Change

Today’s reading, which focuses on the topic of personal productivity, comes fromDavid Allen’s August 3, 2010 Newsletter, and can be found at <http://www.davidco.com/newsletters/archive/0810.html>.  A number of you know David Allen from his Getting Things Done book as well as the GTD website. He begins this piece by reminding all of us that “productivity is not […]

I found today’s Tuesday Reading in yesterday’s New York Times.  Matt Richtel had a wonderful piece “Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain” that reports on a five day trip by five neuroscientists plus Richtel, and a guide, rafting, hiking, and camping along the San Juan River in the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area […]

Dan Heath in today’s Reading – “Want Your Organization to Change?  Put Feelings First” – points out that typically when we want people to change, we try to teach them something.  Sounds good, right?  WRONG!  According to Heath and John Kotter, knowledge rarely leads to change. Heath observes that we know that obesity causes significant health problems but people don’t […]

Today’s reading is a short essay, reproduced below, by Roger Schwartz in his newsletter Fundamental Change.  He makes two significant points that caught my attention:  First, accountability is a two-way street.  Not only do your staff have accountability to their manager, but the manager, you, have accountability to them.  And, second, all feedback needs to be timely.  Said differently, it […]

Chip and Dan Heath, authors of “Made to Stick,” released a new book in February – “Switch:  How to change things when change is hard.”  Today’s reading is a review of the book by Keith McFarland which appeared in BusinessWeek. McFarland is founder of McFarland Strategy Partners and author of The Breakthrough Company, and BOUNCE. In Switch, the Heath […]

After my June 1st Tuesday Reading “Drilling for Certainty” – which made the point that our world has become extremely technologically complex and that the possibility for catastrophe is imbedded in the fabric of day-to-day live – I received several emails making the same or similar points. One, today’s reading – “The Real Cause of […]

A couple of months ago, Gary Augustson posted a BLOG at the Leaders Community Site which has a powerful message for all of us:  “Life is full of ‘wins’ and ‘losses’.”  In the end, how you deal with both will be one of the keys to your success as a leader.”  Given the importance of […]

David Brooks’ May 27, 2010 Op-Ed piece in the New York Times was titled “Drilling for Certainity”which is today’s Tuesday Reading.  The piece also appeared in the May 29th Pittsburgh Post Gazette and was seen by Annie Stunden, Former CIO, University of Wisconsin and IT Leaders Presenter and Coach.   Annie wrote pointing me to the […]

In today’s readings “Why Brainstorming Doesn’t Work”and “Better Brainstorming:  4 Ways to Generate Great Ideas“, Margaret Heffernan reminds us of several shortcomings in our brainstorming practices and suggests improvements.  Heffernan is visiting professor of entrepreneurship at Simmons College in Boston, CEO, author, and speaker. Referencing work by Nicholas Kahn and Steven Smith <http://bit.ly/cpRstq>, she notes […]

This Tuesday’s reading is “Communicating Vision”, by John Maxwell, prolific writer and speaker on leadership. In this short article, Maxwell outlines an approach for communicating a clear and compelling organizational vision.  (You will notice many similarities to the SUCCES tool that we have presented in many of the MOR leadership program workshops.) He makes six recommendations: […]

A few weeks ago Angela Bell from the University of Iowa shared Dan Bobinski’s article “Is your leadership developing or diminishing?” with her cohort and now I’d like to share it with everyone. As Bobinski, a training specialist, author, and president of Associates at Leadership Development, indicates, too many leaders easily get caught up in the […]

Recently Linkage published a short piece by Marshall Goldsmith – “When I Get Better at …” A Simple Exercise for Changing a Behavior to Achieve Results <http://bit.ly/aUrU3M> – which is this week’s reading. In this piece, Goldsmith describes a very simple exercise – select a behavior you want to change, for example listening, and then complete the sentence […]

Terry Gray, IT Leaders Program alumnus from the University of Washington, suggested today’s reading, “How To Rise Fast At Work:  A True Story”.  Terry thought that the piece might be of interest to the leaders community.  And, I agree. In this Forbes.com piece, its author Avril David talks about two acquaintances – whom he calls Mike and Ted […]

If you are leading a change initiative, then you must be an influencer for that initiative to be successful.  Yet studies have shown that only one in five leaders are able to influence positive change in a way that it lasts.  What’s going on? Today’s reading is “The Influencers:  The Top Five Reasons Leaders Lack Influence”.  In this […]

Every time you begin a change endeavor, it’s quite natural to ask “am I prepared and ready?”  Is my team/organization prepared and ready?  Are the stakeholders ready? Answering these questions on an ad hoc basis is not easy.  Several weeks ago in my reading, I came across an instrument to assess transition readiness <http://www.wmbridges.com/articles/assessment_tools.html> on William Bridges’ website.  He […]

Today’s Reading is Preston Cline’s ”Leadership Lessons from Mt. Kilimanjaro“ which appeared in the November-December issue of the Wharton Leadership Digest <http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/digest/index.shtml> and is reproduced below by permission. The lesson here is simple and clear:  In life there will always be error, failure.  It is better to fix the error when it is first noticed and small, than […]

For over two decades William Bridges has helped organizations and individuals deal more effectively with change.  Today’s Tuesday Reading is a short piece by Bridges – “Reorientation + Renewal = Revitalization” <http://tinyurl.com/yet24s4> (download) – which focuses on how to revitalize a team after it goes through a difficult time of change. Bridges focuses on teams which […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading takes a look at Higher Ed 2.0.  Our reading is “Who Needs Harvard?” from the September 2009 issue of Fast Company.  The article’s subheading says it all:  “Free online courses, wiki universities, Facebook-style tutoring networks – American higher education is being transformed by a cadre of web-savvy edupunks.”   This piece makes the point that the […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading is an entry –  “Humility as a Leadership Trait”– from John Baldoni’s Harvard Business Publishing blog. Baldoni asserts, and I agree, that leaders who want to inspire followers need to demonstrate both their accomplishments and their character.  Key to demonstrating character is being humble.  And, humility is essential to leadership because […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is “The Success Trap”, from Jeffrey Pfeffer’s August 25th,  BNET Column, The Corner Officer on August 25, 2009. Pfeffer’s thesis is simple:  When we become successful, it is very easy to drop our guard, to not maintain our standards (much less build on them), and to rest on our laurals. He argues that to […]