If I'm XM/Sirius, I would be losing more sleep over why people aren't knocking down the proverbial doors to take advantage of their quality offerings. I hope they make it, but if my class is representative of a large part of the potential subscriber base, satellite radio either doesn't resonate, or the companies have failed to communicate the value in a way that resonates. I hope that the management teams are Tuning In.
Every once in awhile, a number of articles or blog posts converge nicely to build on each other. Today over at Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Blog in his post entitled Sunday Afternoons, Wally offers his perspective on an article describing that many people report feeling a high degree of anxiety about work as Monday looms in the foreground. Wally's guidance for the leader's role in helping eradicate the causes of this unproductive stress is priceless and timeless (go ahead and click over and read it) and it puts the exclamation point on the leadership themes found in several other recent articles and posts.
Tomorrow's effective leaders are better served focusing on bringing the right resources to bear at a point in time than they are being constrained by a consultant derived goal to reduce managers and costs by increasing span of control. It's time to reengineer the old school thinking that leads to dangerous advice about leadership.
I speak, counsel and write consistently about the critical need for an organization's leaders to institutionalize the process of identifying, developing and retaining talent. In a recent workshop, less than 20% of the organizations represented indicated that they had any form of succession planning or early talent identification programs in place. The numbers got worse when we talked about development activities for established associates. While I suppose that I should be grateful for how miserably organizations perform in the area of talent development—after all, it means a large market for workshops, programs and books, it frankly pains me more than it pleases me. This isn't that hard or expensive people. What are you waiting for?
The question of the moment is how do you deal with your own mistakes? Are you a leader that works hard to distance yourself from your mistakes or those of your team members, or do you embrace mistakes as learning experiences and place them in full view? How you deal with mistakes says a lot about your character as a leader.
