In today’s business landscape, companies have two choices — embrace innovation, or fade into obscurity. As a result, many companies are striving to develop a culture of innovation, where unconventional ideas are welcome, risk-taking is encouraged, and teams communicate openly.
Carlos Valdes Dapena is the managing principal at Corporate Collaboration Resources and the Author of Lessons from Mars. Carlos spent 17 years working for MARS incorporated, a global food and pet care industry. During his time with MARS, his career focus was around improving corporate collaboration within the organization, eventually leading the development of the Mars Framework for High-Performance Collaboration. After moving on from this role in 2017, Carlos continues to share his insights and best practices for team collaboration and leadership development through his book and consulting work.
Those who lead at a high level understand the important function of ‘the triple bottom line’ which regards three key areas: people, services and profit. This helps to focus attention and energy on a competitive vision for the future and concurrently enables effective management in the long run. Let’s learn something about the ways to create a committed workforce and a prosperous business through a strong vision and your organization’s collective culture.
In this episode, we were joined by Rebecca Zucker, the Founding Partner at Next Step Partners, an executive coaching and leadership firm in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York. With a background in business and finance, Rebecca began career in investment banking, eventually branching into international strategic planning while working in Paris. When she returned to the US, she returned to banking in a training and leadership capacity, which led her towards her current path of executive coaching where she now focuses on the people side of business.
Fostering alignment and generating buy-in is an important part of the strategic planning process that should be started early on. Although organizational and departmental leaders may be the ones in the strategic planning meeting, employees can and should be consulted prior to and after the session. Questionnaires, interviews, and face-to-face conversation are great ways to generate employee participation throughout the process.
Jacob Engel, the CEO of YEDA LLC, a consulting and leadership training company in New York joined us for this episode of our Strategy & Leadership Podcast. Jacob’s work began in his family business that was started by his father, a Holocaust survivor. Over time, Jacob developed this organization, and when the financial market crashed in 2008, he was approached by various organizations and communities for guidance on developing and reinventing their businesses. Jacob has also written about the leadership ideas that his father shared with him, in his book, The Prosperous Leader.
