In my mind and experience, a good will drive intent through a mindset, a road to an attainanable set of ideals or goals. The path to these goals however should be more of a motorway.While some may travel in the fast lane, the majority will be in the middle, and there will of course the slow drivers and hard shoulder stoppers. A good leader will not take everyone on the fast lane, but realise that people are free thinkers and their own individual leaders. But of course the "hard shoulder" should always be kept free from blockages! My best experience of this was working for Virgin in both UK and Asia, the mindset of the leadership was clear,dynamic and empowering, each employee had a clear vision of what Virgin was trying to achieve and how it would get there, a framework in which employees could think but still follow...

I think there are three main cornerstones to a successful leader: 1. Communication - motivating your followers and gaining their complete trust and respect by: leading by example, being charismatic, passionate and energetic about intent, confident, level-headed and 'walking the talk'. 2. Strategy - Demonstrating that you are 'smart' and can lead your followers to 'success'. 3. Negotiation - with employees, suppliers, competitors, stakeholders...etc - to keep your followers content and willing to follow and to combat threats internally and externally.

Try this URL: http://www.thesourceofleadership.com/

Couldn't agree more - PMA - positive mental attitude...Don't wait for the ship to come in, swim out to it..

Over the past many weeks, I was honored to be part of the collective effort that David refers to. And you're right, integration doesn't happen through process, charts, special exercises in integration... it happened by having a common goal and getting to know one anohter within the quest for that common goal. The true sign of integration is in the little things. We were asked to prepare the room in about 5 minutes as the previous agency ran late. We had about 15 minutes of set up to do. To see the team instincively work together to get the room prepped so seamlessly and calmy and working together ... it looked to the audience in the room like we had done that 100 times together before. A "little thing" but that's where you notice if a team's a team. When they asked for us to stand up at the end of the presentaiton and identify which orginal Wunderman group we were with... I think it was almost hard for us to each remember given the tightness that had formed. A special experience.

Definitely good. May I add a suggestion for better lisibility ? Is it possible to make the text darker?

A writer I once met - now deceased – told me that before he wrote a novel he felt he had to go out and "commit experience." I love the concept. And as presented by Duke Ellington, it highlights the focus, intent, and pure adrenaline needed for any successful action creative or otherwise. And while the act of murder may be a negative, perhaps we as an agency could decide to collectively commit innovation, commit excellence, commit impact, commit invention, commit success…

;-) David, and that is why last week at the Prague Summit, Mark Taylor and I came clean on our new business initiative. AME, Wunderman's Adaptive Marketing Engine, is not rocket science but it is a whole new voyage. We look to provide end to end Realtionship marketing "Out of a box". We believe that our products need to be packaged and sold to a group of clients out there who don't know or understand the full extent of our service offerings. Bundled into the right size solutions, we can provide a data cleansing and campaign management solution that is Credible, Understandable and most importantly Buyable. Whilst we need to remember that we should be pragmatic and client focused. So our drive is New Business, extending old business and provision of services on a common platform. I know that with the help of our offices, that AME will greatly assist our offices to deliver another great year for Wunderman across the globe.

Why is it that some go where others do not? It comes down to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs: some people in this world simply don't have the same opportunities to 'explore, be curious' as others do. 'Curiosity' also requires 'time' and 'energy'. I agree that it is important to be 'curious'. What about starting a new Wunderman initiative - the 'buddy-system'(one-to-one - where junior staff team up with a senior counterpart (not from the same department)- they have regular meeting sessions (once a fortnight), where the junior staff member has the opportunity to 'explore' concepts, ask tricky questions, flag up issues and equally the senior staff member can discuss ideas with that person. Such a system does operate within other organisations and is very successful in not only generating new ideas but also keeping staff content and pro-actively avoiding 'problems' from occurring.