Category Archives: Ideas

April 16, 2008

Posted by Urzula

Hello All!

I believe that is good to have some kind of bucket list but in a smaller dimension, as to have a list of thing to do, before the day ends… in fact, every day could be the last and we should live it like that. Is not necessary to have a lot of money to do things that give you good emotions that fill your life. Some ideas? call a friend you haven’t spoken to in a long time… tell your family that you love them… go home early after work… smile to everyone you see…. This might sound a little bored, but I think that as long as we learn to be happy with the small things in our life, we are on the way to happiness.

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Posted for Heidi

March 27, 2008

Can Bad Attitudes Lead to Good Innovation?

by Paul Sloane

I give workshops on creative leadership for major organisations around the world. I always ask delegates, ‘What is impeding innovation in your business?’ The answers often involve cultural issues such as aversion to risk, complacency or lack of motivation to experiment.

Recently I gave a workshop in Taiwan and there one of the cultural issues raised was, ‘We have too much respect’. Middle level managers felt too much reverence for the executives in the company to challenge their views and to question the way that things were done. They were used to accepting and implementing decisions that were handed down to them rather than pushing back with better suggestions and radical ideas of their own.

Taiwan, like many Asian societies, is well-ordered with good self-discipline. The people are polite and you never see graffiti on walls the way you do in the West. It started me thinking that the bad attitudes that we see manifested in so many ways in our society might have some upsides.

Do we benefit from rebellious employees who challenge assumptions and rudely assert a different point of view? Should we seek to employ more people who are unruly and disrespectful?

What we need is not a lack of respect but a lack of deference. In the modern innovative organisation leaders need to earn the respect of their employees because of the values they stand for and not because of their position in the hierarchy. A lack of deference should be encouraged so that anyone can challenge anyone else’s ideas regardless of their status.

‘Innovation comes from angry and driven people,’ says Tom Peters. The innovator is not happy with his lot. He is impatient for change. And this can be a problem for successful companies. The natural satisfaction that people derive from success can lead to complacency, which is the enemy of innovation. This is why the innovative leader always engenders a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo. It is all very well telling shareholders that the company is making steady and satisfactory progress but the internal message needs more of an edge. ‘We are doing well but there is much more to be done. We cannot afford to rest on our laurels.’

Clayton Christensen, in his book the Innovator’s Dilemma, explains how the very characteristics that make successful companies successful lead them to keep improving their current products to meet customer demands but to eschew risky new ventures. In doing so they often miss the next big thing, the new technology that kills them. Polaroid’s demise at the hands of digital photography is a salutary example.

In 1901 the radio pioneer, Guglielmo Marconi, came to England to test his theory that it was possible to send radio signals across the Atlantic. The experts all scoffed at the idea – after all the earth is a giant sphere and radio waves travel in straight line. The experts had reason and logic and their side but Marconi was unreasonable. He rebelled against conventional wisdom and insisted on pursuing his experiment. Amazingly his signal was received. Unknown to the experts (and to Marconi) there is a charged layer around the earth, the ionosphere, which reflected the signal.

Often the innovator has to be obsessive to the point of apparent irrationality in pursuit of their dream. They appear insubordinate in opposing convention. Anita Roddick, James Dyson, Richard Branson and Stelios were all seen as obstinate, angry rebels before they achieved the success that changed their status to visionaries.

Every revolution starts with a rebel. So if you want innovators in your team look for people with some particular bad attitudes – the ones with rebellious, contrary and divergent views. These are people who some might label as troublemakers. They are not negative or cynical – on the contrary they are passionate about their ideas. They do not defer to authority, they are dissatisfied with the status quo, they are impatient for change and they are angry about the obstacles put in their way.

With a profile like that they should certainly stand out from the crowd!

Paul Sloane helps organizations improve innovation. He gives talks and facilitates meetings. He is the author of Lateral Thinking Puzzlers published by Sterling and the Leader’s Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills published by Kogan Page

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Posted for Heidi

March 27, 2008

Are You a Leader?
by Mitch McCrimmon, Ph.D.

If you ask whether someone is a leader, you seem to asking about a relatively permanent state, like asking whether a person is a doctor or a lawyer. If you are a father or a mother, you occupy that role for life.

But being a leader is not really like this anymore. We live in an age of guerrilla warfare when a motley crew, thrown together on the spur of the moment, can often defeat the greatest Generals. It’s like being a leader in sports. One minute you’re in the lead and the next you’re not. Leadership, like guerrilla warfare, is much more transient than being a parent, lawyer or doctor.

At one time, leadership was about dominance. The person who was physically strongest got to be the top dog. Then came the cult of personality where we let people dominate us if they have rock star personalities. But form without content is fast fading in its power to hold our attention. We now want people who can deliver and our patience is short.

Building on the guerrilla warfare theme, today’s reality is that it is much easier to show leadership occasionally than it is to BE a leader for more than a moment. The truth is that leadership has always been about power. In the old days it was about the power to dominate us. Today, we say that content is king. A crucial implication of this slogan is that no one has a monopoly on good content, eye-catching ideas. The power to lead has shifted forever from personal power to the ability to generate new ideas, the next great thing that captures everyone’s imagination. This is not so much the power of knowledge as the power to create new knowledge. This is why leadership needs to be seen as an occasional act, almost like creativity, rather than a long term role like fatherhood. I call it thought leadership. Anyone who promotes a new idea, a better way of doing things and who successfully convinces others to buy the idea, has shown leadership. On this view, leadership could be shown by everyone at a meeting and it could shift from one participant to another several times during the meeting.

So, the question ”Are you a leader?” should be recast as ”Can you show leadership?” Take Al Gore. You could say that he is not a leader in the old dominant sense because he missed out on being president, but he often shows leadership today – whenever he makes speeches that champion environmental causes.

If you want to know whether you can show leadership, don’t ask whether you have what it takes to be the boss, to get to the top slot. Ask yourself instead whether you have ever convinced your colleagues or boss to do something different. Actually, to show leadership, your followers don’t even have to do anything. You could show leadership by convincing people to stop doing something or to avoid taking what is clearly an unfounded risk. Maybe you convinced your colleagues to avoid doing something unethical. You have shown leadership in these instances because you have influenced people to change their thinking. Perhaps you are just an unusually hard worker who never complains, who just gets on with it, but who never tries to persuade colleagues of anything. Still, you may have shown leadership by example if they stopped complaining and got on with their work after observing you behave this way.

The bottom line is that leadership comes in degrees. It is no longer the all-or-nothing thing of being at the top. Leadership can range from very small scale actions like setting a better example on how to serve customers in a restaurant to winning the support of millions to rally around you in support of a globally important cause. If you continue to see leadership in all-or-nothing terms as a role you need to aspire to, you are effectively dis-empowering yourself. You are denying your power to show leadership viewed as the occasional act of convincing others to adopt a better way. So, everyone can show some leadership every day, if only on a small scale. You might, therefore, ask yourself what leadership you can show today.

How You Can Be a Leader Now

Ask yourself what the following examples of leadership have in common:

* Martin Luther King moved the Supreme Court to outlaw segregation on buses.
* You influenced your boss to adopt a new policy.
* The example of a customer service employee led her colleagues to follow suit.
* A front-line employee sold a new product idea to top management.
* Apple Computer influenced Microsoft to get into music distribution.
* Gandhi, though long dead, influenced present day activists to be non-violent.
* Tiger Woods led other golfers to raise their game.
* You convinced a colleague to adopt a better way of doing his work.
* You were the only one who didn’t complain about the latest changes at work.
* You kept going after a setback when others were ready to give up.
* You were the first among your colleagues to adopt a new technology.

At first glance there doesn’t seem to be much in common between you, Martin Luther King, Tiger Woods, Gandhi and Apple Computer. But, look a bit closer and you will see it. In all cases, someone showed the way for someone else. That’s all leadership is – showing the way, influencing others to follow, to do something different.

What else do these examples have in common? No one is the boss of those who were led. This is a critical point. We view people in charge of groups as our models of leadership, but this is really just a special case of leadership at best. I say ”at best” because it is possible to be in charge of others and just be a manager, hence not showing any leadership. If the group is working efficiently and does not need to change direction, then no leadership is shown or even necessary.

The bottom line here is that there is no way to unite all these diverse examples of leadership into a single model unless we define leadership simply as showing the way, pointing to a new direction. If we define leadership so that it implies taking charge of a group, then all of these examples are ruled out and we are then left with a very narrow concept of leadership.

There is yet more that these examples share. In all cases, the person or group showing leadership has nothing to do with helping to get anything done. It is only those who are led who take charge of implementing the suggested change in direction. This is important because leadership is conventionally conceived as taking people from A to B, of helping them achieve a goal. But we have to see the journey from A to B as a managerial undertaking if we are to restrict leadership to showing the way. And we must do this if we want to account for the full range of leadership instances. If you are in charge of people and you both promote a new direction and manage the implementation, then you are switching hats from leading to managing.

Notice also that none of these examples refers to influencing style. I have not talked about the need to be inspirational, emotionally intelligent or charismatic. That’s because there is simply no style that all leadership acts share. Leadership occurs when people willingly follow someone else’s lead. It doesn’t matter if leadership is by example, the making of a hard, factual case or an inspirational appeal. Influencing ability is important but how people are influenced should not be part of any definition of leadership.

Finally, in all cases, leadership is an occasional act, not a role, position or type of person. As an act, leadership is something anyone can show and it can shift from one person to another quickly. By changing our definition of leadership from what it takes to acquire and hold a dominant position in a group to one of an occasional act, we open the door for anyone to show leadership. The power that such leadership is based on has shifted from the ability to dominate others to the ability to offer a better idea. And it is not possible to monopolize good ideas. This is why you can show leadership; you have good ideas that can move others to change direction. Notice the switch from talking about how to be a leader to how to show leadership. This is a subtle but vital difference.

Mitch McCrimmon, Ph.D. has been assessing and coaching managers for over 30 years and has written 3 books, Unleash the Entrepreneur Within, 1995, The Change Master, 1997 and Burn! 7 Leadership Myths in Ashes, 2006

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