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Wed Apr 04, 2007
Why Decisions Fail
After 25 years of research on nearly 400 companies, Paul C. Nutt, Professor of Management Sciences, Ohio State University found that tough decisions by organisational leaders failed half the time.
This is amazing. They might well have flipped a coin.
He identified 10 blunders and traps that decision makers fall prey to:
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Sun Mar 11, 2007
New Studies Highlight Real Leadership Challenges
I’m a bit of a magpie. I collect interesting jigsaw pieces of information about leadership and performance and store them away until I get two or three pieces that seem to fit together and shed a little more light or provide more insight. So, here’s the latest:
Research by the Engineering Employers Federation says that more than half of Britain’s manufacturing companies have failed to implement any of the 12 most widely recognized modern production methods. The result is that our manufacturing productivity lags behind our international competitors; for example the gap between the UK and USA is estimated at 45%.
Does this gap apply just to manufacturing I wonder?
The three key reasons for the lack of implementation, given by the survey, are ...
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Tue Mar 06, 2007
Einstein and Creation Intelligence
Einstein is perhaps the creative genius of the 20th century and as well as his ground breaking work on relativity, he is also known today through his many quotes. Two in particular have a special relevance for leaders and business success today.
The first – “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. If I translate this to modern businesses, what I think he is saying is that whilst knowledge is important, it is the leaders who can use knowledge as a source of fuel for their creative expression, and that of their people, that is more important.
Most organisations now have heard of knowledge management and some even have a Knowledge Manager. Maybe what organisations need as well is a Director for Releasing Creativity!
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Wed Feb 28, 2007
Leaders Legacy
As our world changes at an unimaginable speed, organizational leaders are challenged by increasing complexity and formidable paradoxes.
Challenges such as engaging the whole person, meeting the needs for community, and existing in balance with their environment are already pushing leaders and organizations to the limit their capability to respond.
What is needed is for leaders to transform their leadership to be a powerful expression of who they are. As knowledge gives way to the wisdom leaders evoke in their organizations, so transformational change will flow as a natural outcome.
Only leaders who evoke the wisdom of their people will create thriving organizations in the midst of increasing complexity and challenging paradoxes.
Courageous leaders who thrive in this environment are powerful change masters capable of transforming themselves and their organizations. They recognize their role in a self organizing system to encourage independence and interdependence of their members. Their legacy is a sustainable, balanced performance in harmony with all of life.
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Wed Feb 14, 2007
Lack of vision in failing £6.2bn IT scheme
A lack of vision and poor understanding of the sheer size of the task means that a £6.2bn IT scheme for the National Health Service in the UK "isn't working and isn't going to work" according to Andrew Rollerson, an executive with Fujitisu, on of the systems providers, Computer Weekly reported 13/02/07.
When I first read this I thought what a wonderful quantification of a lack of vision. I’m sure the leaders and managers involved in this project will find any other reason but lack of vision to excuse the failure.
If they had to consider vision then they would have to enter this strange and frightening ‘touchy-feely’ world that they pay lip service to but deep down they fear, and believe has no place in business. Well this ‘touchy-feely’ stuff (or lack of it) has just cost you and me (if you live in the UK) £6.2 billion!
I suspect that the senior people on this project have MBAs and have been on leadership courses where they learned about how important vision is. But there is a big difference between an intellectual understanding of how vital vision is, and being able to source vision from within oneself. They don’t teach you that at business school.
And yet vision is a natural and innate part of our humanness. In the old wisdom traditions of the Americas, it was known that we have this spirit of boundless freedom as humans. We are immensely creative, imaginative and passionate.
How could we not be? We are part of a Universe that is just teeming with ‘creation intelligence’. From the Orion Nebula where new stars as being birthed as we watch these pixels, to the tiniest flower that brings such beauty to our world.
We are not separate from it. We are it. Yet we have created this delusion that most of us are not creative.
The old peoples paid a lot of attention to keeping this spirit of creative expression alive and forward because they were aware of its importance. It was their very existence and survival as a people that depended on it.
And here’s me worrying about £6.2bn!
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Thu Oct 14, 2004
Balance is Bunk!
Does trying to balance your work and life drive you crazy. For me, part of the solution is to see balance not as a static achievement but as a dynamic process.
This from Fast Company magazine
"It may be that you recently had a week that defied sanity. You faced an impossible deadline at work. You were expected at your daughter's dance recital, at a soccer game, and at a meeting with the kitchen contractor. Then another big project landed in your lap (thanks, boss!). You were exhausted, and your spouse was miffed. And your job? Well, at 11 one night, you finally bailed on that deadline.
"And you wondered, What's wrong here? Whatever happened to balance?
The truth is, balance is bunk. It is an unattainable pipe dream, a vain artifice that offers mostly rhetorical solutions to problems of logistics and economics. The quest for balance between work and life, as we've come to think of it, isn't just a losing proposition; it's a hurtful, destructive one."
Read more at Fast Company
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Tue Oct 12, 2004
Gentle Action - Surviving Chaos and Change
This is from an article by F David Peat, author of an excellent book called Blackfoot Physics. In this article he demonstrates how small actions can have powerful effects and gives many examples.
"How can policy makers, NGO, institutions, businesses and individuals achieve stability in a world of rapid change and engage in activities that are more appropriate to the situations that surround them? Issues of uncertainty have always existed; as have apparently intractable problems. Yet more recently these issues have been magnified and exacerbated by technologies that allow for rapid transfer of information, large scale economic speculation and fast implementation of policies and actions at a global level.
"Today they are also viewed from within the wider context of global insecurity and economic uncertainty. Gentle Action addresses such issues. It is an approach in which a subtle action operating in often unexpected ways can produce large effects." More ....
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Fri Oct 08, 2004
Courageous Conversation for Leadership
Five simultaneous conversations are essential to the art and discipline of leadership…
The first courageous conversation is the conversation with the unknown future—what lies over the horizon…”
The second conversation is the courageous conversation you’re not having with a present customer, a patient, a vendor, who all represent the future as it’s lapping up against the side of your organization….”
The third conversation is the courageous conversation you’re not having between different divisions of the organization…”
The fourth courageous conversation is the conversation you’re not having in your work group, among your colleagues—people you see every day, or people you e-mail or talk to on your mobile every day…”
The fifth courageous conversation—the one on which I believe all others are predicated—is the courageous conversation you’re not having with that tricky moveable frontier called yourself.
-- David Whyte
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Mon Oct 04, 2004
Integral Leadership
I am always interested in articles that give me another interpretation of new concepts that I find attractive and add value to my work. If you are interested in Spiral Dynamics , Wilber's Four Quadrants and Integral everthing, here is a useful piece on leadership...
"Kurt Lewin, considered by many to be the father of modern organization development practices, is famous for claiming that “there’s nothing so practical as a good theory.” And in 2003, the field of leadership and leadership development does not lack for theories and models. There’s the emotional intelligence model, the concept of the “self-differentiated leader” contributed by family systems theory, the notion of situational leadership, and the ever-popular model of the charismatic leader, to name a few. Whole leadership development programs tend to spring up around each new leadership theory, exist for a while, and then give way as another theory or model comes into favor. And yet, we are still plagued by organizational and leadership breakdowns, across sectors and industries. All of our theories seem to have accomplished little over the long term. Why is that?
"One reason is that few leadership models are comprehensive enough to take into the account the whole scope of leadership and all of the dimensions in which it takes place. What each theory pays attention to is important, yet it is also only partial. For example, the theory and practice of emotional intelligence is an arena that is incredibly important to successful leadership, yet it offers little that helps leaders develop effective systems and practices to manage the day-to-day work of their teams. In contrast, project management or time management models might offer these systems and practices, but they generally ignore the emotional intelligence skills of self-awareness and empathic listening."
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Wed Sep 29, 2004
Lasting Leadership
A new book, Lasting Leadership, interviews 25 business leaders including
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com;
Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Group;
Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway;
Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computers;
Peter Drucker, the educator and author;
William (Bill?) Gates, chairman of Microsoft;
Louis Gerstner, former CEO of IBM;
and more of the usual suspects.
The book identifies eight attributes of leadership, each of which has its own chapter, that are evident to varying degrees in these individuals.
1. They are able to build a strong corporate culture.
2. They are truth-tellers.
3. They are able to find and cater to under-served markets.
4. They can "see the invisible" - that is, spot potential winners or faint trends before their rivals or customers.
5. They are adept at using price to build competitive advantage.
6. They excel at managing and building their organization's brand (which in some cases may be their own name).
7. They are fast learners.
8. They are skilled at managing risk.
I think books like this are valuable up to a point. They are good at identifying the 'what' of leadership behaviour , and there many books that do this.
The challenging part, from my perspective, is the 'how'. How do you develop the qualities and competences that manifest in these 'whats'?
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