Jul
27
With the No. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman helped millions of readers see and understand globalization in a new way. Now you can have it for free.
From now until August 4th, you can download the audiobook version of The World Is Flat and receive an exclusive audio preview excerpt of Hot, Flat, and Crowded.
Technorati Tags: Resources, Leadership, Audio Book, Management, Business
May
11
Dr. Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture
Filed Under Leadership Resources | 2 Comments
Dr. Randy Pausch a professor at the Carnegie Mellon University in the USA gave an inspiring presentation and his “Last Lecture”. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the pancreas and in August 2006 was told that he had 6 months to live. He then began working on his “Last lecture” which has subsequently inspired many people around the world and been translated into seven languages. This lecture is worth watching.
The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
More information regarding Randy Pausch can be found by visiting www.TheLastLecture.com
Technorati Tags: Last Lecture, Presentation, Communication, Inspiration, Dream, Vision, Purpose, Randy Pausch, Leadership, Personal Leadership, Management, Passion
Dec
29
The Best Leadership Books of 2007
Filed Under Leadership Resources | 4 Comments
The Leading blog has published their selection of the Best Leadership Books of 2007. I’ve looked through various lists of top business and leadership book for 2007 and this was one of the best lists I could find.
"Learning for the successful person, is a lifelong journey. No book or conference is an end in itself. They should encourage you to dig deeper and more often….. These titles do not necessarily represent popularity in terms of numbers of books sold. In a few cases they did not get the recognition they deserved. But all of the titles selected will contain ideas relevant and compelling to leaders at all levels and contexts….. The authors all addressed the question, “How can I create the environment and perform in a way that leads to consistently successful outcomes?” But more than that, they deal with the real success of a leader: the creating of a leadership economy if you will—a place where leaders are developed at all levels and in all areas of life. These books will help you on your journey."
Their choice of the best leadership books of 2007 are:
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True North shows how anyone who follows their internal compass can become an authentic leader. This leadership tour de force is based on research and first-person interviews with 125 of today’s top leaders—with some surprising results. True North presents a concrete and comprehensive program for leadership success and shows how to create your own Personal Leadership Development Plan centered on five key areas:
True North offers an opportunity for anyone to transform their leadership path and become the authentic leader they were born to be. For more on this book, visit www.truenorthleaders.com |
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"The problems we’ll be looking at in this book are not life-threatening diseases (although ignored for too long they can destroy a career). They’re not deep-seated neuroses that require years of therapy or tons of medication to erase. "More often than not, they are simple behavioral tics ‘bad habits that we repeat dozens of times a day in the workplace’ which can be cured by (a) pointing them out, (b) showing the havoc they cause among the people surrounding us, and (c) demonstrating that with a slight behavioral tweak we can achieve a much more appealing effect."
For more on this book, visit www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com |
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It’s no longer what you do that sets you apart from others, but how you do what you do. Whats are commodities, easily duplicated or reverse-engineered. Sustainable advantage and enduring success—for both companies and the people who work for them—now lie in the realm of how, the new frontier of conduct. Divided into four comprehensive parts, this insightful guide:
With in-depth insights and practical advice, HOW will help you bring excellence and significance to your business endeavors—and your life—and refocus your efforts in powerful new ways. If you want to stand out, to thrive in our fast changing, hyperconnected, and hypertransparent world, open this book and discover HOW. For more on this book, visit www.HowsMatter.com |
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This book turns conventional leadership wisdom on its head, showing how to focus on the behavior of followers to craft a powerful leadership style. Structuring their message around the indicators of follower behavior that predict a leader’s influence, Aubrey and James Daniels show exactly how to impact the growth of a business, its customers, and the marketplace. Even more important, the authors’ system gives managers the tools to adapt the approach, creating positive behavior that can improve the performance of their people. Managers are transformed into leaders, creating a legacy that perpetually generates greater momentum, commitment, initiative, and reciprocity throughout an organization. |
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“With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters.” Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have each spent decades studying and teaching leadership and advising top CEOs such as Jack Welch and Howard Schultz. Now, in their first collaboration, they offer a powerful framework for making tough calls when the stakes are high and the right path is far from obvious. They show how to recognize the critical moment before a judgment call, when swift and decisive action is essential, and also how to execute a decision after the call. No organization can afford to neglect this crucial discipline—and no previous book has ever brought it into such clear focus. |
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A leader is: someone people follow. But why do people follow? Books abound on leaders, but much less is known about followers. In The Leaders We Need, Maccoby steps into this yawning gap in the literature. This insightful book shows that followers have their own powerful motivations to follow. Many relate to their leader as to some important person from the past—a parent, a sibling, a close friend. The key for modern-day leaders? Being sensitive to how a group’s collective psychology and social context shape its leadership needs. The author outlines the profound shift from a more bureaucratic society and leadership model to an interactive, collaborative one—and provides crucial advice on how to become a “leader we need.” Offering provocative psychological insight and thoughtful analysis of social and cultural changes, this book examines leadership through an entirely new lens. |
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What fuels long-term business success? Not operational excellence, technology breakthroughs, or new business models, but management innovation—new ways of mobilizing talent, allocating resources, and formulating strategies. Through history, management innovation has enabled companies to cross new performance thresholds and build enduring advantages. In The Future of Management, Gary Hamel argues that organizations need management innovation now more than ever. Why? The management paradigm of the last century—centered on control and efficiency—no longer suffices in a world where adaptability and creativity drive business success. To thrive in the future, companies must reinvent management. For more on this book, visit discussionleader.hbsp.com/hamel |
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Arrogant, self-centered, stubborn, and insecure — words that most people associate with ego. But in this original, eye-opening work, authors David Marcum and Steven Smith argue that the upside of ego is as powerful as the downside and answer questions about ego that have been a mystery to most people. In his landmark book, Good to Great, Jim Collins showed that one of two key traits defined leaders who transformed organizations from good to great: humility. But if humility is so powerful, why don’t more of us have it? Why does ego allow us to reach good results but never great ones, unless balanced by humility? Why do we need ego to personally succeed, while having it often interferes with the success we pursue? The Answers Using five years of exhaustive research, Marcum and Smith provide compelling evidence and matter-of-fact answers on striking the balance between ego and humility to reach the next level of leadership. The authors include case studies to illustrate how ego subtly interferes with success but also how ego sparks the drive to achieve, the nerve to try something new, and the tenacity to conquer adversity. For more on this book, visit www.egonomicslive.com |
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The world of the future will demand capacities that, until now, have been mere options. Have you begun developing those capacities-in yourself and others? In Five Minds for the Future, noted psychologist Howard Gardner defines the cognitive abilities that will command a premium in the years ahead:
Armed with these well-honed capacities, a person will be equipped to deal with what is expected in the future-as well as what cannot be anticipated. Without these "minds", individuals will be at the mercy of forces they can’t understand-overwhelmed by information, unable to succeed in the workplace, and incapable of making judicious decisions about personal and professional manners. For more on this book, visit www.howardgardner.com |
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In Leaders at All Levels, Ram Charan addresses a pressing problem—a shortfall of leaders prepared to face today’s complex business challenges. When so many companies struggle to find successors for their top jobs, and when so many leaders rise to the top only to fail shortly after getting there, you know there’s something wrong with our leadership development practices. In this book, Ram Charan presents a radical and controversial remedy for the crisis in leadership: the Apprenticeship Model. This new approach to succession and to leadership development makes it a hands-on activity for leaders and their bosses. People with the talent for leadership get stiff challenges hand-picked for them. Their bosses play a crucial role in accelerating their development. HR gets a new job, as trustee of the Apprenticeship system. Leaders at all levels develop faster and better, and boards have better choices when it comes time to choose the next CEO. New but not untested, this approach works because it is based on Charan’s keen insights into how great business leaders actually develop. For more on this book, visit www.ram-charan.com |
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"My goal is to help you become a Remarkable Leader by unleashing the leadership potential that is already within you." — Kevin Eikenberry We are all given a unique set of talents when we are born and it is our job to tap into our personal skills and abilities to maximize our potential throughout our lives. Some of our natural talents help us on our journey to become a leader, but other skills need to be nurtured and developed. Remarkable Leadership is a practical handbook written for anyone who wants to hone the skills they need to become an outstanding leader. In this groundbreaking book, Kevin Eikenberry outlines a framework and a mechanism for both learning new things and applying current knowledge in a thoughtful and practical way. Eikenberry provides a guide through the most important leadership competencies, offers a proven method for learning leadership skills, and shows approaches for applying these skills in today’s multitasking and overloaded world of work. The book explores real-world concerns such as focus, limited time, incremental improvement, and how we learn. Remarkable Leadership is an original book that is based on a proven process designed to help people become more proficient in their role as a leader. For more on this book, visit www.remarkable-leadership.com |
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Much of our business thinking is shaped by delusions — errors of logic and flawed judgments that distort our understanding of the real reasons for a company’s performance. In a brilliant and unconventional book, Phil Rosenzweig unmasks the delusions that are commonly found in the corporate world. The most pervasive delusion is the Halo Effect. When a company’s sales and profits are up, people often conclude that it has a brilliant strategy, a visionary leader, capable employees, and a superb corporate culture. When performance falters, they conclude that the strategy was wrong, the leader became arrogant, the people were complacent, and the culture was stagnant. In fact, little may have changed — company performance creates a Halo that shapes the way we perceive strategy, leadership, people, culture, and more. Rosenzweig identifies nine popular business delusions. Among them:
The Halo Effect is a guide for the thinking manager, a way to detect errors in business research and to reach a clearer understanding of what drives business success and failure. For more on this book, visit www.the-halo-effect.com |
I would add the following two books to the above list ….
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Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas–business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others–struggle to make their ideas “stick.” Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the “human scale principle,” using the “Velcro Theory of Memory,” and creating “curiosity gaps.” Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas–and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick. For more on this book, visit www.madetostick.com |
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The Leadership Challenge has become one of the best-selling leadership books of all time. Now, with the publication of the fourth edition of their landmark book, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner celebrate twenty-five years of leadership excellence. The Leadership Challenge—the most trusted source on becoming a better leader—has been thoroughly updated and revised for a new generation of leaders living and working in a global environment. Building on the knowledge base of the previous books, the fourth edition is grounded in research and presents extensive interviews with a diverse group of leaders at all levels in a wide variety of organizations from around the world. The authors emphasize that the fundamentals of leadership are not a fad. While the context of leadership has changed dramatically, the content of leadership has endured the test of time. For more on this book, visit www.leadershipchallenge.com |
Technorati Tags: Books,Best,2007,Leadership,Management,Business,Personal Development,Growth,Communication,Execution,Decision-Making
Sep
8
Bill Hybels has put together a list of leadership “must reads” it’s a great list for anyone looking for a good book on leadership:
- Goals, Brian Tracy
- Authentic Leadership, Bill George
- Tough Choices, Carly Fiorina
- Leadership Can Be Taught, Sharon Daloz Parks
- Winning, Jack Welch & Suzy Welch
- Courage: The Backbone of Leadership, Gus Lee & Diane Elliott-Lee
- Leadership: The Inner Side of Greatness, Peter Koestenbaum
- The 360° Leader, John Maxwell
- Executive Intelligence, Justin Menkes
- The Prepared Mind of a Leader, Bill Welter & Jean Egmon
- Intuition at Work, Gary Klein
- Resonant Leadership, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee
- Great Leadership, Antony Bell
- The Leadership Mystique, Manfred Kets De Vries
- Leading in Black and White, Ancella B. Livers & Keith Caver
- The One Thing You Need to Know, Marcus Buckingham
- Launching a Leadership Revolution, Chris Brady & Orrin Woodward
- Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge (2nd ed.), Warren Bennis
- Paths to Power, Anthony J. Mayo, Nitin Nohria, Laura G. Singleton
- Enough, Juan Williams
- The Leadership Gap, David S. Weiss & Vince Molinaro
- Project Leadership, James P. Lewis
- Leading Quietly, Joseph L. Bodarracco, Jr.
- Ladder Shifts, Samuel Chand
- Taking Advice, Dan Ciampa
- Results, Gary Neilson & Bruce Pasternack
- Execution, Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan
- Leadership Passages, David L. Dotlich, James L. Noel, Norman Walker
- A Bias for Action, Heinke Bruch & Sumantra Ghoshal
- The Highest Goal, Jim Collins
- Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman, Annie McKee & Richard E. Boyatzis
- Flexible Leadership, Gary Yukl & Richard Lepsinger
- The Ethical Challenge, Noel Tichy & Andrew R. McGill
- Changing Minds, Howard Gardner
- Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices, Paul Lawrence & Nitin Nohria
- Culture Shift, Robert Lewis & Wayne Cordeiro
- The Future of Leadership, Warren Bennis, Gretchen Spreitszer & Thomas Cummings
- Silos, Politics & Turf Wars, Patrick Lencioni
- Building the Bridge As You Walk on It, Robert E. Quinn
- Leading the Way, Robert Gandossy & Mark Effron, Hewitt Associates
- Value Leadership, Peter S. Cohan
- Business Evolves, Leadership Endures, Andrea Redmond & Charles A. Tribbett, III
- The Next Generation Leader, Andy Stanley
- Grow Your Own Leaders, William C. Byhan, Sudrey B. Smith & Matthew J. Paese
- The Go Point, Michael Useem
- Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter
- Integrity, Henry Cloud
- Leadership on the Line, Martin Linsky & Ronald Heifetz
- Nobody in Charge, Harlan Cleveland & Warren Bennis
Technorati Tags: Books, Leadership, Management, Business
Aug
19
Book Review: The First 90 Days
Filed Under Leadership Resources | 2 Comments
The First 90 Days a Harvard business Review book by Micheal Watkins provides a guide for leaders making a transition from one role into a new one. Transitions are one of the most difficult times for most leaders. This book is an essential guide for leaders in transition…
“Transition failures happen when new leaders either misunderstand the essential demands of the situation or the lack of skill and flexibility to adapt to them.”
Promote Yourself
“This doesn’t mean hiring your own publicist. It means making the mental break from your old job and preparing to take charge in the new one. Perhaps the biggest pitfall you face is assuming that what has made you successful to this point in your career will continue to do so. The dangers of sticking with what you know, working extremely hard at doing it, and failing miserably are very real.”
Accelerate Your Learning
“You need to climb the learning curve as fast as you can in your new organization. This means understanding its markets, products, technologies, systems and structures, as well as its culture and politics. Getting acquainted with the new organization can feel like drinking from a fire hose. You have to be systematic and focused about deciding what you need to learn and how you will learn it most effectively.”
Match Strategy to Situation
“There are no universal rules for success in transitions. You need to diagnose the business situation accurately and clarify its challenges and opportunities. Start-ups, for instance - of a new product, process, plant, or completely new business - share challenges quite different from those you would face while turning around a product, process, or plant in serious trouble. A clear diagnosis of the situation is an essential prerequisite for developing your action plan.”
Secure Early Wins
“Early wins build your credibility and create momentum. They create virtuous cycles that leverage the energy you are putting into the organization to create a pervasive sense that good things are happening. In the first few weeks, you need to identify opportunities to build personal credibility. In the first 90 days, you need to identify ways to create value, improve business results, and get to the breakeven point more rapidly.”
Negotiate Success
“Because no other single relationship is more important, you need to figure out how to build a productive working relationship with you new boss and manage his or her expectations. This means carefully planning for a series of critical conversations about situation, expectations, style, resources, and your personal development. Critically, it means developing and gaining consensus on your 90-day plan.”
Achieve Alignment
“The higher you rise in an organization, the more you have to play the role of organizational architect. This means figuring out whether the organization’s strategy is sound, bringing its structure into alignment with its strategy, and developing the systems and skill bases necessary to realize strategic intent.”
Build Your Team
“If you are inheriting a team, you will need to evaluate its members and perhaps restructure it to better meet the demands of the situation. Your willingness to make tough early personnel calls and your capacity to select the right people for the right positions are amongst the most important drivers of success during your transition. You will need to be both systematic and strategic in approaching your team building challenge.”
Create Coalitions
“Your success will depend on your ability to influence people outside your direct line of control. Supportive alliances, both internal and external, will be necessary to achieve your goals. You should therefore start right away to identify those whose support is essential for your success, and to figure out how to line them up on your side.”
Keep Your Balance
“In the personal and profession tumult of a transition, you will have to work hard to maintain your equilibrium and preserve your ability to make good judgements. The risk of losing perspective, getting isolated, and making bad calls are ever present during transitions. There is much you can do to accelerate your personal transition and to gain more control over your work environment. The right advise-and-counsel network is an indispensable resource.”
Expedite Everyone
“Finally, you need to help everyone in your organization - direct reports, bosses, and peers - accelerate their own transitions. The quicker you can get your new direct reports up to speed, the more you will help your own performance. Beyond that, the benefits to the organization of systematically accelerating everyone’s transitions are potentially vast.”
In Conclusion….
Transitions need to be carefully managed as they are risky and prone to failure. This book is very well written and full of practice advice to guide leaders through the crucial first 90 days in their new roles. I found this book an extremely useful resource in a recent transitions that I made from a leadership position in one organization to another. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for some guidance and advice as they seek to develop their personal 90 day transition plans.
Technorati Tags: Book, Review, 90-days, 100-days, Plan, Career, Transition, Leadership, Management, Business, Change, HBR
May
20
Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win by William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre is a great book. It’s one of those business books that stand out from the crowd and not only in it’s cover design! The cover reflects nature of this book, bold, challenging and provocative. The authors describe the book as “more than a how-to book. It is also a What-If book” with the underlying premise that:
“.. in business, as in basket ball, the smart take from the strong - that the best way to outperform the competition is to outthink the competition.. ” and it’s the “..mavericks do the work that matters most - the work of originality, creativity, and experimentation..”
Two aspects of this book really stand out, firstly the curiosity of the authors, who throughout the book challenge your thinking with a number of provocative questions, secondly the book is littered with quotes from the numerous organisational leaders as they tell their story.
“We went deep inside these organisations, looking to understand the ideas they stand for and the ways they work.”
The book has 12 chapters and is grouped into four parts. The books is jam packed with insightful discussion, delving into what makes maverick companies successful. This made the book very difficult to review, however I have selected those thoughts and ideas that really impacted me in each part of the book to give you and idea of the books message.
Part One: Rethinking Competition
- Talking about the link between who Southwest airlines hires and promotes and their business strategy, Libby Sartain explains that ”We examined at the most detailed level and asked, ‘From the minute you think of working here to the minute you leave, what makes this experience unique? What is it about our workforce that separates us from the competition?’”
- “Anybody who’s running a business has to figure out the higher calling of that business, its purpose. Purpose is about the difference you’re trying to make - in the marketplace, in the world. If everybody is selling the same thing, what’s the tie-breaker? It’s purpose” - Roy Spence
- “How you talk about your company speaks volumes about how you think about your business. And ultimately, how you think about your business determines how well it performs.”
- “Re-creating your industry is about creating a story around customers, around employees, around products…” - Arkadi Kuhlmann
- “At Netscape, the competition with Microsoft was so severe, we’d wake up in the morning thinking about how we were going to deal with them instead of how we would build something great for our customers” - Mike McCue, previously vice president of technology in Netscape
- “We believe that a new wave of strategic innovation is being built around disruptive points of view. Maverick leaders don’t just strive to build high-performance companies….They present a fresh take on the world that clicks with customers, energizes employees, and shapes their business, from the markets they target to the customers they serve and the messages they send. They understand that the only sustainable form of market leadership is thought leadership”
- “Companies that compete on a disruptive point of view are defined as much by the opportunities they choose not to pursue as by the businesses they do enter.”
- “Companies that think differently about their business invariably talk about it differently as well. What language does your company speak?”
- “The customers who are right for you, they love you. They become evangelists. The customers who you close out, they hate you. But you know what they do when they hate you? They tell everybody about you–and that’s good. It creates dialogue. There’s nothing like differentiation.”
- “Perhaps the most powerful indicator of a company’s future share of the product market in its industry is its current position in the talent market for that industry: is it attracting more than its fair share of the best people?”
- If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would really miss you and why? “Why might a company be missed? Because it’s providing a produce or a service so unique that it can’t be provided nearly as well by any other company. Because it’s created a workplace so dynamic that most employees would be hard-pressed to find a similar environment somewhere else. Because it has forged a uniquely emotional connection with customers that other companies can’t replicate.”
- “Can you identify one piece of how your company operates that if it were to disappear, would be sorely missed in the marketplace? If not, can you identify one good reason why your company is not a risk of disappearing?”
Provocative Questions:
- What ideas is your company fighting for?
- What purpose does your company serve?
- If you do things the way everybody else does, why do you think you’re going to do any better?
- Did today really matter?
- Are we who we say we are?
- Do you have a distinctive and disruptive set of purpose that sets you apart from the competition?
- Do you have a vocabulary of competition that is unique to your industry and compelling to your employees and customers?
- Are you prepared to reject opportunities that offer short-term benefits but distract your organisation from its long-term mission?
- If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would really miss you and why?
Part Two: Reinventing Innovation
- “The best leaders have a crisp answer to the question: why would great people want to work for us?”
- “Great performers tend to be naturally competitive. They want to know where they stand, they want to know how good they are. They also want to be challenged, to improve their skills.”
- “You cannot motivate the best people with money. Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated by passion. That becomes more true the higher the skill level goes. People do their best work when they are passionately engaged in what they’re doing.” - Eric Raymond
- “Wieden argues that his job is to ‘walk in stupid every day’ - to keep challenging the organization and himself, to seek out unexpected ideas, outside influences, and new perspectives on old problems. ‘It’s the hardest thing to do as a leader,’ he concedes, ‘but it’s the most important thing. Whatever day it is, something in the world changed overnight, and you better figure out what it is and what it means. You have to forget what you just did and what you just learned. You have to walk in stupid every day.”
- “It’s hard to find an executive who doesn’t appreciate the power of the experience curve - the idea that the more you do something (make computer chips, build airplanes, write TV spots), the more productive you becomes. Dan Wieden and his colleagues also appreciate the power of the inexperience curve - the idea that the more you do something, the more important it is to challenge the assumptions and habits that built your success so as to generate a wave of innovations to build the future.”
- “The most effective leaders are the ones who are the most insatiable learners, and experienced leaders learn the most by interacting with people whose interests, backgrounds, and experiences are the least like theirs.”
Provocative Questions:
- Why should people want to work for us?
Part Three: Reconnecting with Customers
- Levitant says. “For us the foundation of a brand is the psychological contract - the contract between a company and its employees and between those employees and their customers. Great consumer companies are built on genuine passion, plus a day-to-day commitment to great execution”
- “The challenge isn’t to perform as much as it is to connect, to offer something so distinctive that people can’t help but notice, even in a marketplace with low prices and big claims. In an era of overcapacity and oversupply, overloaded customers are eager to identify with companies that have an appealing identity.”
- “We’re customer experts. Our focus is on always doing what’s right for a specific customer we know very well. Every product we buy, every real estate decision we make, every action we take, is through the eyes of that customer. Our customer is our category” - Glen Senk
- “There are so many ways to defy expectations in the marketplace, to do enough little things that you wind up making a big impression on your customers.”
- “To make their offerings more memorable, companies are working desperately to make them more emotional.”
- “The first and most important piece of every job, is to tell a unique and relevant story about the space, the product, or the experience. story is the fundamental platform for organizing ideas. That’s how you connect emotionally with people.” - David Rockwell
- “The next frontier for making products more emotional is to turn them into something social - to create a sense of shared ownership and participation among customers themselves. The more people you invite to shape your company’s personality, the more you enable them to share their ideas with one another, the greater their stake in what your company does - and the more invested they become in its success. In the new world of competition, generating a whole lotta love means unleashing a whole lotta participation.”
- “There’s always a demand for something distinctive”
- If you want customer to invest in and talk about your brand, then invest time and money in developing products worth talking about in the first place”
Provocative Questions:
- How do you make a compelling offer to customer who already have more than enough of what you’re selling?
Part Four: Redesigning Work
- “I’m a capitalist, not a social worker. Too many companies spend too much time trying to ’fix’ their mediocre performers. They should spend more time recruiting and retaining great performers.” -John Sullivan
- “The difference between success and failure, Andreessen and McCue now understand, is not just a function of the markets a company enters or the products it launches. Just as important are the people it lets in the door - who it hires, who it turns away, and the criteria for making those decisions.”
- “Any company with a disruptive business model has to be clear about the distinctive work experience it creates to support that model - and how that work experience shapes the customer experience.”
- “Great people almost always have great jobs. So if you want to fill your organization with knockout contributors, you can’t wait for them to knock on your door. You’ve got to knock on their door and persuade them to walk into your office.”
- “Remember, stars don’t work for idiots. So as you raise the quality of your talent, you’ve got to raise the quality of your management.” - Dr John Sullivan
- “Great people want to work on exciting projects. Great people want to feel like impact players inside their organization. Great people want to be surrounded with and challenged by other great people. Put simply, great people want to feel like they’re part of something greater than themselves.”
- “Companies that compete differently tend to work differently from the competition.”
Provocative Questions:
- Be honest: how many companies do you know that are as creative, as disciplined, as businesslike about the people factor in business as they are about finance, engineering, and marketing?
- What is it about the ideas your company stands for, its point of view in the marketplace, the ways in which employees interact with customers or collaborate with one another, that becomes irresistible to the best people in your industry?
- Have I established a great fit between the customer experience and the work experience?
- Are you articulate and persuasive about why talented people are more likely to thrive at your company than at rivals?
- Why should great people join your organisation?
- Do you know a great person when you see one?
- Can you find great people who aren’t looking for you?
- Are you teaching great people how your organization works and wins?
- Does your organisation work as distinctly as it competes?
Summary
This is an insightful book and is supported by an excellent website, a manifesto and a blog. The book’s appendix also contains a wealth of useful resources that you can explore to gain increased insight into what it means to be a Maverick. I found the book very well written, engaging and challenging. The authors really challenge your thinking, they have done a great job of imparting the reader with the passion and purpose found in the companies they discuss. I highly recommend this book to all those looking to create a disruptive business, seeking to challenge and transform their industries. It’s fresh look at what it takes to disrupt and industry and to compete with passion and purpose.
Technorati:Book, Review, Maverick, Work, Strategy, Innovation, Leadership, Management, Recruiting, Talent, Reinvent, Brand, Customers, Passion
Apr
15
Here is a list of 30 books that the Regional Leadership Forum’s (RLF) suggest that Can Make You a Better Leader. The underlying premise behind this list of 30 books is that although “a single book might not help you discover your inner leader, but 30 books can change your life.” The books in their list include the following:
- Adler: How to Read a Book
- Boyatzis & McKee: Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others through Mindfulness, Hope and Compassion
- Kotter: Heart of Change
- Bridges: Managing Transitions
- Buckingham: First Break all the Rules
- Dotlich, Noel and Walker: Leadership Passages
- Conger: Winning ‘Em Over
- DePree: Leadership is an Art
- Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning
- Friedman: The World is Flat
- George: Authentic Leadership
- Ghandi: the video
- Goleman: Working with Emotional Intelligence
- Hammerschlag: The Theft of the Spirit
- Jamison: Nibble Theory
- Katzenbach: The Wisdom of Teams
- Lencioni: Death by Meeting: A Leadership Problem about Solving the most Painful Problem in Business
- Machiavelli: The Prince
- Mackenzie: Orbiting the Giant Hairball
- Marquardt: Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask
- O’Toole: Creating the Good Life
- Patterson: Crucial Conversations
- Rousseau & Cranston: The Social Contract
- Shafir: The Zen of Listening
- Jaworski: Synchronicity
- Useem: Leadership Moment
- Wallis: Two Old Women
- Whyte: The Heart Aroused
- Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
- Michalko: Thinkertoys
If you’re looking for something to read on leadership this is a good starting list. One great book that stands out to me as missing from this list is “The Leadership Challenge” by Kouzes and Posner. Overall it’s a great list, some of the books I’ve not heard and will be checking out soon…
Technorati Tags: Books, Reading, Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Business, Business
Mar
21
The “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni is written as a “leadership fable” a story of a technology company that is struggling in the marketplace to find customers. The new CEO recognises that the company has innovative products and great talent, however the executives are not working together as a team, negating the advantages of the companies innovative products and talented people. The team is struggling with their situation and are unable to come to agreement on an appropriate solution to their problems. The team dynamics erode into naming, blaming and shaming, no one is accepting responsibility, deadlines are being missed and moral is on the decline. The executive team is unable to make important decisions and as a result the company is losing the battle for market share…..
“If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”
To get the people in a team aligned and rowing in the same direction requires leaders to address the following five dysfunctions of a team.
Dysfunction 1: Absence of Trust
The first dysfunction is the absence of trust amongst team members. The type of trust the author is talking about here is the ability of group members to show their weaknesses, to be vulnerable and open with one another. Trust is never generated in teams when the team members are not prepared to be vulnerable. Instead they feel the need to be right, to be strong and competent, so much that they are unable to be vulnerable and open with one another. Trust requires that team members have confidence in each other intentions, that they are good and therefore have no reason to be protective and careful in the team. The when I ‘m vulnerable it will not be exploited and used against me by the team. The lack of trust amongst teams is a huge waste of time and energy as team members invest their time and energy in defensive behaviours, reluctant to ask for help and to assist others.
The key to overcoming a lack of trust is shared experiences, multiple follow-throughs and integrity. In the fable the team completes a Myers Briggs assessment to get the team talking about one another’s strengths and weaknesses and so become comfortable with one another.
“…teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”
The primary role of the leader is to lead my example, be the first one to be vulnerable, and create an environment where it’s safe to be vulnerable. Building trust makes conflict possible!
Dysfunction 2: Fear of Conflict
Trust is the foundation of great teams and it’s trust that makes team conflict possible. Teams become dysfunctional when they are unable to productively deal with conflict. All meaningful relationships require productive conflict for them to grow. Healthy conflict occurs when people talk about the issue at hand avoiding personal attacks, looking for the best solution for the team. Teams tend to avoid conflict often replacing it with an artificial harmony.
“Harmony itself is good, I suppose, if it comes as a result of working through issues constantly and cycling through conflict. But if it comes only as a result of people holding back their opinions and honest concerns, then it’s a bad thing.”
We wear masks and focus on being nice to everyone. however, productive conflict is required for teams to become functional. This allows for meaningful dialogue where people are open to share, without feeling fearful of reprisal or criticism. One of the worst team dysfunctions is when you have a team of “yes men”.
Leaders need to encourage debate, support it and keep it productive. Teams who avoid conflict spend much time “off-line” never making decisions that the group can commit to. Healthy and productive teams accept that conflict is a normal part of being in a team to learn to deal with it productively.
“…meetings and movies have a lot in common…A movie, on average, runs anywhere from ninety minutes to two hours in length. Staff meetings are about the same…And yet meetings are interactive, whereas movies are not…And more importantly, movies have no real impact on our lives…. [and]…Every great movie has conflict. Without it, we just don’t care what happens to the characters.”
When working with teams a leaders need to understand the importance of conflict in teams, being careful not to try and steer the team towards premature resolution of conflict with the intention of protecting people. It’s important for leaders to help the team members to learn and develop positive conflict resolution skills. The beast way to do this is for leader to “lead by example”, modelling the appropriate behaviours, rather than trying to smooth over the conflict.
Dysfunction 3: Lack of Commitment
When teams engage in productive conflict they can confidently commit and buy-in to decisions. Commitment is a function of clarity and buy-in. Productive teams make clear decisions and are confident that they have the support from every team member. A lack of commitment usually arises from not hearing all the teams concerns before making a decision. There can be no commitment without debate. People will not buy into something when their opinions and thoughts on the matter were not included and discussed. “If they don’t weigh in, then they won’t buy in.” This is not as much about seeking consensus as it is about making sure that everyone is heard.
“The point here is that most reasonable people don’t have to get their way in a discussion. They just need to be heard, and to know that their input was considered and responded to.”
At the end of the day everyone needs to get to the point where they can say, “I may not agree with your ideas but I understand them and can support them.”
“When people don’t unload their opinions and feel like they’ve been listened to, they won’t really get on board.”
Leaders can help to facilitate commitment by reviewing all key decisions made at the end of team meetings, making responsibility and deadlines clear.
Dysfunction 4: Avoidance of Accountability
Without team commitment you cannot have accountability. If the team is to be accountable, everyone must have a clear understanding of what is expected of them.
“People aren’t going to hold each other accountable if they haven’t clearly bought in to the same plan.”
At the end of the day it’s about each team member being accountable to the team. This means that a team member never lets the team down when is comes to meeting commitments. The team needs to hold their peers responsible for achieving results and working to high standards. It’s the responsibility of each team member to hold one another accountable and accept it when others hold them accountable.
It’s often the case, that when teams are not holding one another accountable it’s usually because they’re not measuring their progress. It’s important to make clear what the team’s standards are, what needs to get done, by who and by when. Ambiguity is the enemy of accountability.
Dysfunction 5: Inattention to Results
When teams are not held accountable the team members tend to look out for their own interests, rather than the interests of the team. A healthy team places team results as the most important goal. When all team members place the team’s results first the team becomes results orientated.
“Our job is to make the results that we need to achieve so clear to everyone in this room that no one would even consider doing something purely to enhance his or her individual status or ego. Because that would diminish our ability to achieve our collective goals. We would all lose.”
Leaders need to make the teams results clear for all to see, rewarding the behaviours that contribute to the team’s results. It’s the responsibility of the leader to keep the teams focus on results.
Cohesive Teams
By addressing these dysfunctions, what results is a cohesive team….
“…and imagine how members of truly cohesive teams behave:
1. They trust one another.
2. They engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas.
3. They commit to decisions and plans of action.
4. They hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans
5. They focus on the achievement of collective results.”
Summary
The is a really great book on team dynamics and team work, in fact it’s one of the best books on the subject that I’ve read. The book is written as a fable which help one get a really vivid picture of how a healthy team interacts and what is feels like to be part of a successful team. Although written as a fable, the book provides practical advice, which leaders can use in their own teams.
The book is a small and easy to read and the model provided is simple to understand making it a powerful tool for helping teams improve. I highly recommend this book to anyone, who leads a team. This book will help you understand what a successful team looks and feels like.
Patrick Lencioni has also written a follow-up workbook “Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators” written to help teams work through resolving the five dysfunctions together.
Technorati Tags: Teams, Team work, Book, Leadership, Management, Business, Trust, Book Review, Conflict, Execution, Results, Accountability
Feb
12
Book Review: Success Built to Last
Filed Under Leadership Resources | 1 Comment
“Until you ‘figure out what success means to you personally and to your organisation, leadership is an almost pointless conversation” - Peter Drucker
Jerry Porras, who co-wrote the original “Built to Last“, teams with successful life coaching company co-founder Stewart Emery and top executive coach Mark Thompson, to interview 300 successful people, tagged “builders,” to uncover the secrets of their winning life journeys.
INTRODUCTION
When takling about success, the author’s describe it as:
“the ability to ‘make a difference’, ‘create lasting impact’ and be ‘engaged in a life of personal fulfilment’”
The book is “based on interviews with over 200 people all over the world who have made a difference - large or small - in their field, profession or community, but who have lived a life that they believe mattered”. To find these remarkable people the author’s spoke to Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer, Grammy, Peabody and Grammy award winners including CEO’s from large and small businesses. They also examined lists of people identified as great such as Time Magazine’s Most Influential People, Oprah Winfrey’s Use Your Life Award winners, and people identified by Forbes and Fortune magazine. Once identified the people limited the people on the list to those who had sustained success over a 20 year minimum period. This criteria dropped the number of the people on the list to less than 1000 people, removing “celebrities-of-the-moment”. The final group comprised of people across diverse industries, interests and gender, most of whom were over the age of 40, the o