Tara Turkington | CEO | Flow Communications | mail me |
Over 21 years of building a business have taught me many lessons about people, leadership, and sustainable growth. These lessons apply across industries and business environments. They also offer valuable guidance for South African business leaders navigating changing markets, evolving technologies, and complex workplaces.
Together, they provide practical business leadership strategies for building resilient organisations.
Build business success by investing in people
Yes, it is a cliché, but it remains true. People, not resources, build a company. Therefore, take time to choose the right people. Hire slowly and fire fast.
A company’s numbers and fundamentals always matter. However, its people matter even more. Effective business leadership must put people at the centre of organisational performance.
The principle extends beyond employees and internal teams. It also applies to partners, clients and other stakeholders.
It includes the people you impact and influence. It also includes the work you choose to pursue. Surround yourself with people who share your values. In turn, you can do great things together. You can also help make the world a better place for everyone. However, choosing the wrong people can have the opposite effect.
Develop leadership at every level of the organisation
The best leaders build other leaders rather than diminish them. Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown explored this principle in their classic 2010 leadership book, Multipliers. Nelson Mandela also showed that leadership does not depend on position. Anyone can lead through their actions, attitude, commitment and innovation. Therefore, organisations should recognise leadership potential at every level.
This approach should form part of broader business leadership strategies. It creates opportunities for people to contribute beyond their formal positions.
Prioritise long-term client relationships over short-term gains
Business leaders should consider long-term client partnerships and potential. They should not focus only on making money from every project. Sometimes, loss leaders can develop into valuable and sustainable relationships.
Clients who keep coming back are often the best ones to have. They can also introduce businesses to new relationships and opportunities. Consequently, businesses should view relationships as long-term assets rather than individual transactions.
Make attitude part of your hiring and leadership strategy
You can teach skills, but attitude is far more innate. Consider how often someone’s attitude has impressed you. It can make you want to work with that person. Conversely, a poor attitude can quickly discourage collaboration.
Having a great attitude counts for a lot, especially during difficult times. It inspires confidence and deepens trust. Leaders should therefore consider attitude alongside qualifications and technical skills when building teams.
Build business resilience through grit and perseverance
There is no success without grit. Most ventures do not last more than a year or two. Therefore, businesses should expect setbacks and lean periods. When hardship arrives, leaders need resilience. They need to demonstrate it repeatedly. Without grit, businesses and individuals may struggle to survive difficult periods.
Resilience should therefore remain an important component of business leadership strategies. Leaders must prepare teams for uncertainty rather than assume that growth will remain consistent.
Make quality a foundation of sustainable business growth
Quality means doing the best possible work for every client. That standard should apply regardless of the client’s size. Consistently delivering quality encourages clients to return. It also encourages them to say positive things about the business.
Quality involves more than outstanding creative output. It also requires stringent quality assurance. Nothing can undermine a great plan or damage client satisfaction like poor attention to detail.
Build leadership confidence and inspire confidence in others
Social psychologist and former Harvard professor Amy Cuddy delivered a widely viewed TED Talk on body language. She argues that body language influences how others perceive us. She also argues that it can influence how we perceive ourselves.
Her work offers a useful lesson for leaders. People can develop confidence by consciously projecting confidence. Read this TED blog about how you can fake it until you become it. It explains how you can inspire confidence in yourself and then in others. The blog also contains a link to her talk.
Create a positive workplace culture through fun
Having fun is a serious matter. Therefore, organisations should create opportunities for it. A healthy dose of whackiness can do wonders for workplace culture.
Leaders should encourage people to take joy in their work and in each other. They should also create opportunities for colleagues to know one another. Do not take yourself too seriously. However, always take your work seriously.
Most importantly, create opportunities for fun simply for the sake of it. A positive culture can also strengthen employee relationships, creativity, and collaboration. These factors should feature prominently in business leadership strategies.
Focus business strategy on what needs attention
Business leaders should focus their attention on the areas that require action. If you need sales, focus on sales. If quality or customer service needs improvement, focus on achieving it.
If systems need upgrading, make the upgrade happen. The principle remains straightforward. Focus on what needs your attention. Clear priorities help leaders turn strategy into action. They also prevent organisations from spreading limited resources across too many competing priorities.
Use teamwork to strengthen business performance
Yes, this is another cliché. However, synergies within and between teams can create significant value. Leaders should foster creativity and teach skills across functions. They should also encourage continuous learning.
When teams support and inspire each other, they create stronger outcomes. None of us can do everything alone. Therefore, organisations achieve more when people combine their strengths. The whole can become greater than the sum of its parts.
Strong teamwork also provides a practical foundation for effective business leadership strategies. Leaders can create better outcomes by connecting expertise across organisational boundaries.
Embrace business innovation and technological change
Never stop learning. Business leaders should lead when new technologies and systems emerge. They must also remain prepared to explore unfamiliar territory.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides a contemporary example. AI is radically changing almost every aspect of what we do. Businesses therefore need to learn how to use it effectively. They must do so quickly and creatively. Otherwise, they risk falling behind.
Business leadership strategies must therefore account for technological change. Leaders need to create environments where people can experiment, learn and adapt.
Combine business strategy with optimism and hope
Hope is a good thing. We all hope for things. We hope for a brighter future and for our children to succeed. We also hope that our work will make a difference.
Optimism and hope provide a useful foundation for facing the future. However, businesses cannot run on hope alone. Successful businesses need a clear-eyed, focused, and bold strategy. Leaders must therefore combine optimism with deliberate action and strategic direction.
The strongest business leadership strategies balance ambition with practical execution. Leaders need both a compelling vision and a clear route towards achieving it.
Align organisational culture with business strategy
It remains unclear which captain of industry coined this phrase. However, its meaning remains clear. A good workplace culture influences how people get work done.
No matter how brilliant a business strategy appears, culture can undermine its execution. A strategy will fail if the company’s people, values, and daily behaviours do not support it. Therefore, leaders must ensure that organisational culture reinforces strategic objectives.
This alignment remains central to effective business leadership strategies. Leaders need to ensure that employees understand both the strategy and the behaviours required to deliver it.
Define your business purpose and use it to guide decisions
A business purpose is not simply about making money. That represents the what rather than the why. Instead, leaders should ask a more fundamental question. What is the point of the business?
Simon Sinek explores this subject in his TED Talk and his book, Start with Why? If you do not know why you are doing what you do, you can lose direction. The same applies when you cannot explain why you chose a particular industry.
In conclusion
A clear purpose provides direction for decisions, relationships and organisational priorities. For one business, that purpose centres on doing work its people love. It also involves working with people they like on projects that can make a positive difference in the world.
For other organisations, the purpose will look different. The important lesson remains the same. Leaders should understand their purpose and ensure their people can connect their work to it.
Ultimately, purpose gives business leadership strategies a clear foundation. It helps leaders connect people, culture, strategy, and long-term organisational goals.
