Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 1/28/13)
I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:
BOOK/CD REVIEWS
Executive Toughness: The Mental-Training Program to Increase Your Leadership Performance
Jason Selk
The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well
Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield
Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence: Selected Writings
Daniel Goleman
a fine line: how design strategies are shaping the future of business
Hartmut Esslinger
Resonant Leadership: Inspiring Others Through Emotional Intelligence (CD)
Richard Boyatzis
INTERVIEWS
Terry Leahy (Tesco) in “The Corner Office”
Adam Bryant
The New York Times
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey‘s advice for entrepreneurs
Rebecca Jarvis
CBS MoneyWatch
THE NORMAL WELL-TEMPERED MIND: A Conversation with Daniel C. Dennett
with John Brockman
Edge
Kevin Cashman: An interview by Bob Morris
Simon Pont: An interview by Bob Morris
COMMENTARIES
“Why the Publishing Industry Isn’t Doomed: Readers’ Control In the Future of Reading”
Baratunde Thurston
Fast Company
“How To Make Your Employees Happier”
Anne Creamer
Fast Company
“Five of Steve Jobs’s Biggest Mistakes”
Peter Sims
HBR
“The Narcissistic Leader: Not as Good as He (Or You) May Think”
Maria Konnokova
“Leadership lessons from the Royal Navy”
Andrew St. George
The McKinsey Quarterly
“10 Creative Block Breakers That Actually Work”
Susan K. Perry
Psychology Today
“Several of the Major Business Challenges to Be Faced in 2013″
Gerard J. Tellis
“Preparing for a new era of work”
Susan Lund, James Manyika, and Sree Ramaswamy
The McKinsey Quarterly
“My Favorite Quotations About Women: Part 2″
BOB
“This Explains Everything: 192 Thinkers on the Most Elegant Theory of How the World Works”
Maria Popova
Brain Pickings
“Who says it’s a man’s world?”
Emily Bennington
from Who Says It’s a Man’s World?
“The 5 rules of happy employees”
Lydia Dishman
from It’s Always Personal
“How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries”
Adam Savage
TED
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The Myth of Work-Life Balance
Here is an excerpt from an article written by John Beeson for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.
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Many companies extol the value of work-life balance for their employees, but the reality for senior executives? There isn’t any. Frequently, stressed and harried managers look up the organization hierarchy and assume that they’ll have greater control of their time when they advance to the C-suite. What they don’t understand is that modern-day telecommunications, the hair-trigger requirements of financial markets, and the pace of global organizations create 24 x 7 work lives for most executives. So, forget work-life balance and think personal organization and finding ways to relax.
I see too many new and aspiring executives who are naïve about what it takes to succeed at the C-suite level and surprised by the withering demands placed upon them. The first step in dealing with the workload is putting in place the support structure that allows you to focus your energies on key priorities and issues where you can add the greatest value to the business.
Think for a minute. If your boss came and asked you to lead a major change initiative, your first questions would be about the budget and staff you would have at your disposal for the effort. The same logic applies to preparing to operate as an executive. At work and at home, who are the people who allow you to leverage your time and energy: your go-to staff members to keep track of major projects at work and those who help with childcare, eldercare, or managing a household?
In their drive to succeed, many new executives get caught up in a merry-go-round of business reviews, executive team meetings, e-mail, and late-night conference calls with colleagues around the world. At one large, global company, the CEO was known to keep his top 100 people on speed dial for impromptu phone calls at any time of the day or night. In many companies it can be difficult if not impossible to break away from this routine even for a long weekend, and the cumulative effects of stress and workload are damaging. We know a great deal about the long-term health dangers of prolonged stress. However, as described by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee in Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence, the effects on executive effectiveness are just as profound.
Under continued stress an executive loses his or her perspective on issues and the ability to look at problems creatively. Molehills become mountains. Conflict with colleagues becomes personal. The “flat spots” of our personality — for example, arrogance, inflexibility, aversion to risk or a tendency toward negativity — become evident. And most of us revert to tried and true solutions — the enemy of breakthrough strategies and new innovations.
Say goodbye to the two-week vacation with the family. That’s history in most organizations. Instead, seek to find those activities that allow you to relax — even if only for 15 minutes a day. One CEO races performance sports cars on weekends. Another works out vigorously early every morning and adds a walk around Central Park on weekends. Yet another would end a grueling day of work listening to jazz on a professional quality sound system installed in the basement. Such executives recognize that these moments of relaxation are critical to maintaining resilience: their ability to rebound from obstacles and setbacks whether it’s an unplanned marketplace event, the resignation of a key staff member or a promotion decision that didn’t go their way.
Many managers are “sprinters” early in their careers. Recognition, rewards, and promotions come their way quickly. However, to succeed at the C-suite level where the pressures are greater and the consequences of failure more punishing, it’s critical to equip yourself for the long haul. And that means making sure you have the necessary support structure around you and those precious few moments of relaxation that help you maintain the bounce in your step and the optimistic tone required of a senior leader.
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To read the complete article, please click here.
John Beeson is Principal of Beeson Consulting, a management consulting firm specializing in succession planning, executive assessment and coaching, and organization design. He is also the author of The Unwritten Rules: The Six Skills You Need to Get Promoted to the Executive Level (Jossey-Bass.).
Harvard Business Review on Collaborating Effectively: A book review by Bob Morris
Harvard Business Review on Collaborating Effectively
Various Contributors
Harvard Business Review Press (2011)
How and why to establish and then nourish mutually high-impact partnerships within and beyond your organization
This is one of the volumes in a series of anthologies of articles that first appeared in HBR. In this instance, its nine articles focus on one or more components of a process by which to join forces to answer the most important questions and to solve the toughest problems.
Having read all of the articles when they were published individually, I can personally attest to the brilliance of their authors’ (or co-authors’) insights and the eloquence with which they are expressed. Two substantial value-added benefits should also be noted: If all of the articles were purchased separately as reprints, the total cost would be at least $60-75; they are now conveniently bound in a single volume for a fraction of that cost.
Here in Dallas, there is a Farmers Market near the down area at which several merchants offer slices of fresh fruit as samples. In that spirit, I now provide a brief excerpt that is indicative of the high quality of all nine articles:
In “Which Kind of Collaboration Us Right for You?” Gary P. Pisano and Roberto Verganti acknowledge that, as potential innovation partners and ways to collaborate with them proliferate, it’s tough deciding how best to leverage outsiders’ power.” Pisano and Verganti recommend understanding the four basic collaboration modes:
• In the open, hierarchical mode, anyone can offer ideas but your company defines the problem and chooses the solution.
• In the open, flat mode, anyone can solicit and offer ideas, and no single participant has the authority to decide what is or isn’t a valid innovation.
• In the closed, hierarchical mode, your company selects certain participants and decides which ideas get developed.
• In the closed, flat mode, a select group is invited to offer ideas. But participants share information and intellectual property and make critical decisions together.
Other articles I especially enjoyed include Morten T. Hansen’s “When Collaboration is Bad for Your Company,” Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson’s “Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams,” Roger Martin’s “The Execution Trap,” and Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis’ “Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership.”
If asked to select only one book that provides the most valuable material to supplement what is offered in this volume, it would be Hansen’s Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results, published by Harvard Business School Press (2009). In it, Hansen explains why “bad collaboration is worse than no collaboration.” Here are two of several reasons. First, bad collaboration never achieves “big results”; worse yet, bad collaboration makes good collaboration even more difficult to plan and then achieve. Hansen explains how to create a culture of collaboration while accelerating the development of high-impact teams.
HBR’s 10 Must Reads: On Managing Yourself, a book review by Bob Morris
HBR’s 10 Must Reads: On Managing Yourself
Editors of Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Press (2010)
This is one in a series of volumes that anthologizes what the editors of the Harvard Business Review consider to be the “must reads” in a given business subject area, in this instance self-management. I have no quarrel with any of their selections, each of which is eminently deserving of inclusion. Were all of these article purchased separately as reprints, the total cost would be $60 and the value of any one of them exceeds that. Given the fact that Amazon now sells this one for only $15.14, that’s quite a bargain. The same is true of volumes in other series such as “Harvard Business Review on….” and “Harvard Business Essentials.” I also think there is great benefit derived from the convenience of having a variety of perspectives and insights gathered in a single volume
Authors of several articles about self-management later developed their concepts in much greater depth. They include Stewart Friedman (“Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life” was followed by Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life) and Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee (“Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance” was followed by Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence). “Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey”?” co-authored by William Oncken, Jr. and Donald L. Wass continues to be the second most popular HBR article ever published.
The first article, Peter Drucker’s “Managing Yourself,” serves as an excellent introduction to the other nine in which their authors also address issues that remain compelling relevant to those who are struggling to manage themselves effectively. For example, “How Resilience Works” (Diane L. Coutu), “Overloaded Circuits” (Edward M. Hallowell), and “What to Ask the Person in the Mirror” (Robert S. Kaplan). I also appreciate the editors’ skillful use of two reader-friendly devices, “Idea in Brief” and “Idea in Practice,” both of which facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of key points later.
Jerry Jones, the Cowboys ARE created in your image and they struggle to be a team
From Sara: Open letter to Jerry Jones: “Jerry, I heard you interviewed on TV last night and you were asked about the chemistry of the Cowboys football team. You basically told the reporters that good chemistry would happen when the team wins. You went on to explain that bad chemistry is to be expected when the team loses…in fact, I think your conclusion was that “chemistry” isn’t important in your locker room. I am not surprised the enormous talents of these athletes don’t translate into a winning team. Do you hear your own message, Jerry? You are devaluing the very element that your game is missing – being a team. You can’t just pay people and expect them to be a team. There are so many directions to take the conversation from here! I could point you towards building teamwork by reading Good to Great by Jim Collins; or talk about the responsibility the leader has to results as described in Primal Leadership by Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee. (BTW, those are both relevant topics for the Cowboy organization.) In my role as executive coach, I would ask you “How are you regarding the players?” You seem to view them as objects; you pay them so they should do what you want. Martin Buber the 20th century philosopher calls that an “I-It” relationship. That’s where you treat people as commodities, not as people. There is better way. It is to see and treat people like people. Want to win the Super Bowl? Read Leadership and Self Deception by the Arbinger Institute and give me a call.
Cheryl Adds: Most people might tell you that it wasn’t the words you spoke last night in that interview that they recall, it was the emotions you displayed. There was arrogance and blame plain as day. It was the underlying tone saying, in other words “It’s not my fault; blame someone else.” And what great justification you have for feeling that way; after all, you pay all the money so it must be someone else’s fault. What’s missing is the acknowledgement that emotions are contagious as pointed out in Resonant Leadership by Annie McKee and Richard Boyatzis. This translates into an emotional viral infection of the team where every member of the Cowboys now has permission to say and worse, feel the same way. Any time a group is saying to themselves, “It’s someone else’s fault for this result”, in your case losing, then the culture created is one of blame and no trust. How can team members work together effectively with no trust? And who is working on taking responsibility and thus working on a solution to this problem if they are busy pointing fingers towards their team mates? There will never be accountability if the leader is not accountable, visibly and emotionally. As McKee, Boyatzis, and Goleman point out in Primal Leadership, “The glue that holds people together in a team, and that commits people to an organization, is the emotions they feel.” Still think chemistry isn’t important in the locker room, Big J?
Past time to retire, Jack Welch
Cheryl’s view: It seems Jack Welch should play more golf and resist the temptation of making speeches. On July 21 the Wall Street Journal reported he delivered what I’m sure he thought was “straight talk” like he thinks he did in his book, Straight from the Gut. He told a convention of HR executives women had to choose between raising a family and having the corner office. Which rock have you been hiding under Jack? Maybe he forgot that last year’s CEO of the year as elected by peer CEOs, was Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox, and mother of two sons. And I supposed he also hasn’t noticed Mulcahy passed the reins to the first Afro-American woman to lead an S&P 100 company, Ursula Burns, and (Oh, gasp Jack!) also happens to have a daughter and stepson. When Jack Welch entered the workforce and even possibly when he led General Electric, this might have been a “norm”, possibly his own stereotype at work. This is no longer the case. Jack might also want to start reading the stats on graduating MBAs; women in 2009 will surpass men in all categories: associate, bachelor, graduate and professional. By the way, the gap between men and women has been widening since 1982, the last year men exceeded women in acquiring degrees, in college degrees and is projected to continue until 2017, which is only as far as the projection goes. So, where will the most talented, experienced, and well educated people in the company come from, the future CEOs? My money is on the next generation of women, who, by the way, believe the wisdom of his other book’s title “Control Your Own Destiny, or Someone Else Will.” Thanks for the advice, Jack, now go play golf.
Sara adds: Jack, in the words of James Copeland, former Chairman and CEO of Deloitte & Touche worldwide in True Leaders (Bette Price and George Ritchesche), “Don’t breath your own exhaust.” Your pronouncement in the Journal is contemptible (a carefully chosen word from Merriam Webster’s online dictionary… “contemptible may imply any quality provoking scorn or a low standing in any scale of value.” The italics are mine). I believe your comments to be contemptible; having a low standing in any scale of value on a couple of levels. First level, you single out women leaders. Besides being transparently biased your idea begs the question, why shouldn’t ALL leaders, men and women, have the opportunity to have a life as well as incredibly successful careers? Then there’s the next level. It’s about BUSINESS RESULTS, Jack, not about appearances or sacrifice. By even uttering that comment I wonder if you’ve lost focus on the prize here. Jack, you should read a new Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership (Richard Boyatzis and Daniel Goleman). It stands your antiquated version of leadership on its ear. In the article you will read about the negative impact a leader’s stressed lifestyle has on the success of the company they lead. The authors also provide a pathway to leadership that is healthy, balanced and produces great (get that, Jack, GREAT) business results. I wonder what heights GE could have climbed if YOU had been a different kind of leader.
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