Today’s reading is a short piece “Nix Ambiguity and Focus for Lasting Change” by Dan and Chip Heath, authors of Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, as well as Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.
In this piece, a true story about eliminating narcotics abuse in a health-care network serving Minnesota and Western Wisconsin, the Heath brothers make two major points:
The Tuesday Reading this week is “Become an Extraordinary Leader” comes from Scott Edinger’s blog at the Harvard Business School. Edinger is the executive vice president of Zenger Folkman leadership development consultancy.
Your kids bring home their report cards. Where do you focus – the As or the B– or C? Of course, on the C. It is really where improvement is needed.
Today’s reading is a reflection on “Change and the Balcony.” Drew MacGregor, Coordinator of Educational MDA Technology, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, sent this reflection to his IT Leaders Program cohort in mid-December 2011.
Several points caught my eye in Drew’s essay:
• Real change occurs when we buy into and experience a paradigm change, a major alteration of how we think or act.
For today’s Tuesday Reading, we turn to an Adam Bryant interview of Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons which appeared in the December 3, 2011 NYTimes. IT Leaders Coach Greg Anderson called this interview – which can be found at <http://nyti.ms/tw4lR0> – to my attention. It seemed to be a particularly fitting way to begin the New Year.
Fundamentally, the column is President Simmons’ leadership journey. Some of the key lessons I found in the piece are: