US poverty rate continues to rise

Seems a bit odd in a country where leadership is so much talked about ...

From the BBC Website August 30th.

Poverty levels have risen for the last four years

"The number of people classed as poor in the US has increased - despite strong economic growth, say official figures.

An extra 1.1 million Americans dropped below the poverty line last year, according to the US Census Bureau.

There were 37 million people living in poverty in 2004, up 12.7% from the previous year. The report said non-Hispanic whites were the only ethnic group to experience an increase in poverty as well as a drop in income."

Read the rest of the article ...

Leaders of all kinds

Malawi Leaders

This is in Chiumbangame Village, Malawi. The lady on the right had lost her husband to Aids, and has 9 children of her own. She is the village activist who cares for orphans and terminal patients....

Leadership happens all around us.

The Three Ways of Great Leaders

In my morning trawl through the web, I came across this ...

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From Fast Company, by Bill Breen - September 2005

"What are the elements of this alloy we call "Leadership"?

Certainly, they include vision and integrity, perseverance and courage, a hunger for innovation, and a willingness to take risks. But in building their list of the top business leaders of the past century, Harvard Business School professors Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria have unearthed an immutable attribute that's shared by all of the giants of business: They had an innate ability to read the forces that shaped the times in which they lived -- and to seize on the resulting opportunities.

Henry Ford, Ray Kroc, Estee Lauder, Jack Welch -- these business masters had more than their fair share of what Mayo and Nohria call "contextual intelligence." That is, they possessed an acute sensitivity to the social, political, technological, and demographic contexts that came to define their eras. And they adapted their enterprises to best respond to those forces. Their outsized success at sensing opportunities and capitalizing on them had a dual effect: Just as the times profoundly influenced these business masters, they, in turn, profoundly influenced their times.

"We've always treated the historical context of a particular time as a kind of sidebar to any discussion about business leadership," says Nohria, a coauthor of 10 books on leadership and organizational change. "But we've found that context is far more salient than we ever imagined."

Four years ago, Mayo and Nohria set out to fill a void in the field of management thinking: the lack of a canon of history's greatest business leaders. Students of literature read the classics of Shakespeare, Milton, and Joyce; the Harvard professors believed that students of business should understand the history and critical biographies of Sloan, Procter, Disney, and the other business leaders from the past century who profoundly shaped American life. So Mayo and Nohria identified 1,000 great chief executives and company founders of the 20th century; they then surveyed 7,000 business executives, asking them to evaluate and rank the original list of 1,000. Out of this, they produced a ranking of the top 100 business leaders of all time.

As the pair dug into the lives of their 1,000 leaders, they began to glean how contextual intelligence is an underappreciated but all-encompassing differentiator between success and failure. Seeing how context creates different kinds of business opportunities, the authors categorized their business legends by the different types of opportunities they pursued. Their expanded scope has resulted in a groundbreaking book on business leadership, to be published next month by Harvard Business School Press: In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the 20th Century.

In an interview, Nohria identified three prototypical leadership types -- the entrepreneurial leader, the leader as manager, and the charismatic leader -- and showed how each used their contextual intelligence to thrive in their times. "Leaders and those who aspire to lead benefit from having a sense of history," he says. "Not because history repeats itself. History's real value is that it allows you to imagine what's possible." Here, in his own words, Nohria shows that there is more than one path to becoming a great leader. In fact, there are three.

1. The Entrepreneurial Leader: C.W. Post

"At the turn of the last century, C.W. Post was an itinerant salesman who traveled through Michigan, which was the Silicon Valley of its time. It was the epicenter of more than 300 car companies, which spawned scores more companies. Entrepreneurship was in the air. Post didn't directly exploit these technologies, but he did sense a gathering of forces that created the possibility for a new business opportunity....."

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Read the rest of the article ...

Technorati leadership tag

Purpose

In working "how to bring a mission to life" and "engaging employees", I was reminded of Dick Axelrod's work. Here is a useful article ...

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"Purpose is the Cornerstone - by Dick and Emily Axelrod

A hospital creating a healing environment for its patients; a mortgage bank enabling people to realize their dreams; an outdoor clothing manufacturer equipping people to work in the world. These organizations have purposes that engage and connect people. Their purposes speak to a higher meaning than the daily routine of meeting budgets and achieving production goals.

Purpose provides a way for everyone to see how they connect to the larger whole. When people understand how they fit, a new sense of engagement and connection is created, and you see great things happen:

• free flowing information and cooperation replace organizational silos
• there is urgency and energy to create a new future
• people grasp the issues and quickly recognize the opportunities in an ever-changing marketplace
• a critical mass of people have the ownership, commitment and will to bring about needed change.

Who wouldn't want to work in such a place?

Many organizations identify purpose by creating a business case for change-au very logical and "head- based." Leaders believe that logic will carry the day. While creating this case for change is a necessary first step, it does not create a purpose powerful enough to produce connection.

Purpose must also connect to the yearnings in people's hearts. If a hospital has to cut 30 million out of its budget, that may be the logical reason for change, but it lacks meaning. "Improving healthcare so we care for people in the way we envisioned when we entered the profession" has meaning."

Read the rest of the article ....

Technorati leadership development tag

From "The Social Customer"

Very recent post by Christopher Carfi (The Social Customer blog) in which he talks of the journey from Transactions, through Conversation and Relationships, and onto Community.

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"From Transactions To Community

Have been road-testing this model over the past few months, most recently with the fine folks from Blue Marble Marketing, and would love your feedback as well.

The interactions between customers and vendors are in a state of flux, and, as best as I can tell, are moving up through the levels shown in the graphic to the right. These are as follows:

The Transaction stage: At this point, both customer and vendor are thinking of their interaction as a "one shot" deal. The vendor's trying to sell something, the customer is going to buy something, and that's it. Historical knowlege of the other party, as well as the potential for future interactions, is not even really part of the equation. At least in most "traditional" markets, most organizations are still mired at the "transactional" level. Push, push, push...the vendor creates a product, markets it, spins it, and tries to reap as much short-term profit as possible. It's a "one size fits all" type of interaction, and if the customer doesn't like it, he or she can go elsewhere. And customers will.

The challenge from going from "Transaction" to "Conversation": You need to stop talking, and listen."

Read the rest of the post ...

Technorati customer tag, social networks tag

More on Customer Centricity ...

I am still very much at work on this topic with a client, and came across this item.

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It is from Brian McManus of www.truis.com

He asks "What Does Customer-centric Mean?"

He notes:

"A Customer-Centric Enterprise (CCE) is a company that focuses on customer satisfaction and places the customer at the center of the company's existence. Through years of executing customer intelligence initiatives, we have found 10 factors common to creating a successful CCE:

• Assigns an executive-level manager responsible for customer advocacy/care/satisfaction
• Measures customer satisfaction at least once a year
• Considers the "company" the owner of the customer relationship (not sales)
• Hosts a customer event at least once a year
• Maintains at least a 25% level of customer referenceability at any given time
• Generates at least 10% of annual sales from current customer base
• Maintains ongoing dialogue with customers
• Maintains a central database on customer information
• Leverages customer success as the cornerstone of the sales process
• Uses customer intelligence to guide corporate decisions and strategies

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I guess my critique would be that, beyond this list, Customer Centric Enterprises would do well to look more from the Custiomer angle - concepts such as:

• Being responsive to Customer needs on a real time basis
• Adapting an enterprise's activities to Cutomer feedback
• Engaging all employees in an Enterprise to see the Customer as the "center of the universe"
• Encouraging these employees to take unilateral (but principle based) action to meet Customer needs
• "First time" resolution of Customer complaints and questions

etc.

Technorati customer tag

Buenos Aires

Just a picture I created a while ago ... seemed something different as I am playing with Flickr ... and says a little something about teamwork. If you can't tango, you can't do it?

Buenos Aires ....

Flow ....

Another great post from Don Blohowiak at Leadership. Now., August 15th 2005

"In his classic book Flow:The Psychology of Optimal Experience, psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi provides an unintended but remarkably useful lesson on workplace productivity.

Dr. Csikszentmihalyi notes that when people reflect on their most positive experiences they "mention at least one, and often all," of the following attributes:

• The experience usually occurs when they confront tasks they have a chance of completing
• They are able to concentrate on what they’re doing
• The task has clear goals
• They receive immediate feedback
• They can act with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from theirawareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life
• They can exercise a sense of control over their actions
• Concern for the self disappears, yet, paradoxically, the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over
• Time sense is distorted: hours pass in what seems like minutes and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours.

"The combination of all these elements," Dr. Csikszentmihalyi observes, "causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it."

If you’re a golf lover, you could use this list to explain why you enjoy such a challenging game.

If you’re a manager, try using this as a checklist to assess whether you’re providing the conditions for your associates to do their best work and to become so thoroughly engaged in it that they want to do it.

Get flow flowing in your workplace and watch both morale and profits flow better, too."

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Me? I write about this as Samurai driving ... the time when you drive from one end of the trip to another without messing a gear change, braking hard or even really thinking - Zen in a car.

Technorati leadership development tag

The Art of the Woman Warrior

From Inc Magazine, August 2005

As the rare women in their Marine officer-training school, Angie Morgan and Courtney Lynch struggled with the physical demands of the job. Leading male troops, though, most of whom had never worked for a woman before, was more difficult. Eventually, they figured it out, and now they’re teaching other women how to lead. Last year, Morgan and Lynch launched Lead Star, a company based in Fairfax, Va., that conducts workshops for women’s business groups and for female managers at companies like Wal-Mart and Burger King. Sessions focus on 10 concepts that Morgan and Lynch learned from the Marines.

One is leading as you are. In the Corps, according to Lynch, a lot of women think they need to be more like a man or talk in a deep voice. “Stay who you are,” she says, “and the troops will appreciate that.” The other concepts include exceeding the standards you set for others; making timely decisions rather than waiting for 100% of the information; and avoiding emotional reactions (or, as their drill instructor told them, “save the drama for your mama”).

The rule that’s toughest for many businesswomen to follow is refraining from apologies, Morgan says, even though “it breaks down your ability to communicate as a leader.” Never say “I’m sorry” when you interrupt a meeting (use “excuse me”), never apologize for something that’s not your fault, and never, ever cry at work. When you do make a mistake, “as a leader, you say you’re sorry just once,” Morgan says.

Business lessons drawn from the military have been around for ages—hasn’t every CEO read The Art of War? But until now, women have embraced them much less than men. Yet Lynch and Morgan believe the tough-love leadership of the Marines is great for women who usually don’t get those lessons elsewhere. “The Marine Corps is not a natural source of inspiration for most women,” says Lynch, “but every woman can learn how to lead the Marine Corps way—without strapping on a pair of combat boots.”

Technorati leadership development tag

Marketing Technology - Hill & Knowlton

Like many others, I thought this a great idea - Hill & Knowlton are encouraging all of their people to blog, as long as they meet some basic "Code of Practice" criteria

From Marketing Technology blog - Niall Cook August 9th

"We officially announced our blogging community to all our 1500+ staff in 38 countries today (although Steve 'bloodhound' Rubel already sniffed it out, thanks to this post).

Every employee is being encouraged to complete a slightly tongue-in-cheek questionnaire, which provides them with an assessment of whether they have the desire or time to blog for our brand.

Feel free to give it a go yourself - it's open to everyone (you just won't be able to apply for a blog unless you work for us).

We have two inaugural blogs, but I'm looking forward to welcoming some new team and individual blogs over the coming weeks."

Also see the Hill & Knowlton "So You Want to Join the H&K blogging community ... "

This includes their Code of Practice

• I will acknowledge and correct mistakes promptly
• I will preserve the original post, using notations to show where I have made changes
• I will never delete a post
• I will not delete comments unless they are spam or off-topic
• I will disclose conflicts of interest (including client relationships) where I am able to do so
• I will not publish anything that breaches my existing employment contract
• I will distinguish between factual information/commentary and advertising
• I will never publish information I know to be inaccurate
• I will disagree with other opinions respectfully
• I will link to online references and original source materials directly
• I will strive for high quality with every post - including basic spellchecking
• I will write deliberately and with accuracy
• I will reply to emails and comments when appropriate, and do so promptly
• I will restrict my posting to professional topics
• I will write on a regular basis, at least once each week

Technorati social networks tag

Creative Problem Solving

From the InnovationMarketers blog

By Stephen Pierce, August 11, 2005

"So, you have a problem that you need to solve quick. You have agonized over this issue for hours, days, months, or even years and you still can't resolve it. Well, don't worry my friend; the answer is already within you. You simply need to call forth your creative energy in order to bring the answer into your focused mind.

How do you do this? It is easy. You simply utilize creative problem solving, that's how. Creative what? Creative problem solving. You see, creative problem solving is the powerful act of utilizing internal out-of-the box creativity to solve everyday problems.

Creativity that is already inside of you and the good news is that it can be done by anyone with any type of problem. It matters not if you're a toddler or a sassy sexy citizen, it matters not if you are a housewife or a neurosurgeon, you can solve problems creatively and you can do it without stressing out. All you have to do is follow these basic creative problem solving steps:

1. Visualize ultimate success. Don't dwell on negative thinking for doing so will block your creative energy. Instead, you should always revel in the fact that the answer is already within you. You simply have to pull it forward from your creative mind. Visualizing failure will block your creative energy and visualizing success will bring it forward.

2. Be still and know that the answer is within you. There is absolutely no need to fear that the problem can't be solved. The answer will come to you if you stop worrying and take a more relaxed approach. Be quiet and still and allow the creative ideas to come forth. In addition, always be willing to just sit still and let your thoughts wonder freely."

Read the rest of the article.....

Technorati innovation tag

TED Global - pictures

Finally got around to posting a few pictures to Flickr ... see the badge in the sidebar ...

Technorati TED global tag

Geography and population density in online social networks

From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

by David Liben-Nowell, Jasmine Novak, Ravi Kumar, Prabhakar Raghavan, and Andrew Tomkins - published on line August 4 2005

"In online communities and other social networks, David Liben-Nowell et al. report that any two members can usually find a connection with only a few degrees of separation, partly because individuals tend to optimize friendships geographically. Sociological experiments have shown that social networks are often 'navigable small worlds,' in which any person, given only meager information about an arbitrary target person's geographic location and occupation, can likely transmit a message to the target through a short chain of intermediate friends. Liben-Nowell et al. explored the role of geography alone in routing within a large, online social network.

The researchers used data from ~500,000 members of the LiveJournal online community, who made available their state and city of residence, as well as a list of other LiveJournal friends. Message-forwarding simulations based on these data showed that a routing strategy based solely on geography could successfully find short chains in the network. The researchers proposed a model relating geography and social-network friendship that accounts for variances in population density and showed that short connections can be made in every network exhibiting their friendship/geography relationship."

Read the full paper here
Technorati social networks tag

20 best Leadership developers ...

From Don Blohowiak at Leadership. Now., August 4th 2005

"Yesterday, Dan Tobin succinctly made the case why so much well-intending leadership development falls short of the mark.

So what works?

Every couple of years, the HR consulting firm Hewitt Associates identifies twenty top 'financially successful companies' that 'consistently produce great leaders.' In identifying the 20 firms best at leadership development, researchers drew from 373 public and private companies in the United States in early 2005. The median revenue of participating companies was approximately $2 billion, with a median employee size of 7,300. Obviously, that's the big leagues. But the instructive lessons they provide can be applied universally to all types of organizations.

In summarizing Hewitt's Top Companies for Leaders research, the Wharton Leadership Digest notes:

Hewitt found that the top 20 companies differed from the other firms in several key practices.

1. The chief executive and board directors are more actively involved in leadership development initiatives.
   - Of the top 20 companies, 100% of the CEO are engaged, but of the other firms, 65%.
2. High-potential managers are more often identified, paid more, given greater development, and brought into more frequent contact with top executives.
   - Of the top 20, 95% identify high potential managers, but of the others, 77%.
3. Leadership development programs are more closely tied to compensation.
   - Of the top 20, 65% link explicitly leadership capacities to long-term incentive pay, but of others, 23%.
4. Company executives are held more accountable for leadership development programs. - Of the top 20, 80% hold management responsible for developing high-potential managers, but of others, 35%.
5. ...... "

Read the rest of the article ....

Technorati leadership development tag

Leadership Quotes...

From "Management" ...

"Don't tell people how to do things,
tell them what to do and
let them surprise you with their results.

~ George S. Patton"

Technorati leadership development tag

Blogs: Do This Many People Really Have Something To Say

By Jason Lee Miller, at www.webpronews.com - Aug 4th

"Technorati just released a report detailing the growth of the blogosphere. They found that a new web log was created every second, totaling 80,000 new blogs every day. Even more interesting was the rise of moblogging (blogging from your phone). Let's just hope a moblogger isn't behind you when you're sitting at a red light.That rate of new blog creation has spurred a doubling of the total blogosphere every 5.5 months, with just over half of them regularly updated. Only 13% were updated on a weekly basis, which many of the 14.2 million blogs and counting are neglected or abandoned once begun. But that's not to say the other half is dropping the ball.

Technorati reports that about 900,000 blog posts are created daily, or to be precise, about 10.4 blog posts per second. Most of the blog posts are created during weekday business hours, between 10AM and 3PM EST. The number of weekend blogo-warriors remains low, and the volume of posts on average is 5-10% less than weekday posts".

Read the rest of the article ...
Technorati social networks tag

Working Class Hero

Now here is something I have often thought about - how does one relate Leadership to self discovery?

Several years ago I was asked by a new General Manager what the biggest difference he would find compared with his previous job. My answer? You will be lonely....

I have tried so many ways to explain this - but listening to my iTunes tonight reminded me that the best expression of loneliness yet written was by John Lennon.

"As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me."

Thoughts?

Technorati leadership development tag

Who do you trust?

July's LeaderValues website poll question was: Which Global Leader do you trust most to meet today's challenges?

And the answer (from almost 250 people) was ...

• George W. Bush, US President - 28.57%
• The Dalai Lama - 14.29%
• Kofi Annan, United Nations - 12.18%
• Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister - 11.34%
• Bob Geldof, of Live 8 - 6.30%
• Jacques Chirac, President of France - 4.20%
• Pope Benedict XVI - 3.36%
• Hu Jintao, President of China - 2.52%
• Other 17.23%

I won't argue for the scientific nature of the poll, although not least because the US is our biggest audience it is probably not surprising to see GWB at the top.

But, is almost everyone really ahead of the Pope - how about Bob Geldof's position? And isn't it interesting to see how well the Dalai Lama is regarded ....

Technorati leadership tag