"There is a forgotten lesson we leaders can learn here as we deal with the thundering rain in the world of business right now. Once you are wet, the fear of getting wet is over and you start enjoying the rain. With the fear gone, you return to your work with unmitigated enthusiasm. However, if you freeze indoors because of rain, there is no way you will reach anyplace."
Saturday, 29 November 2008
Interesting Links (December 2008)
Monday, 3 November 2008
Interesting Links (November 2008)
Leadership: 109 Movies that Inspire
From the Totally Consumed blog here is a great post on the leadership themes that are well illustrated by classic movies.
These include:
- Apollo 13 (1999) Problem-solve & team work.
- Braveheart (1996) Cultivate your vision and others will follow
- Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) With responsibility, comes accountability
- Dead Poets Society (1989) Words are powerful, use them wisely
- Ground Hog Day (1993) Do it right the first time.
- Lord of the Flies (1990) Never underestimate what people are capable of.
- It’s a Wonderful Life (1947) It’s about who we are, not what we own.
for the other 102 see the original post !
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Richard Branson on Success
From Leadership Now:When we place too high a value on achievement and fulfillment, we often overlook the important parts of life like character, relationships and service. Richard Branson made a profound statement on success in his book, Business Stripped Bare. The last sentence may take a few reads for its implications to soak in.Successful people aren’t in possession of secrets known only to themselves. Don’t obsess over people who appear to you to be “winners”, but listen instead to the wisdom of people who’ve led enriching lives—people, for instance, who’ve found time for friends and family. Be generous in your interpretation of what success looks like. The best and most meaningful lives don’t always end happily.
---------------------------------------Making learning 'stick' - the role of the manager
Chris Morgan on his blog provides a clear and concise article on the role of the manager in making learning stick.
A good manager will be regularly monitoring progress. A great manager will have agreed specific tasks and/or assignments that will force the employee to apply the new behaviours.
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Richard Branson on Success
Successful people aren’t in possession of secrets known only to themselves. Don’t obsess over people who appear to you to be “winners”, but listen instead to the wisdom of people who’ve led enriching lives—people, for instance, who’ve found time for friends and family. Be generous in your interpretation of what success looks like. The best and most meaningful lives don’t always end happily.
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Interesting Links (October 2008)
- Encourage everyone on your team to remember four words that can help all of you get though your crisis in the best way possible: help more, judge less.
- Try to get team members to focus on a future that they can impact, not a past that they cannot change anyway.
- Try to get people to take responsibility for their own behavior.
- Ask each person to reflect on the question, "What can I learn from this crisis?"
- Ask everyone on your team to reflect on the question, "What can we learn from this crisis?"
- Encourage each team member to avoid speaking when angry or out of control.
- Before speaking don't just ask, "Am I correct?" - ask "Will this help?"
Remote Working - avoiding the pitfalls
Management Issues highlight "Five ways to get Remote Working Wrong" - mistakes that companies tend to make when setting up teleworking or remote working programmes.
Telecommuting is a growing trend - so this paper will be of interest to many.
- The first pitfall is that organisations rush into it without any concrete policies and procedures in place
- The second common pitfall is to over-invest in technology, with companies rushing out to buy the latest technology and gizmos when often they did not need to.
- The third failing was the failure to train managers. It is now well recognised that managing someone from afar requires a different set of management skills, especially how you communicate and stay in touch with your remote team.
- Fourthly, firms often failed to explore whether this type of initiative even fitted within their business model.
- Finally, organisations too often failed to pilot their programme before "going live".
L&D colleagues will be particularly interested in bullet 3, especially as the authors highlight "Yet too often day-to-day pressures or budgetary constraints meant training around this new form of management simply failed to happen".
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Few things have more impact on your happiness at work than the person you answer to every day.
· A willingness to talk about himself. It's not appropriate to grill the interviewer about his qualifications, but it's perfectly acceptable to ask about his education and experience, and how he wound up in his job. You're trying to get a sense of whether you can learn from this person.
· A positive vibe about the person who held the job before. Ask your prospective boss what happened to the last person who held the position for which you're applying.
· A strong career of his own. You want a boss who is considered a rising star, Ask around to see what sort of reputation he has within the company, as well as his field. Is he getting regular promotions? Does he have a strong internal network? "You really want to be near the movers and shakers, if possible," she said.
· Encouraging nonverbal cues.Was the person on time and attentive? Did she look you in the eye? Is her attention focused on you during the interview? If not, don't get your hopes up.
· A good hunch. A big part of finding the right job is pure chemistry. A job may seem great intellectually, but if you have a bad feeling about it, there's probably a reason, even if you can't articulate it.
I'd suggest this theme is equally applicable for internal transfers - and thus the 'chemistry' is something HR should help the business lines determine as part of talent management.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Interesting Links (September 2008)
Being Wired or Being Tired: 10 Ways to Cope with Information Overload
- Women who had only one female boss reported more psychological distress (such as trouble sleeping, difficulty focusing on work, depression and anxiety) and physical symptoms (such as headaches, stomach pain or heartburn, neck and back pain and tiredness) than women who worked for one male boss.
- Women who reported to a mixed-gender pair of supervisors also reported more of these symptoms than their peers who worked for a single male boss.
- Men who worked for a single supervisor, regardless of the supervisor’s gender, had similar levels of distress.
- Men who worked for a mixed-gender pair had fewer mental and physical symptoms than those working for a lone male supervisor
interesting data .....
Friday, 15 August 2008
Interesting Links (August 2008)
What is your personal learning strategy ?
Leading Blog presents a short, informative summary of the book Crucibles of Leadership by Robert Thomas.
Thomas writes that crucibles “are like trials or tests that corner individuals and force them to answer questions about who they are and what is really important to them. Crucibles become valuable when we intentionally mine them for lessons that make us more effective, aware and integrated."
Thomas says that we have to change our approach to learning. We shouldn’t wait for just the right moment to arrive, but learn in the moment—in real time—to, as he writes, “learn while doing.”
Hence the main thesis of this work is that preparation is essential to learning. ie "In order to take advantage of our crucibles, we must develop a Personal Learning Strategy (PLS)".
Put another way - I'd suggest that this reinforces that L&D professionals have an important role helping leaders & manager 'Learn how to learn' (as well as this approach being at the heart of effective Executive Coaching)
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Colleague Engagement
Management Issues highlights ten steps towards engagement based on research undertaken by the business consulting organization SCORE.
The list covers a lot of ground that will be familiar with consulting on building colleague engagement. Equally, for me the following steps stand out:
2. Try to approach your people with fresh eyes and take into account their unique perspective.
10. Be consistent. Don't start programs and then drop them after a few weeks. So stick with it.
How often are these steps overlooked - by assuming best practice in one area can be directly transplanted elsewhere. Also: approaching this long-term challenge with a series of short term initiatives ?
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Team Building
In another easy to digest article - Management Issues highlight 'Five Simple Keys to Building Solid Teams'
1. Honesty
2. Trust
3. Mutual Respect
4. Recognition
5. Support
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Can You Lead with Kindness ?
This month Leadership Now asks 'Can you Lead with Kindness ?' This is a review of a recent book by Bill Baker and Michael O’Malley
The authors state:
The fact is, kindness isn’t always nice. It pushes others to do better; it asks them to try out things that they are uncertain they can accomplish; it requires them to engage in activities that they are not sure they will like. Another fact is this: Folks don’t always take kindly to kindness. Leaders, even great ones, cannot save everybody.
Kind leaders are framers. - They reinforce expectations for employees by establishing clear boundaries, standards of conduct, challenging goals, and organizational values.
Kind leaders are interpreters. - They tell the truth about how each worker and the entire company is doing. They help individuals adapt to change and make sense of their efforts.
Kind leaders are enablers. - They stimulate calculated “stretch” and risk-taking, without sheltering people from their own mistakes. They fight cynicism and facilitate growth
The Leading Now commentary includes the observation that:
"great leaders are not great because they are super-human. Instead, they are ordinary but growth-oriented people with character that have chosen to make a commitment to a bold course of action that is in the best interest of those they serve despite the odds"
... hope for us all !
Saturday, 19 July 2008
Interesting Links (July 2008)
Heads in the Sand on Succession Planning
This month management-issues.com provides an insightful report on succession planning recently undertaken by Novations
"A survey of more than 2,500 senior HR executives by consultancy Novations Group has found that, nominally, succession planning among North American firms seems to be in relatively good shape, with just seven per cent of firms admitting to having no succession planning in place at all.
But peel back the figures and a more worrying picture emerges, it reported. More than a fifth said that, even though they had succession planning in place, it was valueless because, as often as not, they ended up recruiting someone externally anyway."
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Can Google Lengthen Our Attention Span?
Writing in the Harvard Business blog, Diane Coutu started an interesting discussion on the impact of Google on challenging the thinking of individuals
"Here are a few suggestions for increasing your curiosity quotient – and how Google can help:
Don’t be afraid to look dumb. Infants are born passionately curious. They instinctively explore, investigate, and test their environments. Tragically, many of us develop inhibitions as we get older and grow afraid of appearing ignorant. Yet we will never increase our level of curiosity unless we give ourselves permission to formulate and test new hypotheses — and to be productively stupid. The beauty of Google is that it allows us to be stupid in private. Are you not sure which countries make up the G8? Not to worry. Google it.
Never stop questioning. As a number of people have observed: “Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.” Google helps us ask why. When I looked up the word curiosity in Wikipedia, for example, I read that curiosity is an “emotion.” That didn’t sound right, so I googled Freud and found that he described curiosity as a “derivative of the sexual instinct.” That seemed to me an oversimplification as well. In having me quickly place the two alternatives side by side, Google made me question the differences between emotions and instincts. It encouraged me to think critically.
Expose yourself to lots of different experiences.People, travel, play, and books can all introduce you to exciting new worlds. Google can, too. Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor’s memoirs, which relate her sometimes incomprehensible spirituality after suffering a stroke, reminded me of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s lectures on transcendentalism. I googled Emerson’s essay on “Nature,” where he wrote about becoming a “transparent eyeball.” Yikes. Emerson and Taylor’s experiences have quite a lot in common. So I googled mysticism, and the more I read on the subject, the more curious I became about the brain and the varieties of religious experience. That led to a whole new Google search."
To read the whole article & associated comments - click here
Let’s Hear It for B Players
Also from Harvard is this easy to digest article on managing so-called 'B' players.
The authors state "These supporting actors of the corporate world determine your company’s future performance far more than A players—volatile stars who may score the biggest revenues or clients, but who’re also the most likely to commit missteps. B players, by contrast, prize stability in their work and home lives. They seldom strive for advancement or attention—caring more about their companies’ well-being. Infrequent job changers, they accumulate deep knowledge about company processes and history. They thus provide ballast during transitions, steadily boosting organizational resilience and performance.
Yet many executives ignore B players, beguiled by stars’ brilliance. The danger? If neglected, these dependable contributors may leave, taking the firm’s backbone with them. How to keep your B players? Recognize their value—and nurture them. "
Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership
From Time magazine:
- Courage is not the absence of fear - it's inspiring others to move beyond it
- Lead from the front — but don't leave your base behind
- Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front
- Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport
- Keep your friends close — and your rivals even closer
- Appearances matter — and remember to smile
- Nothing is black or white
- Quitting is leading too
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Interesting Links (June 2008)
Want to Boost Productivity? Give Workers Bigger Screens
From Harvard Business - Discussion Leaders
The easiest way to increase the productivity of people working on computers is to increase the size of their monitors. I recently suggested that a firm add an additional screen for all its customer service workers and you can see below that in a month’s time, the time per call decreased from about three minutes and fifty seconds down to three minutes and twenty seconds – a 12% improvement -- with no additional training or change in the work load or work design.
...... Most people don’t know that you can add an additional screen to any laptop and, by changing the desktop settings, which takes less than a minute, create a continuous work space from one screen to the next. The mouse moves across; you can drag applications to the other screen seamlessly. (Windows can drive up to 10 screens.)
Why bother? Well, two screens lets you open two full-sized windows or applications at once, so if you are looking at your email, you can also see your calendar, or open a document. With the trivial cost of 15-to-19-inch screens, many now under $100, every knowledge worker should have at least two screens. They will pay for themselves almost immediately.
I've always resisted having a small flat screen - preferring my trusty old but large CRT. Only recently someone showed me how to use it in combination with my Laptop screen when docked. And I'd agree with this article .... spread the word !
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Top Ten Reasons for Top Ten Lists
Here is that Top 10 list from Tom Davenport of Harvard ! enjoy
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Team-Building with Wikis
Here is an interesting post from the Socialtext blog.
Advice includes:
Next time you have a new team member, and thus, a new team, consider these simple practices for team building:
- Project shared notes in a wiki page while meeting
- Start an initiative to document best practices, kicking off with a conversation about basic language and how to structure information architecture. Revisit as a group on a regular basis until it takes off on its own.
- Augment your next leadership offsite with an Wiki Eventspace to: (i) flush out the agenda beforehand, (ii) have participants create profiles including answering topical questions, (iii)
organize communication, (iv) shared notes and in-session conversation, & (v) structure new initiatives on the fly - Look for major exceptions to business process to rapidly form an expert group focused not just on resolution in rapid time, but documenting learnings in the process
- Look for common editing exercises, from mission statements to press releases
- Encourage rich profiles, blog posts and wiki expression not just about work, but the things that help others understand the identities behind their words and work. Even if its blogging about cats. If you clamp down on tone, it wont be fun (especially compared to paintball). This is not a directed side activity, and these conversations occur in the lunchroom and by the watercooler anyway, just with less distribution and persistence.
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What Will You Regret ?
Marshall Goldsmith reflects here on a great question to ask of leaders:
In your experience, what are the biggest regrets people have at the end of their careers? What do people wish they had learned sooner?
As Marshall states:
"This is a great question. A wise person learns from experience. A wiser person learns from someone else’s experience. The best way to answer this question is to ask the people who actually have the experience."
A key insight is that although most of us go through our careers fearing failure- "people don’t regret their failures and that most people wished they had risked more. Trying and failing is something we can deal with. The happiest people felt they had pursued their dreams and stretched themselves in their lives and careers. So we are more likely to regret having not tried for a dream than to have failed at it. This is particularly interesting because most of us think failure is about the worst thing that can happen to us but it turns out that not trying or playing it safe in our careers is what we should actually be worrying about."
Motivation Disconnect: How Organizations Fail to Motivate Managers
John Baldoni at Harvard reflects here on a recent study from Ashridge
"If you want to drive motivation, you know your people. Some may be motivated by an equity stake, but so often others want to do good and interesting work, and be recognized for it. The lesson of the Ashridge study, like so many others before it, is that people wanted to be treated as individuals. And that is motivational in itself."
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Interesting Links (May 2008)
Inside InnovationIf you are interested in driving Innovation in the workplace - this recent feature by Business Week should not be missed
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Fortune: The Best Advice I Ever Got
Fortune magazine asked 19 people for the best advice that most influenced their lives. Here are several excepts from that feature:
General David Petraeus: Commanding general, multinational force – Iraq The bottom line is that seriously bright folks thought very differently about important issues, and the debates on various topics were wonderful. All in all, in fact, the experience was invaluable. It may sound trite, but experiencing that not everyone saw the world at all remotely the same was good preparation for many of the experiences I've had since then.
Indra Nooyi: Chairman and CEO, Pepsico Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different. When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response. You don't get defensive. You don't scream. You are trying to understand and listen because at your basic core you are saying, "Maybe they are saying something to me that I'm not hearing." So "assume positive intent" has been a huge piece of advice for me.
Sam Palmisano: Chairman and CEO, IBM I've noticed that some of the most effective leaders don't make themselves the center of attention. They are respectful. They listen. This is an appealing personal quality, but it's also an effective leadership attribute. Their selflessness makes the people around them comfortable. People open up, speak up, contribute. They give those leaders their very best.
[credit to Leadership Now for this synopsis]
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Creativity is not just for artists
Leadership Now also presents a thought provoking article on creativity & innovation
"The challenge organizations face is to not only to utilize the creative capacities of their people, but to develop them as well."
The author outlines six ways organizations are trying to develop creative capacities in their people:
- Analogy and Metaphor - not only useful for visualization, but also for problem-solving: if we can resolve an analogous situation or issue, we can perhaps then solve the particular challenge we are facing.
- Perception - the ability to see patterns where others are unable to do so
- Simplicity - the most creative solution could be the most simple
- Adversity - dealing with obstacles through innovative thinking
- Technical Mastery - using the proper tools, techniques, and methods
- Persistence - New ideas, new art, new discoveries and inventions that often defy traditional concepts or aesthetics and are not readily accepted. But creativity demands that the innovator persist in the face of such obstacles.
He asserts, “Creativity is the ultimate intellectual property. The time has arrived for creative people to take their places as leaders of society in professions other than the arts. The specific talent in people with a creative intelligence is the asset most needed by today’s emerging global creative economy: the expression of ideas through design and storytelling.”
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Magnetic Attraction - the potential of Talent & the Corporate Brand
The following summary report provides a wealth of information on Talent Management !
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Also related to Managing Talent - the following blog from Harvard (Tammy Erickson) provides thought provoking insights into '10 Reasons Gen Xers Are Unhappy at Work'
"I’m worried about Generation X and corporations. As far as I can tell, these two have a tentative relationship at best – and are likely headed for some rocky times ahead.
Corporations really need Gen X – folks in their 30’s to early 40’s, who should begin to serve as our primary corporate leaders over the next couple years. But I fear many current corporate executives are taking this small and therefore precious group for granted"____________________________________________
Eight business technology trends to watch
From the McKinsey Quarterly (published April 2008)
Technology alone is rarely the key to unlocking economic value: companies create real wealth when they combine technology with new ways of doing business. Through our work and research, we have identified eight technology-enabled trends that will help shape businesses and the economy in coming years. These trends fall within three broad areas of business activity: managing relationships, managing capital and assets, and leveraging information in new ways.
Managing relationships
1. Distributing cocreation
2. Using consumers as innovators
3. Tapping into a world of talent
4. Extracting more value from interactions
Managing capital and assets
5. Expanding the frontiers of automation
6. Unbundling production from delivery
Leveraging information in new ways
7. Putting more science into management
8. Making businesses from information
____________________________________________Also from the McKinsey Quarterly (May 2008) is this article on the 7-S framework (familiar to most MBA alumni !).
When McKinsey introduced the 7-S framework, in the late 1970s, it was a watershed in thinking about organizations. The framework maps seven interrelated factors that influence an organization's ability to change to change--shared values, skills, staff, strategy, structure, style, and systems--and shows how these forces interact. Emphasizing coordination more strongly than the traditional structural view of organizations did, 7-S suggests that they can make significant progress in any of their parts only if they progress in the others. In an interactive exhibit, longtime McKinsey director Lowell Bryan explains how its elements have evolved over the years
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Tuesday, 29 April 2008
Interesting Links (April 2008)
The following article by Peter Honey (via the learning vendor Priority Management's website) provides a simple to read reminder on the need to recognise success in the workplace.
There is plenty of learning mileage in celebrating successes.
For example, people discover that:
- Emphasizing the positive is a far more powerful motivator than emphasizing the negative
- No news, ie if no-one says anything then it must have been all right, is not good news
- You win some, you lose some, but either way it’s OK to ‘go for it’
- Success is rewarded with the best reward of all; recognition
- Things are successful for a combination of reasons rather than there being one single factor
- Once you know the reasons for a success you can plan future successes even though the circumstances will never be identical
- It isn’t healthy to be inappropriately modest and ‘hide your light under a bushel’
- Celebrating someone else’s success gives vicarious pleasure from which everyone benefits
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The Role of Training in Continuous Improvement Initiatives
The attached report has been produced by http://www.trainingindustry.com/
Here are the Key Findings
- The more involved the training function is with continuous improvement initiatives, the more satisfied senior management are with the progress their companies have made...
- Of the methods used for company-wide improvement programs, Lean, Six Sigma, or a combination (32%) and TQM (29%) are used most frequently...
- Active 'walk the talk' leadership from senior management is critical for ensuring the ultimate success of the improvement initiative...
- The more specific the continuous improvement training, the better...
- Most continuous improvement training should continue to be instructor-led but should be complemented with a blended approach...
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This month Leadership Now highlights the book 'Why Should the Boss Listen to You?' in this article
The author, Lukaszewski describes how leaders think and operate and why this is important to the trusted advisor.
At the core of this book, he presents a seven-discipline approach to becoming a strategic trusted advisor.
- Be Trustworthy: Trust is the first discipline and the foundation for a relationship between advisor and leader or boss.
- Become a Verbal Visionary: The leader's greatest skill is verbal skill, and the leader’s advisor must also have powerful verbal skills.
- Develop a Management Perspective: To be a management advisor is to be able to talk more about the boss’s goals and objectives than about whatever your staff function happens to be.
- Think Strategically: One of the great realities of management is that the leader’s job is always about tomorrow, and almost never about yesterday.
- Be a Window to Tomorrow: Understand and use the power of patterns. A sophisticated advisor is one who can forecast tomorrow with some level of accuracy.
- Advise Constructively: Giving advice starts where the boss is and where he or she has to go (where the advisor is or has been).
- Show the Boss How to Use Advice: If you want to see your recommendations come alive, teach the boss how to accept and use advice.
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Six Drivers of Change
From the Harvard Business blog, here are the common themes surfaced from a panel discussion, titled “Innovation: Change Happens,” featured Dow Corning Chairman, CEO and President Stephanie Burns, Eastman Kodak President and COO Phil Faraci, and Procter & Gamble Chairman and CEO A.G. Lafley. It was part of the Newspaper Association of America and American Society of News Editors “Capital Conference 2008.”
- The need for a crisis or some kind of “burning platform” to motivate transformational change
- A clear vision and strategy … that allows room for iteration
- A recognition that transformation is a multi-year journey
- A need to put the customer or consumer in the center of the transformation equation
- The critical importance of demonstrating to skeptics that different actions can lead to different results
- The need to over-communicate to employees, customers, stakeholders, and shareholders
solid advice from those with first-hand experience !
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Maximizing your value to your organization
Also from the HBR Editors' Blog is an interesting article on 'Lessons from GE's Approach to Productivity'
"If it’s accepted wisdom that businesses should revisit their strategies and organizational structures and processes on a regular basis to ensure that they are still relevant, doesn’t it make sense to periodically take stock of how you’re spending your time? Given the current economic climate, there’s no better occasion than now to step back and make sure you’re maximizing your value to your organization"
In Summary:
- Compare your calendar with the priorities
- Be ruthless
- Ask your team to do the same
- Make time for your people and yourself.
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and finally .....Nurturing Creativity
If you can spare 20mins, take a look at this movie on nurturing creativity - amusing and inspiring, especially when you have kids and have an interest in education...
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Interesting Links (March 2008)
When the Red Phone Rings: Three Questions to Ask in a Crisis
This recent article from Harvard describes the scenario:
“It’s three a.m. and the phone rings. Who do you want to answer it?”
CEOs receive these early morning calls. Sometimes it's a fire in a factory. Sometimes it's a product recall. Sometimes it's a kidnapped employee being held for ransom in a foreign land. Sometimes it's a senior executive who has gotten himself into trouble.
Be it a president or a corporate executive, the first thing that the leader should do is ask questions. These three questions are recommended:
- What is happening?
- What is not happening?
- What can I do to influence the action or outcome?
read more about this here
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Jon Ingham provides an interesting post on Emotional Intelligence on his blog.
He states
'Perhaps the reason CEOs discount social skills is that they don't see them improving - and perhaps the reason for this is that organisations have put too much focus on social skills themselves, and not enough on the other underpinning abilities' (i.e. self-awareness & social-awareness)
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This link provides a 5 minute on-line Foundational Level presentation on the options for 'Learning 2.0' ... the use of Web 2.0 collaborative tools to facilitate workplace learning.
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Thursday, 28 February 2008
Interesting Links (February 2008)
Here is an interesting article from the Fast Company on how better training, RSS readers and/or Instant Messaging are being used to turn the tide for those drowning in email.
"Remember when a new email in your inbox was as exciting as the postman dropping off a card from grandma with a $5 bill in it? Those days are over. Now email is a crushing tsunami. The average corporate email account receives 18 MB of mail and attachments each business day, according to the analyst firm Radicati Group; the figure is projected to grow to 28 MB a day by 2011. No wonder there's a fledgling movement afoot to periodically declare "email bankruptcy"--delete all your saved emails and start over. Never fear; less extreme solutions are being implemented by corporations fed up with wasted resources. The results are surprisingly good."
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Can Internal Coaches Be As Effective as Outsiders ?
More insights from GE (via Harvard) - this time relating to their use of internal HR colleagues as executive coaches (for their high potential leaders). The article by Marshall Goldsmith is a quick, insightful read.
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Focusing on sharing Scientific information - the following link is an interesting concept:
SciVee
SciVee is an online science community where scientists can make their research known to their fellow peers as well as the general public. Scientists can create "pubcasts" which are online presentations that allow a scientist to combine their publication with media such as video, audio, images, and text to allow visitors to quickly grasp the key concepts of their publications, as well as an increased chance for citation. Scientists can also form communities around their research/projects/interests and can start discussions or plan events with
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Interesting Links (January 2008)
As attention focused on annual SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant & Time-based) goal setting - Jon Ingham suggests an alternative framework (particularly for knowledge workers) - MUSIC
Motivational: focused on what would truly inspire the individual to go beyond simply doing his or her job.
Unusual: good performance management systems already stress that performance management objectives should not focus on part of the day jobs, but should reflect new or increased responsibilities or requirements. In performance leadership, we may need to extend this further to ensure that each individual is set objectives that are different to other peoples' or what they have done before.
Sensory: one of the reasons that SMART objectives have been quite useful is that they extend the pyschological priming effect that simply having a clear set of goals provides (just having goals can sometimes be all that is needed to make them happen as the brain starts to unconsciously guide action towards their achievement). But this is even more effective when the goals are supported by thinking about the sensory evidence that would come with their achievement (NLP practitioners will know what I'm talking about here).
Individual: I've already said that goals should be unusual, and it is their focus on each individual, their own particulaly skills, motivations and interests, that provides this.
Congruent: This isn't about people going AWOL, goals still need to relate to the business plan, but they come from the individual and the individual's insight into how they might play the greatest role in delivering the business strategy, than from a piece of paper produced by people at the top of the organisation who don't know the details about what people lower down the organisation do
...could be helpful to re-energise those who have been hearing about SMART for the past decade ?!
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Here is a website focused on Talent Management that was recently brought to my attention - from a quick scan there are some interesting articles for HR/L&D colleagues posted here !
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Harvard Business School - Working Knowledge start 2008 with an interesting article on 'Does Judgment Trump Experience' providing an executive summary of the current scholarship from Warren Bennis and Noel Tichy.
..... the authors have undertaken the formidable task of describing judgment and how good judgments are formed and carried out, based on observations of successful and unsuccessful leaders. They assert that "making judgment calls (especially about people, strategy, and crises) is the essential job of a leader" and go on to say that "with good judgment, little else matters; without good judgment, nothing else matters."
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Many folk provide predictions on the direction of L&D in 2008 - here is one such thought-prokoving article:
"We believe the bigger business issues relating to boomers leaving the workforce is how we will continue to get access to talent and how we will manage that talent. The transformation to a global workforce is already under way. Companies are solving the talent access problem by going global and getting skilled labor wherever it is available. Collaboration and telecommunications technologies allow us to have employees anywhere in the world. So, how do we recruit and train employees in a global workforce? This is the challenge facing the training industry."
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For L&D colleagues - the following link provides a helpful glossary of terms relating to e-learning
