people for the better part of my life and once in a blue moon I have met people with a certain star quality that seems to attract other people. I have yet to achieve an understanding of the mechanisms surrounding this phenomena but that doesn't mean it isn't there. If you think back through your career and your interactions with people I'm pretty sure that you can come to think of someone that has had that weird effect on people around them. 

Management on the other hand is a skill, a profession, almost everyone can, with the right training and experience, become a good manager.

To drive it home: I hate sports analogies but do you honestly think that anyone could become a Tiger Woods, a Usain Bolt or a Lionell Messi? If you do you are more than welcome to continue calling managers leaders.2. Impossible standards imposed, not fair


The word leader invokes a certain picture in your head, admit it. It is an elevated position, slightly aloof, almost ethereal. We are just human and I think that the imagery of the leader is fairly hard to live up to.

3. Diminishes the manager

This is probably my biggest issue with the whole leader / manager labelling. You are being called a leader which imposes impossible standards upon you and makes you feel inadequate whilst you are an excellent manager and as such could be very proud of your contribution. Alexander the Great was a true leader but he was a terrible manager  (at least as far as we know), it seems leaders generally make for really really bad managers. If you start seeing leaders and managers as two different roles, with different talents and skill sets you will have come a long way. The title Master of Business Administration or MBA is implying you have mastered a craft. I have yet to see a curriculum that contains an MoL or Master of Leadership and truth be told; I wish it will never see the light of day.

4. Ridiculous associations (oh, great leader) 

In my world when we meet, and you call yourself a leader you will come across to me as probably a bit conceited, arrogant and/or not so bright. I don't know if it's some dimwitted HR-person (I'm not saying HR people generally are dimwitted, just this particular one) or better yet a management consultant that instigated the use of leader but it has definitely permeated the organisational vocabulary to pretty ridiculous levels. Look around you in your organisation and make a note of the people that have leader in their title and on their business card, then read through the points above again, I rest my case. Or, look at North Korea.

5. Leader is an honorary description

Very similar to the title "don" in Latin languages, leader, although not expressed in so many words is also something you cannot ascribe to yourself but only hope for others to call you. Personally I have as much respect for a true leader as I have for a really good manager, both are needed to make an organisation truly great.

Final caveat: Obviously there are numerous words in the English language that contains leader such as leadership and group leader, those have in my opinion transformed into slightly altered states although I would argue that people management and group manager well could replace those two.

Responsive Strategies - A New Approach.

Back in the late 90’s I worked as managing director in the Nordics for car rental broker Holiday Autos. We used to meet up for a strategy meeting in August, set the objectives and financial goals for next year. I remember them as well thought out events with lots of discussions.

We went home invigorated and set about the financial planning process, after acceptance from the board of directors we set about producing the brochure that would dictate our pricing for the next 7-8 months. Even for a fairly simple little publication like ours it was quite a monumental task which involved predicting currency fluctuations, weighted revenue analysis and other fun things.

Going into the new millenium we sensed that something was fundamentally flawed with the model, we had launched our online presence and we saw our clients referencing the web since it provided you with a much more visual experience, up to date information on car models and full bookability without having to wait sometimes up to 20 minutes on the phone, and, it instantly calculated the total price for the duration (due to space constraints the brochure could only display the price for 7 days).

So, we decided to ditch the brochure, for those of you not familiar with travel & tourism, the printed brochure was and still is in many places as holy a thing as you can get in an industry so it was no small decision. Needless to say we never went back. It increased our pricing agility, it increased our bottom line by 35%, it lowered our currency exposure and made the customer experience better.

So, what has this to do with strategy you ask? Well it’s a small but significant example of the changes in the approach to strategic work we’ve seen in the last 20 years. Back then we had a very linear, chronological approach which worked brilliantly. Then the web happened. New technological advances called for a different way of devising strategies. Hence the real breakthrough for Mintzberg’s Emergent Strategies. Emergent strategy is a set of actions, or behavior, consistent over time, “a realized pattern [that] was not expressly intended” in the original planning of strategy. The term “emergent strategy” implies that an organization is learning what works in practice.

Fast forward to 2014: Today with the advent of social media, semantic web and the whole virtual thunderstorm of changes we see online every day the question arises whether even this model is getting dated. Startups are talking about pivoting the business model every 18 months or so i.e. turning everything they do on the head and changing course 180 degrees! And we are talking about their core business proposition. It would probably be the equivalent to going from running an ice cream stand to starting an airline. 95% of the conversation about you is happening behind your back. No wonder people get confused.

I still believe we need a strategy, don’t get me wrong. We need an idea of what we want to do (vision), what actions to take to achieve it (mission statement) and the who, what, when’s of those actions (tactical planning). Just don’t fall in love with your mission statement or your tactical planning, perhaps not even your vision because every monday you will have to start all over again. So what to do?

Time for some Psychobabble

I believe that in times of uncertainty those most fit for survival are firmly grounded in a logical set of beliefs, understand their own voice and have a realistic idea of who they are. The same applies for companies as well as humans, one of the more significant changes in organisations over the last twenty years have also been how much more similar to a biological organism they’ve become.

So, as a company, understand who you are and your voice, then go about setting broad outlines on your strategic plans, if they work out like a dream, congratulations. But, keep your ears to the ground and be prepared to bail and alter direction at all times when you hear the stampede of change, very few of us have the luxury of being the changers and have to accept that we are mere followers and that when the freight train of change comes it’s better not to stand on the tracks. I’d even like to go as far as inventing a new buzzword: Responsive Strategies, remember where you heard it first.

Are You on Google Plus? No? Think Again. Part 1.

I guess most of you have heard about Google+ by now. What you might not have heard about is that Google+ have passed 1 billion users. Only in June there was about 500 million registered users and suddenly kaboom, another 500 million or so.

What happened? Well, people are talking about Youtube comments and how they are linked to the Google+ universe but to a large extent YOUR business happened. Part one of Are You on Google Plus.. will be a quick introduction and then we'll dive into the commercial aspect of local search also address some issues with specific problems in Norway and maps (not all ‘grisgrente strøk’* show up in Google).

Google have fairly silently created Google+ Local ‘Places for business’ for basically everything that creeps, crawls, walks or flies. Or at least all businesses with a physical location, in the whole world. In Norway alone we conservatively estimate number of added businesses to at least 150.000. So why is this important to you as a business owner?

As you know, Google powers a lot of the searches on the Internet. I mean, a lot.

It is also common consensus that in 2015 over of 50% of all searches will be done from a mobile phone and they will be contextual, by contextual I mean dependent on where and when you search and what you are likely to be looking for. It will also be conversational, it feels foolish to talk to your phone right now but just wait a year. And, if Google says it will happen it will, or rather, if not by itself, Google will make it happen, that much we know.

And, you are on Google+ whether you like it or not. It’s up to you to take ownership of that information. Google will reward you for it. When people search on mobile Google+ listings will be the first information shown to users, especially if you are close by. But there are other reasons:

Above is an example of a fitness studio in Stockholm. They are part of a big chain with a very friendly brand. Their message is that fitness is for everyone. Here we have four problems as I see it:

1. I don’t think they normally communicate super ripped 8-pack stomachs in their marketing, if you are not in control of your imagery Google will pick whatever it finds.
2. There are 7 reviews that have gone unanswered, when you've claimed your page you have the possibility to answer and make things good again. Me personally I’d rather hear what people say behind my back rather than not.
3. They are defined as a Gym rather than a Fitness Facility, it might not mean the world to you but in their trade a gym is signalling 110 kg bulls rather than your average Joe.
4. Is the rest of the information correct, opening hours, facilities, special offers (yes you can do that), upcoming events (yes you can do that as well).

My friends at Sulseter Rideleir have claimed their page, they look like this:

They are in control of their images, can post video, answer reviews etc. No big deal you might think, well, this is how a search is presented in Google:

Hopefully you are now starting to see the big picture. The thing on the right is pulled directly from their Places for Business page. And if I was in Vinstra and Googled ‘Things to do’ in Google Now I bet quite a lot they will end up Top Dog. And this doesn’t have to cost you a penny.

However, it also gives you the opportunity to go Ultra Local in your advertising; ‘2 for 1 dinner offer to people on mobile within 1 km of my place of business between the hours of 16:00 and 19:00 monday - thursday.’

So, go claim your Places for business now, or, ask someone to help you with it today. You can thank me later.

I repeat, I conservatively estimate that about 150.000 businesses in Norway alone now have pages on Google+. And do go horse riding at Sulseter, they are a great bunch.

P.S. And of course you've taken care of your listing on TomTom, 1881.no, gulesider.no, Facebook Local, Yelp, Tripadvisor, 4square, Mapquest, Guide Michelin, Anbefalt.no, Apple Maps, Nokia Maps, Finn.no, Vibb.no, 180.no, Visitnorway.com?

* Grisgrente strøk = Middle of nowhere