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Japan Air line's CEO - CNN. 3 Reasons You Should Listen to Negativity. The undercurrent. Every organization has one – even yours. Maybe especially yours. Sometimes it lurks in the shadows, while other times it can be noticed slithering through various departments. It’s almost always viewed negatively; this is due, at least in part, to the fact that the undercurrent often contains negativity, or at least content presented in a negative light. Allow me a quick sidebar here. I’m not necessarily condoning the contents and/or tone of the undercurrent. 1. Maybe we’re missing something. 2. Instead of simply complaining about the undercurrent, if we can sift through the whining and complaining, we just might find that there’s some truth nestled in there somewhere.

So here’s what I’m suggesting: Leaders, keep an ear to the ground. 3. And then – and this is the hard part for us in leadership positions – take a hard look in the mirror. First, Let's Fire All the Managers. Management is the least efficient activity in your organization. Think of the countless hours that team leaders, department heads, and vice presidents devote to supervising the work of others. Most managers are hardworking; the problem doesn’t lie with them. The inefficiency stems from a top-heavy management model that is both cumbersome and costly.

A hierarchy of managers exacts a hefty tax on any organization. This levy comes in several forms. First, managers add overhead, and as an organization grows, the costs of management rise in both absolute and relative terms. Second, the typical management hierarchy increases the risk of large, calamitous decisions. Third, a multitiered management structure means more approval layers and slower responses.

Finally, there’s the cost of tyranny. Hierarchies Versus Markets No wonder economists have long celebrated the ability of markets to coordinate human activity with little or no top-down control. That’s why we need corporations and managers. Executives Can't Make Agile Work | In the olden days, executives in suits never heard of “agile” or “Scrum”. It was new back then. The “agile” and the “Scrum” were brought in by developers. In a very grassroots kind of way.

Teams wanted to improve, so they tried it on for size. Agile. They were “in”, they were engaged, they were experimenting. Teams gave their consent. Mandated Collaboration In the present day, Agile is a mainstream idea. Interesting, because now Agile is being pushed on teams, without their consent. This is a very serious problem.We seem to looking the other way in the Agile community, like this actually doesn’t matter.

It matters. It comes from people choosing for themselves. Engagement is the secret sauce. Prescriptive mandates kill engagement. What To Do? The obvious thing to do is engage everyone- the executives AND the people who do the work- EVERYONE. It won’t…and it doesn’t. Here are some quotes from that essay: Not convinced yet? Employers can reclaim this lost productivity by engaging people. How to Create a Shared Vision That Works. The Full Steam Ahead! Roadmap This is a “how to” post – for leaders and team members who want to create a shared vision. Over the years I have written blog posts that provide an explanation of each of these steps.

This post connects the dots by linking these posts with the steps they support. This is the roadmap for the process I use to create a shared vision that not only inspires, but provides clarity on direction and ongoing guidelines for decision-making. Step 1: Create a Compelling Team Vision 1) Before you begin, everyone should understand the three elements of a compelling vision and how they are interrelated. Three Keys to Visions That Work A Big Goal Is Not the Same as a Vision 2) As a team, discuss each of the three elements of a compelling vision. . • First • Discuss and agree on your team’s purpose. How to Identify Your Team or Organization’s Purpose How To Write a Mission Statement in 5 Steps • Second • Identify the values needed to support your team’s purpose. Innovation Excellence | Two Views on Innovation at Google. First, Let's Fire All the Managers. Real Heroes at Pixar: When Leaders Serve as Human Shields. 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer Finds a Crisis in Leadership | Edelman Berland.

Less Than One in Five Trust Leaders to Tell the Truth Press Release download available here. Less than one in five respondents in the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer believes a business or governmental leader will actually tell the truth when confronted with a difficult issue. This lack of confidence in traditional authority figures was continually reinforced in 2012 against the backdrop of high-profile scandals involving CEO and government officials, including former McKinsey managing partner Rajat Gupta, former Chinese government official Bo Xilai and Lance Armstrong, former chairman of the Livestrong Foundation.

“We’re clearly experiencing a crisis in leadership,” said Richard Edelman, president and CEO, Edelman. “Business and governmental leaders must change their management approach and become more inclusive by seeking the input of employees, consumers, activists and experts such as academics, and adapting to their feedback. They must also pass the test of radical transparency.” The Joe Belinsky Factor. Whereas some early inhabitants of North America -- the Hopi Indians, to be precise -- assessed the value of their actions by the impact they'd have seven generations out, the rest of us are watching the atomic clock.

We live in the land of next quarter, next week, or -- this just in -- next nanosecond. I'm not proud to admit it, but I, too, was subject to this same chronologically challenged behavior. That is, until I met Joe Belinsky. Joe, a manager from Goodyear Tire attending one of my creative thinking workshops, was so moved by his experience that he came up to me afterwards, eyes on fire, and declared: "I'm going to bring your company into Goodyear. We really need to get out of the box. " "Great idea," I replied. "I'll call you when things clarify," Joe said. And he did -- one year later. "Joe Belinsky on Line 2," Nancy signals me from across the room. "Cool," I think to myself. Joe, as I remembered him to be, was buoyant, buzzed, and mid-westernly beatific.

"No problem," I reply. "Nope. The Woman Problem and the Future of Business. With every passing year, each new piece of research adds detail to what most people in the corporate world know already: there are not enough women in senior leadership positions. The larger the organization, the more true this fact is. In recent years in America and England, amongst other developed economies, it seems to be getting worse, not better.

As always, we search for explanations. Why do so many excellent women choose to take the career off-ramp, and why are so many of them paid less than their male counterparts for the same work? There are some compelling answers available, including how women don’t negotiate as well as men for their salaries and how they still sacrifice more than men when they have children and families. As a father of three daughters and husband of one brilliant wife, this issue is of more than mere passing interest to me. Future-Proofing Our Businesses the issue of women leaders must be a strategic imperative for companies. The Value of the Feminine Touch. What Every Leader Should be Asking Their Team. When I work with general managers to help them get their organizations executing better, the first thing I do is talk to their team.

First, I talk to all their direct reports. Then, I also have some one-on-ones or focus groups with their mid-level managers and their employees. What happens much of the time: The general manager is surprised to find out what I am hearing. Don’t let this happen to you! Because I’m listening to their team’s ideas, experiences, feedback, and concerns, I’m figuring out what all the big, real issues are — issues with the organization, with the business, (and sometimes with the general manager). Talk to everybody! What is your job now? When I was in my first executive role, although I had a sort of big-picture plan for what I wanted to accomplish, I will admit I was thinking, “hmm, what exactly should I be doing right now?” Knew I should be doing more strategic things that spanned the whole organization, but what things, exactly? Talk to everybody So I did this. Bored People Quit. Much has been written about employee motivation and retention. It’s written by folks who actively use words like motivation and retention and generally don’t have a clue about the daily necessity of keeping your team professionally content because they’ve either never done the work or have forgotten how it’s done.

These are the people who show up when your single best engineer casually and unexpectedly announces, “I’m quitting. I’m joining my good friend to found a start-up. This is my two weeks’ notice.” You call on the motivation and retention police because you believe they can perform the legendary “diving save”. It’s an impressive show of force, and it sometimes works, but even if they stay, the damage has been done.

Boredom is easier to fix than an absence of belief. Detecting Boredom There are many reasons other than boredom that someone will quit. My three techniques for detecting boredom: Any noticeable change in daily routine. I think of boredom as a clock. Where are they going? How Drucker Thought About Complexity - John Hagel III. Throughout his life, Peter Drucker strived to understand the increasing complexity of business and society and, most importantly, the implications for how we can continue to create and deliver value in the face of complexity. I have long been influenced by Drucker’s work.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he was already anticipating some of the implications of the Big Shift just beginning to emerge: the transition to an information economy, the centrality of knowledge work, and the transformative impact of digital technology on all types of work. Around that time, two forces coincided, each amplifying the disruptive capacity of the other. First, the deployment of the digital microprocessor and packet-switched networking marked the beginning of the rise of the digital infrastructure that would eventually span the globe, driven by exponential performance improvements in computing, storage, and bandwidth technologies.

But times have changed. The Mongrel Discipline of Management, by David K. Dear Enterprise Leaders, You’re Screwed. Here’s Why. Dear Enterprise Leader, I’ve got some terrible news for you. Your best talent isn’t good enough to compete. Better talent is at work right across town, in an over-crowded garage at the house of some tiny firm’s founder.

Unlike your mammoth offices, this garage is full of energy, excitement, and – here’s the worst part for you – it’s full of absolute brilliance, the type of brilliance your own company was attracting just a few years ago, at the depth of the recession. Buddy, you’re screwed. Your company is big, has a whole lot of customers, and an absolutely astonishing amount of cash. So what on earth am I carrying on about? They’ve been so vanillafied that they have no flavor In today’s business environment, each of those benefits I listed is actually a liability, that’s what. You’re big – cumbersome. You have a lot of customers: good news, right? You’ve got contracts? You’re cash rich: yea!!! Order another round of layoffs and another new jet He who wins the war for talent wins it all.

Detail Oriented Leader: Blank Page Innovation. “I find that those who are skilled at paying attention to the details are the perfectionists of the world. While they probably aren’t coming up with breakthrough innovations, they are quite skilled at tweaking a mediocre idea into something truly fantastic,” writes organizational psychologist Eva Rykrsmith (@EvaRykr) on Intuit.com. “Unfortunately, before something can be made better, the idea for the project needs to be conceptualized.” Such is the dilemma that detail-oriented managers face in a fast-growing company. Yes, the world has room for both big-picture thinkers and nitpickers. But when it comes to innovation, details often get in the way.

“Computers are great when information is highly structured, but for brainstorming and early designs, nothing beats writing on paper. “Inspiration can strike at the most surprising moments, so I always keep paper close at hand. #buildinnovation. What Drives Innovation and Who Owns It? Ownership is one of the key imperatives of Robert’s Rules of Innovation®. Most would agree that innovation is everyone’s responsibility, but employees can’t innovate unless their leaders empower them to do so. Innovation needs a champion within the organization to push them to take calculated risks, and to step outside their own comfort zone. Without ownership, positive results are almost impossible to achieve. To find out if you are on track in your companies’ innovation ownership; ask yourself the following questions: Do you have champions that own projects?

Is there an ownership culture in your company? In a recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit for Oliver Wyman (in which 300 senior executives across 17 different industries were interviewed) the greatest challenge in creating a culture of innovation and delivering business results is “leaders creating a climate for innovation”. image credit: billflagg.com Wait! Choose how you want the latest innovation content delivered to you: Drive out fear. Business leaders: when I use the word “culture”, do you screw up your face and say “Love and peace, man”?

I’m no aging hippie; in any case, I was born 10 years too late to be part of that movement. Business culture is no wiffly-waffly discretionary add-on. It’s central to effectiveness and business improvement. I do admit a fondness for better communication, greater self-awareness, lots more empathy and way less fear in the workplace (man), but this comes out of a firmly held view that there is huge scope for workplaces to be more humanised, which will have a huge impact on effectiveness.

I also have a firmly held view that a real leader is one who seeks to steward the business culture; not find things to measure so they can prove how useless people are. To illustrate the power of culture, have a look at what is going on for Rebekah Brooks. Did Brooks really think that she wouldn’t be subject to the forces of the system which she presided over? What are you supposed to do about it? Management Is (Still) Not Leadership - John Kotter. Lead Like All Your Employees Are Volunteers. The other day I read an article about a well-known company anticipating a big competitive problem: huge attrition when its first employees are vested for their stock options, four years after their hire date. The CEO expects to hemorrhage talent, many of which he expects to be snapped up by his competitors. His question, asked mostly of himself, is, “Why should we train our competition’s talent force?” Really? That got me to thinking. CEO, I’m writing to you. Here’s what I think.

Most companies are not startups, and even among those that are, most will not have IPOs that make the founding talent rich. Guess what folks? Money will always be a factor for some people, and no matter what you try, some of your most talented performers will leave for a (financially) better offer. But for most of us, money only starts the conversation. But there are so many other, much more important reasons to want to work for a company, and even more to stay for one that we’ve grown to love! Ted Coiné. How the American Who Outsourced His Own Job to China So He Could Watch Cat Videos Could Have Gotten Away With It, According to the Man Who Caught Him. Igniting the Invisible Tribe – designing an organization that doesn’t suck. Strategy and the Uncertainty Excuse - Roger Martin. What Employees to be More Engaged? Involve Them in Strategic Planning. Creating Strategy Tools for the Next Generation.

Personal leadership

4 Reasons Employee Engagement Doesn’t Work. David Kelley on Designing Curious Employees. How to Lead a High Performing Team of Superstars. (Almost) Everything We Think About Employee Engagement is Wrong.