The Economist magazine ended a survey of e-business with a review of the skills necessary to successfully manage an e-world business. Now before you discount what is to follow because you might argue that you are not involved in an e-business, have a look at the list. It is no different from skills that Tom Peters, Charles Handy and others have been punting for the past 20 years!
Monthly Archive for November, 2004
Of course in today’s cynical, hard-pressed business environment, swallowing the prediction that relationships will be the economic return of tomorrow is a little like asking you to believe that bullets will one day bounce off vests made from the mixture of a spider’s thread and goats milk - right?
Wrong…very wrong!
Setting aside the bullet-proof vests notion as distracting trivia for now, let’s focus on the former assertion: that relationship will dominate the way in which we see and do business, the way we lead and manage companies into the future. Relationships will be a key economic measure and currency of the future.
Continue reading ‘Relationships - The economic return of the future’
A dozen Burger King marketing execs suffer first and second-degree burns while walking over hot coals as part of a teambuilding retreat in October. One of the injured, a VP for product marketing aptly named Dana Frydman, tried to put a positive spin on it by remaking to the Miami Herald, ‚It made you feel a sense of empowerment and that you can accomplish anything.‛
Mobile Office Enterprise unveils the Express Desk, which attaches a notebook computer to the steering wheel of a car. For use only while parked, of course.
In a co-sponsored contest Coca-Cola and AOL mistakenly inform 100 people that they have won $10,000. AOL attempts to propitiate the non-winners with $200 gift certificates and three free months of AOL.
Sept. 11 Inc., Some things are better left unsaid: The October issue of the Association of Lloyd’s Members newsletter announces that terrorist attacks represent a, ‚historic opportunity‛ for insurance underwriters to make money.
By: Ram Charan & Jerry Unseem
Fortune Magazine (Europe Edition) #11
Charan & Unseem explore the critical question of corporate failure and come up with, ‚Ten Big Mistakes‛ that they maintain are the ‚standard stuff of corporate folly‛. The article is based on researching a number of the 257 public companies with $258 billion in assets that declared bankruptcy last year. One point that is sure to grab your attention is the authors’ assertion that it is a done deal that your company has made at least one of these fatal mistakes!
The big 10 (in no particular sighting order) are:
#1 Softened by success:
The point is made that people are less likely to make optimal decisions after prolonged periods of success. Most mountaineering accidents occur after reaching the summit. Quoting Boston College sociologist, Diane Vaughan, the point is made that people don’t surrender their mental models easily and thereby resist change.
Concept Cafe is a creative way to accomplish a variety of goals in the workplace, from developing and mentoring staff to brainstorming ideas and concepts.
In our last issue we said that we’d begin to review how leading thinkers today are re-looking at the concept of leadership. As you consider your own models of leadership and some of the thinking that has influenced you thus far, here are some thoughts for your consideration:
“Leadership is not so much the exercise of power itself as the empowerment of others,‛ and the idea that ‚the leader controls, directs, prods, manipulates‌ is perhaps the most damaging myth of all. The leader must be willing and able to set up reliable mechanisms of feedback so that he cannot only conceptualize the social territory of which he is an important part, but realize how he influences it.‛ (see Concept Cafe below)
- Bennis, Nanus and Slater (as quoted in The Future of Leadership, Jossey-Bass Pg 111)
“One line I liked summed up what I thought about leadership: ‘The people with whom I have been associated have worked harder, enjoyed it more, although not always initially, and in the end, gained increased self-respect and self-confidence from accomplishing more than they previously thought possible.’”
- Jack Welch (Jack pg 84)
‚Yet it is not enough for leaders at the top to forget themselves in their function. That delight, that sense of vocation or passion, must be possible right through the organization. That requires space, space to express oneself in one’s work, space to experiment, space to fail � and enough space to correct the failures before too much damage is done or too many people notice. It won’t be possible to create those spaces in an excessively tidy organization. Elephants have to be loose-limbed if there is to be room for fleas other than at the top.‛
- Charles Handy (A world of Fleas and Elephants)
‚Leadership is defined as anyone who wants to help at the time.‛
- Margaret Wheatley (while in South Africa during November 2001)
The conventional view of leadership emphasizes positional power and conspicuous accomplishment. But true leadership is about creating a domain in which we continually learn and become more capable of participating in our unfolding future. A true leader thus sets the stage on which predictable miracles, synchronistic in nature, can-and do-occur.
The capacity to discover and participate in our unfolding future has more to do with our being-our total orientation of character and consciousness-than with what we do. Leadership is about creating, day by day, a domain in which we and those around us continually deepen our understanding of reality and are able to participate in shaping the future. This, then, is the deeper territory of leadership-collectively ‘listening’ to what is wanting to emerge in the world, and then having the courage to do what is required.‛
- Joseph Jaworski (Synchronicity)In our last issue we said that we’d begin to review how leading thinkers today are re-looking at the concept of leadership. As you consider your own models of leadership and some of the thinking that has influenced you thus far, here are some thoughts for your consideration:
“Leadership is not so much the exercise of power itself as the empowerment of others,‛ and the idea that ‚the leader controls, directs, prods, manipulates‌ is perhaps the most damaging myth of all. The leader must be willing and able to set up reliable mechanisms of feedback so that he cannot only conceptualize the social territory of which he is an important part, but realize how he influences it.‛ (see Concept Caf� below)
- Bennis, Nanus and Slater (as quoted in The Future of Leadership, Jossey-Bass Pg 111)
“One line I liked summed up what I thought about leadership: ‘The people with whom I have been associated have worked harder, enjoyed it more, although not always initially, and in the end, gained increased self-respect and self-confidence from accomplishing more than they previously thought possible.’”
- Jack Welch (Jack pg 84)
‚Yet it is not enough for leaders at the top to forget themselves in their function. That delight, that sense of vocation or passion, must be possible right through the organization. That requires space, space to express oneself in one’s work, space to experiment, space to fail � and enough space to correct the failures before too much damage is done or too many people notice. It won’t be possible to create those spaces in an excessively tidy organization. Elephants have to be loose-limbed if there is to be room for fleas other than at the top.‛
- Charles Handy (A world of Fleas and Elephants)
‚Leadership is defined as anyone who wants to help at the time.‛
- Margaret Wheatley (while in South Africa during November 2001)
The conventional view of leadership emphasizes positional power and conspicuous accomplishment. But true leadership is about creating a domain in which we continually learn and become more capable of participating in our unfolding future. A true leader thus sets the stage on which predictable miracles, synchronistic in nature, can-and do-occur.
The capacity to discover and participate in our unfolding future has more to do with our being-our total orientation of character and consciousness-than with what we do. Leadership is about creating, day by day, a domain in which we and those around us continually deepen our understanding of reality and are able to participate in shaping the future. This, then, is the deeper territory of leadership-collectively ‘listening’ to what is wanting to emerge in the world, and then having the courage to do what is required.‛
- Joseph Jaworski (Synchronicity)
From Jack Welch’s new book, entitled ‘Jack’, we’ve taken exerts from his chapter ‘What this CEO thing is all about.’
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