Innovation

Two weeks ago, the Tuesday Reading focused on Mindset – a habit of thinking that determines how we interpret and respond to situations.  There we introduced the concept of “fixed” and “growth” mindsets and how a child’s mindset impacts her or his approach to learning.  (Carol Dweck’s RSI ANNIMATE presentation on the subject is listed in the […]

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.  Before I started the leadership journey, I was doing a lot of just that. Wasting a lot of my time and mind focusing on the immediate, the unimportant, the routine tasks that certainly were not going to make a significant difference in creating, influencing, or advancing the […]

In previous Tuesday Readings we have focused on the importance of planning, on being intentional about how we use our time, and on the importance of regularly moving items from our one To Do list to our calendar. As good as a deliberate planning practice is, it can often leave us frustrated at the end of the day […]

In a recent essay, “Beyond Bias,” which is today’s Tuesday Reading, Heidi Grant Halvorson and David Rock wrote:   “Biases are nonconscious drivers – cognitive quirks – that influence how people see the world.  They appear to be universal in most of humanity, perhaps hardwired into the brain as part of our genetic or cultural heritage, […]

My take on an application of a topic from our first session. The Unicorn Meeting Throughout my professional career I’ve always wondered when I would catch a glimpse of the elusive Unicorn Meeting (the one ran with reason, direction, poise and purpose that you can only hope to walk into). Perhaps I would be the […]

We all attend too many meetings.  Some are initiated by others and we attend to contribute.  And some are our meetings, designed to further our team’s work.  Some of them are productive and some are not.  And, everyone I’ve talked to yearns for fewer of them. This week’s Tuesday Reading is drawn from Amy Gallo’s essay […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, I Sit Too Much, should actually be titled “I Sit Too Much and So Do You.” Researchers agree that we all sit far too much, about 10 hours per day – hours at the desk, focused on the computer screen, reading and writing emails, working on reports, eating lunch, in meetings, in […]

Who hasn’t had one?  No milk for the cereal.  A tanker truck cut you off as you were driving to work.  Joe wasn’t prepared for the meeting.  Sam’s presentation wasn’t aligned to the audience.  Stuff happens, and it usually leads to a foul mood. And, as I’ve been told many times, you have to learn […]

Our Tuesday Reading today is drawn from Robert Steven Kaplan’s new book, What You Really Need to Lead.  Kaplan was recently named President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.  Previously he was the Martin Marshall Professor of Management Practice and a Senior Associate Dean at the Harvard Business School. In a review of […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, The Balance of Planning and Spontaneity – What We Can Learn From Bilbo Baggins’s Journey Through Mirkwood, comes from the pen of David Kaplan – writer, software developer, and all around thinker of wacky thoughts.  It was published on medium.com in their Life Hack: Your Story, Experience, etc. blog which shares the […]

In the weeks leading up to the 2015 MOR Leaders Conference, we invited 2,051 members of the MOR IT Leaders community to participate in a nineteen-question survey designed to gather their impressions of their IT organizations’ current levels of adaptability. We received a total of 589 responses. The survey posed nineteen questions in the form […]

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 […]

A couple of years ago I had my kitchen remodeled.  During the process, I, along with my young boys, reveled in the tools the contractors had at their disposal, and their skill in using them.  They had so many tools – some for general use (hammer) and others more specialized (router) – their truck looked like an […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading “Leadership Happens Through Action and Behavior” first appeared as a Weekly Reflection for the University of Minnesota Advanced Leaders Program.  It’s author, Chris Grantham is Chief of Staff to the Vice President and CIO at the University. Many of you know I have a 19-month-old daughter, Iris, whom I adore absolutely and […]

Today’s reading, IMPACT, was written by Bruce Barton, as a reflection in one of the Leaders Program cycles.  Bruce manages the Shared Development Group of the General Library System at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.   Something I’ve been thinking about: Name five leaders.  Chances are that the same names will appear on many […]

We began the 2015 Tuesday Readings with a series of readings focused on being intentional.  A week later, we focused on being intentional about developing new practices to strengthen our leadership.  We next focused on the art of saying “NO,” about being intentional in adding to your deliverables.  And then, last week, we focused on […]

Ten years ago today, the first workshop of the first MOR IT Leaders Program, held at the University of Chicago, came to an end.  Beth Hayes, Penn State participant in that first cycle, has written of that time: “Attending the IT Leadership Program was a game changer.  As our session began, I was concurrently moving […]

The Tuesday Reading today is “3 Underappreciated IT Leadership Skills?”, a commentary appearing this past July in Information Week.  The essay’s authors are Whitney Hischier and Rajiv Ball, lecturers at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business where they teach the Business Leadership for IT Professionals program. Ball and Hischier note that today’s world is far […]

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 […]

Great reminder from Harry Kraemer, professor at Kellogg School of Management, on keeping things simple, shared at MOR’s 2012 conference. Video of Keeping Things Simple