CAPABILITY

During this week and the past week, I had the opportunity to learn more about manage a business, how to sell more, how to educate kids and not just teaching them and I had the opportunity to learn with Carly Fiorina – Former CEO, HQ – a little more about leadership, and it was a great teaching for me. I would like to share somethings that I learned here in my blog.

For Carly Leadership is about three things, 1- Capability, 2- Collaboration, 3- Character. When we think about capability we think about skills, about experiences, of course, all those things are important but one of the most important capability you may have, is, the capability to ask questions……and hear the answer! Every time that we are in a new situation, and for us leaders, it happens frequently, we have to ask questions to understand what is going on. As more accurate the questions are more accurate are the answers, and probably more accurate are the decisions taken.

One of the most important indicator that a company is going well or not is about customers satisfaction. The customers always know what is wrong, they may not tell you what they want, but every time they say what is wrong is an opportunity to the business to fix mistakes, process and even products. Three years ago, I had an opportunity to talk about customer satisfaction with the Bank Bradesco CEO and he taught me with this words that I will never forget: - “Leonardo, remember that a customer that complains is a customer that want to stay with you, I like customers that complain, the worst customers are those who not complain and just stop deal with you.” Listen to the customers are one of the keys for a good to great company.

She concludes that the capability to take risks, to celebrate new ideas and try new things, are extremally important also, because however good the answers you have had, every person, every organization eventually reaches a time, when the old answers aren´t good enough anymore, and then the only thing that works are creativity, new ideas, risk taken and innovation. The other important thing about capability is the capability to keep learning, learn every day, the people that try new things and keep leaning are more vibrant and happier than those who not. The same happens with a company that is always learning. In fact, I have the opportunity to work with education I have an English school and it belongs to Pearson, the biggest educational company in the world and our slogan is: Pearson Always Learning.

Always learning is about learning with our mistakes, our friends, our mentors, our teachers, our experiences our life, in my opinion when we stop learning we stop living. The same happens with a company that stop learning…… stop living!