- A Checklist for Changing Me to Change Them
We can't build a team or organization that's different from us. We can't make them into something we're not. Failing to follow this principle is the single biggest reason that so many team and organization change and improvement efforts flounder or fail. The changes and improvements we try to make to others must ring true to the changes and improvements we're also trying to make to ourselves. The following is a checklist: - A Process for Continuous Innovation and Controlled Chaos is Built on a Service Ethic
Today's leading organizations are knowledge creating companies that thrive on continuous innovation. It's a big competitive edge. New products and services can be "knocked off" or copied. But it's much harder for competitors to duplicate a management system and corporate culture that produces a continuous stream of successful product and service improvements, innovations, adaptations, and extensions. - A Tale of Two Managers: Command versus Commitment
"Organizations should be built and managers should be functioning so people can be naturally empowered. If someone's doing their jobthey should know their job better than anybody. They don't need to be 'empowered,' but encouraged and left alone to be able to do what they know best." - Assessing Our Ability to Influence Others
In our personal and leadership development workshops we often conduct a 'degrees of control' exercise. We ask participants to come up with examples in the following areas: 1. Direct Control; 2. Influence; and 3. No Control. While there's often lots of debate and not always full agreement, examples under No Control generally include things like the weather, the economy, natural disasters, freak accidents, and the like. Discussions about my degree of Direct Control usually boil down to just one thing me. However, some autocratic people fool themselves into thinking they have direct control over their teams, kids, or people reporting to them. Many other people are quick to surrender to the Victimitis Virus and declare they have no control or even influence over the behavior of anyone else. - Avoiding Pity City and the Victimitis Virus
Blaming others for our difficulties is the easy way out. That's why it's so popular. A job applicant put this statement on his resume, "The company made me a scapegoat, just like my three previous employers." In How to Save Your Own Life, author Erica Jong writes, "No one to blame! That was why most people led lives they hated, with people they hated How wonderful to have someone to blame! - Bad Boss? Learn How to Manage Your Manager
If you think you're working for a bad boss, you have plenty of company. Of 1,118 people who completed a survey at the Badbossology dot com web site last year, "48 percent said they would fire their boss if they could, 29 percent would have their boss assessed by a workplace psychologist and 23 percent would send their boss for management training." - Blazing Our Own Improvement Path
A timeless principle of inside out leadership is continuous personal growth. When U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., was hospitalized at the age of 92, President Roosevelt went to visit him. He found Holmes reading a Greek Primer. "Why are you reading that?" the president asked. The great jurist replied, "Why, Mr. President, to improve my mind." - Focus and Context: The Hub of Leadership
Successful leaders spend a lot of time creating the identity of the organization what our values are, what our mission is, what our purpose is, how we are going to act together as one. - How Total is Your Quality Management?
Notre Dame football coach, Lou Holtz, once observed "When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done". Despite all the talk -- passionate speeches, glossy brochures, clever ads, high tech videos, convincing sales pitches, snappy slogans, strategic plans, and solemn annual reports -- the service and quality action delivered by most organizations is mediocre at best. - Innovation Calls For Leadership
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."Success is one of the leading causes of failure....... - Leaders Help People See Beyond What Is to What Could Be
At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done.... - Leaders Make the Difference
All organizations have access to more-or-less the same resources. They draw from the same pool of people in their markets or geographic areas. And they can all learn about the latest tools and techniques. - Leading from the Inside Out
A leader may or may not be appointed to head a group or organization - to be put in charge. Whether formally in the role or not, a leader makes things happen. A leader takes action. A leader doesn't say something must be done about this, a leader does something about it. Leadership is a verb, not a noun. Leadership is action, not a position. Leadership is defined by what we do, not the role we are in. We all need to be leaders, regardless of the roles we may be in. - Managing Things and Leading People
High-performing teams and organizations balance the discipline of systems, processes, and technology management on a base of effective people leadership. Here are some key of the key distinctions between the two: - Purposeful Leaders Make Meaning
In our organization and team development consulting at The CLEMMER Group, we often bring groups of people together to get their perspectives on strengths and weaknesses, improvement opportunities, and the like. One morning I asked a group of very quiet production and service people a series of these questions. I was getting very few responses. This was going nowhere fast. Finally one grizzled veteran sitting at the back of the room with his arms folded said, "Jim, I think you're confusing us with people who care." - The Many Faces of Love
Like leadership, love has many faces and forms. Both are states of being that defy easy definitions or how-to formulas. Pianist, Arthur Rubinstein, describes one face of love, "I'm passionately involved in life: I love its change, its color, its movement. To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings it's all a miracle." Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia outlines another face of love when talking about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four-year-old child whose next-door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, "Nothing, I just helped him cry." - Thermometer Manager or Thermostat Leader?
The late 19th century Irish playwright, critic, and social reformer, George Bernard Shaw, had a lot of useful things to say about personal effectiveness. A few of his comments have hung on my mirror or been posted in my day planner over the years. This one speaks to a core management-leadership choice we all have; "the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."
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