Archive for July 31, 2009

MarkEdwardBrown | July 28, 2009
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Leadership on Trial & the Week of Wonder

Service Member salute  Last week was one of wonderment and a trial of every ounce of my leadership ability.   One of my subject matter experts whom I placed my trust in that deals with all of the logistical and resourcing aspects of my organization let me down on several levels which led to the discovery of several key systems that were not in place or functioning as they should.

It was discovered that an item was missing and jr. leaders were aware of the fact however they were told not to inform me, my second in command or our senior enlisted advisor.  After reporting this initial loss and bringing back all of our employee’s to help search and recover this missing piece of equipment.

This event was so severe that it caused my boss to inform his boss who in turn issues some very clear guidance that saved my organization from having a dark day in it’s history books.  The order that was given was to interview every single member of my organization, face to face.  This process took all day and long into the evening, when I was interviewing one of the final persons that I had to question it was suggested that not all locations were searched or inspected thouroughly enough.

Once the additional or neglected locations were searched the lost item was recovered, almost miracoulously!  It turned out that there was in fact no loss but instead a theft!

Can you imagine my disappointment in some one whom I entrusted to protect other service members to discover this person was a theif?  What a test of leadership, I had just discovered that two of my people and several systems were virtually crippled leading to my organization being placed at an extreme disadvantage to both readiness and accountability.

Once the week was at it’s end I was thankful for the experience and humbled to know that I still have much to learn when it comes to balancing where I focus my attention in this fast paced environment.

What is one of the most memorable leadership trials or tribulations that you recall?  Leave a post or re-Tweet this message to get a really good dialogue started.

To Your Leadership Success,

Mark Edward Brown

Category: Leadership | Tags: , , , , , ,
MarkEdwardBrown | July 23, 2009
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Emerging Leadership Trends Via Social Networking

Oliver Wendell Holmes said “Man’s mind streatched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.”

BusinessLeader     Online leaders from all industries and professions are struggling to define their identities in today’s social networking world.  The number #1 way to capture your target markets attention is to engage them through social media. 

“Why is that”, you might ask?  You can not build a following, client list or market share online by using traditional offline tactics however I think you know that already.

So how does one start, why not take a small step forward and get started through micro-blogging, it’s a technique that is taking the social networking world by firestorm and the service that I recomend you use is Twitter.  With twitter you have 140 characters to get your message out and you had better not be spamming or coming across like a used car salesman – nobody likes a salesman so be your self and talk about topics that your target market are interested in.

Why not start by following me on twitter:  http://www.Twitter.com/MarkEdwardBrown

I tweet back and you can always come back here to leave a comment and discuss connection, networking and leadership in the social networking world.

To Your Social Networking Success,

Mark Edward Brown

Category: Leadership, Success, Connection & Networking | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
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