Results

Over the past several weeks I’ve seen many reviews of Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer’s new book “ The Progress Principle:  Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.”  Today’s reading “How Small Wins Unleash Creativity” from Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge is a summary of that book.*   Amabile and Kramer’s research […]

Today’s Reading, “Go Ahead, Take That Break”, comes from Whitney Johnson’s HBR Blog.  Johnson is a founding partner of Rose Park Advisors (Clayton M. Christensen’s investment firm), and is author of the forthcoming book “Done-Dream-Do:  Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream.” Many studies have shown how important rest is to the human brain.  […]

Yesterday, Dave Logan’s column “Leadership Lessons from the Debt Deal Fiasco” appeared in the BNET newsletter.  Given the timeliness of the subject, I wanted to share the column and its lesson with you.  Logan is a faculty member in USC’s Marshall School of Business.  He teaches leadership and management.  In addition, he’s a Senior Partner in […]

Today’s reading is a July 17, 2011 column “’Let’s Meet’ doesn’t have to be death knell for productivity” <http://bo.st/qG5ac3> by Boston Globe Columnist, Scott Kirsner.  Kirsner is the author of the book “The Future of Web Video,” editor of “The Convergence Guide: Life Sciences in New England,” and a contributor to “The Good City: Writers […]

Today’s Reading, “The Right Response is Not Always Instant” , is from the pen of Ron Ashkenas, managing partner of Schaffer Consulting and a co-author of “The GE Work-Out.”  His latest book is “Simply Effective.” Too many of the flood of messages we receive each day have an implied, or sometime stated, urgency that suggests, […]

This week’s reading comes from an interview Robert Mcgarvey had with Larry Bossidy that appeared in the July 2003 issue of the AmericanWay – “It’s All In The Follow-through” – about the time Bossidy’s book Execution was published.  Of particular attention is the sidebar at the very end of the piece. Bossidy is the former chair of […]

I found this interesting read “Why Leadership Programs Don’t Work” by Kelly Goldsmith and Marshall Goldsmith in BNET.  It’s really short infomercial aimed squarely at you. A few years ago Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan studied eight different companies with 86,000 participants, including 11,000 recognized as leaders, in executive coaching programs.  Every leader focused on one […]

One of the most consistent findings in psychology is that people behave differently when their environment changes.  When we are at a place where people are quiet, say a church or a library, we’re quiet;  when we are at a sporting event where it’s loud, we’re loud. Why then, when we try to make changes […]

Joe Urich from the University of Iowa shared this piece with his on-campus cohort last month and I thought it was worth sharing with everyone.  “Lessons of Fort Sumter”was published in early April in the Wall Street Journal.  The author is Bret Stephens, a columnist for the Journal. In the short piece he distills from […]

For this week’s Tuesday Reading, we turn to a Harvard Business Review blog post by Linda Hill and Kent Lineback “Better Time Management is Not the Answer”.  Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professof of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and Lineback has spent many years as a manager and executive in business […]

Are you up for a challenge?  Josh Linkner in a recent Fast Company blog post, “The 5% Creativity Challenge”, challenges each of us to schedule two one-hour thinking sessions each week.  Linkner is the author of Disciplined Dreaming – A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity and CEO and Managing Partner of Detroit Venture Partners. He suggests […]

On March 15,2011 Harvard Business Review’s Management Tip of the Day was “Live Your Mission, Don’t State It“.  Two sentences – “A mission statement is an abstraction.  An organization on a mission is inspiring.” – caught my eye in this summary of Dan Pallotta’s HBR blog entry “Do You Have a Mission Statement, or Are […]

Last Saturday, Erik Lundberg, ITLP alum from the University of Washington, found at interesting piece – “Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss” – in the New York Times and sent it to me.  Erik noted that “By analyzing data from within its own ranks, Google proves what management practitioners already preach.  But then implements it […]

Today’s reading focuses on building a practice to increase your daily personal effectiveness.  The IT Leaders Program emphasizes being intentional and planful with the use of your time.  Specifically, we’ve suggested identifying and formally setting aside regular times to plan your week/day.  For example, you might schedule time Sunday evening or on Monday morning to […]

To some extent, and more so for some than others, we are all problem solvers.  Most of the time we use ad hoc, informal, personal processes to solve problems.  And, these often work at the “good enough” level.  However, sometimes we miss good solutions, and even fail to identify the problem correctly in the first […]

Wayne Turmel, writer, speaker, president of Greatwebmeetings.com, begins today’s reading, “Virtual Meetings Are Like Broccoli” <http://bit.ly/icPr7O>, by saying “Running good meetings for remote teams is like eating our vegetables:  we know we should do it, we know how to do it, it’s critical to our health in the long run, and we rationalize our way […]

Have you ever been in a meeting to make a decision and before the context can be outlined, a few meeting participants have taken over and are going deeper and deeper into a solution based on a suggestion of one of the individuals?  Today’s reading, ”Go Broad Before You Go Deep,“ from Roger Schwarz’s Fundamental […]

Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft and previously a key figure at Software Arts and at Lotus, and founder of Groove, is leaving Microsoft after a short transition period.  Shortly after he made his announcement, Ozzie wrote “Dawn of a New Day,” as an email to Microsoft’s Executive Staff and his direct reports.  He also posted […]

Six months ago, Robert Sutton, Professor of Management Science at Stanford University and author of a new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss, had a blog entry “12 Things Good Bosses Believe. ”  You can find that entry at <http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/05/12_things_that_good_bosses_bel.html>. Today’s Tuesday Reading is Sutton’s effort to delve into one of these issues:  “If You’re the Boss, Start […]

Tony Schwarts, CEO of the Energy Project, says a lot in this short piece “Six Ways to Supercharge Your Productivity”.  His key point is that as a result of the digital demands of the world we now inhabit, we are in danger of undertaking more and more tasks and creating less and less real value. He […]