Sooner or later any group that works together, be they employees in the same office, volunteers on a non-profit board, or executives on a management team, will be called upon to come up with some creative ideas – to innovate. Unfortunately, what typically happens when the designated leader asks the group to “give me your best ideas,” the reply is limited to standard answers, conventional responses, or blank stares. Would that these hard working souls had some creativity in them! Well I’m here to tell you that groups can let the genie of creativity out of the bottle if they understand three counter-intuitive principles - quantity over quality, reduce inhibition, and seek some chaos.

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Tags: Accelerating Innovation

In an increasingly complex world you will be more likely to face the challenge of working across major organizational boundaries. Maybe it will take the form of cross-functional teams or cross-departmental projects within an organization. Maybe it will take the form of several companies working together to realize a business opportunity.

Whether your project crosses functions, silos, organizations, or industry sectors, to ensure success you’ll want to find coherent answers to these 5 key questions... Read More...

Tags: Collaboration & Teamwork, Artful Leadership

Teams at the Top Unleashing the Potential of Both Teams and Individual Leaders
by Jon R. Katzenbach (1998)

True teams are rare at the most senior management levels, and with good reason, writes Katzenbach. "Teams are seldom the fastest way for a group with an experienced, capable leader to ‘get where they are going,’ particularly if the leader has been there before." Nevertheless, executive teams that learn to integrate “team discipline” with “single- leader discipline” can be rewarded with exceptional performance and tools that are especially effective to deal with major disruptive events. Katzenbach is a foremost authority on teams, and although it has been around awhile, Teams at the Top belongs in the library of any senior executive who even remotely considers pushing team thinking with a senior executive team.

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First the obvious. Given that “knowledge work” is on the rise, the value that people add to organizations increasingly comes from brainpower – the ability to think. It behooves leaders, therefore, to create conditions that enhance people using their brains to the fullest, especially when leading or managing knowledge workers.

What is surprising to many people is that emotions are biologically linked to critical thinking – i.e., to the use of the intellect, rationality, and logical analysis. While conventional wisdom says emotions get in the way of analytical thinking (and certainly they can), or that they are inherently irrational, modern neuroscience appears to embrace the idea that emotions are a key support of intellectual performance.
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Tags: Uncommon Thinking, Top Performance

What is leadership? I encourage would-be leaders to think ACTION. While there are dozens of definitions of leadership with perhaps thousands of nuances, the fundamental concept to keep in mind is that leadership is about ACTION – specifically, action taken with people.

Here's the kicker: the more an enterprise is dependent on brainpower – i.e., people sharing knowledge to create innovations and bring them to the marketplace – the more leadership is important. Leadership action is comprised of two complimentary parts: leading and managing.

In some ways leading and managing are inseparable, like two sides of the same coin. And like ‘heads or tails’ on a coin, these two types of leadership actions have intrinsically opposed objectives.
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Tags: Artful Leadership

Good to Great and the Social Sectors
by Jim Collins (2005)


This monograph explores how the author changed his mind and decided that social sector organizations – non-profits, public agencies, or churches – should NOT be run more like businesses. Written as a companion to his book, Good to Great, the monograph provides an elegant review of key concepts in the book, and how the author thinks they should be applied differently to social sector organizations. (Hint: the “hedgehog” questions need to be different.) If you are involved in the leadership of any non-profit, either board or staff, I highly recommend this monograph...after reading the book, of course.

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We all know it would be foolish, even potentially suicidal, to ignore illness, cost controls, or defects. Achieving excellence, however, requires going beyond problem thinking, and operating from a perspective of possibility thinking.

This key principle applies directly to leaders who aspire to achieve outstanding success for their businesses or organizations. Extraordinary organizations are not created simply by solving problems. Leaders need to be skillful at problem-solving, yes, but to be outstanding they also need to be competent at possibility-building. Read More...

Tags: Uncommon Thinking, Artful Leadership

Getting Things Done
The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
by David Allen (2002)

GTD has practically a cult following, and with good reason. If getting organized, managing time better, and being more productive are some of your New Year’s resolutions, this is the book for you. David Allen explains why typical “prioritize your tasks” strategies don’t work. He then goes on to cover in detail how to create a system that allows for high flexibility and frees your mind to THINK! This is the best book of its kind I have found, and I highly recommend it.

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When organizations identify a specific focus that will drive success, leaders start talking about building that focus into the company culture. For example, I have been asked to help organizations shape a culture of feedback, a culture of customer service, a culture of safety, a culture of teamwork, or a culture of thinking LEAN (as in Lean Six Sigma).

Leaders are correct to emphasize culture change. A company’s culture is the underlying behavior, attitude, and atmosphere that pervade by default – when people are operating on automatic pilot. It’s what people do when the boss isn’t looking, what people do without having to think. A company’s culture exerts a strong influence that shapes individual and collective action. Here's how to shape a company's culture...

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Tags: Taking Care of Business

I can’t tell you how often I’m asked, “Can you make a leader?” Usually this is expressed as a challenge, immediately followed by, “Aren’t leaders just born?”

Well, consider athletes. Do you think athletes can do their sport significantly better with practice, coaching, training, or proper feedback? Isn’t this as true for recreation league softball as it is for Olympic stars? We could apply this same line of reasoning to art, music, or any number of endeavors? What is worth noting about Michael Jordan, Mia Hamm, Tiger Woods, or Picasso is what they did to develop their inborn talent.

Yes, when it comes to leadership I believe there is inherent talent that plays a significant role. Nevertheless, whatever talent you start with, you CAN make a significant (big, huge, gigantic, life-changing, did I say significant) improvement in leadership. Like everything else, it takes the right effort, support, and tools. I don’t know whether you can make a leader, but I firmly believe you can indeed develop leadership. Here are some ways to do it...
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Tags: Artful Leadership, Top Performance

Effective organizations always have a creative tension between leading and managing. During times when big changes are being asked of employees, the heightened uncertainty and corresponding hunger for stability cause this creative tension to be accentuated. Good managing is critical, but to make changes effective, good leading is vital. Read More...

Tags: Artful Leadership, Change Mastery

Is your company vigorously promoting teams? Are you dreaming of transforming your group so it responds like a high-performance team every day? Proceed carefully.

Anyone who has been part of a high-performance team knows the exhilaration felt when everyone clicks and team efforts bring that major goal within reach. Truth is, a high-performance team has become the gold standard of people working at their best. Some companies promote ‘teams’ as the best working solution for everything they do.

But not all situations are best served by pushing people to work in teams. In fact, when misapplied, working as a team may hurt, rather than help, both individual performance and the bottom line. Read More...

Tags: Collaboration & Teamwork

The Answer to How Is Yes:
Acting On What Matters
by Peter Block (2002)

Looking to build more accountability and meaning into your organization? Peter Block’s book, The Answer To How Is Yes, offers a thought-provoking reframe on giving attention to what is important. Leadership, he suggests, must include the perspective of the social architect to counter the engineer and economist archtype that drives most workplaces. Finding the right question is perhaps more important than vision and problem-solving. Consider for example, the difference if you stop asking yourself the question “How long will it take?” and instead ask “What commitment am I willing to make?” I find this the most philosophical of Peter Block’s books, and recommended it to those who welcome having their thinking stimulated rather than the next round of “how-to” bullet points.

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20/20 Foresight Crafting Strategy in an Uncertain World
by Hugh Courtney (2001)

I had the pleasure of hearing Hugh Courtney during a symposium at the Kenan Flagler School of Business where we were both speakers. Courtney’s book is a staple of the school’s course on strategy, and rightly so. It’s refreshing, relevant, readable, and offers practical advice about how to craft corporate strategy in a highly changing world. Key point: defining the level of uncertainty is the critical first step to choosing tools and asking questions to make critical strategy decisions. Recommended.

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