It’s hard to be a good judge of people. Because it’s hard we often, almost exclusively, depend on extrinsic markers academic scores, results in previous jobs, job titles, salary, etc. We can also add extrinsic measures from social media – how many friends of Facebook, followers on Twitter, or who we know in common on LinkedIn.
A key theme of the 2013 MOR IT Leaders Conference was that we are entering a time when disruptive change is the norm. Given that change will happen whether one participates or not, those who actively resist it will hinder their organizations’ progress and imperil their careers. For the conference participants, the message was clear: It is time to focus on the big picture and be sure that you and your unit are doing the right things for the future of the University and its students. It is time to develop the individual skills you need to ensure success for you and your university.
It is a fundamental principle that leadership in today’s higher education environment must be collective, concurrent, and collaborative. To make that happen, campuses need to create, nurture, and sustain communities in which leaders at all levels can be successful. On day three of the 2013 MOR IT Leaders conference, the morning session focused on building and sustaining leadership communities. Stanford University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Minnesota each described their approach to building these vitally important community environments.
Sarah Le Roy, vice president of Talent at Linkage is the author of today’s Tuesday Reading, “Share Your Leadership Vision One Shell at a Time” <http://mylinkage.com/blog/sharpen-your-leadership-vision/>. In the essay she tells the story of “shelling” with her eight year-old daughter. As they walked along the beach, Le Roy noted (to herself) that she consistently found better shells than her daughter.
Deborah Mills-Scofield, writing in the Harvard Business School Blog, talks about four lessons she learned from the best bosses she had. Scofield calls herself a status quo challenger, an innovator, a strategist, and a disrupter. Her principle interest is in creating and implementing “highly actionable, measurable, and profitable strategic plans and cultures that foster innovation.”
All four are simple but profound:
The Tuesday Reading today is “One Thing Employees Need (But Rarely Get)”. Today’s reading, was written by Jeff Haden who says that he learned much of what he knows about business and technology by working his way up in the manufacturing industry and by ghostwriting for smart leaders, and appeared in Inc.
Today’s reading, “Smart Leaders Get More Out of the Employees They Have”, is by Liz Wiseman, president of The Wiseman Group, a management research and development center in Silicon Valley and author of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone
Today’s Tuesday Reading “Are You Sure You’re Not A Bad Boss?” first appeared in the Harvard Business Review’s Blog Network. Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman are, respectively, the CEO and the president of Zenger | Folkman, a leadership development consultancy. They are co-authors of the October 2011 HBR article “Making Yourself Indispensable,” and the book How to Be Exceptional: Drive Leadersh
Hear from members of the MOR Associates team and past program participants as they give an overview of the Leaders Program and what to expect in the months ahead in this video.
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:
