What Extras Helped Those Who Rose to Leadership?

Why take the time to meet new people and introduce them to others in your network?
High achievers don't turn into leaders, even if they seem to have the right skills, without the power that comes from going beyond the letter of the job and doing what Harvard Business School professor, Moss Kanter, calls "The Extras". 
One that caught my eye is  being a connector. Malcolm Gladwell explored this skill set in his best seller, Blink, and explains why it makes such a huge difference in rising up the business ladder of influence and success. Here's Moss Kanter's comment on being a connector:

Opening doors. Power to the connectors! Those who rise to leadership keep their virtual Rolodex rolling. They know enough about others to spot something of interest to them and pass it on, opening doors or making key introductions. In the new networked companies, connectors are the go-to people, the must-haves at meetings. The effects are viral. The more they connect, the more connections come to them.

5 Thoughts to Help Entrepreneurs

Why are the big AHAs of entrepreneurs who kept it going so meaningful? When this recession hit like Hurrican Katrina, we all need voices ahead of us to keep us going. Here is a great list of 5 quotes by Om Malik.

As an entrepreneur, one gets to get too preoccupied with the tactical stuff on a daily basis. So much so that we miss the big picture. In many ways, that is the single biggest mistake we make. When thinking about the big picture, we need to remember a few things. Here is a short list of some of the words of wisdom that have been helpful to me in the recent few weeks. 

• “I don’t think about my business so much in quarters or in numbers that way. I think about getting the product right.” Designer/Founder, Eileen Fisher
• “The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.” Jim Barksdale, CEO, Netscape.
• “What you start your business to be, and what it becomes, are almost never the same thing”Danny Shader, Founder & CEO PayNearMe. Ex-CEO Good Technology and Accept.com
• “You can be what you want to be or, you can be what you are expected to be.” Mad Men, Season 4.
• “Don’t be self conscious about being an entrepreneur.” Tim Westergren, founder Pandora

4 Leaders every team needs

Owners of companies can be very touchy at being boxed or labelled, yet since Aristotle, humans have been put into 4 categories. Here is Paul Maritz, president and C.E.O. of the software firm VMware, a former leader of 10,000 people at IBM chatting about his 4 types he wants on all the teams he manages.

I think that in any great leadership team, you find at least four personalities, and you never find all four of those personalities in a single person.

You need to have somebody who is a strategist or visionary, who sets the goals for where the organization needs to go.

You need to have somebody who is the classic manager — somebody who takes care of the organization, in terms of making sure that everybody knows what they need to do and making sure that tasks are broken up into manageable actions and how they’re going to be measured.

You need a champion for the customer, because you are trying to translate your product into something that customers are going to pay for. So it’s important to have somebody who empathizes and understands how customers will see it. I’ve seen many endeavors fail because people weren’t able to connect the strategy to the way the customers would see the issue.

Then, lastly, you need the enforcer. You need somebody who says: “We’ve stared at this issue long enough. We’re not going to stare at it anymore. We’re going to do something about it. We’re going to make a decision. We’re going to deal with whatever conflict we have.”

You very rarely find more than two of those personalities in one person. I’ve never seen it. And really great teams are where you have a group of people who provide those functions and who respect each other and, equally importantly, both know who they are and who they are not. Often, I’ve seen people get into trouble when they think they’re the strategist and they’re not, or they think they’re the decision maker and they’re not.

Letter of Intent Sample That Watches for Bear Traps

The Letter of Intent for Merger and Acquisitions is a document between a purchaser and a seller used to outline the initial terms of a merger and acquisition transaction between two companies. The Letter of Intent Sample details the purchase of stock, price, closing date, etc. and often helps streamline negotiations when the transaction is complex. This document is essential for protecting your interests during negotiations.

Private equity accessing debt again

Private equity is using debt again. While it is harder to get a home loan or small business loan, large companies and private equity, established players can access cheap bank debt. The US is showing how with its large players - Carlyle and Blackstone. There is a radically different view by each of these giants, but I believe that shows the health of PE and its ability to bring different views to their business. Take a look:

Blackstone, in reporting a 23 percent jump in third-quarter earnings, said it had found the market to buy out companies unappetizing. “There are some good companies being sold, but we just can’t get to the prices that are required,” Hamilton E. James, the company’s president, said Thursday morning.

Carlyle, though, is gobbling up companies. Not long after Mr. James’s bearish comments, Carlyle announced a $2.6 billion deal for Syniverse Technologies, a voice and data services provider for telecommunications companies. On Wednesday, it completed a $3 billion takeover of CommScope, a maker of telecommunications equipment.

The divergent approaches highlight how cheap corporate debt is fueling the recovery of the private equity business. While it remains difficult to get a mortgage to buy a home or to get a loan to fund a small business, yield-starved investors are creating a robust market for corporate bonds and loans.

Private equity firms are seizing upon the corporate-debt boom in myriad ways. For the debt-heavy companies they already own, Blackstone and Carlyle are improving their balance sheets through aggressive refinancing. Corporate loans are now available to do multibillion-dollar buyouts, too, but the easy lending environment has created fierce competition for takeover targets, driving up prices. The corporate loan market “is almost hard to believe,” Mr. James of Blackstone said.

Private equity’s outlook is certainly brighter today than it was one year ago. Buyout firms have made $173 billion worth of deals this year, up 95 percent from last year, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Blackstone, co-founded by Stephen A. Schwarzman, may be reluctant to do deals at the moment, but its earnings report underscored just how favorable the environment has become. The New York-based firm, with $119 billion in assets under management, said its third-quarter profits were bolstered by sharp increases in the value of its real estate holdings.