At a certain point in your career path, you are expected to have a set of skills that allows you to continue to climb the career ladder. Generally, if you are at the higher steps, management and leadership skills are at the top of the qualifications list. Their meanings are likely interchangeable for the majority of us, but an enlightening piece by the Harvard Business Review explains how they are two very different concepts inside an organization.

To sum up:

• Management. All those practical tasks like budgeting, planning, defining strategies, directing and monitoring the work of a team, measuring performance and, ultimately, taking corrective action when necessary. This is a crucial role, especially if we talk about senior management.
• Leadership. Has more to do with attitude than with concrete duties. As the article says, “leadership is about vision”, which in the business arena especially means taking an organization into the future, by seizing opportunities and producing changes. Leadership is also connected to the concept of empowerment, which is essential in human resources. The stage in my professional life where I had to significantly grow and strengthen my leadership skills was when I joined Marcegaglia. I had a team to manage and coordinate and I needed to choose what kind of “boss” I wanted to be. I went for empowerment. In my experience, one of the key elements that make you a successful leader is guiding people through example. You empower them step-by-step: at first you work alongside them and you carry out tasks together, then you leave them to roll along on their own. Thus you help them develop their competencies and, at the same time, you earn authority and credibility.

One point I would like to add about leadership is that isn’t necessarily something you have in your DNA: nobody is self-taught. I’ve actually learned and developed the so-called “soft skills” through coaching and leadership courses, which I highly recommend for anyone aspiring to build a career and even for personal growth reasons. One of the lessons I especially put into practice every day is to, as a leader, draw pleasure and satisfaction when you see people around you grow and reach their goals.

If you have any comments, input or observations, feel free to share them here. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts.

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Any time you want to make new moves in your business, from introducing a new product line to expanding into new markets, you need to evaluate the competition first. That’s obvious and I take it for granted that everyone reading this post right now is routinely keeping tabs of their competitors – I’m right, aren’t I?

What I wanted to do today is to look at some of the different ways to research the competition:

• Google search. This is the very first step in your competitive intelligence analysis and also the easiest and fastest. You don’t even have to leave your desk, you just need to do some Googling and you’ll come up with all sorts of information: Web pages, blogs, social media, feedback from customers, etc etc. Depending on the nature of your business, some of these channels might not apply, but what I’d suggest is to be ready to leave your comfort zone. I operate in an extremely technical industry but this is no reason I can’t have a blog and share ideas with business professionals worldwide.
• Customer inquiries. Now I’m used to dealing with the Internet, online marketing and blogs, but I come from an age where competitive intelligence was carried out through traditional approaches, like simply speaking to customers. If you gain a new customer, you can find out a lot of valuable information, from who they used before to why they switched suppliers. And the same applies if you lose a customer: ask why.
• Supplier inquiries. If you operate in a business where you and your competitors share the same suppliers, then you might take advantage of that. It’s trickier, because suppliers may not explicitly unveil your competitor’s orders or volume, but you might be able to infer additional information by asking different kinds of questions. Like I did when I was younger — see the next checkmark.
• Competitor on-site inquiries. I’m not sure how doable it is nowadays. but when I was appointed sales manager for the first time I did real on-site research on my competitors. I actually went in person to the plant, driving for miles by myself to reach the place and trying to collect first-hand information — by chatting with the employees, for instance. I would approach them in a coffee bar and ask questions like “How do you like working here?”, “Are you paid well?”, “How many of you are there?”, which could give me an idea of my competitor. As I said, this is not that easy today, but what I have learned is that getting to know your competition well means digging deep: just as in the past browsing a brochure wasn’t enough, so today the same applies with browsing the Internet. In my opinion, relationship-based and live research (for example, by attending a conference or trade fair) are still highly valuable in terms of competition monitoring.

If you have any comments, input or observations, feel free to share them here. I’d be happy to know your thoughts.

If you wish to be advised on my next posts and to receive additional material and updates soon, please leave your email-address here.

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Discover the Secret Data about the Price War in the CYLINDER BUSINESS.

If you have any comments, input or observations, feel free to share them here. I’d be happy to know your thoughts.