Tuesday Reading

Everyone who has participated in the ITLP has had the opportunity to look back on their career and note the leadership lessons they have learned.  Today’s Tuesday Reading is a leadership journey in the form of an interview.  Recently, Richard Anderson, chief executive of Delta Airlines, was interviewed for the New York Time’s April 26, […]

Somehow, Tuesday came and I was completely oblivious to my commitment to send out something for everyone to reflect on.  Don’t know where my thoughts were that morning!  In spite of my forgetfulness, we do have a very good piece for this week from ITLP IX’s Vision Team – Tom Lewis (University of Washington), Todd Rheinfrank […]

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;  […]

John Maxwell, a very prolific writer on leadership, is the author of our Tuesday Reading for today:  “Influence:  Connecting with People”. Maxwell’s thesis is straightforward;  … “until leaders learn the art of connection, their influence remains minimal.”  To help us make connections, he offers eight practical steps: 1.  Don’t take people for granted. 2.  Possess a difference-maker mindset. 3.  Initiate movement toward […]

Recently, Adam Bryant, writer for the New York Times’ Coner Office column, interviewed John Donahoe, president and chief executive of eBay for the past year.  The condensed interview is today’s Turesday Reading – “There’s No Need to Bat .900”. Donahoe has a lot of good advice: •  You can’t change people.  …  Allyou can do is help them help […]

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? […]

Today, we continue our theme of leading in challenging times with Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis.  The piece’s author is Bill George, author of “True North,” and a professor of management practice at the Harvard Business School.  He is also the former CEO of Medtronic. Virtually every American institution is facing some kind of major crisis […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “Keeping Pace with Technology” comes from ITLP IX’s Vision Team – Beth-Anne Sullivan (Northeastern University), Terry Tatum (University of Texas), Elease Welch (New York University), Randy Standridge (University of Texas), Todd Rheinfrank (Carnegie Mellon University), and Tom Lewis (University of Washington).  Their graduation was last summer and since then they have continued to […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is “Stay Out of the Bunker”from the New York Times Under New Management column.  There Kelly Holland says that even though this may be a very challenging time for managers, employees still need leadership if they are to function effectively.  She suggests seven behaviors for leaders: 1.  Treat employees as responsible adults, […]

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, […]

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 […]

For today’s reading we turn to advice from José Carlos Eiras, former CIO of DHL-Express US and also European CIO and Global Services Information Officer at General Motors, found in “Practical Advice for CIOs Struggling to Survive in Tough Times“. After talking briefly about the choices IT leaders struggling with tough times — either ”hunker […]

In ITLP, we talk a lot about meetings.  Greg Anderson, senior director for General Services at the University of Chicago, recently called my attention to a January 18, 2009 New York Times article “Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time”.  The author is Reid Hastie, Robert S. Hamada Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago’s […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading “How New Leaders Can Achieve Quick Wins” is an interview with Mark E. Van Buren and Todd Safferston who looked at how quick wins affected the success and futures of new leaders.  (A full article on this subject, The Quick Wins Paradox,“ appears in the January 2009 of the Harvard Business Review.) […]

In the current issue of Fortune Magazine, Jim Collins is interviewed by Fortune Senior Writer Jennifer Reingold for the article “How Great Companies Turn Crisis Into Opportunity”. Collins has spent much of his career in understanding how companies succeed.  For the past several years, he has been focusing on how successful companies navigate through turbulent times.  Much […]

How often have you laid out for your team, perhaps in a presentation followed by a clearly written document, a future state for the team as well as the strategies for getting there.  And, you wait, and wait, and nothing happens. This is the situation that Marshall Goldsmith addresses in “Don’t Just Check the Box”.  Though […]

Power is a subject that is not often discussed in public.  Yet, an individual cannot be a leader without having power, “the potential to influence others.”  In this week’s Tuesday Reading, “Power Plays:  How to Use Your Power Wisely” from the December 2008 Issue of the Center for Creative Leadership’s Newsletter Leading Effectively, outlines nine strategies for levering your […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading “Taking Control of Your Work Life Balance and Gaining Personal Fulfillment” takes a hard look at work life balance.  In her review of clinical psychologist Henry Cloud’s new book “The One Life Solution,” Meridith Levinson, a CIO staff writer, wrote: ” Work will consume as much time as we allow it.  It will take […]

Today’s reading “IT Careers:  5 Tips for Charting Your 100 Day Plan“ by Mary Pratt, a Computerworld contributing writer in Waltham, MA, focuses on developing a plan for the next 100 days.  The point being that the more you have a vision of where you want to be in 100 days and a well thought out plan for […]

Today’s reading, “Degrees of Giving” by Bruna Martinuzzi, comes from the MindTools November 25th, 2008 newsletter.   Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving and were with our families and thought about all the reasons we have to be thankful.  We may have thought about giving — giving thanks, giving of our time, giving material gifts, etc.  Such gifts […]