How different is Leadership from Public Speaking?

I went to Milan yesterday for lunch. It sounds rather exotic but it had a serious underlying purpose. The lunch was being hosted by The British Chamber of Commerce in Italy and as we’re interested in joining the Chamber their invitation was an opportunity to find out more. It also allowed me to meet new people, talk about our business and expand our list of contacts here in Italy. And, the 1½ hour drive was a pleasant change, fog excluded.

It was a worthwhile investment as not only did I meet some nice people and eat a nice lunch but I was also reminded of 2 very important things:

Are your Green Projects a sickly shade of Gray?

It’s time to get back to basics.

Green IT 2.0 is getting a lot more publicity but what is it? Put simply it’s about using technology to enable greener business practices. That means deploying IT in smarter ways so it’s used to enable further reductions in the total carbon footprint of a company. I read some Forrester research recently and they cited an example where Tesco has found IT’s contribution to their carbon footprint is only 4% but that it has the enabling potential to reduce their total footprint by 20%, which regardless of the calculator you use equates to what could be huge cost savings.

Good news indeed, especially with regards to the other elephants in the room – Climate Change and the ongoing Global Economic Crisis.

But what of Green IT projects themselves? Are they defined, organised, or delivered in a different way to any other project? And, how can these projects enable greener business practices not just to reduce a carbon footprint but to also increase business process efficiency?

5 Steps to Maximise Leadership Success

Have you ever been thrown in the deep end of a new role and asked to work miracles?  What are the first things you do when you're asked to take on a poorly performing team, department, or project in chaos?  Do you leap in like the caped crusader to save the world or are you overly consultative in an attempt to make friends and influence people?

We know how challenging these situations are and we also know that they can be exceptionally rewarding.  To help you swim through the mud we've put together a list of the 5 practical steps that we know work.  Why do we know they work?  Because they're what we do and we've proven their success time and time again. These 5 steps will help you set the scene, quickly establish credibility, build trust and maximize the chances of success.

Try them and let us know how you get on.