Strategy

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Be Nice!, is based on Christine Porath’s June 19, 2015, New York Times Sunday Review essay, No Time to Be Nice at Work.  Porath is an associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Her research over the past two decades makes it clear that incivility, rudeness and bad behavior have […]

In the Harvard Business School 2015 winter term, Frances Frei, UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management at HBS, and Amy Schulman, Senior Lecturer in Technology and Operations Management, also at HBS, taught a new course “Why You Should Care:  Creating the Conditions for Excellence” to a group with equal numbers of law and management students.  […]

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 […]

I hope that everyone is taking advantage of the summer weather. My reflection for this week has to do with taking actual vacations from work in just as meaningful and purposeful a way as tackling a major project or presentation. This is a new approach to vacations for me because recently I have become rather […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is a short video Emotional Intelligence in Tough Conversations from the Harvard Business School’s “The Management Tip” series.  The presenter is Susan David, CEO, Evidence Based Psychology and Codirector, Institute of Coaching, McLean Hospital.  David is also co-author of Emotional Agility, which appeared in the November 2013 issue of the Harvard Business Review. […]

From the 2015 MOR Leaders Conference, keynote Chris Mayer talks about the industry parallels between media and higher education.  In this three part video series, he prompts us to think about how education is defined and the experience will continue to change, in large part by students and employers. Universities as a whole need to understand […]

Two weeks ago I began a series of Tuesday Readings focusing on feedback.  In the first reading, I suggested that feedback was the sharing of information between co-workers about the impact of their behavior on the team’s results, its processes, and/or its relationships.  This past week I focused on giving feedback and suggested six simple, […]

Last week we began a series of Tuesday Readings on the subject of feedback:  Feedback in the workplace is the sharing of information between co-workers about the impact that their behavior is having on the team’s results, its processes, and/or its relationships.  It can be positive in the form of affirmation of specific good work a […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

No, today’s Tuesday Reading is not bad driving advice!  The curves here are those Brad Wheeler, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer for Indiana University and a professor of information systems in IU’s Kelly School of Business, is speaking of in his January/February 2014 EDUCAUSE Review essay “Speeding Up On Curves” which is […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, More About Questions, continues our discussion from the past two weeks.  As we’ve noted there, being able to ask good, well-formed questions is as important to a leader as being able to listen well.  Today, we’ll focus on crafting our questions, on asking questions, and finally on those terrible questions we should […]

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 […]

We began the Tuesday Readings for 2015 with a focus on being intentional, and followed that with an essay on practices and then, last week, on the art of saying “no.”  Today we want to take a next step and turn to your calendar and being intentional about it.  It’s been noted that you have a […]

Almost everyone I run into bemoans their busyness, the large number of To Do’s that are in front of them, and the seeming inability to make headway in reducing the length of the list.  Author and consultant David Allen suggests that the typical mid-level manager, at any one time, spanning all aspects of his or […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is an essay by Jim Dezieck, Leadership Coach at MOR Associates.  In the essay, Jim focuses on developing new practices.  As I indicated in last week’s Tuesday Reading, building new practices is one step in becoming more intentional. Everywhere in our work at MOR we promote practical action, through practices, as the […]