Tuesday Reading

Today’s two-part reading takes the once-common practice of communal barn-raising where everyone in a community worked together to benefit a single farm family.  Given the right task, good planning and organization you may find a community approach gets the right result and has the benefit of generating new relationships that represent a real added value. […]

Many people have observed that journaling will change the way that you go about your work and your life.  In today’s reading, Rick Brenner of Chaco Canyon Consulting observes that you record what you did and why you did it.  And, you record what you didn’t do and why you didn’t do it.  You record […]

Most of the time we interact with others — fellow members of a team, colleagues assembled for a particular issue, individuals we meet by happenstance — to get work done.  In “We Are All People,” Rick Brenner of Chaco Canyon Consulting reminds us that we are all people, different people, and that we have one common […]

Who’s Sorry Now? http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16816&ch=infotech Jason Pontin, Editor in Chief of MIT’s Technology Review, reviews Pip Coburn’s “The Change Function:  Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn.” Coburn was managing director of the technology group of UBS Investment Research during the technology run-up of the late 1990s.  While his focus in on customer’s […]

Today, I turn to Rick Brenner’s Chaco Canyon Newsletter for a piece — If Only I Had Known — that spans two issues: 1.    http://www.chacocanyon.com/pointlookout/060531.shtml 2.    http://www.chacocanyon.com/pointlookout/060607.shtml In this piece Rick asks whether you have ever regretted saying something that you wouldn’t have said if only you had known just one more little fact? He […]

Most of us, I suspect, don’t pay much attention to “trust” until we get smacked in the face because there is an absence of trust and that absence of trust is stopping progress towards our goal dead in its tracks.  Rick Brenner, in two April issues of his newsletter Point Lookout focuses on the costs […]

In the April 1, 2006 issue of Business 2.0, Jeffrey Pfeffer,  Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of  Business, argues that it pays to invest in leaders who blame  themselves when things go wrong.  His focus is on CEOs and he uses  the metric of stock prices in his argument.   However, the […]

I found this piece —     Why Everyone in an Enterprise Can — and Should — Be a Leader http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=printArticle&ID=893   — which was originally published in December 2003 recently and thought it was really worth sharing.  Based upon work by individuals at Wharton and McKinsey, it points out that everyone, no matter their […]

In a pieces spread over three issues beginning in late January NetworkWorld discusses the IT profession in the year 2010      http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2006/0123ed1.html      http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2006/0130ed1.html      http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2006/0213ed1.html   Based upon Gartner report, the articles suggest that “technical aptitude alone will no longer be enough”, IT leaders will need to possess expertise in multiple […]

  I really enjoy reading Rick Brenner who writes the email newsletter  from Chaco Canyon Consulting.  The last two issues of the newsletter  has focused on tactics for tough times:        http://www.ChacoCanyon.com/pointlookout/060201.shtml        http://www.ChacoCanyon.com/pointlookout/060208.shtml   In these two pieces Rick focuses on problem solving:      – What problem as I […]

Is It Blame or Is It Accountability? —  When we seek those  accountable for a particular failure, we risk blaming them instead,  because many of us confuse accountability with blame.  What’s the  difference between them?  How can we keep blame at bay?   Today’s reading comes from the Chaco Canyon newsletter.  In it Rick Brenner […]

It is very hard to get our work done without collaboration.  Sometimes those collaborators are on our team, sometimes in our organization, sometimes they are elsewhere in our university, and sometimes they are outside our university in suppliers, government agencies, etc.  When collaboration occurs things go well.  But sometimes it doesn’t;  our needed collaborators resist, […]

As all of your know by now, I read a lot from a lot of sources. Yesterday, a newsletter called Marketplace Moments written by a friend, Randy Kilgore, reached my desk.  It carries a story which I want to repeat:   “It’s December 17, 1941. The citizens of the town of North Platte, Nebraska heard […]

We all do presentations and after the presentation there is always questions and answers.  While the questions and your answers do not add all that much content to what you had to say, how you answer plays into how your audience evaluates you and what you had to say; presence and presentation again.   Today’s […]

Rick Brenner of Chaco Canyon Consulting here in Boston has a weekly email newsletter called Point Lookout.  I like Rick’s writing because it typically leads you to think about a subject from a different point of view.  This is truly the case in this weeks reading “FedEx,  Flocks and Frames of Reference.”  In the piece […]

Marshall Goldsmith is one of the country’s leading executive coaches. Today’s reading is his column from the July 2005 issue of Fast Company:   http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/mgoldsmith.html   In this column Goldsmith talks about the importance of being a great listener.  He says that in listening “Your only aim is to let the other person feel that […]

One of my favorite books on leadership is Leadership Jazz by Max DePree. Max was chairman of the board of Herman Miller for many years. Leadership Jazz is primarily a set of personal stories about leadership. I first read the book about 10 years ago and have found that rereading it as well as a […]

Good morning!   In my reading this week, I found this short piece by John Baldoni.  In it he talks about the foundational importance of importance and suggests that you can nurture it by “inviting them to look up,” by “letting them see you sweat,” by “learning from your mistakes,” and by “radiating hope.” Enjoy…………..jim Weigh In: A Matter […]

A West Coast colleague passed this URl along earlier todayhttp://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/22/text.iq/index.html A concrete, perhaps, result about the impact of letting yourself be interrupted throughout the day. And, an interesting comparison with which to end the week. Have a great weekend……….jim

In the February 23rd and the March 16th issues of the Point Lookout email newsletter, Rich Brenner and the staff at Chaco Canyon Consulting <http://www.ChacoCanyon.com> present two helpful pieces on “Recovering Time.”  Given that all of us scramble to find more time for our work, I thought that I would share their ideas with you. […]