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Fast Company Executive Board member Josh Jacobs is developing a recipe for success for collaborations.

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Here's how thought leaders are setting and achieving their short- and long-term goals—creatively. You can do it too. Whether you are planning your business career and the goals that you intend to accomplish or are thinking about certain expectations you have set for yourself in terms of personal aspirations outside of the 9-to-5 hustle and bustle, it's important to develop a plan and put it into action. You should also consider the process of writing it down on paper to keep it on your radar on a daily basis.  A vision board is a creative way to keep yourself inspired and flesh out your ideas and potential pathways to realizing your goals. To spark your ability to remain laser-focused and not give up on your path to success, experts from Fast Company Executive Board share how making a vision board inspires their determination and encourages them not to give up on themselves or their dreams. 

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Implement these tips to quiet the noisy holiday promo rush and bring attention back to your company.  “Keeping up with the Joneses” seems synonymous with the ability to maintain a successful brand among some of your biggest competitors in a tight economy. Pulling out all the stops, especially during the busy season of holiday advertising campaigns, company leaders are striving to compel consumers to pay closer attention to their business' latest products and services. Based on their own experiences, the experts from Fast Company Executive Board realize that if you're trying to build long-term customer loyalty and strengthen positive brand recognition, sometimes it's not about following the latest holiday trends at all. Instead, it's about understanding what your clients and potential customers need right now and how remaining authentic as a brand can better demonstrate a company's ability to deliver satisfying results that urge people to return throughout the year. Here are 18 suggestions they highly recommend other leaders to explore.

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Create clear expectations and communication so your team will succeed. To avoid burnout in the workplace, it's essential for every leader to learn how to delegate their workload before they begin to feel overwhelmed and off-balanced. However, it takes some time to assess who you can really trust to meet the same expectations and execute your goal. But once you find your sweet spot of handing assignments over to the staff members with enough bandwidth, sometimes the problem is relying on others way too much. It's not always a good practice to let go of too much, too soon. If you are having issues with over-delegation, here is what 11 experts from Fast Company Executive Board have to say about what they've learned about the error of assuming that everything is being taken care of when the leader is away or focused on other tasks. 

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There's an upside to a downsize. Here's how company leaders can make a difference and maintain their staff's trust. In the past few years, many companies are still facing economic challenges in a fluctuating market, which also makes it difficult when leaders are forced to have tough conversations with their dedicated team about potential or necessary cutbacks. Demonstrating transparency and open communication is one of the most important steps to keep your stakeholders well-informed along the way. If you work together with your team to engage in ideas for alternative solutions, you will set your organization up for success and strengthen your potential to come out on top in the long term. Below, 13 Fast Company Executive Board members share their best practices to help leaders prepare their teams for cutbacks in the business world.

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Is your establishment still on the right path to achieve its original objectives? As the business starts to pick up its momentum in the marketplace through brand recognition and new partnerships, it's sometimes easy for founders or leadership teams to get sidetracked away from their original goals and why the company was launched in the first place. While it's important for entrepreneurs and business owners to task on certain risks and close in on the right deals, it's also crucial to maintain your core values and business integrity in the process as the company grows. Below, a panel of experts from Fast Company Executive Board shares 13 ways for business owners and executives to ensure that their current and future business practices still align with their organization's original mission and vision.