Recently retired as Senior Vice President for Patient Care and Chief Nursing Officer at Woman’s, Patricia Johnson played a key role in a vital Baton Rouge institution for decades. We were fortunate to host Johnson at the Success Labs office for a lively discussion about leadership with a group of emerging public health leaders.

Johnson fielded questions from Louisiana Office of Public Health Leadership Development Institute participants and offered valuable insights into her career path and leadership style. Here’s an overview of what she shared.

For software company founder and CEO Padma Vatsavai, the satisfaction in her work was for many years rooted in solving complex technical problems to help business clients achieve their goals. “When I produced a good solution that worked and it was exciting to the user, it made me feel like all my hard work was worth it,” says Vatsavai, who founded Baton Rouge-based software firm Vinformatix in 2008. But when she stepped out of her day-to-day role developing technology to focus on growing her company, Vatsavai initially struggled to find the same fulfillment. Fortunately, she has learned to balance these and grow Vinformatix into a thriving 30-person company poised for further growth. Here’s a look at her journey.

Success Labs is proud to announce that Salvation Army of Greater Baton Rouge has been selected as the first recipient of our Lead And Build “LAB” Grant, a new funding and community partnership awarded to local nonprofits serving the Baton Rouge area.The LAB Grant totals more than $1,500 for each partnership, which includes a $1,000 gift to be used at the nonprofit’s discretion, a hands-on project to enhance an existing space or function and $500 project seed money. These projects are implemented by participants of Success Labs’ leadership development training series that take place twice a year in the spring and fall.The grant is a formalization of a 15-year history of donating and partnering with local nonprofits to grow leaders and build community. For over a decade, Success Labs and its leadership development series participants have partnered with local nonprofits to improve or enhance the function and aesthetics of a space, and developed ideas to help them meet growth goals, increase brand awareness or align strategic initiatives to the organization’s mission and vision. Our partnership with the Salvation Army is already underway.

One of the latest trends in talent management revolves around feedback — specifically the annual performance review. Some companies are ditching it in favor of more frequent, less formal feedback, while others are combining those two approaches and getting opinions from other managers and coworkers and using a 360-degree feedback model. What’s becoming increasingly clear is that the traditional model of an annual performance review is no longer effective for many organizations. According to a recent Gallup survey, only 14% of employees strongly agree their performance reviews inspire them to improve.

As leaders start to move up in their careers and take on more responsibility, they often realize they don’t have time, skills and knowledge to get everything done on their own. Goals and initiatives simply become too difficult to navigate solo — even for the most capable and skilled performers.The reality in business is that we almost always have to rely on the abilities and knowledge of others if we want to accomplish important and impactful things for our organizations. In short, we need a team. 

The most recent Baton Rouge event featured a wide range of speakers and topics, from a poetic meditation on aging, to a dedication to the value of diversity in the art we consume, to a reassessment of a long-past celebrity encounter. The event’s relaxed and supportive atmosphere and welcoming attitude toward both seasoned presenters and novice public speakers made for a very positive overall vibe.

Constant change is the new normal for just about every industry these days — but even amid that new reality, the digital marketing sector stands out. With new technologies and approaches reshaping the hyper-competitive industry in increasingly shorter intervals, digital marketers must adapt or be left behind.

One organization that has learned to thrive in this fluid environment is Baton Rouge-based Gatorworks, a digital marketing agency that focuses on website design, web development, search engine marketing, targeted display advertising and traditional branding. Founder and President Brian Rodriguez started the company as an LSU student and over the past 13 years has navigated sweeping industry changes to grow the firm into a marketing powerhouse serving a wide range of companies. In August 2017, Gatorworks was acquired by Guaranty Media. Brian continues as president of Gatorworks with its full team intact, and the agency is poised for continued growth in the near future.

This is the first chapter of a short series about the importance and impact of leadership development. We’ll explore the challenges that organizations and their leaders face – and the opportunities to engage your people proactively.The influx of workers from younger generations coupled with a wave of emerging and disruptive technologies is driving unprecedented change at organizations across nearly every industry.To survive, it’s vital that organizations develop leaders with the skills and resilience to successfully compete in this new landscape. But it’s probably not going to happen using old approaches. Instead, the most successful organizations are going to adapt their leadership development strategies to this new reality.With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the biggest trends in the leadership and development space — and how smart companies and their leaders are evolving with these changes.

The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team moved pretty easily through group play at this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, and advanced to the semifinals after tough battles with Spain and France in the knockout rounds.  On the pitch the group’s speed, agility, ball skills and teamwork have been impressive. It’s also evident this is a squad that is not only extremely talented, but also organized, connected and unified in their ultimate goal. This is clearly the result of quality coaching.Watching this team perform started me thinking how we as leaders can more effectively coach our teams to perform to the best of their abilities. It’s an aspect of leadership that is sometimes easy to forget — especially for new managers.When people are placed into leadership positions without proper training, they often think their job is merely to get the work done — when it’s actually usually to get the work done through other people. They tend to fall back on what they’re really good at, which is being a doer. They don’t take the necessary steps to get their team to perform.With the World Cup in full swing, it’s a great time for people in leadership to revisit how — or if — they are coaching their team to success. These three approaches can help.

Today, Success Labs announced a new funding and community partnership, The Lead And Build “LAB” Grant to be awarded to local nonprofits serving the Baton Rouge area.The LAB Grant totals to more than $1,500 for each partnership which includes a $1,000 gift to be used at the nonprofit’s discretion, a hands-on project to enhance an existing space or function and $500 project seed money. These projects are generated and implemented by participants of Success Labs’ leadership development training series that take place twice a year in the spring and fall.This fall’s grant award will support one nonprofit working to improve the Baton Rouge community and its people.  This grant is a formalization of a collective of 15 years of donating and partnering with local nonprofits to grow leaders and build community. For over a decade, Success Labs and its leadership development series participants have partnered with local nonprofits to improve or enhance the function and aesthetics of a space, and developed ideas to help them meet growth goals, increase brand awareness or align strategic initiatives to organization’s mission and vision.

Whether it’s marketing and planning, software development or the leadership training I conduct these days at Success Labs, my entire career has been centered around project management. Over the years, I’ve come to understand that project management is a combination of art and science — and the key to success is balancing these two elements.I’ve also come to understand that for high performers and complex organizations, the most challenging projects are the ones that never end because you never get the feeling of satisfaction that it is done. These types of challenges require careful leadership to manage that process.I recently had the opportunity to speak to a group at the Louisiana Bankers Association about my philosophy and best practices for project management. Here’s a look at some of what I shared.

A group of Baton Rouge-area business leaders were recently implemented a series of facility enhancements at Front Yard Bikes, a community bike shop that focuses on teaching participants of all ages how to fix and maintain bikes.The project was part of our Management Incubator, a development program for talented individual contributors who are emerging as leaders within their organizations. The Management Incubator offers rising leaders insight into their leadership styles and potential challenges, strengths and weaknesses.The four-week program features competency-based leadership assessments, experiential learning, individual coaching and development planning — capped off by a community-based project.For this round of our series, we partnered with Front Yard Bikes, a growing nonprofit that has made a mark in Baton Rouge teaching underserved children the mechanics and how to maintaining a bike, cycling road safety and other valuable skills such as financial and academic accountability while giving them a safe place to form a community.