Results
08.31.2010
Productivity Doesn’t Happen By Itself
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 […]
08.17.2010
Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain
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 […]
08.03.2010
Never Duck the Tough Questions
Today’s Reading, “Never Duck the Tough Questions”, is an interview with Dawn Lepore, chair and CEO of Drugstore.com. The interview was conducted by Adam Bryant and originally appeared in the Corner Office column of the July 18, 2010 New York Times. What impressed me from the column was the set of leadership lessons Ms Lepore learned over […]
07.20.2010
Accountability: What Do You Owe Your Direct Reports
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 […]
06.04.2010
Overcome Resistance With The Right Questions
No matter who we are, we will meet resistance on some matter every day. And, according to Kevin Daley, founder of Communispond, Inc. and author of “Talk Your Way to the Top” and “Socratic Selling,” the way we handle that resistance is often counterproductive. In “Overcome Resistance with the Right Questions”, Daley notes that our default […]
05.25.2010
Brainstorming
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 […]
04.27.2010
Back from a vacation?
In today’s reading “Back from a vacation?”, David Rock, founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute and CDO of Results Coaching Systems, reports on research indicating that we are more likely to solve really difficult problems when we have a fresh or quiet mind. Specifically the research points out that when faced with a new problem we […]
04.13.2010
When I get Better at …
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 […]
02.23.2010
How to Rise Fast At Work: A True Story
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 […]
01.26.2010
Assessing Transition Readiness
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 […]
01.19.2010
Leadership Lessons from Mt. Kilimanjaro
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 […]
12.22.2009
Give Feedback with Video
One of my sons acquired a new Flip MinoHD digital camcorder just before Thanksgiving. This gave all the family ample opportunity to appear in living color and HD. And, as I watched myself later on the video, I realized that what others were seeing was not what I necessarily expected or, in many cases, wanted them to […]
09.15.2009
The Success Trap
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 […]
09.08.2009
Stop Working for Technology – Make it Work for You
The Tuesday Reading for today is Jeffrey Pfeffer’s piece, Stop Working for Technology – Make it Work for You which appeared in BNET’s The Corner Office on July 22, 2009. Pfeffer is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Pfeffer’s point in this piece is simple and straight-forward: For some, maybe most, of us […]
08.18.2009
How to Make People Passionate About Their Work
For today’s reading we turn to John Baldoni’s blog at the Harvard Business Review for his piece “How to Make People Passionate About Their Work”. Baldoni notes that generating passion for what you do is essential, and doubly so in difficult times. He goes on to say that it is essential for a leader to have passion […]
06.30.2009
Making Decisions Outside Your Repertoire
Today’s Tuesday Reading is “Making Decisions Outside Your Repertoire” by Ronald Heifetz (you remember him from the first session of the Leadership Program), Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow. The article begins by noting that in turbulent times like today, pressure in on to act quickly. But, the authors argue, that strategic moves depend on making […]
05.19.2009
Anxiety for Fun and Profit
This week’s Tuesday Reading is a piece “Anxiety for Fun and Profit” which I found on a recent flight in the April 2009 issue of United’s Hemisphere magazine. The article’s key thesis is “We need just the right amount of worry to achieve our goals in life.” Too much anxiety, you succumb to perpetual negative thinking; […]
04.28.2009
The Three Questions
Today, we turn to a short paper by William Bridges, “The Three Questions” (the paper will download). Bridges is a name familiar to many as the author of “Managing Transitions” (2003) and “Transitions” (2004). In this short piece, he introduces us to three important questions which he often asks his clients:. 1. What is changing? […]
03.31.2009
Grownups Need Recess, Too
Recently, in reading through the goals of participants in the Leaders Program, I noticed a number of goals of the form “reduce my stress,” “learn to control the stress I encounter day after day,“ ”reduce the hours I work to help control my stress,“ etc. And, then I came across a piece, ”Grownups Need Recess, […]
03.03.2009
Time to Aim Lower
For today’s Tuesday Reading, we turn to Dan and Chip Heath’s Made to Stick column in Fast Company for a piece about goals: “Time to Aim Lower”. In this piece the focus is on those ambitious goals that we often set for ourselves. Sometimes these goals, instead of energizing and empowering the goal-setter, do just […]