SHOULD YOU BE READING THIS BLOG?

By: Jerry Tarasofsky

This is not MY blog – rendering ideas opinions that I HAVE.

It is a permission based MODERATED blog, posting ideas about leadership from OTHER leaders, academics, industry gurus, and only occasionally from yours truly.

In most of the cases these are ‘older’ posts – yes rehashes of what these persons have posted at one time or another – so you may have already read them, if you are (were) one of their followers.

So why even have such a blog?

Reason #1: It’s because there are so many elements involved in leadership, and knowing them all is challenging, if even possible, and practicing them even more difficult, that I, and hopefully some of you, find it worthwhile hearing them again; reminding us of them; refreshing our memories; and hopefully seeing new ways of applying them in our leadership roles.

Research on management, organizations and leadership picked up momentum in the 1960’s and was very extensive in the late 90’s. Very little in terms of breakthrough ideas has happened since other then the component of speed and communications thanks to the emergence of the internet and computers/Smartphone’s/ pads, etc. Today we can not only revisit the wisdom gained by others, but hear about how they are being applied and gaining new insights.

Reason #2: I just looked up Leadership on Google and got 503,000,000 results. Where do you start? How much can you absorb? I guess that if you are a student, this could be a challenge to pursue. But who has the time?

Ideas for Leaders is a once a week blog. A few minutes a week to read or see a video on leadership is doable for any of us. Absorb the content. Maybe think about its applicability and even best if you can actually implement some of the learning presented. Bite sized learning/education I have found to be a most effective approach. I hope that you do as well.

Reason #3: The blogs are cataloged (in the left hand column) of the Home Page according to the five Universal Challenges of successful organizations, and the three Essential Capabilities of each of them. So if you are involved in a specific leadership need, you can quickly research the multiple blog postings for any of the topics: an easier and more efficient approach to possibly discovering an idea/solution to help you out.

SHOULD YOU BE READING THIS BLOG?

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­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Ideas For Leaders weekly posts are also available on EFactor (www.efactor.com); Ecademy (www.ecademy.com); LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com);  The Leadership Hub (www.theleadershiphub.com); Head of the Curve (http://www.headofthecurve.com) and on the Blog Sphere of multiple other Blogs.

An original post by Jerry Tarasofsky

I met Steve and his partner Steve Wozniak when I bought four Apple 1 computers in 1976 for the first computer store chain in Canada – Compucentre that we started that same year.  (Yes, there was an Apple 1 before the Apple 2.) The Apple 1 was the first computer on a board ever made. They only produced 100 of them, and they did not work well.

Apple opened their Cupertino office the following year under a professional president Mike Scott and introduced the Apple 2. O. Mike was recruited by Mike Markkula who arranged the initial financing for Apple. Both Steve’s were focused on the technology development and left the sales and running of the company to others.

Apple 2 became the big breakthrough product for Apple and its success led to them going public. It gave them the fuel that led them to where they are today. I truly regret not buying their stock at that time.

Beside a brief encounter with Steve during a visit to their Cupertino facility, I again met him when we shared the podium at a conference on the emergence of personal computers in 1978. By then Compucentre had become Apple’s largest distributor in Canada and one of their largest anywhere. He was not the most communicative person to talk to, and very definite about whatever subject we broached on. He was committed to making computers easy to work with and we both shared the opinion that personal computers were going to have a significant impact. I don’t think that either of us at the conference saw to what extent that would turn out to be.

Being enamored with Apple right from the beginning, Compucentre jumped on the Macintosh bandwagon when it was first released. I was not surprised with the graphic interface that they developed (with thanks to Xerox) for it. It was right in line with Steve’s image of user friendly and he certainly has driven that thinking home in everything he created since. In doing so Steve has changed our world.

We can only hope that even as Chairman, his creativity will be maintained at Apple. He is a very unique individual and worthy of all the accolades he receives.

IDEAS FOR LEADERS is a collaborative blog that is linked with the Organization Optimizer an innovative holistic organization diagnostic from CSI Diagnostics.

The Essence of Entrepreneurship

An original post by Del Chatterson

The question is often asked and there are many different, but acceptable, answers. To add my perception, I think there are certain personal character traits mixed with particular skills, knowledge and experience that add up to an “essence” of entrepreneurship that leads to success.

Here is my list of what I think adds up to be the Essence of Entrepreneurship:

1. Burning desire to turn an idea into a successful business.
2. Determination and persistence to achieve results.
3. Treating every obstacle as just another challenge to be met.
4. Recognizing the challenge to provide both strategic leadership and operational management.
5. Consistently communicating vision, mission, values.
6. Willingness to change the plan but not the goals or ideals.
7. Strong social awareness and empathy for people.
8. Motivated by more than the money.
9. Good marketing and sales instincts – knowing what appeals to the target market.
10. Understanding the industry measures of performance for the business.
11. Continuously aware of business results relative to planned performance.
12. Does not waste time – the most precious non-renewable resource.
13. Knows to decide when it’s time to decide, not waiting for all the information to be sure it is right.
14. Mix of strong industry knowledge or technical/professional skills with good instincts
15. Acceptance that success is a very imprecise objective and that never being satisfied is the way to continue being better and doing better.

Not a short list and not all essential.  But also probably not yet the complete answer to what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

Want to add to the list?

IDEAS FOR LEADERS is a collaborative Blog providing ideas from experienced leaders to improve organizations.

CHECK OUT the ORGANIZATION OPTIMIZER – the unique application that puts Ideas for Leaders into action.

An original post from Jim Clemmer

I’ve written quite a lot about coaching as a central leadership task. The CLEMMER Group is getting ever deeper into developing and delivering customized coaching workshops, competency models, performance management systems, and the like. I have over 300 citations, quotations, and research papers filed under coaching in my research database. Here are a few:

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself”
- Galileo, 16th Century Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and flautist who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution

“In these high-pressure, tense times, leaders say they ‘don’t have the time’ for coaching. By ignoring this style, however, they pass up a powerful tool….coaching focuses on personal development rather than on accomplishing tasks…coaching creates an ongoing conversation that allows employees to listen to performance feedback more openly, seeing it as serving their own aspirations, not just the boss’s interests. Coaches are also good at delegating, giving employees challenging assignments that stretch them, rather than tasks that simply get the job done.”
- Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee, Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence

“Too many managers focus on fixing people’s weaknesses — or worse, they simply ignore employees altogether. This doesn’t boost performance. Gallup has found that if your manager focuses on your strengths, your chances of being actively disengaged at work are only 1 in 100.”
- Brian Brim and Jim Asplund, “Driving Engagement by Focusing on Strengths,” The Gallup Management Journal

“Great coaches help people do what they don’t want to do so they can be the person they want to be.”
Health Centre CEO

“In our latest meta-analysis of 198,000 employees in almost eight thousand business units, employees who strongly agreed that they had a chance to do what they do best every day claimed fewer sick days, filed fewer workers’ compensation claims, and had fewer accidents while on the job.”
- Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton, Now, Discover Your Strengths

“Managers’ chief responsibility lies in helping employees on their team unleash their human potential. No systems, process, or self-directed team – irrespective of how modern, fashionable, or flawless it may be — can ever take the place of a great manager. That’s because great managers act as the emotional connection between employees and the organizations they work for. In effect, they act as the emotional engineers who set the reactions in place and watch them take affect.”
- Curt Coffman and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina, Follow This Path: How the World’s Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential

IDEAS FOR LEADERS is a collaborative Blog providing ideas from experienced leaders to improve organizations.

By:  Jerry Tarasofsky

The founding mission for IDEAS FOR LEADERS is to provide leaders of any type and size of organization interesting ideas to help them improve/optimize their organizations; and create a depository/library for these ideas in a way that makes sense for them to search organization improvement intelligence.

Therefore the headings on the left of this post are a library classification based on the 5 strategic challenges that are universal to any size and type of organization and the 3 essential capabilities that operationalize each of them. These topics being the result of an extensive meta- research made on the field of organization development.

There were several objectives that I set for the blog when I started it 12 weeks ago:

• Build up a team of notable contributors to fuel the initiative,
• Create sufficient content for the unique library structure, and
• Develop a space on the Internet for leaders to find information relevant to their needs for organization improvement.

The listing of contributors, and blog population for just about all of the library classifications are evidence that the first two of my objectives are progressing successfully. And based on Google Analytics data a growing number of you are coming to the blog to read posts related to the library classifications. This is a very encouraging development and gives me positive re-enforcement to keep this blog active and growing.

And so it will be.

Instead of 2 posts a week however, I will with some occasional exceptions be posting once a week. It certainly isn’t for the lack of excellent content – but related to the development of my eighth business start-up in which this blog will play an important role.

Thank you for your participation in this collaborative initiative, keep spreading the word to other leaders, encourage potential contributors and I always welcome your comments.

IDEAS FOR LEADERS is a collaborative Blog providing ideas from experienced leaders to improve organizations.