Dec
19
The 10 Most Enduring Ideas
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An interesting article published by strategy+business seeking those ideas that “are most likely to endure for (at least) another 10 years?” Their findings are as follows:
- EXECUTION - “It’s not your strategic choices that drive success, but how well you implement them.”
- THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION - “A learning organization is one that is deliberately designed to encourage everyone in it to keep thinking, innovating, collaborating, talking candidly, improving their capabilities, making personal commitments to their collective future, and thereby increasing the firms long-term competitive advantage.”
- CORPORATE VALUES - “Companies that care about ethics, trust, citizenship, and even meaning and spirituality in the workplace (or that simply articulate their values carefully) perform better in the marketplace than companies that care just about making money.”
- CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT - “The cultivation of long-term relationships with customers, including awareness of their needs, leads to highly focused, capable companies that try to make consumers part of the family.”
- DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY - “As Clayton Christensen noted in The Innovators Dilemma, technological innovation radically alters markets by undermining incumbent companies which are vulnerable because their offerings are all tailored to the needs of their existing customers…… Professor Christensens idea lives on, to an extent, because of its two-part form. First, there is a warning: Your most cherished policies and practices in this case, the hallowed sanctity of a successful customer relationship can include the seeds of your undoing. Second, there is a way out: Preempt your own comfort zone, adopting a disruptive technology yourself before others beat you to it.”
- LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT - “You don’t have to rely on putting the right people in place. You can train all employees to be better choosers, better strategists, better managers, and in the end, better leaders.”
- ORGANIZATIONAL DNA - “Leaders can design an organizations structures incentives, decision rights, reporting relationships, and information flows to induce high performance by aligning them with one another and the strategic goals of the enterprise. Elucidated in the book Results, by Gary L. Neilson and Bruce A.”
- STRATEGY-BASED TRANSFORMATION - “Beyond the blank page of reengineering, this is the redesign of processes and organizational structures, and the consequent cultural change, to fulfill the strategic goals of the enterprise.”
- COMPLEXITY THEORY - “Markets and businesses are complex systems that cant be controlled mechanistically, but their emergent order can sometimes be anticipated.”
- LEAN THINKING - “This type of process and management innovation is exemplified by the Toyota production system. Employees use a heightened awareness of work flow and demand to cut waste, eliminate cost, boost quality, and customize mass production.”
Technorati Tags: Ideas, Thinking, Management, Leadership, Strategy
Dec
12
Ideas form the basis of leadership! Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, describes an ‘idea‘ as being:
“the result of thinking.”
Thinking and leadership go hand-in-hand, primarily because:
“Great leaders lead by ideas” - Rudolph W. Giuliani
Great leaders lead through ideas, not through positional power and authority. Good examples of great leaders who use ideas, rather than authority to lead are: Jesus Christ, Mahatma Ghandi and more recently Nelson Mandela. A leader’s ideas guide their actions, a leader’s ideas aligns their team and a leader’s ideas inspire their organisation towards a common goal. Dave Pollard is also convinced in the power of ideas in his post he states that:
“Ideas have enormous power, since they form the frame of our understanding of the world, inform our beliefs and drive our behaviours. Great ideas are so profound and frame-shaking that they quickly topple many of the things we believe, and transform our worldviews, our values and hence our actions. We need more great ideas, and a deeper understanding of how and when they transform our understanding, our culture, what we do and who we are.” - Dave Pollard
Ideas are an extreemly powerful force, ideas engage people’s minds and help them see new possibilities and new opportunities. Strong and evocative ideas energize people and incite action. As leaders, our ideas are important. Leaders need clear ideas and philosophies about how to win in the marketplace, how their organisation should operate and how to develop their people.
A Leadership Philosophy = A Network of Ideas
A leadership philosophy is an inter-connected network of ideas that constitute an internal model of leadership. A personal philosphy is about knowing what you believe and why you believe it, involving a personal learning process, deliberate and continious. In this sense ideas form the basis of a personal leader philosophy.
This process of developing a personal leadership philosophy is, the process of systematically reflecting on oneself and the world around oneself to build and develop a set of beliefs, principles and values with which to guide ones actions.
Leaders are always on the lookout for new ideas, always learning and constantly embracing higher more empowering ideas. These ideas they incorporate into their leadership philosophy on an ongoing basis.
Your Leadership Philosophy Should be Unique
Leadership books, training and workshops teach similar leadership “methods” and “principles”. This is creating a generation of leaders who all think alike. Clones of the latest leadership ideas and trends! Leaders end up on “automatic pilot” never stopping to examine what they have been taught contrasting this with their life experiences. Great leaders spend time in introspection gaining an understanding of their strengths and weakness, they are also are students of life. They know what they want and why they want it, having invested time in reflecting on their approach to leadership. In this sense these leaders are self-made, rather than a product of their genetic make-up or their social environments.
Questions to ponder:
- How do you go about building your leadership philosophy?
- What ideas make up your UNIQUE leadership philosophy?
“The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but seeing with new eyes.” - Marcel Proust
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Ideas, Thinking, Leadership Philosophy
Dec
12
Ed’s Path of Leadership: Excellence, Initiative and Impact
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I found this post from Ed Brenegar from Leading Questions very interesting….. Here are some snippets from the post that caught my eye:
EXCELLENCE
“Leadership is first and foremost a quality of an individual…….So, the first step along the path to leadership is to recognize that leadership is a product of character, not just skills and techniques of style.”
INITIATIVE
“leadership is focused upon the action of the leader. Leadership requires actions. Without action there is no leadership, and yet to often the “leader” does not act, and his
passivity stands in contrast to the other members of the organization. Leadership action is most clearly defined in the personal initiative that a leader must make. This action takes place in three
areas - with people, through ideas, in organizational structures.”“People: A leader initiates toward people to establish collaborative relationships that allow for the same leadership initiative to develop in the other. The character of the relationship is marked by honesty, respect and trust. The collaborative nature of the relationship develops when both individuals recognize that there is a mutuality or sharedness to their relationship.”
Ideas: A leader initiates toward people using ideas as a tool for not only communicating, but for establishing purpose, focus and a vision for the relationships………It is the leader’s responsibility to initiate the conversation that establishes a common understanding of what the purpose and goals of the organization are.· And it is the leader’s responsibility to act as a interpreter of the vision.· Ideas without communication are dead, and communication that does not lead to action is self-indulgent.· As a result, the initiative that a leader takes is
to constantly move from the abstract to the concrete, from the conceptual to the practice, from the idea to action.”Organizational Structure: A leader initiates within an organizational structure or setting. The purpose of this structure is not organizational perpetuation, though sustainability is a by-product. Organizational structures exist as a vehicle for enhancement and fulfillment of the collaborative nature of human relationships.
IMPACT
The focal point of leadership is impact. In other words, leaders focus on creating change so that individual and organizational purpose can be fulfilled……Organizations are a reflection of their people. If they lack the character of excellence, so will the organization.
Technorati Tags: Strategy; Leadership; Management; Teams
Dec
12
Jack on What Leaders Do….
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From Winning
- Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.
- Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breath it.
- Leaders get into everyone’s skin, exuding positive energy and optimism.
- Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency, and credit.
- Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls.
- Leaders probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure their questions are answered with action.
- Leaders inspire risk taking and learning by setting the example.
- Leaders celebrate.
Dec
10
Taking a Hard Look at IT…..
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An article titled “Why So Many Big IT Investments Do So Little for Shareholder Value” from Knowledge@Wharton, reporting on a talk by James Blyth on the “Management Challenges of Technology”, some of the highlights from his talk:
High IT failure rates
“He cited figures from Gartner Research showing that “on average, 20% of the corporate IT budget is spent on initiatives that don’t achieve their objectives……..In the U.S. alone, he said, total spending on Customer Relationship Management has reached $10 billion, “but analysts estimate that more than half of CRM projects fail.” In addition, more than 90% of companies are dissatisfied with the results of their Enterprise Resource Planning implementation.”
Technology Alone is Unable to Provide Competitive Advantage
“Technology alone “will not provide companies with a competitive advantage,” Blyth noted. “Too many companies out there are prepared to sell you innovative technology that they sold to somebody else…….instead of getting “profitable differences” for all this spending,…. the outcome is usually just “expensive similarities” — i.e., companies invest huge amounts of capital without gaining points of differentiation…..it’s difficult to sustain a technology-based competitive advantage…..IT is easily replicated and “any advantage gained quickly erodes over time as competitors catch up.” Even knowing this, companies still put as much as 85% of their IT investments into infrastructure and only 15% into innovation. It took competitors six weeks to imitate Intel’s latest chip technology, he said, and yet one hears CIOs evaluating IT proposals based on 10-year paybacks.
Lack of Management Discipline
“….companies often lack the management discipline they need when evaluating technology proposals.”…….According to McKinsey research on Fortune 500 companies, 64% of the CIOS interviewed did not undertake any follow-up to determine whether IT projects failed or succeeded.
Technology Mingled with Sound Management Practices Provides Competitive Advantage
“Real competitive advantage is provided by managerial innovations, either to increase productivity or to build on operational strength. Fundamental business changes are much more difficult to replicate. When technological innovations are fused with fundamental change in business process, real competitive advantage can be achieved.”……..Blyth brought with him the results of research conducted last year by McKinsey and the London Business School. The study examined the impact of management practices and technology on the financial performance of 100 companies in the U.K., Germany, France and the U.S. Results show that companies with the top-quartile IT departments increased productivity by 2%; companies with the top-quartile management practices increased productivity by four times as much, or 8%; and companies that successfully combined good management practices with good IT increased productivity by 20%. “These conclusions are intuitive,” he said. “It’s obvious that companies should focus on their strategic direction and on enhancing management practices. Technology is one of the tools that can help deliver the strategy.”
Technorati Tags: Projects, Management, Technology, Project Management
Dec
10
Leadership Insights from Anne Moore
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Here are some insights I gained from reading “Nine Business Insights from Time CEO Ann Moore, Plus the Mix-and-Match Women“, what a mouthful!
The Right People, Our Most Important Asset
“The only difficult assignment in business is finding good people and putting them in the right job…. Moore insists that the lessons we teach our children should also apply to the work force. Say “please” and “thank you.” Do your homework. Look both ways. Speak up. Don’t shout. Listen to your teacher.”
The only difficult assignment in business is finding good people and putting them in the right jobThis is also what Jim Collins recommends in Good to Great, “first who….then what!” as the key to strategy. Getting the right people “on the bus” goes a long way towards solving the management challenges of motivation, employee engagement and productivity. As a business unit leader states in “Good to Great”, “I don’t know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great” Other obervations in the book on this issue are that:
- “First get the right people on the bus, get the wrong people off the bus, then figure our where to drive it.”
- “People are not your most important asset. The RIGHT people are.”
- “The role of compensation change from rewarding people for the right behaviours and values to paying people to remain with the organisation.”
- “We hire 5, work them like 10 and pay them like 8.”
“Whether someone is the “right person” has more to do with character traits and innate capabilities than with specific knowledge, background or skills.”
The late management guru Peter Drucker at one point offered Moore what she viewed as a logical explanation about interpersonal conflict and basic behavior. “It’s the law of nature,” Drucker said, “that two moving bodies in contact create friction.” So Moore doesn’t get worried any more when she sees two grown people fighting in the office. “‘It’s just physics,’ I whisper to myself. Still, I go out of my way to avoid hiring people without manners.”
Effectiveness Before Efficiency
“Forget the clock. Get a compass instead. Time management studies suggest that by doing things more efficiently we will gain control over our lives. ‘This is just complete baloney,’ Moore countered. ‘Faster, harder and more does not bring peace and fulfillment. Where you are headed is more important than how fast you are going. Always plan for the long-term strategy because, trust me, 25 years fly by in the blink of an eye.’…….. When Moore graduated from Harvard Business School in 1978, she had 13 job offers. She accepted the one with Time over more lucrative Wall Street opportunities although it was the lowest paying because “I loved magazines. Others thought I was crazy, but I ended up as president of People. And I did not look so stupid at our 25th reunion.”
This is a common mistake we tend to make, becoming so busy working in the business we neglect to work on the business. The result is that we fail to exploit opportunities emerging in the market place through a lack of preparation, it’s said “luck favours the prepared”.
The Fish Rots from The Head Down!
All behavior emanates from the top and reverberates down the organization to the lowest level. If you can, suggested Moore, check out what your chairman is carrying in his pocket or in her head. What are her values? “There are vast differences in organizations led by the man or woman” whose philosophy is ‘Follow or get out of my way’ as opposed to “the type of chairman who carries an Emerson poem about children in his pocket. It is best if the chairman’s values are compatible with your own. That’s one of my greatest secrets.”
This is closely tied to the first point, “the right people, our most important asset” and in my opinion we should apply this principle most rigioursly to management, especially top management. We should move swiftly to move or replace poor performing management before they damage the people reporting to them! Unfortunately, its my experience that organisations move too quickly to address poor performing employees and too slowing in addressing poor performing management. The impact of poor performing managers on their businesses is huge, in the article titled “Businesses ‘held back by their managers’” describes research found the following:
- “Almost one in four employees feel uninspired by their bosses and just over a quarter believe senior managers fail to provide them with a clear vision.”
- “A total of 60 per cent of those polled who were critical of their employer identified improving the quality of management as a top priority for their organisation, against just 18 per cent of those who spoke highly of their employer.”
Making a Difference Every Day
Making money is easy. Making a difference is hard. That’s why cause-related marketing is a powerful tool today, one that inspires staff and customers. “When I’m 85 in my rocker on my porch and looking through my box of snapshots, what memories do you think I will cherish most? Will it be catching a company plane to go to a shareholders’ meeting or playing golf? Will it be the famous people I have met or the wardrobe of ball gowns I’m accumulating? It would probably be the work that my mother did so well, that she is still doing. Even with arthritis she does something kind every day for a neighbor, the women’s club or the church.”
This importance of making a difference every day is explored in the small book titled “The Fred Factor” by Mark Sanborn, in the book Mark challenges us:
The fact is that everybody is already making a difference every day. The key question is, What kind of difference is each of us making?
YOU Own Your Career
Moore also told her audience that “You are responsible for your own career. People come into my office and say, ‘What do you have in mind for me next?’ Well, I don’t have anything in mind for them. The question is, ‘What do you have in mind for you?’ People get jobs by letting others know what they want to do. I find it tragic that people who have worked beside me for 25 years leave burned out, mad or disappointed. Everyone needs to figure out how to plan their lives, including the second act which comes after they retire from business.”
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Team Leadership, Business, management
Dec
10
The Creative Processes
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An interesting post titled Notes on Making Art offers the following insights into the creative process:
- Quality through quantity. Don’t get hung up on making this one piece good — make ten and one will certainly be pretty good.
- Do NOT mix generating and editing. When you’re making a piece, don’t stop and get judgmental half-way through. If it’s a piece of crap, get that piece of crap out of your system — don’t try to fix it mid-flow. Finish it, move on.
- When to judge: After you’ve completed a piece, look at it and decide what direction you want to go in next. Or if you’re selecting pieces for submission to a show, apply your critiquing mind then. Make a piece of art; look at it; make another.
- Don’t be afraid to re-use elements. If each piece has to be unique, then you’re going to get hung-up when you create some bit that you like. But if you can re-use bits, then you can keep moving.
- How to have “lots of ideas”: permute. Start anywhere. Once a piece is done, try varying some aspect. Think of all the variables that could have permutations.
- “Get through your first 50 failures as fast as you can.” I don’t think that we should be shooting for a place where we no longer make crappy art. A good artist is one who’s in motion making lots of art — you only think they’re so much better because they produce so much quantity that their pile of “good art” has also been able to accumulate. For every piece of crap you create, you’re one step closer to getting something you really like.
- Don’t even bother “fixing” pieces. Making art shouldn’t be a struggle. You’re simply “thinking out loud” onto the page, photo-paper, or canvas. If a product seems confused, leave it confused. Make another piece where you contemplate whatever issues you were wrestling with. Try something different. When clarity arrives, it will come in one living piece — not be Frankensteined together out of a single infinitely re-worked, mangled corpse.
- Work fast. Creativity is exciting. If you’re not judging while you’re making, then you can just throw things together as fast as your mind can move. You’re smart; if you don’t like what you’ve made, you’ll know immediately. You might not know what to do about the problem you perceive… Don’t “think”, standing there cogitating — try things. If your hands are in motion, you can be generating new permutations. The one that you want to pick will come out on its own time.
- Let your level show. Let the world know that despite having years of investment in your art form, you’re still a beginner who doesn’t know it all. Rather than hide your thought process, let your questions be present in your work. You are a fundamentally more interesting artist if people get to see what it is that you’re struggling with, rather than just your final answers. Show your work. Talk about what you still can’t understand (unapologetically).
- Don’t hide your failures. If you are only willing to show those perfect pieces that you are aspiring towards, you’re never going to display / publish your work. Show everything, the worst of the crap included, and let your ego be humbled — and goaded to create more.
Thinking patterns that help create new ideas.
- Explore new ideas and learn to become flexible in your thinking.
- Practice visualization — learn how to create concept maps, illustrative schema, and sketch ideas out.
- Explore other fields looking for new theories and ideas that can be synthesized and adapted.
- Keep a record of your explorations. Keep an “Idea Journal”
- Learn to think of possibilities, diverge, be expansive. Generate lots of ideas, then refine them.
- Practice trying to look at things holistically and try to get the big picture.
- Learn to focus in on parts of a problem, then come back out to the big picture.
- Don’t get in a rut. Force yourself to try new things. Experiment with new strategies and play with ideas imaginatively.
- Think of yourself as an “idea artist” or an “idea vendor.”
- Combine ideas. Let ideas and thoughts ferment and percolate and then revisit them.
- Take time to imagine new ideas and possibilities. Practice daydreaming.
- Look for ideas and inspiration in ordinary places. Scan books, magazines, articles, advertisements & photos for new ideas.
- Ask family members, friends, co-workers and even strangers for a fresh perspectives.
- Brainstorm and free associate frequently.
Technorati Tags: Creative, Innovation, Creativity, Leadership
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