Reflective Blog II
My today’s blog is about an
entrepreneur I have met during my stay in Chicago and who has impressed me most
because of his leadership skills and characteristics. I write about Matt Maday.
I have met him on a panel at Kendall College on July 16th.
Matthew (Matt) Maday has several jobs at one time: he is an
entrepreneur, an inventor, an author as well as an educator. He is the
co-founder and CEO of the digital agency “Oncall Interactive”. In his role as a
CEO, Matthew plays an advisor on digital strategy, for firms as there are
McDonald’s, Microsoft and uBid. This shows that Oncall is a digital agency,
offering a unique blend of strategy, design and development for some of the
world's leading brands.
The core values of Oncall are connect (create relationships to clients,
customers and community), inspire (original ideas and experiences), deliver
(dynamic, simple solutions) and evolve (push to find great ways to solve
different types of challenges).
Matt Maday leads his business in a participative/ democratic way. During
the panel, he talks about motivating the employees, inspire them, and make them
feel to be part of the processes because this is the way that works out with best
results. The employees are most creative because they know their ideas will be
taken into account. They are ready to do their best at any time as they are
part of the company and responsible for the success or fail of the business
they belong to.
Matthew seems to be a well prepared leader as well as a good mentor for
his employees. He guides them and let them work on their own at the same time.
Democratic leadership encompasses discussion, debate and sharing of ideas. All
these points characterize a democratic leader.
I like the way Matt does his work as a participative leader and CEO. I
guess to become successful you have to be a successful leader. He is a friendly
respectful person but I believe he is also great in organizing, managing and
controlling things. That impressed me and I think about and reflect my own
leadership skills.
You have not to be just really convinced of what you do actually but
about what you want to do in your life. I am not quite sure what I want to do
by now but to think about the possibilities is a good start I guess. Matt said
you have to be both: born as an entrepreneur and in addition build
entrepreneurial skills during your life. In his opinion it is difficult to
build up entrepreneurial skills from nothing. You need an idea that inspires
you that much that you cannot life without realizing it. I would like to become
an entrepreneurial thinking person who is that fascinated of a business idea
that I can motivate other people want to be part of this idea.
However, to sum it up, leadership skills are necessary if you have the
aim to build up your own business.
Tim, you wrote about needing an idea that inspires you, which is so true for successful entrepreneurship. Starting and running a business is really hard and sometimes scary so there has to be a purpose behind it that keeps you going. You also pointed out. Matt's company's values - I believe sometimes what inspires entrepreneurs is not so much an idea of a product but an idea of the kind of company they dream of building regardless of what the product happens to be.
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