May
27
Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton’s New Book: Hard Facts
Filed Under Leadership Resources | Leave a Comment
Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton, authors of the book “The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action” (which I thought was a great book) has just released his new book “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management“. The book has received a lot of attention from respected sources on the web. I first heard about the book, from a podcast by Dr. Moria Gunn, who interviewed the book’s authors on IT Conversations. Then Tom Peters interviewed the authors and published the interview on his website. Business Week also reviewed the book in their article “Forget Going With Your Gut” stating that:
The book is a rarity on the crowded management shelf. Unlike many such volumes, it offers no quick-fix, hype-heavy solutions from self-anointed gurus. At a time when intuition is on the ascent, thanks in part to Malcolm Gladwell and his best-selling Blink, Hard Facts is a useful reminder that the gut is often trumped by the facts. The book’s deconstruction of some of the most widely applied management truisms and fads is thought-provoking but will leave some managers, especially those in metrics-driven cultures, unsatisfied.
The Stanford Graduate School of Business, has a video interview with the authors and can be viewed here. In addition, Bob Sutton has released a manifesto on ChangeThis, titled “Management Advice: Which 90% is Crap?” with some guidelines for identifying misguided management advice, his guidelines are:
- Treat old ideas as if they are old ideas
- Be suspicious of breakthrough ideas and studies
- What are the incentives for the people who are selling you the idea?
- Are they telling you that “all the best companies” or “most of the fortune 500” do it?
- Does it seem to obvious
The book seems to be something every leader and manager should have on their “to read” list, it’s definitely on mine.
Technorati Tags: Book, Leadership, Management, Tom Peters, Podcast
May
26
How to Build a Great Team
Filed Under Team Leadership | 1 Comment
The article “How to Build a Great Team” by Charlie Feld, provides a great overview of what it takes to build a great team. Charlie found that the “secret sauce” of great leaders are:
Character: Doing the Right Thing
My definition of character is …. what you do, not what you say. Not only the right thing from a business or economic aspect, but the right thing including social and philosophical dimensions…. People will rally around leaders who do the right things consistently. They know they can count on their leaders to be open and honest at every fork in the road and to take a stand regardless of the personal risk. When people feel their leaders are erratic, political or detached from them, they will become cynical. They will generally do their work but won’t be committed. Their trust can only be built over time, so don’t become discouraged if people take a “show me” attitude.
Leadership Development: The Most Important Task
The second competency required for great execution is developing the leadership skills of your team. Organizations are seldom led by a single person, no matter how charismatic. The team at the top determines the environment and the culture. The team decides what gets rewarded, punished, recognized and ignored. Although they don’t run all of the plays, they call the plays.
For CIOs, it’s important to remember that the team at the top represents and reflects your character and agenda. Regardless of what you say you believe, who you choose for your IT leadership team speaks more loudly. So choosing and developing your leadership team is the single most important competency of a leader. This is a time-consuming task. Many great leaders talk about spending up to one-third of their time on leadership development. Since no one is perfect, everyone needs help and coaching.
Developing leaders means that you can articulate the requirements in a clear and thoughtful way. Without a basic framework of leadership skills, it’s hard to evaluate and give people feedback-and without constructive feedback, most people will not change and grow.
Passion: The Organizational Energy Level
Passion for the job is hard to manufacture, but when present, it is contagious. Enthusiasm from a leader enables people to sustain themselves through demanding times. The energy level of an organization is set at the top.
Influence and Persuasion: Better than Power
Executives tend to think it is much easier and less time-consuming to just tell their direct reports what to do. Part of leadership, however, lies in spending time to explain a directive, in giving employees perspective and in helping them understand the “why” behind the direction. This is influence-the flip side of positional power. It is easy to rely on positional power and forget the usefulness of influencing skills.
Leaders have the responsibility of developing people and building teams. How are you doing? What percentage of your time do you spend developing the people around you?
“Develop everyone you touch.” - Robert Greenleaf
Technorati Tags: Team, Teams, Teamwork, Leadership, Management, Character, Development, Business, Passion
May
25
Leadership is Both an Art and a Science
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Leadership is both an art and a science, effective leadership requires that we embrace both dimensions.
The science of leadership concerns the observation, study and classification of leadership practices, resulting in a reliable explanation of what makes leaders effective. Volumes of research, opinions and books have been written on scientific leadership methods and practices.
The art is about developing practical experience in the application of the leadership practices and methods resulting from the “science of leadership”, to me, the art of leadership is about practice!. It’s about practicing the leadership science until you develop intuition. A similar concept is described by Chet Richard, in his book “Certain To Win: The Strategy Of John Boyd, Applied To Business” as follows:
“Zen and other oriental philosophies talk at great length about intuitive knowledge, but they also stress that it comes through years of experience and self-discipline. In medieval Japan, samurai warriors practiced with the long sword until it became as an extension of their arm. When the fight starts you don’t have the time to stop and think about the fundamentals”
Further observations were made by Sharon Daloz Parks, in the article “What Artists Know About Leadership” stating that:
Artists learn “everything they can about the medium(s) with which they work . . . what they can expect from it and where it will fall short.” A potter, for example, must learn that clay has its own life, its own potential and limits, its own integrity. The potter develops a relationship with clay, spending time with it, learning to know its properties, how it will interact with water, discovering that if you work it too hard, it will collapse, and if you work with it, it will teach you its strength, your limits, and the possibilities of co-creation……. The practice of adaptive leadership requires the same awareness of working within a dynamic field of relationships in which the effect of any single action is not entirely controllable because in a systemic, interdependent reality, every action affects the whole. On the other hand, if one learns to understand the nature of the system that needs to be mobilized (the underlying structure and patterns of motion), he or she can become artfully adept at intervening in ways that are more rather than less likely to have a positive affect in helping the group to move to a new place, creating a new reality.
The practices and methods that comprise the leadership science, requires relentless practice and ongoing experimentation, until they become part of the leader, “an extension of their arm”, so that their work, relationships and behaviours become intuitive.
“Practice is the only way that you will ever come to understand what the Way of the warrior is about . . . Words can only bring you to the foot of the path . . .” - Musashi from “Certain To Win: The Strategy Of John Boyd, Applied To Business“
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Practice, Experience, Art, Science, Business, Management
May
21
10 Principles of Strategy
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
I recently attended a course, “Designing Your Business Strategy” run by the Gordon Institute of Business Science (a South African university), presented by Tony Manning a well known South African Strategist. I found the course really useful, Tony’s approach to strategy practical, focused on execution and simplicity. An article on his website, (which is worth a visit as it’s packed with articles on strategy) that sums up Tony’s approach, Tony Manning’s 10 Principles of Strategy are:
- If you don’t make a difference, you don’t matter.
- You can’t make a difference to everyone.
- Strategy must enable your organization to make a difference that matters to a critical mass of the “right” customers.
- Strategy connects the purpose and values of your organization with those of its customers and other external stakeholders.
- It may be easy to clone a product, but it’s impossible to clone a community. So a vital goal of strategy is to create and sustain a unique community.
- Purpose and values hold a community together, drive teams to seek their potential, and provide the context in which individuals will volunteer their imagination and spirit.
- Shared ideas lead to shared meaning. The more openly and honestly ideas are shared, the greater the level of trust will be, the more efforts will be aligned - and the more ideas will emerge.
- People value work that makes them feel valued. When they make strategy, they matter. And they own the results, so effective execution is more likely.
- Strategic management is conversation. It informs, focuses attention and effort, triggers fresh insights, lights up the imagination, energizes people, and inspires performance.
- Strategic conversation provides a context for personal and group learning. Your message must be compelling, simple, clear, and believable, or you won’t sell it. It must also be complex and challenging, or no one will buy it. And it must be repeated with relentless consistency.
Apart from teaching he has published a few great books on his unique approach to strategy, I’ve listed below one of Tony’s books on strategy for those who may be interested:
Technorati Tags: Strategy, Principles, Leadership, Business, Management, Execution
May
13
Leadership Thoughts from a Philosopher
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I found some interesting thoughts on leadership in the article “Do you have the will to lead?“. These some thoughts on leadership are from Peter Koestenbaum, a classically trained philosopher with degrees in philosophy, physics, and theology from Stanford, Harvard, and Boston University.
Make Time for Conversations that Matter
“There’s a terrible defect at the core of how we think about people and organizations today. There is little or no tolerance for the kinds of character-building conversations that pave the way for meaningful change. The average person is stuck, lost, riveted by the objective domain.”
I like the phrase “character building conversations“, how often to we talk past one another or leave things unsaid for the sake of peace? The net result is the “illusion of conversation”, as we all nod and talk past on another. Leaders must take the responsibility to actively engage in character building conversations with their people. Too often leaders remain separate from their constituents in theory offices and rarely engage in conversations that matter…..
Leadership as Competence and Authenticity
“Think of leadership as the sum of two vectors: competence (your specialty, your skills, your know-how) and authenticity (your identity, your character, your attitude). When companies and people get stuck, they tend to apply more steam — more competence — to what got them into trouble in the first place: “If I try harder, I’ll be successful,” or “If we exert more control, we’ll get the results we need.” The problem is, when you’re stuck, you’re not likely to make progress by using competence as your tool. Instead, progress requires commitment to two things. First, you need to dedicate yourself to understanding yourself better — in the philosophical sense of understanding what it means to exist as a human being in the world. Second, you need to change your habits of thought: how you think, what you value, how you work, how you connect with people, how you learn, what you expect from life, and how you manage frustration. Changing those habits means changing your way of being intelligent. It means moving from a nonleadership mind to a leadership mind.”
Leadership Means Dealing with Paradox
“I believe that the central leadership attribute is the ability to manage polarity. In every aspect of life, polarities are inevitable: We want to live, yet we must die. How can I devote myself fully to both family and career? Am I a boss or a friend? A lover or a judge? How do I reconcile my own needs with those of my team? Those paradoxes are simply part of life…… Managing polarity teaches us that there are no solutions — there are only changes of attitude.”
This is an important insight, leadership is a paradox. As leaders we need to develop the ability to deal with paradox. The insight, that a change in attitude can help us deal with paradox is interesting. I have experienced this in many situations, and leaders need to consciously manage their attitude by changing the perspective from which they view the problem or situation. If you change your perspective you can often shift your attitude and thereby embrace BOTH dimensions and find a way to move forward.
Vision, Reality, Ethics and Courage
“The best leaders operate in four dimensions: vision, reality, ethics, and courage. These are the four intelligences, the four forms of perceiving, the languages for communicating that are required to achieve meaningful, sustained results. The visionary leader thinks big, thinks new, thinks ahead — and, most important, is in touch with the deep structure of human consciousness and creative potential. Reality is the polar opposite of vision. The leader as realist follows this motto: Face reality as it is, not as you wish it to be. The realist grapples with hard, factual, daily, and numeric parameters. A master in the art of the possible, the realist has no illusions, sees limits, and has no patience for speculation….Ethics refers to the basic human values of integrity, love, and meaning. This dimension represents a higher level of development, one ruled not by fear or pleasure but by principle. Courage is the realm of the will; it involves the capacity to make things happen. The philosophic roots of this dimension lie in fully understanding the centrality of free will in human affairs. Courage involves both advocacy — the ability to take a stand — and the internalization of personal responsibility and accountability.”
Self-Limitation
“One of the gravest problems in life is self-limitation: We create defense mechanisms to protect us from the anxiety that comes with freedom. We refuse to fulfill our potential. We live only marginally. This was Freud’s definition of psychoneurosis: We limit how we live so that we can limit the amount of anxiety that we experience. We end up tranquilizing many of life’s functions. We shut down the centers of entrepreneurial and creative thinking; in effect, we halt progress and growth. But no significant decision — personal or organizational — has ever been undertaken without being attended by an existential crisis, or without a commitment to wade through anxiety, uncertainty, and guilt…. That’s what we mean by transformation. You can’t just change how you think or the way that you act — you must change the way that you will. You must gain control over the patterns that govern your mind: your worldview, your beliefs about what you deserve and about what’s possible. That’s the zone of fundamental change, strength, and energy — and the true meaning of courage.”
This insight really impacted me, leadership requires growth, growth requires transformation and transformation requires that we’re constantly out of our comfort zone! We want to be busy, but busy with purpose. At the end of the day you need to consider, “Are you’re bigger than the job, or is the job bigger than you?” The place you want to be is in a job that is bigger than you.
Technorati Tags: Philosophy, Leadership, Personal Leadership, Personal Development, Character, Paradox, Vision, Transformation
May
13
Forbes Magazine’s List of the 20 Most Influential Business Books
Filed Under Leadership Resources | Leave a Comment
Forbes’ has published their list of the 20 Most Influential Business Books which was compiled in 2002. The list of book is worth considering if you’re looking for a good business read.
Technorati Tags: Book, Books, Business, Leadership, Management, Strategy
May
13
The Starbucks’ Secret Ingredient
Filed Under Leadership Practices | 1 Comment
Carmine Gallo, wrote an interesting article in BusinessWeek titled Starbucks’ Secret Ingredient discussing the communication skills and passion of Starbuck’s Chairman Howard Schultz.
His powerful communication skills define a leader who knows not only what he stands for, but also the values he promotes, and who knows how to make an emotional connection with his listeners….. There are three qualities that I think help Schultz stand out as a persuasive business communicator.
- Lesson 1: Dig deep to identify what you are truly passionate about (hint: it’s not always the product itself) and convey that message to employees, customers, and colleagues. When you are passionate, you come across as excited, energetic, and enthusiastic — all of the qualities people like to see in others. And if people like you, they’re more likely to do business with you or to back your vision. While Schultz’s passion rubs off on employees, it was his enthusiasm mixed with the ability to paint a vivid picture of what he was trying to accomplish that convinced skeptical investors to back his original concept…….
- Lesson 2: Inspire your colleagues, investors, or employees by painting a picture of a world made better by your service, product, company, or cause.
- Lesson 3: To get the most out of people, a leader has to tap into their emotions as well as their minds. People can relate to stories. They can see themselves in other people’s stories. The ability to use stories to get people to buy into one’s vision with their hearts is a powerful leadership capability.
I recommend Howard Schultz’s book “Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time“, reviewed here, if you’re interested in the Starbucks story.
Technorati Tags: Book, Starbucks, Communication, Persuasion, Leadership
-
Welcome to The Practice of Leadership!
-
What I support...
