ITLP Tuesday Readings

In their book High Altitude Leadership: What the World's Most Forbidding Peaks Teach Us About Success, Chris Warner and Don Schmincke explore the issue of how leaders create and sustain greatness in spite of the selfish human program that pushes every leadership theory off the cliff during implementation. In a book excerpt published as the first article in the December 2008 Wharton Leadership Digest:

http://tinyurl.com/72d72

..they write, addressing their question: "Humans need a compelling saga: a story or drama that inspires passion for a strategic result, a passion that overwhelms the selfishness common in humans." They go on to say that a saga:

• Has a dramatic theme to achieve an ideal or fulfill a purpose.
• Sets a goal that's difficult to achieve, a challenging summit that needs to be conquered
• Is captured in language that drives performance, values, and strategic focus even in the face of risk, sacrifice, or pain.
• Sets the context of how success (or failure) will be defined.
• Focuses people on strategic results, not selfish, territorial, gossipy, soap operas.
• Although a brief statement, spawns stories and legends that permeate an organization's culture.

What's your saga for your organization? Think about how you keep your team focused as they move to the later stages of their project.

Posted by Jim Hall at 3:22 PM | Permalink

This week's Tuesday Reading "Taking Control of Your Work Life Balance and Gaining Personal Fulfillment" takes a hard look at work life balance.

http://www.cio.com/article/443772/TakingControlofYourWorkLifeBalanceandGainingPersonalFulfillment

In her review of clinical psychologist Henry Cloud's new book "The One Life Solution," Meridith Levinson, a CIO staff writer, wrote:

Work will consume as much time as we allow it. It will take over our whole lives if we let it.

As I read this, the key words I saw were "if we let it." Years ago work was a place and when you were not at your workplace, you didn't do much work and had time and space for a personal life. Cloud notes that work life balance was not really a problem in the past as the personal and the professional spheres of our life were separate. Today the anyplace, anytime ubiquity of communications via Blackberry, iPhone, Treo, cellphone, and laptop, along with our complicity, has changed all that.

Henry Cloud, like most everyone reading this note, has a Blackberry/iPhone/... and would not be able to do work without it. However, as he notes the question is, "Is your Blackberry a tool you are using to serve the things that are important to you, or does it have control over you, where the things that are really important to you never happen?"

The solution will be found, according to Cloud, in learning to set priorities -- across all phases of our life; pruning -- deciding where you will focus your resources and "pruning" off the rest; and in setting boundaries. Notes Cloud, "If people don't have personal boundaries inside them at their core, they're going to feel fragmented and crazy and lost."

In the piece you'll find some good advice and examples and a wise closing thought: "The people who are the most fruitful in their marriages, relationships, and in their careers get there because they've structured their lives such that those things will be immovable, will get the best and first of their attention."

Posted by Jim Hall at 3:25 PM | Permalink

Today's reading "IT Careers: 5 Tips for Charting Your 100 Day Plan" by Mary Pratt, a Computerworld contributing writer in Waltham, MA, focuses on developing a plan for the next 100 days. The point being that the more you have a vision of where you want to be in 100 days and a well thought out plan for how you might get from here to there, the more likely you will be successful.

http://www.cio.com/article/457517/ITCareersTipsforChartingYourDay_Plan

Pratt suggests five action steps to guide you in developing your plan:

1. Assess the situation. Talk with peers, team members, your manager, and key stakeholders to get a more complete picture. Kevin Sharer, after he became CEO of Amgen and after serving as president of that company for eight years, asked each of the company's top 100 executives the same five questions: What do you want to keep? What do you want to change? What do you want me to do? What are you afraid I'll do? What else do you want to ask me?

2. Determine expectations. How does your boss define success for you? Ask. Observe. What are the subtle unspoken expectations as well as those vocalized?

3. Identify stakeholders and build alliances. Identify those individuals who will directly and indirectly affect your ability to be successful. Build meaningful relationships with them.

4. Work to understand the culture. Learn how things get done here. Identify the artifacts, the espoused values, and the underlying assumptions. How will you work in the context of the culture to reach success?

5. Act on what you learn, targeting an early win.

Make today a day of action and start building a plan. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 3:30 PM | Permalink

Today’s reading, “Degrees of Giving” by Bruna Martinuzzi, comes from the MindTools November 25th, 2008 newsletter

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_55.htm

Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving and were with our families and thought about all the reasons we have to be thankful. We may have thought about giving -- giving thanks, giving of our time, giving material gifts, etc. Such gifts can give us some understanding of the power of generosity and lead naturally to asking how the ideas of generosity and giving translate to the workplace and leadership.

Bruna Martinuzzi’s piece gets us thinking about that subject and encourages us to lead with a generous spirit. He suggests nine ways that we can give:

1. Give people a sense of importance.

2. Give feedback, not criticism.

3. Give people visibility.

4. Give anonymously.

5. Know when to forgive, and forgive.

6. Give opportunity.

7. Share your knowledge and experience.

8. Give moral support.

Take a moment and ask yourself how you might become a more generous leader.

Posted by Jim Hall at 2:55 PM | Permalink