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Tuesday Reading

03.27.2012

Not Achieving Your Goals? 5 Common Mistakes

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 […]
03.20.2012

Humble Key to Effective Leadership

Research by Bradley Owens from the University of Buffalo’s School of Management and David Hekman from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee’s Luber School of Business has shown that “Leaders of all ranks view admitting mistakes, spot lighting follower strengths and modeling teachability as being at the core of humble leadership.”  “And, they view these […]
03.13.2012

What to do When You’re Stuck

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 […]
03.06.2012

This One Leadership Quality Will Make or Break You

Today’s reading “This One Leadership Quality Will Make or Break You”is from the pen of Mike Myatt, author (Leadership Matters…The CEO Survival Manuel) and managing director and chief strategy officer at N2growth.  The piece appeared at Forbes.com. If you’re asking, which quality, Myatt’s answer is pursuit.  He says “Great leaders are never satisfied with traditional practice, strategic […]
02.28.2012

How to Really Listen

We all need to have a “listening” tune-up from time-to-time.  Today’s reading “How to Really Listen”serves that purpose.  The article is from the Harvard Business Review Blogs and was written by Peter Bergman, author (“Get the Right Things Done”) and strategic advisor to CEOs and their leadership teams. Listening is hard, one or the hardest of the […]
02.21.2012

What’s Your One Big Theme?

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 […]
02.14.2012

Best Problem-Solving Tip: Don’t Be Afraid to Break Stuff

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 […]
02.07.2012

Five Questions That Should Shape Any Change Program

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 […]
01.24.2012

Nix Ambiguity and Focus for Lasting Change

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 […]
01.17.2012

Become an Extraordinary Leader

The Tuesday Reading this week is “Become an Extraordinary Leader” comes from Scott Edinger’s blog at the Harvard Business School.  Edinger is the executive vice president of Zenger Folkman leadership development consultancy. Your kids bring home their report cards.  Where do you focus – the As or the B– or C?  Of course, on the C.  It is really where […]
01.10.2012

Reflection: Change and the Balcony

Today’s reading is a reflection on “Change and the Balcony.”  Drew MacGregor, Coordinator of Educational MDA Technology, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, sent this reflection to his IT Leaders Program cohort in mid-December 2011.   Several points caught my eye in Drew’s essay: •  Real change occurs when we buy into and experience […]
01.03.2012

I Was Impossible, but Then I Saw How to Lead

For today’s Tuesday Reading, we turn to an Adam Bryant interview of Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons which appeared in the December 3, 2011 NYTimes.  IT Leaders Coach Greg Anderson called this interview – which can be found at <http://nyti.ms/tw4lR0> – to my attention.  It seemed to be a particularly fitting way to begin the […]
12.20.2011

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

Today’s Tuesday Reading “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently”was posted by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and originally from the Harvard Business Review blogs.  The author is Hiedi Grant Halvorson, motivational psychologist and author of Succeed:  How We Can Reach Our Goals. Halvorson notes that we are all very successful at reaching some of our goals;  and not so successful at […]
12.13.2011

3 Paradoxes of a Well-lived Life

Today’s reading is “3 Paradoxes of a Well-lived Life” and comes from the blog of Box of Crayons, a Toronto, Canada, consulting company that helps organizations, teams, and people do less “good work” and more “great work.”  I learned about this piece from Kika Barr, an IT Leaders Program alum from the University of Wisconsin. In  this blog, […]
12.06.2011

Three Questions for Effective Feedback

This week’s Tuesday Reading, “Three Questions for Effective Feedback”, comes from the pen of Thomas J. DeLong, the Phillip J. Stomberg Professor of Management Practice in the Organizational Behavior area at the Harvard Business School.  His research focus is on the challenges facing individuals and organizations in the process of change. No leader improves without […]
11.29.2011

The Secret of Dealing with Difficult People: It’s About You

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 […]
11.22.2011

You are what you learn

Today’s reading “You are what you learn”comes from Scott Adam’s blog at dilbert.com and was drawn to my attention by my oldest son. The key point in Adam’s short essay is simply: A person changes in a fundamental way as he or she engages with a particular field of knowledge, i.e., when he or she […]
11.15.2011

Stop Procrastinating…Now

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: […]
11.08.2011

3 Ways to Improve Your Relationship with Staff

This week’s reading “3 Ways to Improve Your Relationship with Staff”comes from the pen of John Baldoni, executive coach, author, and speaker. Baldoni begins the column with this strange sounding advice:  “Act like Mike Rowe” adding that this is the advice that he would give to leaders seeking guidance on how to connect more authentically with […]
11.01.2011

Transforming Your Organization with the Three-Box Approach

Today’s Tuesday Reading “Transforming Your Organization with the Three-Box Approach”reports on a conversation with Vijay Govindarajan and Brian Goldner.  Govindarajan is a professor of internation business and founding director of the Center for Global Leadership at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmath.  Goldner is president and CEO of Hasbro, Inc. Like last week’s reading, […]