5 Bussines Tips From Obama

 It's just the usual caveat, that every situation is different and so
everyone's challenge and opportunity, resources, strengths, and
weaknesses are different. But I think there are some general
principles:

1. The first is to have a very clear theory about how you're going to
be successful so that you can make all of your decisions around
that.
2. Secondly, to have great interaction in person so that everybody
is important to you, your employees, your customers, and your
shareholders, if that's appropriate. Understand what your strategy
is so that they understand how they fit into it. I think, if you're
asking people to contribute their time, their money, their talent,
and their career, they obviously have their own individual jobs they
do, but my sense is they will do a better job if they understand how
it fits.
3. Three, if you're trying to reach people, and most people in
business are, you've got to be in every avenue possible. You just
can't be on TV anymore. You also just can't be online. You've got
to try to reach people, human being to human being. You've got to
try to reach people through television and radio. You've got to
reach people online. You've got to reach people on social
networking sites, and what makes that harder is you just can't be in
those spaces. Your communication has to be in alignment. You
can't have your television advertising message differ from your
internet strategy. You've got to step back and say, are we
congruent in our efforts in the message, whether that's about your
brand, your product, or service.
4. Another thing would be to have clear metrics so that your
evaluation, both of your overall performance and the performance
of your employees is not subjective. And how are these metrics
understood? So that when you're doing an evaluation with an
employee, you take as much of the subjectivity out of it as
possible. And by the way, if you've got people in your organization
where you can't apply metrics to them, they probably shouldn't be
there.
5. And then I think to basically be unafraid to chart your own
course. Even if that course is questioned by others and not fully
understood because I do think in all enterprises, if you're just
following old pathways or with a slight adjustment, maybe you'll
succeed in the short term, but it's hard in my view, to envision
someone like that getting a foothold over time.I think you've got to

be willing to chart your own course and not be afraid to fail. That's
very common advice, but it's true. We were not afraid to fail, and I
think if you're willing to go out there and chart a new course,
maybe a ground-breaking strategy, and you don't succeed, you lose
not because you screwed up, it's just because, hey, there wasn't a
marketplace for it. I think the people who really, really succeed are
all those who are willing to color outside of the lines a little bit and
think of things that haven't been thought of before, and that gives
you the greatest upside I think.