September 29th ...

Berlin Circus Ealing

A contribution to a project trying to capture pictures from all over the world on September 29th 2005.

I am blogging this as I am both impressed and intrigued with how a little leadership (from the core team) and an effective social network (flickr) can get real traction on a global project like this. Basically, creativity and community for free?

See the flickr "One day on Earth September 29th" group ...

And, just to demonstrate that this not a "one off" - see the flickr "Sky on October 1st" group ...

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Sub-$100 laptop design unveiled - Leadership!

From the BBC Website

Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs, has been outlining designs for a sub-$100 PC.

The laptop will be tough and foldable in different ways, with a hand crank for when there is no power supply. Professor Negroponte came up with the idea for a cheap computer for all after visiting a Cambodian village. His non-profit One Laptop Per Child group plans to have up to 15 million machines in production within a year.

A prototype of the machine should be ready in November at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia. Children in Brazil, China, Egypt, Thailand, and South Africa will be among the first to get the under-$100 (£57) computer, said Professor Negroponte at the Emerging Technologies conference at MIT."

Read the rest of the article ...

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Father Figure

From Entrepreur.com, by Aliza Pilar Sherman

"Do women who take over ownership of businesses previously owned and run by their fathers face unique issues?"

"I was in leadership positions long before becoming CEO, so the employees weren't affected adversely by the change" says Dana Chryst, 46, CEO and owner of The Jay Group, a Ronks, Pennsylvania-based marketing and fulfillment services company with revenue exceeding $30 million.

"When I became CEO, it simply sent a message that we are growing and will continue to create career opportunities for our employees".

After graduating from college, Chryst officially joined the company as an employee in 1981, first as an account executive and later in other capacities, including client services, before moving into management. She became president in 1991 and CEO in 2002, when she also purchased controlling interest of the company.

Taking over her father's job wasn't difficult. "We had distinctly different management styles but exactly the same principles," says Chryst". The business was fortunate to have my dad at a time when it needed the entrepreneurial spirit and intensity he brought. The company now needs my collaborative, team-building style at a time of tremendous growth and complexity."

Read the rest of the article ...

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Executive Heroes and Goats

From The Motley Fool, By Selena Maranjian - September 14, 2005

"Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened" -- Billy Graham

I'm not sure how correct Billy Graham is. It seems to me that in the corporate boardrooms of America, the courage that has been exercised over the years has not exactly resulted in an epidemic of imitators. But perhaps that's asking too much. Perhaps the courage of some has indeed led to more bravery in corporate circles. (This would be despite a tendency of many of us to think, as Mason Cooley noted, "Courage, determination, and hard work are all very nice, but not so nice as an oil well in the backyard.")

Courage is not a concept discussed often in the financial world. Yet it can make an enormous difference in how a company fares. Courage can lead to brave decisions to enter new business lines. It can inspire employees and attract customers. It can simply offer the chance to sleep soundly, with a clear conscience. I read an interesting roundup the other day in Fast Company magazine of 10 courageous leaders in 2004-2005 and 10 corresponding "cowards of the year." I want to share some of them with you here."

Read the rest of the article ...

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The Daily Innovator: Clear thinking about risk

From Jeff De Cagna at "The Daily Innovator"

"John Hagel III, co-author of "The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization" (with John Seely Brown) put up an excellent post on risk last week that I think is quite relevant to all TDIs. In the post, John references the very useful work of two other authors, but he makes his own important point as well:

Rather than just treating the environment as a given, executives need to realize that in times of rapid change and uncertainty, significant opportunities to shape the environment arise. Opportunities often exist to shape the environment in ways that would just not be possible in more stable times. By being alert to these opportunities, executives can both increase the potential upside from their business initiatives while reducing the potential downside.

Instead of seeing themselves as being at the mercy of prevailing conditions, leaders must increase their sensitivity to any unexpected opportunity to seize the initiative. In the process, they can redefine not only their businesses but also the operating environment itself. While the short-term goal is to minimize the impact of risk on the organization's strategy and operations, the long-term goal must be to leverage risk to gain strategic advantage.

How do you do this? John suggests looking for "edges," what I would describe as the thin spaces between what's being done and what is possible. I agree, and I would add the "gaps," the spaces between what's being done and what can be done even a little bit better."

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Ansel Adams as Leader?

My wife and I were lucky enough to visit the Ansel Adams exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts today, as we both love art and photography. But it is also impossible to look past Adam's many and serious attempts to lead public opinion and thus appreciation of value of "the great outdoors".

Of course one can argue that his efforts were not exactly "traditional leadership" - yet I would prefer to believe that here was a man who was using his skills in any way possible to engage and encourage others. Doesn't that sound like leadership?

"No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied -it speaks in silence to the very core of your being." - Ansel Adams

From the MFA website ...

"Take a new look at the work of this great American landscape photographer through an outstanding selection of images from The Lane Collection. You're likely to see an Ansel Adams you've never seen before.

Because the exhibition is drawn from the largest private holding of his work in the world, rarely exhibited photographs from the 1920s through the '70s are hung side by side with the iconic images that made Adams famous. Footage of Adams mountain climbing, a large-format camera on display, and video of the photographer in the field and in the darkroom add to the complete picture of Adams as artist and outdoorsman."

Visit the MFA

They Don't Teach This In B-School

From Business Week Online, September 19th

When the natural rhythms of our lives are brutally disrupted, we respond with fear, anger, calm, sometimes violence, and often with courage. Katrina was that kind of upheaval. It obliterated towns, submerged a great city, exposed a nation's frailties and prejudices, and uprooted thousands.

It also brought forth untold instances of duty and determination. Here are the stories of two men and their colleagues, Gulf Coast residents who, when their world was torn apart one Monday, deftly managed their way through the storm "Vertical Evacuation" at the Hilton and "When a Local Wal-Mart is a Lifeline".

The Frankenleader Fad

From Fast Company, September 2005

By Marcus Buckingham

"We're on a leader-building bandwagon. Companies are lining up to trade in the notion of the celebrity CEO and his all-star C-suite team for a grassroots approach that grows leaders deep within the org chart. By instilling leadership traits -- integrity, creativity and initiative -- among the troops, companies hope to build lasting organizations that thrive beyond any reigning chief.

A few months ago, I was invited to give a speech to a group of human-resources employees at a major investment bank. Unbeknownst to me, it had recently begun a similar leadership-development program that seeks to groom ranks of leaders far outside the executive suite.

Toward the end of my talk, I told the group that the core characteristics of leadership are self-assurance and authenticity. The best way to achieve those qualities, I said, isn't by developing what you lack but by amplifying the areas where you are most true to your best self.

Something about the stillness in the room made me pause and scan the audience. Every face in the crowd bore what I perceived to be an expression of enlightenment. Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but at least I thought what I was saying was ringing true.

During the Q&A session that followed, however, I quickly discovered that my analysis was in need of some fine-tuning. The first woman I called on told me about the firm's new initiative, and how it would measure people on a list of competencies and suggest they develop the ones they don't have. "I'm worried what you just told us doesn't really fit with our model," she said.

I quickly realized that the look on the faces of my audience hadn't been one of mutual understanding. What I had witnessed was a collective million-mile stare.

Their confusion is understandable".

Read the rest of the article ...

Technorati leadership development tag

Integrity Matters

From Fast Company, September 2005

"Integrity Matters ...

So say the folks who took our latest survey, by a huge margin. Too bad they find it in such short supply among today's leaders.

How's this for two different models of leadership: Jack Welch and Steve Jobs?

They may be about as alike as chalk and cheese, but General Electric's magisterial manager and Apple's mercurial mythmaker came out number one and two, respectively, when we asked the 1,665 respondents to our Fast Track Leadership Survey to name the person who most exemplifies great leadership. (We teamed up with IMD, the Switzerland-based business school, and Egon Zehnder International, the executive-recruiting firm, to conduct the survey.) The list grows even more eclectic: Rounding out the top five are Nelson Mandela, Colin Powell--and, in a three-way tie for fifth place, Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Gates, and George W. Bush.

The good news:
By an overwhelming margin--95% to 5%--our survey takers said the ethics of the CEO play a meaningful role in the way business gets done. Leadership, they said, starts at the top, and ethical leadership filters throughout the organization. Good ethics is also good business, many said: It builds brands, draws customers, and saves money in the long run. "Integrity matters a lot to respondents," says Sean Meehan, professor of marketing and director of IMD's MBA program. "They're emphatic-'This is an issue, and I've got something to say about it.' "

The bad news:
When we asked folks to rate leaders in various types of organizations, most got middling to poor grades on integrity. On a scale of zero to five (with five being the best), people gave their own organizations the highest score for integrity, a healthy average of 3.87. But things go downhill from there, with leaders in small companies coming in at 3.53, large corporations at 2.81, and government at 2.20. Dead last on integrity: the media (ouch), at a dismal 1.90.

Read the rest of the report ....

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How Organizations Create Social Value

From HBS Working Knowledge, August 29th

By Manda Salls

"A recent study on the factors that contribute to successful high-performance social enterprises finds a connection between enterprises that link economic value with social value.

This was the focus of a study presented at the colloquium, 'The Social Enterprise Knowledge Network: Seeking Success in Social Enterprise,' ending August 1. This two-year study was the second carried out by SEKN since it was founded in 2001 as a research partnership between HBS and leading business schools in Latin America and Spain. SEKN's research centered on smart practices by social and business organizations in Latin America and Spain.

This research will be published in Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies book series through Harvard University Press.

The goal of the colloquium is to help leaders in businesses and society create social value for their communities, while in parallel strengthening their organizations.

The study centered on forty organizations - twenty NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and twenty corporations - eemed to be high performers in social enterprise (SE). Through interviews, field research, and comparative analysis, HBS professor James Austin, HBS senior researcher Ezequiel A. Reficco, UNIANDES professor Roberto Gutierez, and INCAE professor Enrique Ogliastri presented what the SEKN researchers found to be smart practices for organizations wanting to create social value.

The researchers stressed the importance of synergies between Economic Value (EV) and Social Value (SV), calling them 'two sides of the same coin. By aligning EV and SV, both nonprofits and corporations can: ..."

Read the rest of the article ...

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Friction in the workplace?

August's LeaderValues website poll question was: What causes most friction in your workplace?

And the answer was ...

• Lack of Trust 26.28%
• Misunderstanding of Issues 20.51%
• Self Centeredness 19.87%
• Poor Strategic Choices 14.74%
• Fear 6.41%
• Apathy 5.77%
• Greed 1.92%
• Other 4.49%

Trust, once again ..... funny how that crops up all of the time!

Technorati leadership development tag