ITLP Tuesday Readings

Nancy Lublin, CEO of Do Something, is the author of this week's Tuesday Reading, How to Write a Mission Statement That Isn't Dumb. Her article appears in the December 1, 2009 issue of FastCompany.

Lublin argues that our mission statements don't have to be dumb, that is, neither clear nor useful. They should, she continues, "convey clearly what the work unit is trying to do." The concept of BHAG - a big, hairy, audacious goal - introduced by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras - provides a good model: a unifying focal point plus a clear measure of what constitutes success.

Amazon.com's BHAG for the Kindle is a great example: "Every book, ever printed, in any language, all available in less that 60 seconds."

So, my challenge to you: Write a mission statement - for yourself, for your team, for ... - with a goal that's an action that is quantifiable. Reflect on what you've written, on your ambitions. Rewrite until it reflects the difference you want to make.

Thanksgiving Day is later this week. All of us associated with the Leaders Programs have much to be thankful for this year including our opportunities to work with you as you continue your leadership journeys.

. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 11:51 AM | Permalink

In his piece, "Using Curiosity to Create Accountability with Powerful People", Roger Schwarz (of the Skilled Facilitator) notes that when people are accountable to you, you [should] expect then to explain the key decisions and actions they have taken. Yet, when we are talking with people who have more power than we do, we stop asking questions, we stop being curious. In this piece, Scvhwarz suggests four questions that you might ask in these situations along with ways to set the context:

1. "Are you open to exploring [a certain topic]?" . . . This is a great question to ask to start off the conversation. It will let you know immediately whether the person is willing to proceed. If they say they are not willing, you can follow-up by saying, "Can you share your thinking about why it's a closed issue for you? I'm not asking to get you to change your mind; I would just like to understand better."

2. "Can you help me understand what about the solution doesn't work for you?" . . . This is a great question to ask when someone has turned down your proposed solution. It moves the conversation from focusing on positions to understanding the interests that the person needs to meet. Better yet, if you talk with the person before you propose a solution, you can ask, "What needs of yours do we need to meet? I'm asking so that we make sure our solution incorporates this."

3. "What, if anything, would influence you on this issue?" . . . Rather than spend a lot of time and energy guessing what will lead a person to adopt your proposal or change her mind about a decision, this question asks the person to give you that information. It saves everyone time. A variation of this question is "What would need to happen for you to be willing to [take a certain action]?"

4. "How, if at all, do you see yourself contributing to the problem?" . . . If your heart started beating faster when you read this question, it's because this question raises the level of accountability. You are asking the person to move beyond sharing his reasoning to sharing ways in which he is partly responsible for a problem that has been identified. If you feel uncomfortable with this question, it may be because you are assuming that it's inappropriate to ask people with more power to be accountable for their contributions. If you feel this way, this is an important assumption to explore. It will limit your ability to have important conversations and to obtain information you need to help people with more power.

Posted by Jim Hall at 9:43 AM | Permalink

Over the past several years, I've seen a number of articles about personal branding. My favorite is a piece Tom Peters wrote some two years ago - The Brand Called You - that appeared in FastCompany on December 18, 2007. Peters' piece is this week's Tuesday Reading.

Peters begins by noting that today almost everything is branded, including almost everything you are wearing as well as your university and some of its more significant constituent parts. He argues that we need to understand the concept of branding, particularly as it relates to your own personal brand, "You." The point is that you have a brand whether or not you make that brand work in your behalf.

So, what about the brand, You? Peters argues that thinking of yourself as a brand leads you to think about being visible, to realize that everything matters, and to understand that style and substance really matter.

To begin thinking about yourself as a brand, you might ask questions such as:

• What is it that makes my product or service distinctive? EXERCISE: Write it out now - 15 or fewer words. Read and revise often.

• What feature or benefits does "You" offer? E.g.,

  • Do you deliver on-time, every time?
  • What strategic needs do you meet?
  • Do you think strategically about your responsibilities?
  • Do you address issues before they become crises?
  • What have you accomplished that gives you a real sense of achievement?
  • What do you consistently do that adds value?
  • Are you loyal - to your colleagues, to your team, to your project, to your customers, to your values, and to yourself?
  • Do you continue your personal development?

• What's the "pitch" for "You"? What makes you visible? The extra project, volunteering, how you show up. (Catherine Kaputa, founder of Selfbrand, LLC asks: "Do you have a visual identity that ... is consistent with your personal brand ...?")

• Does your network of relationships support your brand? If not, what do you need to do to improve?

In our always connected and communicating world, the brands that stand for something relevant and that build positive perception and expectations are the ones that succeed. And, so it also is with personal brands.

So, take a moment to look at how you are seen from this point of view. And, if changes are needed, make them a priority.

. . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 8:33 AM | Permalink

Today's reading Lessons from Your Leadership Journey is a recent entry in Brian McDonald's blog at the ITLP Leadership Development Community Practice website.

Early in every Leadership Program cycle, everyone has an opportunity to reflect on their past experiences as a leader and identify lessons they learned from these experiences. In doing this, some people focus on the experience, while others go a step further and ask the question, what did I learn? Still others ask how did what I learn influence the way I lead today?

Brian's post urges you to go back to the leadership journey you completed in your cycle of the program. Update it. (And, for those who have lost track of your work then, do take some time once again to reflect on your journey.) And, then look for themes, insights that you believe currently influence your behavior.

After you've done this, you are ready to explore how you might build on, refine, or add to your learnings as you look ahead. Brian argues that understanding these experiences and being explicit about both what you learned and the resulting practices can significantly enhance your ability to be a more effective leader. The lessons learned no doubt inform your beliefs about leadership and influence your behavior.

. . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 2:03 PM | Permalink

Today, we turn to Business Week's September 18, 2009 Leadership column for the piece How Authentic Leaders 'Walk the Walk'.

In the article, Alan Deutschman, says that being an authentic leader means two things:

1. You must share the struggle and the risks with your people.

2. You must make sure that your actions consistently reinforce the one or two most important values you hold up for your organization.

So, the questions we must each ask: How authentic a leader am I? Am I walking the walk? What do I need to do to step it up?

. . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 10:19 AM | Permalink

Today's Tuesday Reading takes a look at Higher Ed 2.0. Our reading is Who Needs Harvard? from the September 2009 issue of Fast Company. The article's subheading says it all: "Free online courses, wiki universities, Facebook-style tutoring networks - American higher education is being transformed by a cadre of web-savvy edupunks."

This piece makes the point that the university as we know it came into existence around the year 1100 when communities formed around a scarce, precious information technology, the handwritten book. Today, we are still educating on a model based on the scarcity of knowledge when we have gone to unimaginable abundance. New information technologies have the potential of radically changing the way we do higher education. This piece argues that the new university can't be far away.

Whether you agree with the author's premise or not, this is a must read. . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 1:11 PM | Permalink

For today's Tuesday Reading, we turn to a Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Q&A - How Team Leaders Show Support - or Not - with HBS faculty member Teresa Anabile.

Though from 2004, the findings remain valid. Professor Anabile's research points to two key concepts for leaders who want to gain their staff's confidence:

1. Perceptions of team leader support are more positive when the leader

   • gives timely feedback
   • support the team member's actions and decisions
   • recognizes good work publically and privately
   • seeks team member's ideas and opinions.

2. Perceptions are more negative when the team leader

   • micromanages
   • provides nonconstructive negative feedback
   • fails to clarify roles and objectives
   • avoids addressing problems.

Think about your team. Are you doing all you should be doing to build your team's confidence in you? . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 11:50 AM | Permalink

This week's Tuesday Reading is an entry - Humility as a Leadership Trait - from John Baldoni's Harvard Business Publishing blog.

Baldoni asserts, and I agree, that leaders who want to inspire followers need to demonstrate both their accomplishments and their character. Key to demonstrating character is being humble. And, humility is essential to leadership because it authenticates a person's humanity.

The article suggests three ways a leader can demonstrate humility:

1. Temper authority. "...you don't have to pull it to make it work for you." Delegate, both authority and responsibility.

2. Look to promote others. Groom talent. Success depends upon them.

3. Acknowledge what others do. As Badoni suggests, channel "Bear" Bryant: "If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it."

Baldoni also notes that it is possible to be too humble. You do that by not putting forth your ideas and accomplishments. If you don't put these forth, you don't give anyone a reason to believe in you, or follow you, or be influenced by you. But, how do you balance the need to be noted with the importance of being humble. You put forth your team's ideas and accomplishments first and yours second, and the work of your team and you will be noticed. Humility.

After you read Baldoni's piece, you might take a bit more time and read the comments. Ones that caught my eye included:

• humility is a key to building trust

• trust allows for real candor, everything on the table

• humility inspires followership

• it takes a great deal of self confidence to be humble

• managing humility requires a delicate balancing act and constant analysis

This week, work on your humility and reflect on the changes that result. . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 10:10 AM | Permalink

This week's Tuesday Reading is from BusinessWeek's August 25, 2009 Communications Column: How to Give a Lousy Presentation.

We all make a lot of presentations. And, I know that you are like me and know that you are able to do better most of the time. This piece gives you 15 excellent ways to make a lousy presentation. It thereby gives each of us a set of solid reminders for all of us.

And, if you are out to take your presentations to a significantly higher level, get a copy of Garr Reynolds' book "Presentation Zen." (Or, take a look at his website.) His approach to presentations will lead you to a different way to think about how you develop and execute your "presenting." Key to his approach is beginning to think aobut your presentation from the listeners' and not the speakers' point of view.

This is an area where we can always learn.

. . . . . jim

As a related topic, please also check out How not to use Powerpoint. -jh

Posted by Jim Hall at 8:52 AM | Permalink

For this week's Tuesday Reading, we turn to the Career Strategies Column in the Wall Street Journal for a short piece You're a Success, Now Get Down to work.

Near the end of this piece, its author Alexandra Levit writes: "Just because you're skilled or talented in a particular area doesn't mean you should simply pass go and collect your $200." Or, as Marshall Goldsmith puts it, "Strong leaders don't coast."

So what do you need to do:

1. Continue to sharpen your people skills. Listen more carefully. Think before you speak. Reciprocate favors. Manage conflicts diplomatically.

2. Regularly look at yourself, identify your weak points, pick one, and really work to get better in that area.

3. Begin now.

Have a great week. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 5:47 PM | Permalink

Today's Tuesday Reading is The Success Trap from Jeffrey Pfeffer's August 25th, BNET Column, The Corner Officer on August 25, 2009.

Pfeffer's thesis is simple: When we become successful, it is very easy to drop our guard, to not maintain our standards (much less build on them), and to rest on our laurals.

He argues that to maintain our successes we have to understand the basis of our success and maintain a laserlike focus, discipling ourselves to maintain, and even improve, on what made us successful to begin with.

Now might be a good time to take a look at your results. Are their areas where you need to sharpen your focus to regain or improve on your past successes?

Have a great week. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 9:04 AM | Permalink

The Tuesday Reading for today is Jeffrey Pfeffer's piece Stop Working for Technology - Make it Work for You which appeared in BNET's The Corner Office on July 22, 2009. Pfeffer is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

Pfeffer's point in this piece is simple and straight-forward:

For some, maybe most, of us our technology-enabled, always on, always interruptable, always available electronically status is at best not always helpful to us or to those around us. It is disrespectful to those we are interacting with when our favorite technology beckons and we respond often without a word to whoever happen to be interacting with us at that moment. It retards our learning and impeds task performance because it reduces our concentration and focus. Pfeffer reports on a study that showed that just being notified of an incoming message, even if you ignore it, is disruptive.

So what can you do?

Turn off your cell phone/iPhone/Blackberry (or at least set the alarm to "silent"), and do the same with your office phone when you don't want to be interrupted. Set aside time on your calendar to respond to email, to return phone calls, etc. Institute office hours to accommodate those who want to do a low-tech physical drop-in. In other words, take control of your technology so that it works for you. I think you'll find that it increases your focus and your productivity.

. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 10:13 AM | Permalink

For today's reading, we turn to a December 2007 FastCompany article by William Taylor, The Leader of the Future. In this piece Taylor, one of the founders of FastCompany, reports on a discussion with Ron Heifetz, director of the Leadership Education Project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. You will likely remember that Heifetz is author of one of the views of leadership we studied early in the leadership program.

Although at eight pages this article is somewhat longer than the usual Tuesday Reading, it says some very important things about leadership that I thought should be shared with you. Some of the key things that caught my eye are:

Leaders question reality:

1. What values do we stand for? And, what are the gaps between our values and our actual behavior?
2. What skills and talents do we have? And, what are the gaps between our resources and what we need?
3. What are the opportunities we see in the future? And, what are the gaps between these opportunities and our abilities to act on them?

Leadership means influencing the organization to face its problems and live into its opportunities. Mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges is what defines the new job of a leader.

People learn by encountering differences (another word for conflict). Hand in hand with the courage to face reality comes the courage to surface and orchestrate differences.

The work of the leader is to lead conversations about what is essential and what is not.

The leader must help people face the internal contradiction between the values they espouse and the way they live (behave).

Leaders must know how to listen, want to listen, and want to know what the real difference is in what is being said.

Leaders face danger when they challenge people about their priorities, their values, and their habits. When you do this you have to pace the rate at which you challenge so that you do not frustrate people to the point of inaction on everything.

When a person is attempting to lead and is either without authority or seen to be without authority, people's attention spans are very short when you try to communicate with them. Use what attention you can get wisely and planfully.

Leaders should not take things personally. While it may sound personal, its the issues you represent that people are after.

Look for something in this leadership template that would represent a new, useful practice for you to have. Begin to use it, and adopt it for your own.

. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 10:01 AM | Permalink

If you've been through the IT Leaders Program, you know about Jim Bruce's "Tuesday Readings" emails. I keep this ITLP "Tuesday Readings" blog as a great way to maintain an archive of Jim's very interesting and insightful emails. But did you know Jim keeps his own blog?

It's called Jim's Ramblings, and it makes for good reading. All of the entries that are re-posted here are at Jim's blog. Check it out!

And if you've been through ITLP, you may also be interested in the Leadership Development Community.

Posted by Jim Hall at 5:06 PM | Permalink

For today's reading, we actually have a short video Five Competencies for Adapting to a Changing World. The speaker is Dr. Helen Haste, visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and professor of psychology at the University of Bath, Bath, England.

In this video (which is part three of a four part series), Dr. Bath identifies five "21st century skills" -- competencies really, skill plus adaptation --

1. Managing ambiguity
2. Agency and responsibility
3. Finding and sustaining community
4. Managing emotion
5. Managing technological change

that we should have in our tool boxes and that we should be teaching when we have opportunity.

The video is well worth watching and the skills worth learning. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 10:10 AM | Permalink