LeaderValues January Newsletter just published - Bryan Ferry as leader, innovator, influencer ...

Click here to see this month's newsletter

It features ...

• Bryan Ferry - a biography by Victoria Yates
• When is Enough, Enough - Dan Elash
• Management 3.0: The Era of Complexity - Jurgen Appelo
• Lessons and Quotes
• Create marketplace Disruption - Adam Hartung

Posted via web from mick's posterous

Lead Change "Tweet Chat" from the LinkedIn group - post by Mike Henry Sr.

From Mike's Blog ... I am sorry I couldn't join the Chat, but I will try to next time. Sounds fascinating!

"Last Thursday we held the inaugural Lead Change Tweet Chat. The topic was “How can you apply character-based leadership to make a positive difference in 2010?” In one hour over 100 people joined in the “conversation” and made over 600 posts. Some of my friends have seen the transcript and called the event chaos. Maybe it’s the wild west of technology and communications. But if you’ve ever participated in a tweet-chat before, you know they can be chaotic. Like “Where’s Waldo,” many times you have to search to find the nuggets.

Three nuggets I got from the chat include:

1. People want to make a positive difference. The Lead Change Group is up to 500 members on LinkedIn right now, but only 200 that I’m aware of are on Twitter. We had good participation with short notice and we picked up several new friends and members.
2. We all know “poster-quotes.” At 9:33 PM EST, Tim Milburn (@Timage) noted:

Does anyone else feel like they’re walking past a motivational poster shop and reading all the captions?

3. We want to be about something more significant than “poster-quotes.” Many committed to make a positive difference starting “tomorrow” once Kit Stookey (@kstookey) prompted us for some traction. Just Ctrl-F down the page looking for the word “tomorrow.”

• Brandleadership: we can encourage a leader tomorrow.
• Timage: tomorrow I will do my best to say something encouraging in the first 30 seconds of a conversation.
• KetelboeterPR: Tomorrow, I will choose to build the vision and share the trust.
• Timage: tomorrow I can tell someone I believe in them. I can help them become more of the person they were created to be.
• Logosnoesis: Tomorrow I can encourage a leader to invite others into the leadership conversation @ their place.

Tomorrow?

So, let’s take this a bit further. If you’re one of the “Tomorrow” quotes, how did you do? Is there anything this group can do to help? We all want to be part of a community that makes a positive difference by applying character-based leadership.

Chaos To Community

Would you like to insert order into the chaos of your thoughts and plans? Cement your thoughts about making a positive difference. This community will help. Here are 4 steps you can take to begin to make a positive difference immediately.

1. Download and check out the transcript. Think about what you will do to make a positive difference?
2. Write it down. Post a comment here or on Twitter about what you can do to make a positive difference beginning today. Please use the #LeadChange hashtag on Twitter so we can find you.
3. Get some help. Get with people who don’t want to spend the next year watching TV. Maybe it’s your church or some other local organization. If you don’t have one locally, join this group at http://bit.ly/leadchange or just follow 200 active individuals on Twitter with 1-click by going to http://bit.ly/36uhrt. Or start your own.
4. If you do take some action to cement your plan, share it with the group here, on Twitter or LinkedIn. We’d love to help.

These four steps aren’t complex or the stuff of peace prizes, but they are steps. If you’re already making a difference, share your ideas and help the rest of us. But if this is progress for you, start making it. We won’t judge you and you don’t have to enroll in the Advanced School of Sainthood. Just do something. Our world needs you to stop being a spectator.

We’ll do this again in January. Share your plans. What are you willing to commit to, or what are you already doing to make a positive difference?

Until then, thanks and have a great year!"

------------

Great post, Mike

Posted via web from mick's posterous

Presentation on "Organizational Change"

I am pleased to be making a presentation this week to the MBA program at Leeds University Business School. It starts with a brief introduction to two approaches to cultural understanding that I have always found useful - Geert Hofstede's groundbreaking work on cultural dimensions, and Gerry Johnson's "Cultural Web".

The presentation then uses the 4E's Leadership Framework to explain the 11 step process that was co-developed with members of the Change Leaders community of practice (as part of the Oxford/HEC CCC program in 2004).

You can find a link to the PowerPoint on my LinkedIn Slidespace.

Posted via web from mick's posterous

Change Management in 4 Steps

From the Fast Company blog, by Seth Kahan

When you are kicking off a new change initiative, the highest leverage activity bar none is face-to-face engagement with your key opinion leaders. Don't make the mistake of writing emails, designing brochures, putting together PowerPoints and sending them out into the change-o-sphere unescorted. Change is interactive. Here are the four steps to master:

1. Create enticing events that bring people together to discuss what you are up to. Don't show up to tell them. Don't broadcast.

Involve them. Ask them. Engage them.

2. Be a good teacher. This means you do these things extremely well:

• Connect with the audience. Become adept at listening and learning. Talk only about what your audience cares about. Everything else... they don't care about.
• Honor political realities. Know when to speak, when to shut up, when to defer, and what to do to ensure you are not blacklisted because of a political faux pas.
• Tell great stories. People are not won over with facts or functionality. They are won by desire. Good storytellers make people want to know more. Facts and function follow, carried along in the current of desire.
• Push back on substance when needed. Know your program. If a listener gets it wrong, correct them...tactfully and graciously, of course.

At the center of every extraordinary, exceptional face-to-face event is a great teacher. Teachers know how to listen. They are great storytellers. They know how to draw people out. They know how to draw people in.

Read the rest of the article ....

Here We Go Again: Leading in Tough Times

From Change This, which features downloadable Manifestos. This is from Lee J. Colan, Ph.D.

"Have you been wishing for the good old days lately? Or at least to rewind the economic clock 12 months? Leading a company during a slowing economy has plenty of challenges: What should you change, stop or continue doing?"

Read more and download the Manifesto

Book Excerpt: A Sense of Urgency

From HBS Working Knowledge ... John Kotter's Sense of Urgency

The problem with using crises to reduce complacency and create urgency is that the tactic is a potential diamond sitting on a rock surrounded by quicksand and very nasty beasts. Any naiveté about the downside risks can cause disaster.

Big Mistake Number 1: Assuming that crises inevitably will create the sense of urgency needed to perform better.

An example. At a major European retailer, margins were shrinking year after year because fashionable boutiques were taking its top-of-the-line business, and discounters were taking away its low-end business. Then the European edition of the Wall Street Journal published an explosive article spelling out many of the firm's problems. The CEO had two weeks' warning, but instead of alerting others or working to kill the story, he deliberately chose to do nothing. Not only did he not warn others, except one close confidant, but he also did little to analyze in advance exactly what would happen the day the article came out and what precisely he should do to channel fear, anger, and confusion into a determination to act fast and succeed.

Read the rest of the excerpt ...

Soggy

Seth Godin's blog has to be one of the "must reads" out there - so I hope he will forgive me for quoting this entry from a few days ago ....

"New organizations and new projects are so crisp.

Things happen with alacrity. Decisions get made. Stuff gets done.

Then, over time, things get soggy. They slow down. Decisions aren't so black and white any more.

Why?

Here are some things that happen:

• Every initiative, post launch, still has a tail of activity associated with it. Launch enough things and over time, that tail gets bigger and bigger.
• Most projects either succeed or fail. Successful projects raise the stakes, because the team doesn't want to blow it. There are more people watching, more dollars at stake, things matter more. So things inevitably get more review, more analysis and slow down. Projects that fail sap the confidence of the group. They want to be extra sure that they're right this time, so, ironically, they slow down and end up sabotaging the new work.
• The paper isn't blank any more. Which means that new decisions often mean overturning old decisions, which means you need to acknowledge that it didn't used to be as good as it was.
• And the biggest thing is that there is a status quo. Something to compare everything to.

I'm not sure you can eliminate any of these issues. But, you can realize that they're there. And you can be really strict about priorities and deadlines... it's so easy to let things slip, rather than confronting the fact that you're stuck and probably afraid. Speak up, call it out... and ship!"

Go to Seth's blog....