Want to be a leader?

Want to have some fun? Go to the book section of Amazon.com, enter the keyword "leadership" and see how many hits you get. The last time I did this I got over 18,200 hits. Eighteen thousandtwo hundred! Why is there so much material on this one subject?

The law of supply and demand would say it is because people arebuying it. But I suspect there are other, more subtle reasons. One of those reasons is the underlying belief that leadership can be taught. With enough training, anybody can be a leader. The theory is that leaders are made, not born. Or are they? The other day a woman told me that she sees definite leadership traits in her son. I asked her how old he was. "Six," she replied. Too young to have been through any leadership training. So are leaders born or made? The answer is both.

The problem is that we often get fuzzy about what can and cannot betaught, and at the heart of the fuzziness is the difference between talent and skill. Talent is what we do well naturally. It is our bent. Talents are inborn, and can be discovered and developed. They cannot be taught. However, skills can. Skills are simply how to do something. They are learned and transferable. When we confuse talent and skill, we set ourselves up for disappointing expectations from training. What does this have to do with developing leaders? Everything.

For example, the ability to create vision and strategy is a key leadership trait. Some people have a talent for it. They do it naturally and continually. Others don’t. Both can learn some skills that will help them do it better. The difference is that the one with the corresponding talent can be excellent at it, while the other one can be adequate at best. Talent is required for excellence.

Here’s the bottom line for developing your leadership potential: become the leader you are designed to be. Discover your natural motivational talents, and build on them. Volunteer for assignments and training that complement your natural giftedness. Get on the track to excellence by aligning your development with your talents. There are all types of leaders. Some rouse and inspire. Some organize. Some are strategic, and some tactical. Some spot opportunities, and some protect against disaster. All are needed in this world of ours. What’s the best type of leader to be? The type you were designed to be.

What to look for in a CRM Tool

chWhile you deploy a CRM tool, you may need to consider the following options that could be helpful in the long-run.

Customisation
One of the features of CRM is that there is much more variance in the way the systems are set up and used than there is in, say, an ERP (accounting) system. Not only do differing types of business have significantly different ways of dealing with their customers but even within the same industry sales, marketing and service approaches can be markedly different. So when you start looking at CRM packages it is unlikely you will find one that is a 100% match for your requirements and the way you want to work. It is essential that you review how much flexibility there is in the software you are evaluating – not just for the requirements you have identified now but those for the future that you don’t yet know about. Some of the key areas to look at are considered below.

Screen layout
Usually if you install a system ‘out of the box’ the screens it will present you with allow you to do that you might not necessarily need. Typically you want the ability to remove fields that aren’t going to be used and move things around to reflect what is important to you and the way that you work.

Security
Most CRM systems will allow you to restrict the screens, reports or data a particular user can gain access to. Unless you have a very limited number of users this is essential and allows proper segmentation of people’s roles and responsibilities on the system. Data fields. Whilst a significant number of standard data fields will be provided with a system you won’t necessarily want or need all of them and more importantly there may be some information that is essential to you but can’t be recorded on the system as standard. In these circumstances you should be able to add the new data fields you want and ideally define what values can be entered in them.

Reporting
Many people, when considering a new system, will start by looking at the reports that can be produced and work back from there. Yet, it will be rare that the reports provided by the system are the ones needed by management or staff. In nearly every CRM implementation you will need to write a number of reports to meet the needs of the business so you must choose a system that allows this. You should look for a report writer built into the system or, better still, be able to use standard third-party report writers to access the data in a secure manner.

Workflow
Some advanced CRM systems incorporate a workflow engine which dictates a sequence of events that should occur with relevant people being notified by the system when they need to perform an action. If you have a large, sophisticated system planned you may need a method to modify and adjust these workflows to match your business processes. The degree of flexibility you get varies greatly from one system to another in each of these areas but generally it is the more expensive solutions that provide the greater customisation options.

Although this is not a comprehensive list, major considerations for the features the CRM tool in question offers are from these categories.