Strategy

Today’s Reading is a blog entry “6 steps to resolve conflict”by Robert Pagliarini which appeared recently  on the CBS News MoneyWatch website.  Pagliarini works to inspire others to live life to the fullest by challenging the way they invest their time and energy. We all experience conflict and the emotional turmoil that ensues.  So, what can one do […]

Recently Daniel Markovitz wrote “To-Do Lists Don’t Work” for the Harvard Business Review blogs.  I found the posting to be a good discussion of why we all wrestle with making our to-do lists work and decided to share it as today’s Tuesday Reading.  Markovitzis president of TimeBack Management and the author of A Factory of One. He […]

Today’s Reading, “Go to Lunch and Clean Out Your Inbox,” was originally written as a weekly reflection by Stephen Kemp.  Stephen is the Coordinator for Help Desk Services at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Every semester I perform employee reviews for my student workers; this is an opportunity for me to give […]

Today’s Reading, Christensen on disruptive innovation in higher education, comes to us from the Changing Higher Education blog.  (Clayton Christensen coined the term “disruptive innovation” in 2003, having used “disruptive technology” earlier for the same concept.) This blog post draws from a well-written white paper – Disrupting College – that describes the challenges facing higher education today, […]

Today’s reading “Wilderness Leadership – on the Job”comes from the pens of John Kanengieter and Aparna Rajagopal-Durbin.  Kanengieter is director of leadership at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), and Rajagopal-Durbin is the school’s diversity and inclusion manager and a faculty member.  NOLS is a non-profit outdoor educational school dedicated to teaching environmental ethics, technical outdoor skills, […]

This past year Michael Useem’s new book “The Leader’s Checklist” was published.  Professor Useem is Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.   The checklist has 15 leadership principles that taken together can constitute an effective playbook for leadership decisions whatever […]

Anna Biggers, ITLP alum from University of Oklahoma, suggested today’s reading –  “’No’ is the New ‘Yes:’  Four Practices to Re-prioritize Your Life”.  Tony Schwartz is author of this article, which appeared in the Harvard Business Review blog last January.  He is president and CDO of The Energy Project. Schwartz notes that we all have back-to-back meetings, more email […]

The Tuesday Reading today is a piece, “The Power of Pause”, by Ana Dutra which recently appeared in a Harvard Business Review blog.  Dutra is CEO for Leadership and Talent Consulting and Executive Vice President, at Korn Ferry International. No leader likes to be called out as tactical, short-term oriented, or for always being in the […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is “Not Achieving Your Goals?  5 Common Mistakes”which appeared in the CBS business blog recently.  Kelly Goldsmith is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.  Marshall Goldsmith is one of the world’s leading leadership thinkers.  He is author or editor os some 30 books on leadership and management.  Each of us sets goals […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is “What to do when you’re stuck” is from Margaret Heffernan’s blog atCBS News.  Heffernan has been CEO of five businesses in the United States and United Kingdom.  A speaker and writer, her most recent book Willful Blindness was shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book 2011. Heffernan begins by noting that […]

Peter Bergman, author of today’s reading – “What’s Your One Big Theme?” – takes time each year at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year to identify what he wants to change during the coming year.  Others, write New Year’s resolutions.  And, when you think about it, there’s no magic in any particular day.  So today may be your day […]

A few weeks ago, Erik Lundberg, an ITLP alum from the University of Washington, shared with me a short piece from Inc. – “Don’t Be Afraid to Break Stuff” – which is today’s Tuesday Reading.  Chris Mittelstaedt, Founder and CEO of the FruitGuys, a company delivering farm-fresh fruit and vegetables to the American workplace, homes, and […]

Today’s reading “Five Questions That Should Shape Any Change Program” comes from Scott Keller and Colin Price, directors at McKinsey & Company and coauthors of the book Beyond Performance.  This article appeared early in December in the HBR blog. Keller and Price wrote this book to address a key problem in leading change: “organizations that focus too […]

Today’s reading is a short piece “Nix Ambiguity and Focus for Lasting Change” by Dan and Chip Heath, authors of Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, as well as Made to Stick:  Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. In this piece, a true story about eliminating narcotics abuse in a health-care network […]

Today’s reading “The Secret of Dealing with Difficult People:  It’s About You” comes from Tony Schwartz’s blog at the Harvard Business Review.  Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent At Anything.  Almost everyone of us has someone who routinely triggers us.  It may be the cynic in […]

It’s easy for me to imagine that I don’t procrastinate.  But that would really be stretching the truth, stretching it a lot.  The reality is that no one of us is immune to procratination. Today’s reading is “Stop Procrastinating…Now”by Amy Gallo, a contributing editor at the Harvard Business Review. There are lots of reasons why we procrastinate: […]

In MOR’s several Leaders Programs, we routinely talk about the need for everyone to set aside time on a regular basis for reflection, for work on strategic projects, and for planning.  In today’s reading “An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day“, Peter Bregman proposes a very structured plan for planning and thus for gaining control of […]

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 […]

You may have run across the term “decision fatigue” in your recent reading. John Tierney in a lengthy NYTimes article “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?” writes: “Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get anyry at colleagues and families, spurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket, …  No matter how rational […]

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.  […]