A good friend of mine sent this over and I found it to be a fascinating and helpful read. It is a presentation on Corporate Culture in Netflix. In particular, I liked its emphasis on managing poor or even average performance out of the organization – what may be the rarest skill I see in [...]
in 2002 or 2003 I was conducting a group workshop on leadership skills which drew participants from all over the world. On a break, one of the students came up to me. She was urbane, well-spoken and competent. She pulled me aside and said something that helps me to keep things in perspective: “Rob, I [...]
There is a lot of controversy right now about a new service called Unvarnished, a system that offers Facebook users the ability to provide personal business feedback for other individuals. There have been good discussions of Unvarnished (UV) at the LA Times, CNET, and TechCrunch (among many others). The service works by allowing users to [...]
Ownership is not an intellectual state, it is a feeling. As such, you can talk about ownership and present the rational reasons why individuals on your team should take ownership until you are blue in the face and very little will happen. To understand some of the techniques that work to actually encourage your team [...]
I’m reading Atul Gawande’s Checklist Manifesto right now. It is a detailed, thorough and comprehensive examination of why we so often fail at very simple things. Gawande’s researched based answer: we need to use more checklists. This reminded me of one of the simplest and easiest to use decision-making tools: the side-by-side pros and cons. I’ve [...]
Really interesting discussion of the demise of complex business models from Clay Shirky (h/t Wally Bock). Practical advice if you find yourself on a panel presentation from Great Leadership. Detailed discussion of “under-commit, over-deliver” from Sharlyn Lauby. Is technical excellence enough? According to this post, its just the beginning. Two new articles (one on [...]
Want to jump start your professional and leadership development? There’s something you can do that will dramatically increase the effectiveness of your change and learning efforts: make the shift from the pursuit of experience to a commitment to experiment. For a discussion of experiment and what it means for those who would own their professional [...]
A classic cartoon about gaps in our thinking: Also a very useful cartoons for leaders. Think how many companies during the dot com run-up had a “then a miracle occurs” component of their business strategy. If this happens for companies, it can happen for individuals as well. When thinking through problems, it’s that [...]
Crises happen. Whether small or large they can throw us back on our heels and, depending on how fast they develop, can challenge us to our very limits. As leaders, the consequences of our reactions impact others and so it is wise to think through the best way to respond to crises – before they [...]
HR Bartender is one of the best blogs in this space and this month is hosting the leadership carnival – a collection of posts from all over about a wide ranging set of leadership topics. If you have the time, this is a great way to see a broad range of the bloggers in the [...]
