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5 Creative Evolutionary Leadership Niche Strategies!

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I have a short story to share with you about an important skill many leaders need to develop, use and perfect.

Life is a journey. The signposts along the path pointing out the way are many and are sometimes hard to understand.

We hear news stories telling us it is the dawning of a knowledge-based society. As a leader, you may wonder about the amount of knowledge that is reported to be so plentiful.

You recognize the many difficulties challenging you, weakening your leadership power and reducing your control over Fate.

Where can people like you and your associates carry the burdens hidden in the vast amounts of data flooding your mind everyday?

Would you like to know what your leadership responses should be when facing your universe of fragmented situations, advantages and information?

How could you shape your confusing array of facts, figures and incomplete thoughts into creatively elegant solutions, new products or transformational strategies?

This article describes how you can use your understanding of basic evolutionary forces to:

=> Sort through and identify root causes

=> Discover new opportunities and sources for innovation

=> Create a strategic focus on mission-critical priorities

=> Evolve solutions to challenges or complex problems

=> Use synergy, syntropy and synergetics to grow or prosper

Niche Strategy-1: Use historical developments to sort through and identify root causes

When describing the force of evolution, biologists invest their efforts into studying, analyzing and evaluating the history of development concerning the group of interest to them.

To better understand the improvements, problems solved and progressions accomplished by a biological species, you must determine what caused, threatened or influenced those changes.

Leaders should search for what, how, why and when the emergence of new characteristics, qualities or traits began to affect the organism [in this case your team, venture or organization].

In biology, sorting through and understanding root causes leads to the discovery of more effective medicines, diagnosis and therapies.

In leadership, this process of discovery should lead to greater operational efficiencies, quality of execution and production, more robust growth opportunities and stronger alliances or wider networks of influence.

Niche Strategy-2: Recognize how elan vital propels discovery of new opportunities and sources for innovation

What are the vital forces of life? How do they contribute to creativity, revitalizing, renewing of living organisms?

The qualities scientists believe form the foundation for emergent or creative evolution and elan vital are based on both observed and imagined principles of our spiritual, emotional and related incorporeal natures.

To be effective, you need to understand and harness those eclectic, motivating forces. You must dig under the facades presented by people to reveal their intangible natures and qualities.

Great leaders constantly learn how to

=> Encourage and magnify positive mental attitudes,

=> Apply liberal treatments of positive reinforcement

=> Provide sincere, candid expressions of recognition or rewards

=> Strengthen and focus the faith, hope and charity of people

=> Use spiritual, emotional and theological truths to step-up, transform and energize human achievement, creativity and resourcefulness.

Niche Strategy-3: Adapt to the environment by creating a strategic focus on mission-critical priorities

The survival of a species is dependent upon its ability to adapt to changes, shifts or conflicts in its environment.

Biologic or living entities are intensely sensitive to the myriad interactions, exchanges and transactions occurring within their ecological niches.

You and your group are subject to never-ending series or waves of differences, compromises and attacks from your associates, suppliers, competitors, partners and rulers.

Leadership excellence demands your unwavering focus, unbending stance and unrelenting grasp on the details of your strategy, mission and key priorities - can you say these guiding elements are:

=> Well-defined or being clarified on a regular basis?

=> Based on the realities of your current situation and its realistic possibilities?

=> Important enough to satisfy the needs of your people or stakeholders for recognition, purpose and growth?

There are destructive and evolutionary forces at work in your environment - your primary task is to hold forth the light of nobility, righteousness and goodness for others to see or be guided by.

Niche Strategy-4: Explore further out to evolve elegant solutions to challenges or complex problems

There are combinations, immersions and swappings involving organisms or their organic surroundings happening all the time and all around an ecological niche.

Organisms tend to exhibit signs of evolutionary formations, process or development through these movement types:

=> Approaching or moving towards each other

=> Establishing a correspondence with other parts, organisms or locations which were picked-up, found-out, formed-by or absorbed-through a natural convergence or parallel evolution

=> Proceeding through successive changes that involve or affect the interactions between ecologically interdependent organisms

=> Emerging out-of and -from an enveloping field or obscure position

=> Gradually progressing through time or space to a desired endpoint due to stated policy or some process of accumulating smaller amounts of new organic materials or resources

=> Regressing backwards to earlier stages of development, which may be defined as a simplification of form or even going from a better to a worse state

=> Existing in a relatively stable state for long periods of time and then experiencing brief periods of rapid change during which new forms of the organism appear - these are usually caused by radical fluctuations and alterations in the organism's local environment

Niche Strategy-5: Incorporate the dynamics of synergy, syntropy and synergetics to grow or prosper

Evolution is thought of as being somewhat random in its occurrence or as lacking some ordered purpose.

However, recent developments in our understanding have been influenced by the sciences and studies of numerous non-traditional newer avenues of inquiry.

Since synergy and syntropy describe the effects of energy being exported, radiated-out from or involving the intentional combinations of two or more organisms, we now know that evolution can also result from a cooperative, purposeful venture.

You can think of the energies being output by allied organisms affecting an environment in such a way as to influence adaptations, progressions and changes in other organisms who operate or live within the same environment.

Leaders can learn more about how these synergetic associations can contribute to evolutionary change by understanding the core principles of sociobiology, teleonomy, microevolution, cladistics, vicariance biogeography, the phenomena of punctuated equilibrium, the concept of noosphere and coevolution.

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By nature, leaders are facilitators of evolutionary progress. Leadership sits at the wheel of an organism's control center, it is the organic instigator or catalyst - leaders are 'agents of Change'.

These 5 niche strategies will empower your ability think critically, improve your effectiveness and to excel at:

=> Solving problems,

=> Make informed decisions

=> Supervise work performances

=> Increase employee resourcefulness

=> Discover opportunities to innovate or create new things

A recent survey of executive recruiters revealed that the top mistakes made by newly appointed senior executives is their failure to establish strategic priorities and waiting too long to implement a program of change [as reported by Korn/Ferry International].

With the information contained in this article, you have the support you need to defeat feelings of uncertainty while you avoid making these same career-ending errors.

You will find confidence and hope building inside you when apply these niche strategy concepts to the issues and challenges of your real-life situations.

What have we learned today? Evolution exerts a complex of forces which operate on the time and space where organisms strive, survive and are sustained.

Evolutionary leadership activities involve the creative shaping of ecological niches in such ways as to effect beneficial adaptations of their enterprise's mission and priorities to any changes, challenges or threats in its environment.

Leaders need to understand how they should strategically, creatively and aggressively direct those evolutionary impulses towards making a positive impact upon their organizations.

As you apply these truths to your daily tasks of providing oversight and stewardship, you will quickly see the tangible payoffs and proof that your knowledge of these critical concepts is sound.

Learn more about this subject by reading our 'blog': Leadership skills training & development for creating energy!
Leadership skills training & development for creating energy!

I know your sensitivity to the operation and manifestations of evolution will enable you to sustain the health and prosperity of your organization as you successfully achieve all your objectives.

Copyright © 2004, Mustard Seed Investments Inc.,
All rights reserved.

This is a guest blog post written by Dave Kawula, a Senior Consultant with 1E. Dave was the guest on our January episode of the AlignIT Manager Tech Talk where we talked about how IT managers can take the risk out of their Windows 7 deployment projects. Below Dave details cost savings that can be claimed by implementing automation and self service as part of your deployment project.

Read Dave’s other guest post on rationalizing your apps prior to a Windows 7 deployment >>

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Imagine that you have finally completed the following phases of your project:

Core Architecture, Gold Image Build and Test, Application Rationalization, Testing, Testing, and more Testing

Now you need to get your images deployed to end users…well this is a problem because most organizations lack the forethought to automate this process.

So when it comes to deploying Microsoft’s operating systems there are really two choices that we are normally presented with: Lite Touch and Zero Touch. Let’s take a moment and define both of these:

• Lite Touch = Some manual intervention from a desktop analyst or from user driven menus.
• Zero Touch = Fully automated builds when an administrator can choose to deploy operating system upgrades on demand.

Now do either of the above work… the answer is yes absolutely. The issue is that all of this requires Careful coordination and communication to end users. This process normally involves hiring project managers, business analysts, corporation communication specialists, and costly IT Engineering time.

My question is this: We are in a world where we can get applications delivered to all of our phones by simply clicking in a portal and having them magically installed. We can change devices and simply re-deploy these applications from the same portal.

WHAT IF… you could do the same thing for your Windows 7 deployment. Just treat the Windows 7 deployment as nothing more than a complex application. Allowing end users to click on a Windows 7 upgrade icon in a portal. Then have them them schedule their own upgrade for a time that works for them.

Check out this product from 1E Software called yes you guessed it, 1E Shopping:

Does this mean death to the manual spreadsheets… well probably not – we always seem to return to what we know and love. I have personally deployed this product and have seen the impact it has on the classical approach to operating system and software delivery. The only requirement for Shopping is that a customer must already own and have configured System Center Configuration Manager.

The best part of this application is that it can be easily be installed and configured in less than five consulting days.

So I want to wrap up this post with a little bit of simple math for everyone:

• Assume each Windows 7 Upgrade costs an organization $3000 per desktop.
• Assume that approximately 50 % of deployed software is not used.
• Assume that each request for Software costs an organization $200 (BTW This is a really safe number) I haven’t seen it much lower than this.
• Assume it takes over 5 business days to receive the software after a request.

Now…here is a look at the old way!

Deploy 1000 Desktops x $3,000 each = $300,000 in resource costs

• Assume 25 applications averaging 100 each with 50 % unused and deployed to all workstations. 25 Apps x 1000 Desktops x $100 Average License Cost = 2.5 /mil investment in software. This would work out to having approximately $2500 in software on each desktop – You all know this number is really low!
• Assume that the organization receives 20 software deployment requests per week for 52 weeks per year. 20 Request x 52 Weeks x $200 average cost = $208,000 in resource costs to deploy software.
• Assume that it takes 5 business days to receive your software once requested. Well you do the math on this one – quantify the cost of lost productivity for your employees!!!

How about the new way!!! Take the opportunity to incorporate this organizational change into your Windows 7 projects.

From my previous post on application rationalization:

• Deployment costs reduced by 30 % simply by “Rationalizing” the number of applications that need to be ported to Windows 7 and automating the delivery mechanisms for the images. You could easily save over $90,000 in soft costs out of the gate.
• Reduce the amount of Software Renewals, Support, Deployment, and licensing costs. Once again we “Rationalize” all of our apps. Assume a 50% savings for your organization what does that return? How about an estimated 1 /mil + savings in hard and soft costs. By the way – now that you have a tool that helps rationalize this – think of the savings the next time the licensing police come visit you.

Add in savings from using automation and self service:

• Reduce the amount of annual software deployment costs by over 50%. Savings of over $104,000 in soft costs.

Assume your budget for this Windows 7 project was around $500,000. I will leave you pondering those numbers. Now of course remember there is an acquisition cost of new software that would save money. The nice thing about 1E is that all of their software pretty much pays for itself very quickly.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and I welcome any feedback or if you want to share your experiences with your Windows 7 projects thus far.

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About Dave Kawula

Dave Kawula is an MCSE and CNE with over fifteen years of experience in the IT industry and a senior consultant with IE. His background includes data communications networks within multi-server LAN/WAN environments. He has experience with project management, network strategic planning, network design and integration. He has led the architecture for NT, SMS/SCCM, Exchange and Internet Gateways, including managing migration paths and issues as well as implementation. He has supported a variety of network infrastructures as well as architecting and defining technical standards.

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