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Archive for December, 2009

Holiday with mY Generation

Friday, December 25th, 2009

Merry Christmas!

I hope you’re in your jammies, sipping mimosas or good coffee, knee deep in wrapping paper and that Santa was good to you.

Since there are just four days left of Leadership Turn I thought you might enjoy seeing another feature you’ll be able to enjoy at MAPping Company Success.

mY generation is a comic series drawn by Jim Gordon, who graduated this year and is working in his first job. His quirky sense of humor will make you smile and his provocative viewpoint will make you think.

Since mY generation runs on Sundays you’ll receive it, as well as Quotable Quotes, if you subscribe via RSS or EMAIL.

nosanta

Again, have a wonderful holiday weekend and remember, don’t get

  • sunburned if it’s sunny;
  • wet if it’s raining; or
  • cold if it has the audacity to snow!

Your comments—priceless

Image credit: Jim Gordon on MAPping Company Success

Merry Christmas!

Friday, December 25th, 2009

reindeerChristmas comes just once a year

Good thing, too, ’cause money is dear.

Enjoy the day, it’ll soon be past

Turn off the computer, the time won’t last!

Image credit: unknown

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Santa…

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Today is the last Leadership’s Future post in 2009, but the feature will continue every Thursday at MAPping Company Success (to avoid missing it subscribe via RSS or EMAIL). Please click to read today’s Leadership’s Future.

‘Twas the day before Christmas I sat down to write,
but nothing came—writer’s block was my plight.

A video was the answer I thought with a sigh
and clicked over to YouTube to give it a try.

I found what I wanted as you will see,
plus you can follow tonight by using this key!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idamgLDhwLI]

Track Santa here or go mobile!

Image credit: NORAD

Leadership’s Future: the Past is Not the Future

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

seeing-the-futureDan McCarthy had a terrific post on why choosing leaders is a gamble—be sure to read the comments.

We see the idiocy of assuming that past performance is always a good predictor of the future all the time, but it seems especially true at senior levels.

First, there is the penchant for identifying ‘high potential’ starting in kindergarten and providing lots of extra training and coaching, while ignoring those who may be late bloomers or less obvious (read quieter).

Then there’s the Peter Principle, which is not only alive and well, but functioning even more efficiently today than it was when Laurence J. Peter first described it back in 1970.

We relish looking at the past to predict the future, thus choosing to ignore all extenuating circumstances and surrounding factors that played a role in the person’s performance.

We forget, or ignore, that

  • one manager’s star is another manager’s bomb;
  • the skills needed to take advantage of an economic expansion are very different from those needed in a downturn; and
  • turmoil or an ongoing crisis in a person’s personal life often impacts their performance at work.

Last, but not least, we need to get over our love affair with the idea of the hero-leader who, with a wave of the hand, can part the seas and eliminate obstacles.

Your comments—priceless

Image credit: Valerie Everett on flickr

Wordless Wednesday: Unsuspecting Santas

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

santa-fishAs you’re probably tired of hearing, Leadership Turn ends December 29. We’ve had a lot of fun the last couple of years and there’s more today. I scanned my Christmas decoration for you to see. Click over and while you’re there be sure to subscribe via RSS or EMAIL.

Your comments—priceless

Image credit: unknown

Wordless Wednesday: Peace from 2 Viewpoints

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

santas

Be sure to take a look at these 3 fishy Santas

Image credit: unknown

Ducks In A Row: Noticing the Obvious

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

ducks_in_a_rowMany times the solutions we seek are waltzing around in full sight, but we don’t see them.  Let me give you a personal example.

I started RampUp Solutions in 1997, but finding a simple way to describe what we did took several years.

In the show Gypsy there’s a song that says, “Ya gotta have a gimmick” to succeed and I doubt that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

I wanted one clear, concise term that gave insight to RampUp’s coaching approach, not a couple of paragraphs—no matter how well written.

When the light finally went on I had to laugh. The term I settled on was MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and the humor comes from the fact that I’ve been talking about mindset, attitude and philosophy my whole life—even using those terms.

But formalizing it never crossed my mind, which just goes to show how blind we can be.

There’s a reason ‘you can’t see the forest for the trees’ achieved the status of an adage more than a century ago.

Some people are focused on trees, while others have the opposite problem and focus strictly on the forest—neither offers optimal performance.

In my case it didn’t matter that much, sure, it would have been easier to create the company’s marketing messages, but it didn’t cripple us.

However, if your forests are made of people then it’s critical that you see them both.

It’s only by seeing your people as both individuals and collectively as a team that you can recognize the obvious solutions you miss when you focus on just one view.

Since Leadership Turn is ending December 29 I’ve been encouraging you to click over and follow me at MAPping Company Success.

Ducks in a Row will continue every Tuesday; check out Why ‘Cracked Pots’ are Good For Your Team and you’ll know why you should subscribe via RSS or EMAIL.

Your comments—priceless

Image credit:  ZedBee|Zoë Power on flickr

Why ‘Cracked Pots’ are Good For Your Team

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

cracked-potDo you have the courage to hire people with quirks? Those who are unconventional or have unconventional experience for the position? Will you hire someone who is flawed in some way?

Would you hire a ‘cracked pot’ for your team?

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck.

One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.

At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water.

Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.

But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream.

“I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house”‘

The old woman smiled, “Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side?”

“That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.

For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table.

Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”

Managed correctly, appreciated instead of tolerated or, worse, homogenized, the idiosyncrasies of your team, the unusual backgrounds, your cracked pots, are what push productivity, juice creativity and drive innovation across the board.

And often it’s another’s management failure that gives you the opportunity to increase the strength of your team.

So cherish the pots you already have and never hesitate to hire another.

Image credit: Blind Grasshopper on flickr

Smoke and Mirrors

Monday, December 21st, 2009

smoke-and-mirrorsHave you noticed the efforts to diminish the compensation or banking honchos and Wall Street hotshots?

Or at least make it look that way.

Our friends at Goldman Sachs are in the forefront, which should give you lots of confidence that the effort is for real.

The bonuses are in restricted stock that has to be held at least five years, so if the stock value went down 20% the banker would receive only $8 million instead of the $10 expected—poor baby, a lousy $8 million dollars, that’s terrible! Of course, the stock goes up 20% they’ll pick up an extra two mil.

Goldman benefits because the shares don’t count as compensation until they vest, which means they don’t show as an expense and that will boost profits.

Another piece of sleight-of-hand is counting consultants and temporary workers as employees; this raises headcount and significantly lowers pay per employee making politicos and the media happy.

Does it make you happy?

Do they really think we are that stupid?

Are we?

Leadership Turn ends December 29. I hope you’ll stop over today to read Leadership Needed—By 2015. To be sure you continue to get your daily fix of Miki you should subscribe via RSS or EMAIL.

Your comments—priceless

Image credit: Robert Couse-Baker on flickr

Leadership Needed—By 2015

Monday, December 21st, 2009

learning-leadershipHow do you feel when you read something presented as a unique insight into a subject and it turns out to be the same old tire stuff that you’ve seen for years?

That’s how I felt when I read The Coming Leadership Gap: What You Can Do About It by John Ryan, president of the Center for Creative Leadership.

I’ve been hearing the term ‘leadership gap’ for years, yet Ryan writes that his company just coined it.

Based on our [global] survey, there are four skills that executives all over the world believe will be most important just five years from now: leading people, strategic planning, inspiring commitment, and managing change.

Most important starting 2015?

Good grief, I haven’t done a survey, but I’d say those four skills have been important for decades hundreds of years, more actually.

I’m sure Attila the Hun found them critical when he conquered the known world. In fact, odds are that they were on the mind of the first Cro-Magnon clan chieftain when he fought his neighbor.

Pity our poor world when the people running global enterprise think they have five years before they need to master these skills.

One of the comments was especially perceptive; in part it said,

Various management gurus from the 1950’s have said the same thing over and over again. Yet despite this each generation of corporate leaders repeat the mistakes off their predecessors in that they fail to invest in leadership and management development. I believe the answer lies firstly in a change of mindset.John Coxon

Now we are getting somewhere.

It’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™); it’s always been MAP and it will always be MAP that is the problem—or the solution.

Before and after 2015 it will be the executives and managers who get it; who understand that these skills need to be embedded in the company’s DNA; they are not CEO skills, but core competency requirements to thrive in the 21st Century.

Image credit: hikingartist.com on flickr

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