Leadership and Concensus
There is a school of thought that tends to relate consensus with leadership. While you could define this as a completely democratic way of utilizing leadership, it typically increases bureaucratic issues and the time it takes to make decisions. This is especially true given that any one individual doesn't assume the responsibility for making a decision.
In my opinion a more effective approach is to utilize group discussions to uncover concerns, ideas, or opportunities for improvements prior to the final development of an initiative or making a decision. This way you can include ideas from your team when and where it makes the most sense in order to gain higher levels of buy-in. The rest of the process is in the leader's ability to effectively lead his or her team to the right conclusion by asking a series of leading questions. This way the group can come to their own conclusions via the path that is carved out by the leader. If done effectively your people will ultimately end up at the right destination.
While democratic leadership models have flaws, so do those that are autocratic in nature. I personally believe the right model is somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. I like to define our leadership culture at The Employment Guide and www.EmploymentGuide.com as "controlled autonomy." While this is an oxymoron, this terminology does a good job in defining the way we give our leaders definable parameters by which to make local decisions within the breadth of their authority. Anything that falls outside of this scope will ultimately need senior manager approval. This provides balance while keeping our organization nimble and flexible as to better deal with current and emerging competitive threats. You can use our leadership style at all levels in order to better improve performance while remaining engaged in your business.
Consensus can also work against a leader if they allow themselves to be lead more by their team than leading. If a manager becomes to dependent on their team to direct the business the leader then becomes more of a facilitator verses a true leader. Once a leader is removed from the navigation and ownership of the business they are likely to fail. The line between leading and being lead can occasionally become fine in nature. My advice is when you, as the leader feel that these lines are about to cross be sure to quickly review your objectives and the need to make decisions based on the needs of the business verses what is best for the individual. The most effective leaders have a way of creating the perception that both of these objectives are parallel and intertwined into an organizations culture.
How would you define your leadership style?
4 comments:
My leadership style is best described as hopefully helping the EmploymentGuide in online domination and moving upward and assisting the rest of the Dominion Enterprises subsidiaries into a similar position...And one question I will pose to you...wouldn't ranking in Google for terms like "Washington jobs" and "Georgia jobs" and "Florida jobs" bring in a significant chunk or not only traffic (visitors), but of revenue as well? You have more leverage over a possible client, at least in the online world, by showing them that you appear in relevant searches that would only give them a wider selection of possible candidates to choose from. Because running searches using those terms, I always see the competition like careerbuilder and jobing, ahead of employmentguide. Just some random thoughts of mine though...
In response to SEOhno...
What you are describing in your comment is actually SEM or also known as Search Engine Marketing. SEO stands for search engine optimization which describes the ability of websites to increase in the organic (free) rankings on the search engines by the effective use of the content, design, links, etc.
While I do not want to go into specifics on our strategy as an electronic business here in this comment, I will simply state that given our targeted demographic of user we have historically found more value and higher conversions by focusing our search efforts locally. If you would like more specifics feel free to give me a call at my office 757-351-8050.
Again, just letting random thoughts flow here but I am in the business of SEO/SEM and have had the chance to work on a variety of different sites, in a variety of different verticals, from Fortune 500 company websites, to little mom and pop shops, and I really wasn't discussing the marketing aspect because that is not what would be happening, at least not in a traditional marketing sense.
As you stated, SEO is done to gain natural rankings in the search engines by "optimizing" all the things you mentioned, and therefore proving to the spider that you are "relevant" and deserve be ranked for a particular keyword.
And even if you are targeting a certain demographic, as you said the best way to get any business is by dominating the market, which can easily be done with a targeted local search effort.
The problem is, as I was pointing out is, from my perspective of someone who lives, breathes, sleeps, and loves the SEO world, the "focused" local search effort, I just don't see.
Compared to the other guys, your site is one that would to have to only make slight changes in the coding structure and actual on-page content, in order to quickly move up in local search rankings. You have the potential to overtake the competitors in each and every single market, but looking at things now...it is far from focused.
For instance, doing a search for "atlanta jobs", I see employmentguide at number 7. Now when I look at the site from an SEO standpoint, it seems to me that there is no "focused" search effort at all. But I don't even need to look at the code and I can see why the competitor ranks higher for that keyword. And when I do look at the code, it shows me a lot. Granted there is onpage content with mentions about "atlanta jobs" and such, but doing a search for "austin jobs", we see the competition again ranking higher for that term. And when I look at the onpage content of the employmentguide...wait a minute! Haven't I read that before? Oh wait, it's duplicate content which unfortunately spiders notice. Especially Googlebots.
Even forgetting the duplicate content issue running rampant throughout, and getting back to looking at the code, from my standpoint it looks like you are trying to rank the page that shows up for "atlanta jobs" with, and excuse me as I am about to cut and paste here, (Atlanta part time jobs, hourly jobs, part time jobs for teens, jobs part time, careers, employment, Job Fairs, job search, hourly, employers, resumes, post a job, fast app, ads plus, career advice).
Now I don't know about you, but if I am looking for a job in Atlanta, I am definitely not going to be using over half of the terms that are describing the page for the spiders. Sorry but keywords like "hourly", "post a job", and "fast app" are definitely not my definition of focused LSO, or local search optimization. Why can I state this fact? Because I have done many, many LSO campaigns and they all had a running theme in them. They were successful number one. And number two, each page that I was trying to get ranked was targeted, which is the keyword here, towards the specific market I was going after.
And some of the keyword choices only further show to the spiders that compared to the competitors, you are not as relevant and honestly don't deserve to be ranked higher than them. That is what SEO is about - proving to the spiders that you are more relevant than the next guy. Because even without the duplicate content that is throughout the site, to this SEO aficionado, it doesn't look very focused at all. In fact, it sorta looks all over the place. Because looking at who is number one in the "atlanta jobs", there is no reason why the employmentguide is not number one.
That goes for every market that the employmentguide is in, and that directly translates to any market Dominion is in as a whole. Because they have a huge advantage over anyone who trys to compete with them, and that is they are huge, which in the SEO translates into more relevant than the next guy.
Again it all how you use that leverage, and no offense to whoever does the SEO (assuming someone does currently do it), but there aren't SEOing in a way that would help rankings.
And if there is an SEO person, shame on you! Duplicate content? Come on, are you serious? Again after rambling on for a bit, in the verticals that Dominion is in all that is needed is a quality SEO campaign. And honestly I haven't even really looked into the other verticals that Dominion is in online but I can bet dollars to doughnuts that there are not where they should be. After that, the natural rankings that any site receives is marketing enough. SEM is actually a whole other beast to tackle...
Thank you for your input. It is obvious that you are very passionate about your craft. It sounds like we could benefit from your level of knowledge in terms of coding structure and actual on page content. We certainly want to have a quality and effective SEO campaign that utilizes the practices of local search optimization. In addition to sharing your thoughts with our folks, I would love to pick your brain more so we can continue to improve. We are an organization that is continuing to learn, develop, and grow. Let me know if you are interested in providing us additional assistance. My email is jeff.littlejohn@employmentguide.com. Thanks again for your comments and feedback.
Post a Comment