Three Lessons From Leadership: Growth, Focus, Hiring

Many people don’t consider the impact of leadership—true leadership—on the growth and success of a business long term. But leadership, especially early in a business’ life cycle, means learning to manage people (perhaps for the first time), to communicate vision and inspire buy-in, and to balance strategy with the common entrepreneurial need to follow the “shiny ideas.”

In a recent podcast, Kevin Blake, president of ICS, and Sunny Kaila, CEO of ITBD, talked about their experiences over decades of leadership and shared three key lessons.

1 Learn From Your Mistakes

For Kevin, a turning point in his leader journey came when he realized the success of ICS didn’t depend on the best tech, but instead on the best people.

“I wish I had learned more quickly that the stumbling blocks weren’t tech issues, they were people problems. My peer group made it clear that if I wanted to keep growing my business, I had to fix my people problems,” explains Kevin. “It was easy to push the blame to the team, then I realized the problem began at the top.”