Leadership Beyond Borders

Companies today should have plans to grow their businesses while increasing sales and profits, but there is more than one way to do this. Some growth strategies include market penetration, market development, product development, diversification and even acquisitions. But all of these strategies require a full understanding of how a business is currently performing and then identifying the right strategy to move forward. This is because a growth strategy involves more than simply envisioning long-term success. If you don't have a tangible plan and an approach method your chances of success diminish. In this episode, we talk about a method that helps companies increase their chances of being successful. A method that not only works for existing business but a method that can be used for start-ups.

All business planning begins and ends with the sales forecast, and sales is a hard job. Not too many Years ago prospective buyers had limited access to buyer-related information and relied on salespeople to provide the information they needed. And then the world changed, buyers became more empowered. All of a sudden buyers became digitally savvy and had access to a wealth of information. A lot of them actually tried to avoid interacting with a salesperson, until absolutely necessary. And just as salespeople began to adapt to these newly empowered customers the world changed again with the onset of COVID-19. The COBID-19 pandemic struck at the very heart of every business, sales. Companies focused on retaining existing customers at first and then realized that their long-term existence still depended on new customers, but the job of sales prospecting was even harder than before. This episode focuses on how to prospect effectively and win more new customers.

If you walk into a room with ten people and two of them are entrepreneurs, how would you recognize the two on sight? You probably would not until you started a conversation with them. Once in a conversation, you may recognize certain traits or a certain mindset often associated with entrepreneurs, but this does not mean that those two entrepreneurs are alike. Not all entrepreneurs follow the same path to get to where they are. In part I of this series we discussed how innovation is a component of entrepreneurship, in this episode we discuss how not every entrepreneur approaches innovation in the same way. In Part II of this 2-Part series we discuss the Entrepreneurial Mindset and Journey, and the different ways entrepreneurs approach the journey. We explore the contribution of different entrepreneurial styles and how they can contribute to teams and to the different stages in the entrepreneurial journey.

In December 2019 at the onset of COVID-19, we saw a wide array of responses form businesses and entrepreneurs. Many businesses moved their activities online while entrepreneurs sought out new opportunities in the crisis. But the one thing we did see was innovation. German Breweries started making hand sanitizers and tech companies developed tracking and tracing apps. Essentially innovation blossomed in light of the crisis. This episode is Part I of a 2-Part series that explores innovation and entrepreneurship. In this episode, we discuss the routes of innovation, how we can foster innovation and its relationship to entrepreneurship. In Part II we explore the Entrepreneurial Mindset and Journey. Why is this so important? Because Innovation increases our chances to react to changes and discover new opportunities. Entrepreneurship propels us forward with new solutions, helping us embrace change. This series provides us with timely insight into both innovation and entrepreneurship.

More now than ever we require a future perspective, which can take our discussions beyond current issues such as lockdown policies, social distancing, increasing and decreasing COVID-19 numbers, getting children back to school and everything else that occupies our minds daily.

Individuals, leaders, and organizations must have a vision of what kind of world we will be facing - a month from now and or even in the next decade. In this episode, we explore the visions of some great minds.

We ask if their visions are generally optimistic, seeing the pandemic as a once in a generation opportunity for positive change. Or do they believe we still have a long bumpy road ahead of us?

With the co-author and one contributor, of the book: Aftershocks and Opportunities – Scenarios for a Post-Pandemic Future, we discuss some of the opinions of the noted leaders that contributed to the book. While we try to imagine what our lives will look like ten months or even ten years from now.

Local Search is about ‘near me’ searches that were incredibly popular and based on intent, proximity, location optimization and relevance, the searcher was getting what they wanted in a very local sense.

Given the recent restriction of offline movement, one could ask how this has affected Local Search?

It would be natural to assume that it has dramatically fallen or even evaporated. Yet that’s not the case. As footfall has declined for most local retailers and other merchants, online visits and calls have grown. In other words, local search behaviour has shifted from generating driving directions to more website traffic and higher call volumes. At least that is what the data shows from a recent analysis done by the company Uberall locate in Berlin.

In this episode, we explore what has happened to the “near me” experience and what it means for the future of Search.

There are many models and theories concerning organization culture and if you have attended university you may have been taught many of them. The issue is that most of the models are based on either economical or psychological foundations. In this episode we question what would happen if we looked at organizational culture form another angle? What about if you used cognitive science to look at organizational culture? Most leaders think of organization culture as employee attitude and the way employees interact with their workplace is. Leaders very often think that they are the drivers of organization culture, but what if someone told them that culture really does not start of the top? What if someone explained to leader's that culture emanates from the people and practices within? This episode takes a new look at organizational culture, the myths we are taught and what we really need to do to make corporate culture shifts.

Everyone is talking about the new normal, and this new normal has changed our business practices, it also includes a flood of changes and new trends in tech. Software development has become more integral in every part of business and in every part of the world, meaning that new software development is having a great impact on our lives. While we cannot always predict what lies ahead for tech, but we are seeing new technology and new trends that will continue into the new decade. Deep learning: a subset of machine learning, Blockchain and other tech developments are some of the things we are seeing. New tech hubs are springing up in geographical regions we did not anticipate and in industry sectors that had a legacy for being slower in tech are speeding up. In this episode we discuss--the who, what and where of software development. We look at the latest trends and try to make some predictions on what will happen next.

During the Corona crisis, tech has been a blessing in many ways. But the use of tracking and tracing apps in various countries have raised the question whether we are putting our privacy at stake. In this episode of Leadership Beyond Borders we speak with Juergen Weichert, CRO of Munich based ad tech company Usercentrics. We talk about the use of tracking and tracing apps in the wake of the corona crisis and why the crucial question is how the data is being stored. We discuss the concept of Consent Management Platforms and help you understand how website and app operators can keep their Opt-in rates high whilst being legally compliant. We also take a glimpse at what the future holds for Consent and Preference Management and what website and app operators can do to be prepared, all this while keeping the end user in mind.

Business has certainly changed, today we are facing new challenge and new opportunities but even in the midst of this crisis business and negotiations must go on. We are operating in highly unusual and disrupted commercial environment today, therefore even the location of negotiations has changed, they may not be happening in the board room today but on virtual platforms. But no matter where discussions and negotiations are taking place and under what conditions and what altered business practices we have ; the principle of the negotiation process has not changed. Our circumstances may mean we are facing different kinds of discussions, negotiations, conflicts, disputes and difficult conversations today, with everyone from family members to clients and customers, but differences are still there, maybe even more prevalent than before. This is why the skill of negotiating has never been as important as it is today, and this episode helps you make the art of negotiation easier.