The importance of understanding the different roles in a System Implementation Project

While the various roles in a system implementation project should be clear to everyone involved it is quite common to have some misunderstandings. This needs to be addressed right at the start of the project to ensure project success. This could be done with a meeting that addresses the RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) questions or whatever other way works best for your company culture. At the end of this exercise it needs to be clear to all stakeholders mentioned below who is doing what and why.
This applies to all projects no matter if you use any form of agile or waterfall project management methodology.
As an example let's look at a "typical" project in the technology industry. This could be a new system implementation or a system improvement of an existing system like SAP ERP, Oracle, Salesforce, Apttus, BigMachines etc.

Usually there are the following stakeholders

• Project Sponsor - that is the person / group of people that requested this project e.g. Head of Sales. They usually have a clear business objective in mind that this project is expected to meet. Example: When the current Salesforce improvement project is done the forecasting accuracy increases from x% to y%
• Business Team - this is the person / team that provides the detailed requirements that will ensure we can meet the objective from the project sponsor. This could be e.g. Sales Manager or a Sales Operations VP. This person/team knows the current challenges and works with IT to tell them what they need. Usually there will be KPIs/metrics to measure a before/after status to determine how successful the project was. The members of this team are business specialists.
• IT Team - this is the team that will review the business requirements from the business team and determine how they can implement this solution technically in the best possible way. This could be e.g. System Architect or IT SVP. The members of this team are technical specialists that setup the solution. Example: If this is an Apttus implementation project this will be someone who sets up the contract management in Apttus.
• Project Management - this person/team is helping to organize the project to ensure it's scope, time and resource objectives are met. In the best case the Project Manager is very familiar with the subject matter (e.g. PM knows SAP ERP) so that they can provide the best planning to meet the project objectives. These resources are usually neither business nor IT specialists.

The challenge now comes up with all the roles that don't necessarily fit easily into just one of these categories. Like for example a BigMachines Solution Architect. While the general expectation is that the skills are broad and deep on the IT and the business side my experience shows that everyone has a preference either towards the IT or the business side. In order to address this appropriately and in a timely manner the Project Manager needs to determine right at the Initiation of the project

1. Who is the Project Sponsor?
2. What are the Project Sponsor's expectations or in other words what makes this project a success from the Project Sponsor point of view?

If we stick with the example of the BigMachines Solution Architect If the Project Sponsor is from IT their expectation is most likely that they will get someone who knows the in's and out's of BigMachines. They should be certified in BigMachines and have multiple years of experience in hands on development so that whatever business requirements come up they have a sleek technical solution for it. This should be someone who is onsite and can demonstrate his/her superior technical skills in F2F meetings with the IT (and Business) Team. The expectation might be that a prototype of the system is available rather sooner than later.
If the Project Sponsor is from the Business the expectations are most likely very different. They will probably seek more guidance on how certain goals can be achieved. How did other customers in the same industry or even a different industry tackle this problem? What system tools or business processes did they use to achieve these goals? What business requirements do they recommend to address and what is the expected impact based on experience? Example: How can I best achieve my goal of raising my revenue in the US by 10%? They will most likely focus more on the business experience and subject matter expertise instead of a BMI certification. The expectation is probably a well thought out plan on what needs to be implemented and the time frame by when this can be done.

Conclusion: The Project Team needs to keep in mind who is sponsoring the project and what their objectives are. This will determine if the project can be successful.
Even if you have the best business focused specialist available on an IT focused project there is a higher chance of this project not being successful. So chose your resources on a project carefully (as far as that is possible). Keep in mind that what I wrote above is an example and in a real project this can be very different and hence the Project Management Team ( or PMO or Manager) should always build a close relationship with all stakeholders to ensure the Project Sponsor objectives are understood early and clearly in the project. This is especially important if you work in any kind of Service Provider capacity to ensure you are not signing up for something you will struggle to deliver.

Book suggestions

Here are some key books (in my opinion) that I think will help you be successful as a Project Manager and beyond

1. The 7 habits of highly effective people  by Steven Covey. This is a classic which every person interested in leadership should read
2. Made to stick by Chip & Dan Heath. This is about communicating ideas so that they stick with your audience. Naturally this is also a big topic for Project Managers
3. Influence by Robert B. Cialdini . A classic with tons of useful information about how "influence" works
4. Getting past No by William Ury. If you want to learn more about negotiating this is the book to start with.
5. Drive by Daniel H. Pink. Explains what drives people. If you want to learn more about Motivation this is a good book to read.
6. Mojo by Marshall Goldsmith. He is a famous advisor to business leaders and this book is about how to achieve happiness and meaning in our lives. 

If you read these books and apply what you've learned you will be more successful. But keep in mind that just consuming them and then forgetting about them doesn't help. You have to take some time and really apply the advise that works for you and your situation.  

If you want some advise on relaxing (especially for high stress jobs) I would suggest one book by Thich Nhat Hanh like "Peace is every step" . This can also help in business situations by learning to focus on the moment and not getting distracted. 

Good reading!

Basic Communication skills

Clear communication is a critical key to most business activities (e.g. Programs, Projects, Business Transformations, M&A, QBR etc. ) . Do you spend enough time on it? Do you get your communications across to the intended recipient(s) as planned? How do you measure if your communications come across as planned?

Basic Steps - This needs to be done at the beginning of every communication effort/project

• Determine who needs what kind of information - Stakeholder determination 
• When does he/she need this information? 
• Who will deliver the information? - keep company culture etc in mind 
• How will the information be delivered? (e.g. Face-to-Face, phone, email) 

That sounds very easy doesn't it? But as you know in reality this can be quite tricky. Here some notes on what you should pay close attention to.

1. Keep in mind who you communicate with! Executives prefer high level, clear summaries w/o you going into all the details. They don't have the time for that and rely on you to work this out. For meetings with Subject Matter Experts be prepared to discuss more details. Don't succumb to the trap to use the same communication for different audiences. In most cases this will not work! 
2. Use words that everyone understands in your environment! 
3. Really listen before you try to answer any questions! Take your time to answer questions! Note: If you think about the next meeting or planning the next activity in your current communication you are not really paying attention. There is a reason why you have two ears and one mouth. 
4. If possible do really important communications in person ! (Note: 55% of communication is non verbal!) 
5. Be aware of cultural differences when you communicate! Check this link and/or check this book
6. Be transparent in your communications! This will establish trust. 
7. Keep all your business communications professional at all times 

Lastly, be prepared that you will be a lifelong learner of communications and don't ever stop learning more.

20 Employee Recognition Idea's for your Team

To recognize our team members/peers is important to keep or establish a good working environment. Most of us spend a lot of time at work and want to do an excellent job at whatever we do so it is important to show sincere appreciation to the people we work with.
Note the goal here is to encourage the best possible performance from all team members (including yourself!) and not to try to manipulate people.  This certainly doesn't mean we all need to pad each other on the back and build a perfectly harmonic environment. In some cases it might be helpful to have a more competitive environment to achieve the best possible goal. In any case there are thousands to books, podcasts, articles etc on this topic. Below I have put some key idea's that I consider a good starting point for Employee Recognition. Note that while most of these idea's are not new we need to implement them to ensure they help our team. Are you doing any of these in your team?

Here 20 Employee Recognition idea's for your team

1. Say "Thank you!" - In person whenever possible or written to give more visibility to other people. This is easy and probably the most important but unfortunately not nearly done often enough. Note that this needs to be personal and honest! If you need to fake it don't do it!
2. Offer Job Rotations or consider Job Promotions (for people who show initiative) 
3. Start a program that allows employees to submit suggestions for improvement. In order to make this effective you need to be ready to implement (some of) these improvements
4. Allow employees to choose their next assignment
5. Provide interesting work/project
6. Facilitate Training (technical and non-technical)
7. Recognize Anniversaries (Birthdays, long service etc.). When you do that don't give away cheap stuff. This needs to be done sincerely with appreciation or not done at all.
8. Buy books and magazines for your team (not just business related books but everything that is intellectually stimulating) 
9. Have a Wall of Fame with Photos of your team 
10. Provide Gift Cards (e.g. Starbucks, Amazon, Best Buy etc.) 
11. Cinema/Movie Tickets  
12. Provide "Work from home" opportunities
13. Give publicly credit for employees who deserve it. E.g. write a Thank you message to your employees on the entrance door of your building or office, make sure senior leaders get visibility to this as well
14. Promote Team building activities (e.g. once per week/month/quarter ... whatever works for your team). This could be a company picnic, pizza party, ice-cream afternoons, get together at the end of the day etc.
15. Provide Educational Opportunities (e.g. ongoing professional development, language, scholarships etc.)
16. Setup regular Lunch or Dinner with Senior Leaders
17. Showcase your employees and their work to your leaders. Communicate clearly why they are important to your team. Add pictures when possible and appropriate 
18. Show sincere interest in your employees' professional development. You need to follow up on this with action to make it authentic. This doesn't mean that you can give everyone what they want but you can help show a way that can get them there. Keep in mind that you will benefit from a strong network as well since your employees will go off to different areas of your company or switch companies
19. Publicly communicate an employee's ideas and suggestions and their positive impact to your team
20. Time off for Charity or Volunteer work

The key for all these ideas (and the thousands more that you can find on Google etc.) is that you keep the team motivated, engaged and feeling valued and appreciated. Don't underestimate these ideas they can really make a difference. 

Some thoughts about gettings things done

There is definetely more advise on this topic out there than anyone could digest and hence I want to keep this very short. As you know there is not one way to get things done there are many ways that work for different people in different situations. What I have below is based on my experience with Business and IT Programs/Projects in the High Tech Industry.

1. Have a clear Goal!
• You can explain to anyone in the program in 2 minutes what this is program is all about
• Everyone else in the program can tell you in their own words (in 2 minutes) what benefits this program will provide
• You know what will define success and how to measure success
2. Think like an entrepreneur!
• Assume it is your money you spend on the program --> only do what is necessary to achieve your goal.  Whatever you do, do it right with 100% commitment!
• Involve the people you really need --> don't bloat the program with stakeholders if they don't have a clear role
• Be responsible - the buck stops with you! 
3. Be passionate
• You love what you do and are committed to make it successful for your customers, your team and yourself. Not being passionate is not an option!
• Engage the best people and ensure they can do their best work. 
• Everything can be improved! Therefore use every opportunity to make improvements.
4. Focus on your customer
• Make the program successful w/o looking at your own benefit will yield the biggest long term benefits!
5. Break your goals into digestible tasks
• Smaller tasks are better to understand and monitor for you and for your customers
• You need successes along the way to keep morale up. Plan for these successes.
6. Don't just talk about doing things but actually start DOING them
• Plans are very important and need to be there, nevertheless you need to start somewhere and it's probably not the ideal point. In order to get things done you actually have to start doing them. 
7. Keep things simple
• Ensure that stakeholders which are NOT full-time engaged in your program still fully understand the processes and systems you are implementing. If stakeholders don't understand what you are trying to do or disagree with what you are trying to do they can't support you. 

There are definetely many more great tips out there but the above is a good starting point to get things done. 

Some things to consider for your next IT Plan of Record (POR) task

Many of you work on IT Plan of Records and it always seems a struggle to communicate why your teams requirements are more important than requirements from another team. Please note that in general it is very important to put a Dollar ($$$) value on your requirements. This could be for cost savings or for revenue increases but it needs to be crystal clear to everyone (Business/IT) what the expected benefit is when this requirement gets implemented. If you think you can't put a dollar value on it think about potential customer satisfaction and something like customer retention rates. How does your company value that?  Below I have put some notes and an example you might want to consider next time you work on an IT POR

To Do

1. Collect all business requirements from your stakeholders (global + regional requirements)
2. Determine overlap of these business requirements
3. Determine if you have cost savings or revenue increases when you implement these requirements
4. Size and prioritize the business requirements
5. Present to IT POR committee 

Example

1. Business Requirement: All products that are added to a quote need to remain valid as long as the quote is valid.  Example: Quote 123 is valid for the next 30 days. Product ABC is only valid for 10 more days hence product ABC should not be added to the quote.
2. For our example let's assume that this is the same in all our regions (Americas, Europe/Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific).
3. This is clearly a cost savings requirement (.. with some additional aspects ...)
4. Questions to ask
• How many deals are currently impacted by this business requirement?
• Is every region equally impacted by this business requirement?
• What is the (manual) process to fix this issue if a product that is not valid for the whole quote validity period is added to a quote?
• How much time is needed to address this issue? ... and who is fixing it?
• What is the average annual Salary of the person that is fixing the issue?
• How much time is needed to communicate the solution of the issue (to the customer?)? .. and who is doing it?
• At the end we could have the following $ number (simplified)
• Quotes with invalid product numbers per year : 1,000 (globally)
• Time needed per quote to (in Min) to fix issue: 30min
• Communications needed (email, phone calls etc.) to clarify changes / confusion with customer/others (in Min) per quote: 20min
• Average Salary of person that is fixing the issue (according to HR tables): $60,000
• Average Salary of person that is communicating the fix for this issue (according to HR tables): $50,000

• Resulting $ amount
• 1,000 x 30min = 30,000min  (= 500 hrs / = 62.5 days)  (time to fix issue) 
• 1,000 x 20min = 20,000min ( = 333 hrs / = 41.5 days) (time to communicate fix)
• Annual work time for employees ... check this link. For the US it is 1,790 hours per year
• Average hourly cost (simplified) for the person fixing the issue: $60,000 / 1790 hours per year = $33.52 per hour 
• Average hourly cost (simplified) for the person communicating the issue to the fix: $50,000 / 1790 hours per year = $27.93 per hour
• Final numbers: 
• 500 hrs x $33.52 = $16,760.00  (Cost to fix issue)
• 333 hrs x $27.93 = $9,300.69 (Cost to communicate fix)
• Total cost = $26,060.69 Total cost savings amount. This needs to accompany your IT POR requirement 
• NOTE: This does not include customer satisfaction challenges (e.g. customer retention etc.) or the cost of fixing this issue (you need a cost benefit analysis for that). 

Next time you work on your business requirements follow this idea to increase your chances to actually get your requirements approved. It should help you to think more thoroughly about your requirements and hence come up with better data to justify the requirement.

Some thoughts concerning switching to a Cloud Configure/Price/Quote Tool

If you are thinking about switching to a cloud based CPQ Tool (e.g. BigMachines, Apttus, IBM Sterling, Callidus, Selectica, Cameleon) you will have to answer questions from at least five areas before you can make a decision on the tool and the process. Below I have put some questions that you should consider before making a decision

1. General Questions
• What do you expect to get from a SaaS/Cloud Configurator/Price/Quoting Tool? Note: Like for every other project you need to have a clear project charter!!
• Do you consider this a long-term investment?  Note: It should be considered a long-term investment because a change is probably not as easy as SaaS companies want to make you believe. 
2. Technical Questions
• Basic
• Who will setup the Data (e.g. Product Model, Pricing, Quote Forms) in the new CPQ Tool? 
• Who will keep maintaining this data going forward (onshore/offshore)? Keep in mind that you should expect to pay ongoing expenses here either for in-house resources or for consulting resources.
• How quickly do you need to make changes to your Data (e.g. change the product model, change the price components) ?
• How tightly is the SaaS/Cloud tool data into the rest of your IT infrastructure?
• What happens to your business if the SaaS/Cloud tool is not available?
• How much time and budget do you expect to spend on training?
• What Browsers does the intended tool support? 
• Do any of your intended users need to change their Browsers?
• How many employees/users do you expect to train on the new tool? (e.g. get certifications)
• Do you have a sufficient Broadband connection to ensure a good performance?
• What usage models (e.g. billing based on consumption) does the CPQ Tool support?
3. Security Questions
• Are you comfortable to upload all the data into the SaaS/Cloud tool (e.g. your price data, channel partner pricing data)?
• What is the SaaS/Cloud tool provider doing to ensure your data is secure?
• What is the impact of the SaaS/Cloud tool security to your other (e.g. on premise) IT infrastructure?
4. Data Migration Questions
• How do you plan to setup all the existing business data (e.g. product models, prices, quotes) in the SaaS/Cloud tool ? (e.g. open quotes from your current tool will move or will not move to the SaaS/Cloud tool?)
• What will you have to do if you should decide (at a later point) to move to another SaaS/Cloud tool? Note: There should be a clear path how this can happen even though it is understood that this will not be a trivial exercise. 
5. Integration Questions
• How will your CPQ tool integrate with your ERP system? Example: You create an opportunity in SFDC and SFDC is integrated with BigMachines. In this case BigMachines creates the quote (based on the product configurator and pricing in BigMachines). Once that quote is converted into an order (e.g. in the ERP system ... SAP or Oracle) the data needs to move from SFDC/BigMachines to the ERP system. While there are tools available to help you do this transition it is interesting to learn how much effort it is to get this setup and function flawlessly). 
• How much effort will it be to adjust the CPQ Tool/ERP interface (middleware) if you have any changes?
• How much are you willing to buy into a platform (e.g. BigMachines and Oracle, Apttus and SFDC) with your CPQ tool?
• How much customizing do you need from the SaaS tool? 
• Do you need to have installed based information in the SaaS tool (installed base info shows what products the customer already has) and how can that be integrated into the SaaS tool?
• Are the CPQ / CRM and ERP tools aligned? e.g. If you want to use SAP's Variant Configuration on the ERP side what does that mean to your CPQ/CRM tool?

There are obviously many more questions but I think that gives you a good starting point. 

What you should consider before you offer a training class to your Sales Team

In many cases Teams like the Sales Operations Team, Product Management Team, Product Marketing Team, Order Management Team etc. would like to train the Sales Team on various processes and tools. This can be a costly engagement from a Sales Team point of view (e.g. just think how many Sales Reps you want to train and how much time that will take and the impact on the Sales Quota ... while the Sales Reps are trained they can't make any Sales Quota and this makes it harder for the Sales Management Team to agree to these training sessions). In order to make it easier for Sales Executives to actively support this training I suggest to look at the following.

• Have data available that shows that a training is appropriate 
• This should show some information on how the Sales Reps spend their time. You could get this Information from a Sales Productivity Survey or by working with representative Sales Teams directly. A Key point here is to see what is industry average (you probably need a consulting company to help on this) and how much time your Sales Team spends on this task. If you have several Sales Teams in different parts of the world you should break this up by regions. Below I show some examples
• Customer Facing Time
• Travel to customer site
• Sales Meetings
• Prepare Sales Meetings
• Networking meetings / Relationship building
• Non-Customer Facing Time (could be sales related or non-sales related)
• Special Pricing requests
• Deal Approval Process
• Product Configuration and quoting
• Customer Research
• Account Planning
• Internal meetings and email (e.g. for non-sales related activities)
• Training
• Internal Reporting
• Know exactly what you want to improve, why you want to improve it and what the expected outcome is
• See the list above and determine what you can achieve by when and who needs to support this training effort
• Determine who needs to attend the training
• Should the whole Sales Team (e.g. Field Sales, internal Sales Rep) attend this training?
• Should you potentially create a questionnaire with different topic areas to determine who needs to attend a training and who doesn't? Example: You can ask 5 questions in the Order Management Area and if a Sales Team Member answers 4 questions or more correct then they don't need to participate in the training. Note: If you use a questionnaire ensure the questionnaire is as short as possible to ensure you are not wasting everyone's time. Also think about how you want to enforce the completion of this questionnaire. Suggestion is to have the questionnaire no longer than 30min.  In any case before you use this questionnaire you need to discuss this proposal with the Sales Executive Team. A questionnaire might help convince the Sales Management Team to do a training when you can show that it won't waste time.
• Determine how you will measure the success of this training
• Should be done before you present to the Sales Management Team
• Ensure that all instructors are available and handle the training as a priority
• Ensure you have Executive Sponsorship for your suggested Training
• Not everyone in the Sales Team will be eager to do this training and hence you should ensure you have the Why, What, When, Where, Who and How questions well thought through before you have this discussion
• Measure the results and share with the Sales Management Team and the Sales Executive Team

How to select a Product Configurator ? High Level Overview

When you select a new Product Configuration Tool many things need to be taken into account. Below I show some key points that you might want to keep in mind when your company tries to introduce a new tool. In any case it is a good idea to involve a Consulting Company that has deep experience with this process and can help you circumvent some pitfalls.

Steps
1. Determine Business and IT Requirements
    Keep the following in mind

• How will the Product Configurator be used? (e.g. only for internal Sales Reps or on the internet or ... ?)
• What capabilities do you need? (e.g. guided selling, proposed configuration solutions, install based information during product configuration)
• Do you focus on the Sales Configurator (used in the Sales Process), Product Configurator (used in the Manufacturing and Delivery Process) or on the Support part of the Configurator (used to manage installed based information). 
• How will the Product Configuration Tool be integrated into the ERP environment?
• What Pricing requirements do you have? .. and how will they work with the new tool? (e.g. Is something like the SAP Variant Pricing needed?). How will the new tool integrate with your pricing data?
• How will Product Life Cycle changes impact the new tool? 
• What is the Change Management Process when changes occur?

2. Prioritize requirements from 1.

• Keep in mind where the Product Configuration work is expected to occur (on-site or offshore)
• How quick do you need to implement changes (e.g. within 2 hours or within a week) ?

3. Agree on evaluation criteria

• This is a KEY area that should be addressed before you look at any tools. That way you have more objective criteria
• Also ensure that both IT and Business stakeholders are involved in determining these criteria
• User Stories might help to flesh out which criteria are most important (Business stakeholders should provide these User Stories)

4. Determine potential Vendors

• There are many vendors out there. So keep the list manageable (not more than 5 potential vendors if possible)

5. Have vendors demo their solution to your team
    Notes:

• Ensure that Business and IT Stakeholders are at this meeting
• You should provide the vendor a a script that they should follow to ensure all evaluation criteria are considered.
• Remember that YOU should control this meeting NOT THE VENDOR!

6. Score each vendor (after demo)

• This should be done by Business and IT Stakeholders directly after the demo meeting to ensure that you don't forget anything. Instead of doing this in a group you might want to ask every participant to score it for themselves first and then come up with a group scoring.

Note: Depending on the maturity of your company this process can take from 4-6 weeks to whatever. Since this tool will be really important going forward (e.g. your sales team will interface with it on a regular basis, your customers will use it on the Internet regularly) you should take as much time as needed to make the right decision instead of rushing to a decision. 

Key Performance Indicators (KPI's)

Do you use KPI's (sometimes also called "metrics") ? If yes, why?

I see the following two reasons to use KPI's :

1. Instead of making decisions based on instinct you want to make decisions based on facts
2. Set goals in order to monitor and measure against a target

What KPI's you use depends on the area you are working in (see below for some examples). For Software Development you will have different KPI's than for the Sales Team or for the Project Management Team.

In any case it is important that you agree on a set of KPIs that you want to monitor. This direction should come from the Senior Management Team since they set the goals of the company. The first step is to have clear goals. The KPI's then serve as a compass to tell you (and most importantly the Senior Management Team) if you are on or off track. 

Here are some tips you might want to take into account (based on my experience) before you set any KPI's

• Ensure your Senior Management Team (in all regions) is actively supporting the capture of your KPIs
• There should be a regular review of KPI's with the Senior Management Team
• Ensure that everyone understands that you (and the Senior Management Team) want to use the KPI's to keep the team on track and aligned to your common goal
• Otherwise there is a risk that different teams are comparing themselves against each other and losing sight of the common objective. While some rivalry is good it is important to ensure this only happens if that brings you (the company) closer to that goal.
• Talk to every (regional) leader separately to explain what is measured, why it is measured and how you intent to measure it. It is important to have a high degree of buy-in from these leaders because otherwise the risk is too high that the KPI's get 'manufactured' to show better than actual results
• Our objective is to reach our goal, NOT to make team A look good and Team B look bad
• Ensure you have KPI's that are understood by all impacted teams
• Ensure the KPI's are aligned to the major goals in your area (only measure what is really important to you!)
• Think if you really need 100 PowerPoints to review the KPI's in your area. If they are supposed to be meaningful less is probably more.
• Clearly identify WHAT is measured (and ensure that all regions are able to measure this in the same way)
• Agree WHEN the measurement starts and ends
• Agree HOW the measurement is performed (e.g. live of via a report)
• Agree if the results will be published and who will see the results first

There are many books about KPI's and the above is a huge simplification BUT in order to make them work for your team (depending on the maturity of the team) I think a simplification helps to get better results.

Here are some interesting examples for various KPI's

• Business Analysis/Project Management KPI's
• Management KPI's
• Sales KPI's

Be the leader everyone writes or talks about

Happy New Year to everyone! 

Especially at this time of year there seem to be a considerable number of lists that talk about what to do and what not to do in the new year. Many of these lists talk about leadership.  While I  think leadership is really important I think there is more talk about it than action or to put it differently the word is simply overused. 

Check Amazon for "Leadership" (~110,000 books found) and "Management" (~892,000 books found) and you see there is no lack of  advise. But reading a book (assuming it's a good book) doesn't mean you truly understand and apply the knowledge from the book. 

What are you planning to do to show that you are a leader in 2014?

I suggest you go and own a real (business) problem from beginning to end! If you already work on a critical program or project make it clear to everyone that the success of the program or project is something you own. 

This means to clearly identity an issue in your environment. Ensure that this is a real issue and not just something you like to work on. Don't wait for someone to empower you to own the problem but actively identify the issue and make it your issue. Many people like to wait until a problem is assigned to them. Don't fall into this trap in 2014 and instead be the "leader" by grabbing the issue by the horns and own it. In many cases you will be successful "only" by acting instead of talking or waiting for someone to assign the issue to you. So go and be the leader others talk about in 2014!