The contemporary leader is a part-Confucius, part-Aesop, part-Buddha. Success is having a repertoire of metaphors for each business function –
1. Marketing: Solutions depend on the targeting the right segment.
2. Sales: Create the headache, sell the aspirin.
3. Logistics, Operations and Production: We need to innovate our roadmap with benchmarks, milestones, nodes, and hubs and spokes.
4. Human Resources: We’re here to grow human capital and to develop human assets so that they may climb the career ladder, the greasy pole, and the stairway to mahogany row.
5. Finance: Remember that time is money, and that liquid of assets aren’t as important as cash flow.
6. IT: We need to develop an agile platform, to springboard to the next level.
7. Legal: Our blueprint is a template for a precedent. But don’t quote me.
8. Strategy: We’re on a journey powered by the business cycle, laying chess with our competitors; our comparative advantage is in our ideas, which are left field, out of the box, and lateral.
9. Leadership: Depending on the situation, work is sport, a game, or a war. It takes a long time to turn this ocean liner, all hands on deck and to the wheel, or both, as we sink or swim with or without the sharks.
10. Governance: Shift that paradigm, change the landscape, steer – don’t row.
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