My notes from Nordic Business Forum 2015 in Helsinki. Notes from leadership presentations given by John C. Maxwell, Nilofer Merchant, Guy Kawasaki, Simon Sinek and Keith Cunningham.

1. Nordic
Business
Forum
2015
Notes
by Mikko
Levo

2. John
C.
Maxwell

3. The 5
levels of
leadership
• People
follow because of
who you are and
what
you represent.
5.
Pinnacle
• People
follow because of
what you havedone
for
them personally.
4.
Person
development
• People
follow because of
what you havedone
for
the organization.
3.
Production
• People
follow because they want to.2.
Permission
• People
follow because they have to.1.
Position

4. Development as
a
leader
Listen
LearnLead

5. How
to
equip your people
• Train
only if you know it
wellI
do it
• Show
exampleYou watch me
do it
• Let him/her try itI
watch you do it
• Let him/her do itYou do it
• Let him/her equip the next personYou train

6. Law of
the lid
Leadership ability is
the lid that determines a
person’s level of
effectiveness.
à The lower an
individual’s ability to
lead,
the lower
the lid on
his potential.
The higher the individual’s
ability to
lead,
the higher the lid on
his potential.
Your leadership ability—for
better or for
worse—
always determines your effectivenessand
the
potential impact of
your organization.

7. 3
+
3
questions
3
questions every leader
must ask
1. Am
I
investing in
me?
2. Am
I
investing in
the right people?
3. Am
I
genuinely
interestedin
other
people?
3
questions people want to
ask from leader
1. Do you like me?
2. Can
you help
me?
3. Can
I
trust you?

8. Nilofer Merchant

9. Social Era Shifts
Talent:
Inherent vs.
Credentials
Purpose:
Meaning vs.
Money
Culture:
Relational vs.
Routines
Relationships run life
in
digital age like efficiency in
industrial age.

10. How
to
get most of
out
of
your
people
• Purpose brings out
the best people and
best in
people.
What is
the purpose of
you organization?
• As
a
leader you invite everyoneto
play
with others.
• Have all the right people in
the bus,
but don’t tell
them to
sit down and
shut up.
Otherwise things will
drop between the roles.

11. Guy
Kawasaki

12. 10
steps to
art of
disruption
1. Make
meaning – Don’t hunt for
money
2. Make
mantra
– Why should you exist
3. Jump to
the next curve – What’s next?
4. Roll
the dice – Make
perfect products
5. Don’t worry,
be crappy – It
doesn’t have to
be perfect
6. Let 100
flowers blossom – Be ready for
”wrong”
customers
7. Polarize people – Accept some people will hate you
8. Churn,
baby,
churn – Evolve disruption
9. Niche thyself – Selling unique solution with a
value is
easy
10. Perfect
your pitch – Make
difference and
let others know it
11. Don’t let bozosgrind you down

13. Simon
Sinek

14. Humans are social animals
• Purpose tells you WHY
you keep continuing and
trying.
• Sense of
progress keeps you going further à
metrics!
• If
an
employee doesn’t feel safe, customer and
company will suffer.
Asking approval for
everything
is
a
common sign of
this.
• There is
always ranking
inside
the group of
people
(whether you like it
or not).
Acting like there isn’t is
stupid as
you can use the hierarchy to
help
organization survive and
keep people ”calm”.

15. About leaders and
leadership
• Leadership is
about being in
charge of
people.
• People
follow leaders that are ready to
sacrifice
themselves.
• Invest
time and
energy to
people and
they return
love and
loyalty.
• Leading is
like training:
You don’t see results in
short term and
sometimes others see results earlier
than you.

16. Keith
Cunningham

17. About customers
• For
a
company there is
only 2
reasons to
spend
money:
• Keep existing customers
• Get new customers
• On
the average companies would have 3
times
more customers if they wouldn’t have lost
customers over time.

18. Powerful questions
1. How
did this get to
be a
problem to
begin with?
2. What could I
do to
improve my
situation or make
things better?
3. If
I
could _______
really,
really well,
I
could solve this
problem.
4. Where have we tolerated mediocrity,
lowered our
standards or allowed inconsistent execution to
become an
acceptable performance criteria?
5. Competitively,
why do customersbuy from us?
Why
isn’t this strength sufficient to
cause more potential
buyersto
stop
doing business
with our competition
and
to
start doing business
with us?

19. The 4
Questions
ü Who do I
want to
Buy from me?
ü What MUST
happen to
cause them to
Buy?
ü What MUST
happen to
keep them Buying?
ü What could cause them NOT
to
Buy?

20. If
you are at
the top
of
the
mountain alone,
you are
not a
leader,
you're a
hiker.
@JohnCMaxwell
#nbforum2015