Culture

Returning to work after our second session, I felt like I was coming back not just with new tools, but with new lenses and sharper vision.  But would that have an impact?  I think it has.  Here are three mini-reflections focused around new things that happened in my leadership because of lessons and tools I […]

Stop Getting in Your Own Way My big takeaway from our first set of meetings has to be to “get on the balcony.”  Related to getting on the balcony, I recognized through our reading and activities that I need to delegate more, give work back, and say no more.  Once I condition myself to make […]

“We all live in the world with only the vaguest notion of our impact, and sometimes that matters.  Clearly, when we’re effective or helpful, we ought to know it.  And when our actions are working against us or others, we ought to know that too.  Given how most of us put our heads down and […]

For the 2015 MOR Leaders Conference held May 27-28 in Indianapolis Brian McDonald and Jim Bruce collaborated on the following top trends impacting our clients: 1. Globalization of Education Education is global. Increased numbers of international students, US campuses abroad, countries creating new universities some of which are world-class and attract US students. The list […]

I attended the MOR IT Leaders conference in late May.  As an ITLP graduate who stepped into a CIO role two years ago, I was asked to share how I employ the elements of the MOR toolkit in my leadership role.  I’ve invested in relationships and focused on changing culture.  I’ve taken uncomfortable risks.  But, […]

I suspect that we all have heard enough about Secretary Clinton’s decisions, first to use a non-government email server for both her government-related email as well as her personal email, and subsequently about the processes followed to preserve or delete emails.  And, that you like me want to be done with it.  Even with that as […]

We’ve all been in situations where we’ve succumbed to peer pressure.  We often argue to ourselves that it’s too hard to step up with a different point of view – we won’t be liked, we’ll do harm to our relationships, and after all it’s not that big of a deal.  However, in many cases, it […]

For the past three weeks, the Tuesday Readings have focused on one or another facet of employee engagement.  Today, we shift the focus a bit and turn our attention to “Employee Morale.”  Our author is Vi Bergquist, CIO at St Cloud Technical & community college.  Vi’s essay was a recent weekly reflection in one of […]

The past two Tuesday Readings have focused on employee engagement, first, on February 10, 2015, focusing on what employee engagement is and then on February 17, turning to a set of five expectations that employees have of their supervisors.  The data shows that if these expectations are met, engagement will increase.  And, that’s a good thing.  […]

The issue of employee engagement has surfaced in several ways over the past few weeks – what is it?, why is it important?, should I be concerned about my team’s engagement?, how would I improve it?, what could/should a team member do to increase his/her engagement?, etc.  This issue and these questions have led to […]

This week, at least in the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving Day, traditionally a day of giving thanks for the harvest (that provides our food) and for the preceding year. History suggests that this celebration goes back in the United States at least to a 1621 feast in the Plymouth Colony celebrating a good harvest […]

Last summer, for a leadership reflection, John Shutt, Instructional Media Coordinator at Michigan State University, pointed his colleagues in their leadership program, to a short audio clip of Jim Collins’ discussion of “Creating a Pocket of Greatness.”  Collins is a noted leadership author known for his books Good to Great and Level 5 Leadership. The central focus of […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is “Mood And Engagement Are Contagious” and first appeared in Joe Folkman’s Forbes column.  Folkman describes himself as “a behavioral statistician who covers evidence-based improvement.”  More conventionally, he is co-founder and president of Zenger-Folkman, a consulting firm that works to improve organizations and the people within them.   There’s not a one […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading “If You’re Not Helping People Develop, You’re Not Management Material” <http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/if-youre-not-helping-people-develop-youre-not-management-material/>, first appeared in the HBR Blog Network.  The author is Monique Valcour, Professor of Management at EDHEC business school in France.  She focuses on helping companies and individuals craft high performance, meaningful jobs, careers, workplaces, and lives. Professor Valcour argues that […]

The Tuesday Reading for today is “How to Make Stress Your Friend,” a presentation Kelly McGonigal made at TED Global 2013.  (A transcript of the presentation can be found on the talk’s website. McGonigal is a Stanford University psychologist and a leader in the growing field of “science help” which helps us understand and implement the latest […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, The Laws of Simplicity, is drawn from John Maeda’s book by the same title, and the associated website.  Maeda is President of the Rhode Island School of Design.  He is an artist, designer, and technologist.  Before going to RISD in 2008, he was a professor and associate director of research at MIT’s Media […]

The Tuesday Reading this week is “Four Keys to Thinking About the Future”, an essay by Jeffrey Gedmin that appeared on the Harvard Business School blogs.  Gedmin is President and CEO of the Legatum Institute in London. Prior to joining the Legatum Institute in 2011, he spent four years as President and CEO of Radio […]

The Tuesday Reading for this week is “The Best Way for New Leaders to Build Trust,”  as essay by Jim Dougherty.  Dougherty is a veteran software CEO and entrepreneur and now is a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.  In the essay, he relates some of his experiences as CEO of Intralinks, an internet […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “6 Management Lessons from Visionary Women Leaders,” is from the pen of Lydia Dishman, a business journalist covering innovation, entrepreneurship and style, and appeared recently in FastCompany. Dishman notes that it has been a big year for women in leadership.  In her piece, she focuses on women who have recently become or […]

“I don’t care if you like each other right now, but you will respect each other, ” said Coach Herman Boone to his high school football team in the movie Remember the Titans.  In todays Tuesday Reading, Christine Riordan, Provost and professor of management at the University of Kentucky, says it similarly in her essay […]