Your Search for Leadership Wisdom Starts and Ends at the Carnival!
Filed under: Career, Current Affairs, Fresh Voices, Leadership, Leadership Carnivals, Leadership Skills, Leading Change, Life and Business, Management Education, Performance, Professional Growth
One of the best leadership public services you will find is Dan McCarthy’s hard work to produce the monthly Leadership Development Carnivals.
Dan scours the world far and wide for compelling content designed to inspire, energize and challenge you to step up your leadership game. He leaves no stone unturned looking for those nuggets of wisdom and then he carefully crafts them into a post guaranteed not to disappoint. OK, actually, he does a heck of a job inviting people to submit their favorite posts, and I’m sure he turns over at least a few stones, but the result is as advertised! Point your browser to Dan’s Great Leadership site for this month’s Carnival and remember to drop your favorite blogger a comment or two as you explore the material!
The September 5th Leadership Development Carnival at Great Leadership
Filed under: Career, Fresh Voices, Leadership, Leadership Carnivals, Management Education, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Just in time for a long holiday weekend, Dan McCarthy is hosting the always exciting and often inspiring Leadership Development Carnival at his home blogging base at Great Leadership.
Aside from the way over the top kind words that he has for me and this blog (Thanks, Dan!), he’s put together a collection of phenomenal essays from some really great writers and authorities in the world of leadership and business.
Grab a cup of coffee…or something colder and click over to The Carnival and enjoy the rides with Wally Bock, Steve Roessler, Mary Joe Asmus and so may other great bloggers!
Thanks, Dan for hosting this great event.
New Leaders, Twitter and the Volunteer Management Conundrum
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Life and Business, Marketing, Not-For-Profit Leadership, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
A collection of sound bites and developmental suggestions for busy professionals:
The Challenges of New Leaders: Feedback on Practical Lessons In Leadership:
Thanks to Dan McCarthy at Great Leadership for featuring my book with Rich Petro, Practical Lessons in Leadership, on his blog today. Dan features material from the book focusing on: The Top Ten Challenges of the New Leader. Please click over to Dan’s site to remind yourself of these challenges and importantly, check out his consistently outstanding blog content.
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Networking, Collaborating & My Twitter Experience
What started out as a bit of marketing curiosity has turned into a great and productive networking experience for me on Twitter. I continue to meet new and talented professionals on a daily basis and to share ideas and even identify opportunities to collaborate. Share a good idea or thought and watch it spread like wildfire. Have something new to offer in your business, as long as you are genuine and credible, watch the community jump on your idea and spread the news.
I know a number of marketers that I really respect that don’t have a seat at the Twitter Table yet. Fair warning, that this is a potent tool for professional networking, research and brand building. It’s time to pull up a chair and join the discussion.
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Managing Volunteers: A Non Profit Management Conundrum
One of the more rewarding activities that I am involved with, includes working with a great group of professionals to help change the shape of volunteering in our community.
Volunteerism is certainly popular in our culture thanks to the encouragement of our leaders in Washington and in response to the many societal challenges that we face. The fact that more people have time on their hands due to a sudden outbreak of unemployment is a factor as well.
A paradox that I find fascinating is the fact that so many nonprofits truly need the help of volunteers in pursuit of their mission, yet it is fairly common for volunteers to report having had a poor experience. It seems that many non profit organizations struggle to create the processes and infrastructure that allow for effective selection, on-boarding and management of volunteers.
In a Fast Company article titled: Why Volunteers Don’t Come Back, the author highlights research suggesting that as many as one-third of the volunteers from a prior year don’t return—a loss of labor worth an equivalent of $40 billion. The biggest competitor to volunteering? According to the author, studies indicate that watching television is the number one alternative use of time.
At a high level, it seems like there are two issues. As part of our local community efforts, we need to help our community nonprofits develop efficient and effective systems for managing the volunteer process and improving the overall experience and outcome for all parties. This is an eminently solvable management task!
The second issue is a fundamental reality check on how we prioritize our time. The advent of low cost DVRs makes it pretty hard to explain why people need to sit at home at night glued to the tv screen. It’s time to get out into the community and help solve some problems.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
I’ve offered three suggestions here for you to help make a difference. No charge!
1. Pay attention to the developmental needs of new leaders
2. Get started on Twitter and figure out what it can mean to you and your organization
3. Become part of the solution in your community and volunteer.
In particular on the last point, let’s put our heads together and help our non profits do a better job managing their talented and enthusiastic volunteer resources, before they lose them to the latest episode of Lost.
Your “Weekend Reading List” from Management Excellence
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Current Affairs, Leadership, Leadership Carnivals, Leadership Skills, Management Education, Professional Growth
Weekend Reading Suggestions to Recharge and Refresh
Beginning with this post, I intend to make “Your Weekend Reading List” a regular Friday feature. Most professionals that I know are too busy to carve out quality reading time during the week, and many have confided that they wish they would be more diligent about reading on the weekend. While I won’t be there to help you pick up the book or click on the link, I can at least try and remove the “I’m not sure what to read” excuse from your arsenal.
In what I promise will be (maybe) my last attempt to nag your conscience about this topic, I view reading as critical for self-development as well as for recharging your intellectual batteries. And I don’t suggest limiting your selections to those items in the business section of the magazine rack or the bookshelf. As evidenced by my Recommendations List at Management Excellence, I encourage leaders and business professionals to read histories, biographies, books on physics and the classics. Sneaking in an occasional mystery is also a good way to stimulate your divergent thinking skills!
OK, enough preaching and on to this weekend’s suggestions. I’ll keep it short and this week, I’ll stay business focused.
The December 6 Issue of the Leadership Carnival at Great Leadership
The carnivals bring together some of the best minds and leading bloggers in management and human resources to cover a wide range of topics. Instead of seeking out the best posts of leading consultants and bloggers, they are here under one umbrella for easy reading. This is scheduled to go live on the 6th, so be sure to check it out.
Article: Where GM Went Wrong at Fortune.com
Like traffic slowing to pass a wreck, it’s almost impossible to not look on in both horror and fascination as this company which once was Master of the Universe now teeters on the brink of oblivion. (Did you know that GM’s market cap is just over $1 billion and Toyota’s is some 160X greater. How did this happen?)
Senior Editor, Alex Taylor III, covered GM for the past few decades and shares his fascinating insights into the culture, the leaders over time and the slow and methodical unraveling of this insular and grossly misguided company. As we all face the reality of letting GM go or propping the firm up with our tax dollars, Taylor’s lengthy article (8 pages) is must reading.
Article: Big Blue’s Big Plan at Fortune.com
OK, this is a good issue of Fortune. The sub-header, “IBM is drooling over the coming infrastructure boom.” and IBM CEO Palmisano’s opening statement of, “We’ve been given this on a silver platter,” give you some clues to how IBM is looking at the global recession from a glass half-full perspective. Another must-read article I guarantee will get you thinking about how you and your firm can find opportunity in chaos. Pass this link along to your associates and fire up the divergent thinking!
Book: Winning, by Jack Welch with Suzy Welch
I’ve had this one in inventory for a couple of years and recently cracked the cover and remembered why I like Welch so much. He cuts through the baloney and mysticism of topics like leadership, mission, vision, values and strategic planning, offering the reader practical, common-sense perspectives on driving results. While his day at GE is over, like Drucker, the guidance is timeless. In my opinion, the world would be better off with a few more like Welch in command today.
Book I’m Reading: Thinking About Quality, Progress, Wisdom and the Deming Philosophy, by Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason.
Fresh from a great session teaching Quality Management to MBA students at DePaul University in Chicago, I’ve rediscovered my thirst for knowledge about Deming, his life and his philosophies. This man gets too little credit for shaping the post World War II business world, and his “Theory of Profound Knowledge” is appropriate reading for these difficult times.
I just started this one from the hosts of the TV special, “If Japan Can, Why Can’t We,” that launched Deming into mainstream America 40 years after he had established himself as a near-god in Japan and other countries. (I highly recommend the video…you can click on this YouTube link to the Deming special or search for Deming on the site to see the original program yourself.) My early feedback on this 1994 (but timeless) book is, great! I’ll keep you posted with a full review after I complete my “weekend reading.”
Now Grab a Cup of Coffee, Find a Comfortable Spot and Enjoy Your Reading Time!
Leadership Development Carnival #4: A One-Stop Shop for Great Ideas
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Carnivals, Management Education
I am pleased to be included in some great company again this month at the latest Leadership Development Carnival hosted at Great Leadership. Dan McCarthy brings together the perspectives of some exciting Carnival newcomers and some industry stalwarts. Dan's monthly Carnivals may be the best leadership deal going…great content, ideas that you can use immediately and the price is definitely right. Grab a cup of coffee or favorite beverage and take a stroll through the Carnival. You will be glad that you did.
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