In my reading not long ago I found a pointer to a short piece by Sean Silverthorne – "The Power of the Humble Checklist". As the author points out, and as I will confirm, having a standard checklist for complex, but nevertheless, routine tasks – e.g., the pilot’s pre-flight checklist or the hospital’s safe-surgery checklist – is lifesaving and invaluable.
We all remember Ron Heifetz from the first day of the IT Leaders Program. There we learned about "adaptive leadership," “giving work back to the workers,” and about “getting up on the balcony.”
Today’s reading “The Leader of the Future” reports on a series of 2007 conversations that William Taylor, a founding editor of Fast Company, had with Heifetz. In the conversations, Heifetz offered ideas, advice, and techniques for leaders of the future. The conversations are structured around four topics:
Over the past few weeks I’ve seen a number of pieces about how email is disruptive, how some companies are suggesting ways to that staff might step away from the constant flow of interruptions, how IM, blogs, and wikis can be effective in reducing your email load, etc. So, there seems to be even more concern about how our "always on" culture may be having negative impacts on our work as well as the other facets of our life.