Jim Bruce

Today’s Tuesday Reading was written by Dana Stasiak, a participant in IT Leaders 2012, as a reflection on leadership for her cohort.  Dana is the manager for Web Services at Argonne National Laboratory.  She writes:   I was channel surfing on Sunday night after our first session and ended up on Great Performances on PBS.  As it […]

Earlier this year Arianna Huffington, author and syndicated columnist, spoke on the Penn State campus as part of their 2011-2012 Distinguished Speaker series.  The centredaily.com account of the event <http://www.bit.ly/wFmdtk> is today’s reading. In her remarks, Huffington provided a number of leadership truisms that Gary Augustson, ITLP coach and former CIO of Penn State, urged me […]

The Tuesday Reading today is a piece, “The Power of Pause”, by Ana Dutra which recently appeared in a Harvard Business Review blog.  Dutra is CEO for Leadership and Talent Consulting and Executive Vice President, at Korn Ferry International. No leader likes to be called out as tactical, short-term oriented, or for always being in the […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is “Not Achieving Your Goals?  5 Common Mistakes”which appeared in the CBS business blog recently.  Kelly Goldsmith is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.  Marshall Goldsmith is one of the world’s leading leadership thinkers.  He is author or editor os some 30 books on leadership and management.  Each of us sets goals […]

Research by Bradley Owens from the University of Buffalo’s School of Management and David Hekman from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee’s Luber School of Business has shown that “Leaders of all ranks view admitting mistakes, spot lighting follower strengths and modeling teachability as being at the core of humble leadership.”  “And, they view these […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is “What to do when you’re stuck” is from Margaret Heffernan’s blog atCBS News.  Heffernan has been CEO of five businesses in the United States and United Kingdom.  A speaker and writer, her most recent book Willful Blindness was shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book 2011. Heffernan begins by noting that […]

Today’s reading “This One Leadership Quality Will Make or Break You”is from the pen of Mike Myatt, author (Leadership Matters…The CEO Survival Manuel) and managing director and chief strategy officer at N2growth.  The piece appeared at Forbes.com. If you’re asking, which quality, Myatt’s answer is pursuit.  He says “Great leaders are never satisfied with traditional practice, strategic […]

We all need to have a “listening” tune-up from time-to-time.  Today’s reading “How to Really Listen”serves that purpose.  The article is from the Harvard Business Review Blogs and was written by Peter Bergman, author (“Get the Right Things Done”) and strategic advisor to CEOs and their leadership teams. Listening is hard, one or the hardest of the […]

Peter Bergman, author of today’s reading – “What’s Your One Big Theme?” – takes time each year at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year to identify what he wants to change during the coming year.  Others, write New Year’s resolutions.  And, when you think about it, there’s no magic in any particular day.  So today may be your day […]

A few weeks ago, Erik Lundberg, an ITLP alum from the University of Washington, shared with me a short piece from Inc. – “Don’t Be Afraid to Break Stuff” – which is today’s Tuesday Reading.  Chris Mittelstaedt, Founder and CEO of the FruitGuys, a company delivering farm-fresh fruit and vegetables to the American workplace, homes, and […]

Today’s reading “Five Questions That Should Shape Any Change Program” comes from Scott Keller and Colin Price, directors at McKinsey & Company and coauthors of the book Beyond Performance.  This article appeared early in December in the HBR blog. Keller and Price wrote this book to address a key problem in leading change: “organizations that focus too […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently”was posted by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and originally from the Harvard Business Review blogs.  The author is Hiedi Grant Halvorson, motivational psychologist and author of Succeed:  How We Can Reach Our Goals. Halvorson notes that we are all very successful at reaching some of our goals;  and not so successful at […]

Today’s reading is “3 Paradoxes of a Well-lived Life” and comes from the blog of Box of Crayons, a Toronto, Canada, consulting company that helps organizations, teams, and people do less “good work” and more “great work.”  I learned about this piece from Kika Barr, an IT Leaders Program alum from the University of Wisconsin. In  this blog, […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading, “Three Questions for Effective Feedback”, comes from the pen of Thomas J. DeLong, the Phillip J. Stomberg Professor of Management Practice in the Organizational Behavior area at the Harvard Business School.  His research focus is on the challenges facing individuals and organizations in the process of change. No leader improves without […]

Today’s reading “The Secret of Dealing with Difficult People:  It’s About You” comes from Tony Schwartz’s blog at the Harvard Business Review.  Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent At Anything.  Almost everyone of us has someone who routinely triggers us.  It may be the cynic in […]

Today’s reading “You are what you learn”comes from Scott Adam’s blog at dilbert.com and was drawn to my attention by my oldest son. The key point in Adam’s short essay is simply: A person changes in a fundamental way as he or she engages with a particular field of knowledge, i.e., when he or she […]