Note from Art: every Friday, I share three thought-provoking management posts for the week. Fair warning: I take a broad view of management, so my selections will range from leadership to innovation to finance and personal development and beyond.

This week’s selections feature content on corporate struggles in a changing world, ideas on creating organizations that drive remarkable commitment from their employees and customers, and a buffet of great leadership reading options at the February Leadership Development Carnival. Enjoy!

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop’s “Burning Platform” Memo as reported in the WSJ Blogs and many others. If you’ve not had a chance to read the full text of Elop’s “Our Platform is Burning” memo, this is must reading for all students of management, leadership and strategy. Nokia is a prime example of how not to cope with, respond to or leverage the global pressures in our world, and Elop pulls no punches in highlighting his firm’s transgressions. Read this…think about it and re-read it again. Then go spend some time looking around your organization and check to see if your platform might be burning (or require burning).

From the Memo: “Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe. I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform. And, we have more than one explosion – we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us. For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected.”

and

“The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things.”

From John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing, “The 7 Verbs of Commitment.” John raises some compelling questions and offers his considerable expertise on what it takes to create that culture and company that drives remarkable commitment from all of the players in the ecosystem…customers, partners, suppliers and of course employees. This post is all about capital “M” Marketing, and raises issues that should keep all of us…especially CEOs awake at night.

From the post: “In the end, what every business seeks is commitment – from our customers, our staff, our partners, and our entire collaboration universe. Commitment erases friction, creates momentum and drives substantial profit. But in a world where most everything our companies offer can be acquired somewhere, perhaps even from our own company, for free, how do you create the kind of company, product or service that drives people over the edge to commit…?”

Hosted at Inflexion Advisors by Mark Stelzner, The February Leadership Development Carnival-A Love Story. Heres a buffet of fifty of your soon to be favorite leadership bloggers sharing some of their favorite recent posts. The Leadership Development Carnivals are coordinated by my good friend and great blogger at the aptly named, Great Leadership blog, Dan McCarthy. This month’s episode was produced by Mark Stelzner, and I can assure you that you will not be disappointed by spending some time checking out the sweet leadership treats just in time for Valentine’s Day.

From the lead-in to the Carnival: “The emotions attached to February 14th range from wide-eyed hopefulness and heart-pounding anticipation to downright disdain and overt hostility. As many attribute the same feelings to their organizational leadership, I thought we’d focus this month’s Carnival on our favorite Hallmark holiday. That’s right, it’s the leadership development carnival of love featuring fifty of the sweetest posts from the past few weeks.”

–

OK, that’s it for the week. Enjoy your weekend! I’ll be back Monday with a fresh cup of Leadership Caffeine.

—

About Art Petty: Art coaches high potential professionals and develops and delivers  workshops and programs on leadership, professional development and building high performance teams.Contact Art to discuss your needs for a program or keynote.

And whether you are an experienced leader seeking to revitalize and develop as a professional, or, a new leader looking for guidance on starting up successfully, check out Art’s book with Rich Petro, Practical Lessons in Leadership at Amazon.com.