dialogic*

Sheryl Sandberg's 411 of making leadership personal

Conventional wisdom holds that getting close to employees can compromise objectivity and the ability to make tough management decisions. "I dramatically disagree with that," Sandberg says. "I believe in bringing your whole self to work. We are who we are. When you try to have this division between your personal self and professional self, what you really are is stiff... That doesn't mean people have to tell me everything about their personal lives. But I'm pretty sharing of mine." being open with your employees, she believes, means that nothing is a surprise to them - even if you fire them. Amen! From the July 11 & 18 of the Newyorker magazine.

In your business, do you value better "questions" or better "answers?"

Actually, recent research shows that true high performance teams ask literally 10 times more questions to and of each other than low performance teams. But the trick is in the ratios, not the quantity. I would argue that "questions" stand for inquiry and "answers" stand for advocacy. In a high performance team, the ratio between inquiry and advocacy is 1.1 to 1.0, so almost a perfect equilibrium. In a low performance team it's 0.1 to 1.0. Go figure...

Previously answered on www.quora.com , my favorite pass time to flex my brain and engage with smart, opinionated people...

What are great ways to convey strategy, simply?

Train the top 100/400 to shut up and listen. Listen = silent, only with letters rearranged. Train them to facilitate a dialogue. Train them to tell their own story authentically. Then get them to engage in a dialogue with 25 people at a time, sitting in a circle, until they have talked with every employee in the company. The format: "Here's our best thinking. What do you make of it?" Open dialogue thereafter, 1.5 hour per session. Get a graphical artist to record the session. Put those flips out in the hallways everywhere for a year and invite people to continue doodling and talking. Strategy delivered.

Previously answered on www.quora.com , my favorite pass time to flex my brain and engage with smart, opinionated people...

I should get better at recycling...

Some of the answers I post on Quora, for example. Because people who visit this blog may not be on Quora (yet).

So I'll be sharing some of my oldies here in the next few weeks, if they really have merit, that is...

Small Message, Big impact

Kevin Small sent me the book with the aformentioned title. It's a worthwhile read by Terri Sjodin, who is a specialist in all things elevator pitch.

I usually get slightly allergic when people talk about this topic, because it annoys me that everyting seems to have to fit in under 2 minutes these days.

I genuinely liked the book. It pays good attention to helping you sort out what the purpose of your message is, how to craft your elevator speech accordingly and pays a lot of attention to the importance of narrative. The book is very consistent with the methods suggested in it and for a change, I loved the review of concepts discussed at the end of each chapter. It's also warm-hearted and self-deprecating, which endeared me to the author and her message. The whole book conveys a sense of not haviing to be perfect, but your best. Loads of specific tips and practical hooks to get cracking.

Go buy, whether you are seasoned or rookie in this domain. You're bound to get something good out of it!

http://www.amazon.com/Small-Message-Big-Impact-Elevator/dp/1608321304

Why going on a real journey delivers great results...

Here's a brief post on @IanSanders website with a video where I explain why if you really want to change something, you shouldn't sit in a soulless conference room but should take your team on a real, physical journey with a sound process attached to it: http://bit.ly/hy1Mhk

Check out his site here

Delivering Hapiness

A while ago, I came across this funny company called zappos.com. It's interesting, because they don't even formally trade in Holland. Yet I found the tweets that its CEO, Tony Hsieh posted so funny, weird and interesting that I researched it. So I asked for their culture book. And sure enough, this wasn't a fad, within 5 working days - Vegas to Holland, that's 5400 miles for you- the UPS guy was on my doorstep. So there was the first WOW experience.

Then I learned that Tony was about to publish a book. And that I could get a free advance copy if committed to review it. Again within a heartbeat, the UPS guy rings the bell at the office door. I get not one but two copies, with all sorts of smart thinking about how to entice me to spread the word. WOW experience #2.

I am an advisor that helps organizations transform their way of working together and build healthy cultures. So I am running a program for client where I think a dialogue with Tony would help them a lot. I send him a message. I am contacted within 24 hours with precisely the right information by his European representative. WOW experience #3.

Why am I sharing all of this with you? Because its easy to SAY that you deliver happiness. But at Zappos they DO it every day. The aforementioned three instances show that pretty conclusively for me.

So I can write a long, semi-scientific review of Tony's book. Or I can tell you that you should buy it. Because his story is worth reading. It's a story of how he sold his first company for $ 265 million. And that running that company made him wretchedly unhappy. And how he invested in Zappos, became its CEO and nearly "blew" all the money he made in life on it. Why? Because he passionately believed (and believes) that you could run a company in a different and healthy way. Where people actually are...happy. And what's more, make their stakeholders happy as its core offering. For the skeptics: it grew from 0 to $ 1 billion in revenues in under 10 years. It was sold to Amazon in the first ever stock only deal they did for $ 1.2 billion at the time of closing. And they promised they wouldn't change the culture.

While the book is not a how-to guide and at some points lacks structure for the more traditionally oriented, it's a story worth reading and if you digest it properly, there's a ton you can learn from these people.

http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com

http://www.amazon.com/deliveringhappiness

David Ogilvy on Leadership

I came across a post of Tom Peters on epigraphs. Little surprise that one was from David Ogilvy. I picked up a book that his partners gave him for his 75th birthday. Every time i do that or re-read other things he's written, I am struck by the relevance that a lot of his thinking still has today. Here's a list of qualities he felt leaders should have:

1. High standards of personal ethics.
2. Big people, without pettiness.
3. Guts under pressure, resilience in defeat.
4. Brilliant brains, no safe plodders.
5. A capacity for hard work & midnight oil.
6. Charisma - charm & persuasiveness.
7. A streak of unorthodoxy - creative innovation.
8. The courage to make tough decisions.
9. Inspiring enthusiasts - with thrust & gusto.
10. A sense of humour.

A Porsche, a road trip and working on achieving your full potential in one unique experience: http://tinyurl.com/yjgdht2

Sustainability

Somebody asked: How do organisations change to deeply implement more sustainability and
climate awareness in their actions? And how can this be supported?

Here's my answer:

Sustainability & climate change are fragments or representations of a fragmented world that is not whole. Focusing an organisation on these domains will not do anything (expletive deleted) for bringing about more sustainability or eventually put a stop to climate change. This is because the purpose of organisations is not to be sustainable, but to sustain themselves, if need be at the expense of other fragments.

 

So unless organisations are incited and have have a clear incentive to contribute to a new, larger whole/world order based on reexamining their purpose and values, the relentless focus that some boutiques and larger consulting firms have on sustainability is just another managent fad that sells hours. Which is OK, because their purpose is to sustain themselves as organisations... But it would be good if they were slightly less pretentious about it.

 

If you, however, challenge people to really look at their individual values and purpose and succeed in aligning these, they will draw the obvious conclusion: this has to stop, we must be sustainable in everything we do, because otherwise, ultimately, we will not be able to sustain ourselves. Aveda and Zappos.com got this in one, no consultants needed.