Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 5/13/13)
I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:
BOOK REVIEWS
The Lean Practitioner’s Handbook
Mark Eaton
HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing
HBR Editors and various contributors
Weaving the Web: the Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee
Untapped Talent: Unleashing the Power of the Hidden Workforce
Dani Monroe
The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off
Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan
The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels
Michael D. Watkins
The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: Know What Boosts Your Value, Kills Your Chances, and Will Make You Happier
Cy Wakeman
INTERVIEWS
Charting technology’s new directions: A conversation with MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson
Rik Kirkland
McKinsey Publishing
Eric Schmidt on “Disruptive technologies”
Richard Dobbs
The McKinsey Global Institute
Brooke Denihan Barrett (Denihan Hospitality Group) in “The Corner Office”
Adam Bryant
The New York Times
COMMENTARIES
“If you think top executives have to have charisma, think again.”
Christian Stadler and Davis Dyer
MIT Sloan Management Review
“How to Listen When Someone Is Venting”
Mark Goulston
HBR
“How to Stop Going to So Many Meetings”
Management Tip of the Day
HBR
“How to stop the mediocrity pandemic”
Dave Logan
CBS MoneyWatch
“How the Internet of Things Changes Everything”
Stefan Ferber
HBR
“Several expert perspectives on data analytics”
McKinsey & Company
“Does it matter where you went to school?”
Margaret Heffernan
CBS MoneyWatch
“The coming era of “on-demand” marketing”
Peter Dahlström and David Edelman
The McKinsey Quarterly
“How to Influence People with Your Ideas”
John Butman
HBR
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Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 5/6/13)
I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:
BOOK REVIEWS
Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die
Eric Siegel
Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams: How You and Your Team Get Unstuck to Get Results
Roger Schwarz
Smart Thinking: Three Essential Keys to Solve Problems, Innovate, and Get Things Done
Art Markman
From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom
Prasad Kaipa and Navi Radjou
Customer CEO: How to Profit from the Power of Your Customers
Chuck Wall
INTERVIEWS
Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins
BOB
Steve Case (Revolution) in “The Corner Office”
Adam Bryant
The New York Times
Peter Gray: Part 2
BOB
COMMENTARIES
“5 signs a workplace is family-friendly”
Amy Levin-Epstein
CBS MoneyWatch
“Why Ken Robinson is so important”
TED
“What great coaches do — and leaders should [comma] too”
Laura Vanderkam
CBS MoneyWatch
“A Tribute to Steve Jobs”
The Charlie Rose Show
“Risk: The story of America’s greatest idea”
John Dickerson
Slate
“Never Embolden the Naysayers”
Josh Linkner
“These Soft Skills Can Go a Long Way”
Paul H. Eccher and Dave Ross
Talent Management
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Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 4/22/13)
I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:
BOOK REVIEWS
The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace
Richard Weylman
Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire
Bruce Nussbaum
The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius
Nancy C. Andreasen
Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message
Steven Fink
Decide: Better Ways of Making Better Decisions
David Wethey
Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable
Steven Fink
Business Brilliant: Surprising Lessons from the Greatest Self-Made Business Icons
Lewis Schiff
INTERVIEWS
Jen Guzman (Stella & Chewy’s) in “The Corner Office”
Adam Bryant
The New York Times
Peter Gray (Part 1)
BOB
Thought Leader Conversation: Edgar Schein
Art Kleiner and Rutger von Post
strategy+business
Dennis Perkins (Part 1)
BOB
COMMENTARIES
“How to Expand Your Company’s Innovation Network”
Management Tip of the Day
HBR
“McKinsey & Company: Leading in the 21st century”
The McKinsey Quarterly
“How IDEO brings design to corporate America”
David Kelley
FORTUNE
“To Increase Innovation, Take the Sting Out of Failure”
Doug Sundheim
HBR
“Linked Data: Web Science and the Semantic Web”
Tim Berners-Lee
“Google’s Greatest Innovation May Be Its Management Practice”
Bruce Nussbaum
Fast Company
“The Five Stages of Disruption Denial”
Grant McCracken
HBR
“How to Create an Innovation Ecosystem”
Art Markman
HBR
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Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 4/15/13)
I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:
BOOK REVIEWS
Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization
Dan Pontefract
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
Jon Gertner
To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism
Evgeny Morozov
Make Your Brain Smarter: Increase Your Brain’s Creativity, Energy, and Focus
Sandra Bond Chapman with Shelly Kirkland
50 Philosophy Classics: THINKING, BEING, ACTING, SEEING – Profound Insights and Powerful Thinking from Fifty Key Books
Tom Butler-Bowdon
The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World
Marina Gorbis
Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools
Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein
INTERVIEWS
George Hu (Salesforce) in “The Corner Office”
The New York Times
Chip Heath and Olivier Sibony on “Making great decisions”
The McKinsey Quarterly
COMMENTARIES
How to Find Your Own “Element”
BOB
“How to Create an Innovation Ecosystem”
Art Markman
HBR
“Givers take all: The hidden dimension of corporate culture”
Adam Grant
The McKinsey Quarterly
“How to Strike the Right Tone in Your Writing”
Management Tip of the Day
HBR
Jonathan Winters: “A Madman, but Angelic”
Robin Williams
The New York Times
“Why Big Companies Can’t Innovate”
Maxwell Wessel
HBR
“Evolution of the networked enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey results”
McKinsey and Company
The McKinsey Quarterly
“To Innovate, Find What’s Hiding in Plain Sight”
Vijay Govindarajan and Srikanth Srinivas
HBR
“Employee Engagement: Key Insights”
BOB
“The Physics of Talent”
John Boudreau
Talent Management
“Why Ron Johnson Was Ousted As JCPenney CEO”
Robert Passakoff
CustomerThink
“The Physics of Talent”
John Boudreau
HBR
“The Creative Mindset: Classic Insights”
BOB
* * *
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Robin Williams on Jonathan Winters: “A Madman, but Angelic”
Jonathan Winters, seated, with Robin Williams and Pam Dawber on the sitcom “Mork & Mindy”
* * *
My father’s laughter introduced me to the comedy of Jonathan Winters. My dad was a sweet man, but not an easy laugh. We were watching Jack Paar on “The Tonight Show” on our black-and-white television, and on came Jonathan in a pith helmet.
“Who are you?” Paar asked.
“I’m a great white hunter,” Jonathan said in an effete voice. “I hunt mainly squirrels.”
“How do you do that?”
“I aim for their little nuts.”
My dad and I lost it. Seeing my father laugh like that made me think, “Who is this guy and what’s he on?”
A short time later, Jonathan was on Paar again. This time Jack handed him a stick, and what happened next was extraordinary. Jon did a four-minute freestyle riff in which that stick became a fishing rod, a spear, a giant beetle antenna, even Bing Crosby’s golf club complete with song. Each transformation was a cameo with characters and sound effects. He was performing comedic alchemy. The world was his laboratory. I was hooked.
Not only was Jonathan funny on TV, but his comedy albums are also auditory bliss. One of my favorite routines involved a mad scientist who sounded like Boris Karloff. But instead of creating a Frankenstein, he made thousands of little men that he unleashed on the world. His shocked assistant cried out, “What are they looking for?”
The professor replied, “Little women, you fool.”
He also created comic characters like Maude Frickert and the overgrown child Chester Honeyhugger. In one classic pre-P.C.-era routine, he had Maude being molested by a huge farmhand. She protested, “Stop, I’m church people.” After he had his way, he was off to do his chores, and she called out, “Don’t be long.”
* * *
To read the superb Winters obituary in The New York Times, please click here.
Robin Williams is an Oscar-, Emmy- and Grammy-winning actor and comedian. He recently completed filming The Angriest Man in Brooklyn and is in production on A Friggin’ Christmas Miracle.
The Rise of Executive Feminism
Here is an excerpt from an article written by Joan C. Williams and Rachel W. Dempsey for Harvard Business Review and the HBR Blog Network. 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.
* * *
In the aftermath of the publication of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, two things are becoming clear. One: we are in the midst of a powerful new feminist movement. And two: the backlash has already begun.
Led by high-powered women like Sandberg and Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, a new wave of executive feminism has emerged aimed squarely at the highest levels of the professional world. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that’s sorely needed: Only 21 Fortune 500 CEOs are women. Women make up 15 percent of Fortune 500 executive officers and 15 percent of law firm equity partners. They make up 30 percent of doctors, but comprise barely more than 10 percent of doctors in each of the top five highest-paid medical specialties.
For a while it looked like this problem would fix itself, but at this point we’ve being waiting for top-level women to emerge from the pipeline for forty years. Waiting isn’t working. Women earn more college degrees than men, make up about 46 percent of the labor force, and hold more than half of managerial and professional positions. But men still run the world. (Literally — women make up 18 percent of the United States Congress, and about 20 world leaders out of 193 United Nations recognized states.)
Women leak out of the pipeline well before they reach the top. To take one example, women’s law school enrollment peaked in 1993, at 50.4 percent. Twenty years later, when these women should be reaching the peaks of their careers, they make up barely 15 percent of law firm equity partners.
It’s not your mother’s gender inequality — but it’s no less real. At current rates, it will take nearly three centuries for women to reach parity as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Here’s where we stand: Women can get low-paid jobs. They can get middle-management jobs. Very few have jobs at the top.
This is the new frontier of feminism. Quite suddenly, some of the women who have reached the top are speaking out about just how hard it is for women to get there. Executive feminists like Sandberg and Slaughter have eschewed the long-held wisdom that leading an open discussion on gender bias is a bad career move. They follow Mika Brzezinski, who led the way with an impassioned book about gender bias in pay in 2011.
Research shows that women who succeed in jobs dominated by men, not surprisingly, often do so by distancing themselves from other women. What’s impressive is that Sandberg, Slaughter, and Brzezinski aren’t following that conventional wisdom. They are embracing change with the argument that maybe executive feminism is just what we need to jump-start the stalled gender revolution. More women in power might well lead to greater success in other arenas: note that every female GOP senator voted for the recent reauthorization of the Violence Again Women Act. The people in power are the people who shape policy, whether in business or in politics or in the neighborhood garden club. It’s as simple as that.
The conversation these women have started is easy to dismiss. One line of attack is implicit in the gleeful (and exaggerated) coverage of Sandberg and Slaughter’s differences: Typical women, whining and catfighting. The other criticism is that executive feminists are out of touch with regular people — they all have nannies; what do they know about an average woman’s struggles? The backlash against executive feminism gets at the heart of what’s really holding women back: the kind of subtle bias that has stalled women’s progress.
The first major theme, the catfight narrative, has persisted despite the lack of evidence to support it. To hear many people tell it, Slaughter and Sandberg are at each other’s throats; Jodi Kantor in The New York Times claims that they have “quietly developed perhaps the most notable feminist row since Ms. Friedan refused to shake Gloria Steinem’s hand decades ago.” Her evidence? Unnamed sources, and a statement by Slaughter that Sandberg’s book “has made a real contribution, but it’s only half the story.” Since when is “real contribution” an insult?
* * *
To read the complete article, please click here.
Joan C. Williams is a distinguished professor of law, the UC Hastings Foundation chair, and the founding director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. Rachel W. Dempsey is a frequent blogger and a student at Yale Law School. Williams and Dempsey are co-authors of The New Girls’ Network.
Lawrence Cunningham: Part 1 of an interview by Bob Morris
Lawrence Cunningham is the Henry St. George Tucker III Research Professor at George Washington University Law School and Director of GW’s Center for Law, Economics and Finance (C-LEAF) in New York. He is the author of numerous books including three editions of The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America (Third Edition, March 8, 2013), The AIG Story (written with Hank Greenberg) and Contracts in the Real World: Stories of Popular Contracts and Why They Matter. His research appears in leading university journals, including those published by Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Michigan, Vanderbilt and Virginia; his Op-Eds have run in the Baltimore Sun, the Financial Times, the National Law Journal, the New York Daily News and the New York Times. On Amazon, Cunningham has been ranked one of the top 100 authors in the category of business and investing.
Here is an excerpt from Part 1 of my interview of him. To read all of it, please click here.
* * *
Morris: To what extent has your formal education been invaluable to what you have accomplished in life thus far?
Cunningham: As a university professor, it would be blasphemous but to declare my formal education invaluable and there’s also a lot of truth in it. I learned some of the most important things I know from classroom work in economics in college and in law and business in law school. I’ve learned a great many things in the decades since, of course, but those days trained me to think, encouraged me to be curious, taught me how to interact with others, and nurtured countless other traits.
Morris: What do you know now about the business world that you wish you knew when you went to work full-time for the first time? Why?
Cunningham: The importance of relationships to opening doors and keeping them open. Merit seemed as important as anything else when I began my career as a corporate lawyer in 1988. And while merit matters, what’s more important over the longer term is the quality of the network of friends, colleagues, mentors, and fans that you develop and maintain at each phase of your life and career. There is a lot of truth in the old saying: “It’s not what you know but who you know.”
Morris: Of all the films that you have seen, which – in your opinion – best dramatizes important business principles? Please explain.
Cunningham: Other People’s Money. Hollywood has always had a bit of a hate affair with American business in portraying corporations and capitalists in negative lights. The exception is Other People’s Money, as it presents both sides of the story in a difficult circumstance of a company in decline: whether to stick it out or close it down. (Incidentally, it is akin to the angst portrayed in The Essays of Warren Buffett concerning a struggling New England textile company that Buffett eventually shut down.)
* * *
Morris: Here are several of my favorite quotations to which I ask you to respond. First from Voltaire: “Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”
Cunningham: Truth is elusive. Searching for it is indeed noble. But be skeptical of anyone who claims to have found it.
Morris: From Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Cunningham: Reminds of a quip, attributed to Will Rogers, quoted in The Essays of Warren Buffett: “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” It also reminds me of another Einstein quip: “Everything should be as simple as possible, but not more so.”
Morris: Finally, from Peter Drucker: “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”
Cunningham: I wish such wisdom had been taken to heart by the financial engineers whose derivative products fueled the mortgages behind the housing boom that collapsed so catastrophically in 2008.
* * *
Morris: In Tom Davenport’s latest book, Judgment Calls, he and co-author Brooke Manville offer “an antidote for the Great Man theory of decision making and organizational performance”: organizational judgment. That is, “the collective capacity to make good calls and wise moves when the need for them exceeds the scope of any single leader’s direct control.” What do you think?
Cunningham: The wisdom of crowds and the power of markets are real. But within an organization it can be difficult to maintain a “collective capacity” for decision making, which would resemble a democratic vote. Shareholders do a little of that when electing directors and voting in annual meetings when no single person is entitled to make such extraordinary decisions. But with such choices made, directors and the senior executives they appoint cannot discharge their duties by referendum.
True, within boards of directors, corporations have always drawn on a fundamental notion of organizational judgment. A team rather than an individual speaks for and binds the corporation. Law even gives such board decisions reverence, under the “business judgment rule,” which keeps judges out of second-guessing.
The danger to watch for in any move to such organizational judgment is the risk of authority without accountability, which I know we will discuss a bit more later.
Morris: Here’s a brief excerpt from Paul Schoemaker’s latest book, Brilliant Mistakes: “The key question companies need to address is not ‘Should we make mistakes?’ but rather ‘which mistakes should we make in order to test our deeply held assumptions?’” Your response?
Cunningham: I am not sure about the notion of having an appetite for mistakes, even as a way to test assumptions. There are other less costly ways to test assumptions, such as by logical critique, contained experiments and consulting analogical experience. The wisdom I see in this quotation might be flipped around, to say there are a class of mistakes we should avoid absolutely. Foremost among these would be any decisions that impair a company’s reputation, for instance, another point I know we’ll discuss more later.
* * *
To read all of Part 1, please click here.
Larry cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:
The publisher’s page for The Essays
Amazon’s page for The Essays
Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 4/1/13)
I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:
BOOK REVIEWS
The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win
Steven Gary Blank
Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You: Retrain Your Brain to Conquer Fear, Make Better Decisions, and Thrive in the 21st Century
Marc Schoen with Kristin Loberg
Intelligent Leadership: What You Need to Know to Unlock Your Full Potential
John Mattone
INTERVIEWS
Francesca Zambello in “The Corner Office”
Adam Bryant
The New York Times
Lawrence Cunningham
BOB
Gerard J. Tellis
BOB
Emily Bennington
BOB
Vijay Govindarajan
BOB
COMMENTARIES
“Remembering Roger Ebert “
Linda Holmes
NPR
“The Psychology of the Creative Class: Not as Creative as You Think”
Richey Piiparinen
“Five routes to more innovative problem solving”
Olivier Leclerc and Mihnea Moldoveanu
The McKinsey Quarterly
“The Originality Scale”
Marty Neumeier
Liquid Agency
“The Most Popular Articles (First Q 2013)”
The McKinsey Quarterly
“How to Tell Your Company’s Story”
Nadia Goodman
Entrepreneur
“Don’t Sandwich Negative Feedback”
Management Tip of the Day
HBR
“5 Insanely Simple Work-Life Balance Shortcuts From People Who ‘Have it all’”
Cali Williams Yost
Fast Company
“Lessons From Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg On How To Succeed In Business By Really Trying”
Sharon Poczter
Forbes
“Yes, women make better leaders.”
Margaret Heffernan
CBS MoneyWatch
“How Innovative Is Your Company’s Culture?”
Jay Rao and Joseph Weintraub
MIT Sloan Management Review
“What Losing My Job Taught Me About Leading”
Doug Conant
HBR
“How to Know the Difference Between Your Data and Your Metrics”
Jeff Bladt and Bob Filbin
HBR
* * *
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Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 3/25/13)
I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:
BOOK REVIEWS
HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Making Smart Decisions
Various Contributors and Editors of Harvard Business Review
It’s All About Who You Hire, How They Lead…and Other Essential Advice from a Self-Made Leader
Morton L. Mandel with John A. Byrne
Win-Win Partnerships: Be on the Cutting Edge with Synergistic Coaching
Steven J. Stowell and Matt M. Starcevich
Ahead of the Curve: A Guide to Applied Strategic Thinking
Steven J. Stowell and Stephanie S. Mead
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Sheryl Sanberg
Getting Innovation Right: How Leaders Leverage Inflection Points to Drive Success
Seth Kahan
INTERVIEWS
Ivar Kroghrud (QuestBack) in “The Corner Office”
Adam Bryant
The New York Times
The Thought Leader Interview: Cynthia Montgomery
Ken Favaro and Art Kleiner
strategy+business
COMMENTARIES
“9 Initiatives Employers Must Take to Support Women’s Success”
Kathy Caprino
Forbes
A McKinsey Classic: “The granularity of growth”
Mehrdad Baghai, Sven Smit, and S. Patrick Viguerie
The McKinsey Quarterly
“How Innovative Is Your Company’s Culture?”
Jay Rao and Joseph Weintraub
MIT Sloan Management Review
“Why Organizations Are So Afraid to Simplify””
Ron Ashkenas
HBR
“Six social-media skills every leader needs”
Margaret Heffernan
CBS MoneyWatch
“Why to Change Small Things, Not the Entire Culture”
Management Tip of the Day
HBR
“Want to Change Behavior?”
Marshall Goldsmith
Talent Management
“The Making of an Expert”
K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely
HBR
“Two Great Talks by Ken Robinson”
TED
“Beyond corporate social responsibility: Integrated external engagement”
John Browne and Robin Nuttall
The McKinsey Quarterly
* * *
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Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 3/11/13)
I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:
BOOK REVIEWS
Can’t Buy Me Like: How Authentic Customer Connections Drive Superior Results
Bob Garfield and Doug Levy
The Future Arrived Yesterday: The Rise of the Protean Corporation and What It Means for You
Michael Malone
It’s Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace
Anne Kreamer
Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture
Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green
Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think
Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier
INTERVIEWS
Ilene Gordon (Ingredion) in “The Corner Office”
Adam BRyant
The New York Times
Lee LeFever
BOB
An Interview of Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard
Poets&Quants
Leigh Thompson
BOB
COMMENTARIES
“To Become More Adaptable, Take a Lesson from Biology”
Rafe Sagarin
HBR
“Sheryl Sanberg’s Manifesto”
Michael Lewis
Vanity Fair
“Out of the Mouths of Babes”: Part 2
BOB
The first step to brain mastery””
Nick Morgan
PublicWords
“Lean In: Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Explains What’s Holding Women Back”
NPR Staff
“Brain Plasticity: How learning changes your brain”
Pascale Michelon
SharpBrains
“Institutional Innovation”
John Hagel III and John Seely Brown on
Deloitte University Press
“TIME Magazine’s All-Time Top 10 Commencement Speeches”
TIME
“How to Make Emotional Connections with Your Employees
Management Tip of the Day
HBR
“The Perils of Preaching to Children”
BOB
“The Case for Stealth Innovation”
Paddy Miller and Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg
HBR
“How to Create a Culture In Which Female Leaders Can Thrive”
Nellie Borrero
Talent Management
“Out of the Mouths of Babes”: Part 2
BOB
“Find a rocket ship and ride it.”
Kashmir Hill
Forbes
“The value of sportsmanship in business”
Michael Hess
CBS MoneyWatch
* * *
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