Tuesday Reading

I recently stumbled across a post “ The Toughest Choices a Leader Must Make”(which is alternatively titled “Thinking Strategically About What You Want to Accomplish in Life”) that really caught my attention.  Its author is Ray Blunt, who is Associate Director and Fellow at the Washington Institute fro Faith, Vocation, and Culture.  His focus as a leadership […]

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 […]

Today’s reading is “Managing Yourself:  Stop Holding Yourself Back”from the Harvard Business Review.  The authors are Ann Morriss, managing director of the Concire Leadership Institute and Robin Ely and Frances Frei, both professors at the Harvard Business School. Morriss, Ely, and Frei have been studying for over a decade what gets in the way of […]

Luca Baiguni, Professor of Organizational Behavior and Personal Development at the Politecnico di Milano, was recently was in Barcelona on business and spent some time visiting the city.  One of his must see places was the Sagrada Famìla, the basilica universally considered the masterpiece of Antoni Gaudì, the Spanish architect who lived from 1852 to […]

The reading today, “Take ownership of your meeting experience”, appeared in the Facilitate.com blog and comes from the keyboard of Danuta McCall, a senior member of the Facilitate.com team.  The reading’s key point is that we, each as individual participants in a meeting, play a role in whether that meeting is successful or not.  We do […]

Today’s reading comes from Anthony Tjan’s Harvard Business Review Blog.  Tian is CEO of the venture capital firm Cue Ball and is a recognized business builder.  The piece “Six Habits of a Talent Magnet,” which he wrote with Tsun-yan Hsiehm chair of the LinHart Group, can be found at <http://bit.ly/e5VSWy>. In the piece, the authors […]

A few weeks ago, one of the Harvard Business Review Blogs contained a short post by Linda Hill and Kent Lineback with the eye-catching title “The Words Many Managers Are Afraid to Say”.  Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor Business Administration at Harvard Business School.  Kent Lineback spent many years as a […]

Last week my attention was drawn to a 2007 article by Harry M. Jansen Kraemer, Jr. “What is this thing called CEO leadership?“.  Kraemer is clinical professor of management at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and an executive partner with Madison Dearborn, a private equity firm based in Chicago.  He is also the former […]

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 […]

In today’s reading “Thank You for Doing Your Job“, Whitney Johnson argues the value of saying thank you for routine work that contributes to the organization’s well being. Today, there is too little praise or appreciation voiced in our work environments.  In fact, I remember an organization that almost prided itself in being a “praise-free” […]

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 […]

Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, has a new book, “Alone Together.”  In the book, Turkle raises an interesting point about how we get and maintain each other’s attention in our always-on-connectivity culture.   In one review – MITnews’ “The lonely crowd” by Peter […]

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 […]

In the sports world, a “clutch” player performs best when the pressure is on.  [See “Learning to be a ‘Clutch’ Leader” by Sean Silverstone, editor of HBS’s Working Knowledge newsletter.]  In the thinking of Paul Sullivan, New York Times business columnist and author of “Clutch:  Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don’t,”  the best example of a “clutch” […]

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 […]

This Tuesday’s Reading “Lessons in IT Leadership:  Doing Less with Less and Failing for Success” is from Mark Katsouros, Director of Telecommunications and Network Services at the University of Iowa.* In Katsouros’ view, the combination of expanding IT demands and customer expectations in concert with dwindling resources have meant that doing more with less has been […]