I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of the amount of pure stupid going around.

Now it’s Mark Hurd, but he is just the latest in an epidemic of stupid.

I expect stupid from teens, after all, brain science has proved that teen brains are in a process of change and during that time the frontal cortex isn’t functioning.

Dr. Paul Thompson, UCLA School of Medicine: “As you get older, you don’t necessarily get more brain. The outer layer of the brain is actually thinning.”

Dr. Judy Rapaport, NIH: “You end up with a sort of leaner, meaner thinking machine by the time you’re an adult.”

But it seems that many aren’t thinking.

Call it Extreme Makeover: Career Edition and Ty Pennington just screamed, “Let’s do some demo!”

I think the brain research needs to be redone to account for regression after 40.

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Many people in Washington and around the country look to venture capitalists to jumpstart companies that will generate jobs, both directly and indirectly. Once again KG Charles-Harris, EMANIO CEO and founder of M3, attended Stanford Summit, a three day gathering of those who move in the world of startups, and provides his impressions of their ability to perform.

Last week I again attended the AlwaysOn 2010 Summit at Stanford, held at Stanford University in California.  It was a beautiful setting with people from all parts of the technology ecosystem—from very large companies such as Hewlett Packard to small 2 person startups, banks, venture capitalists, angel investors and consultants.

One of the most interesting takeaways from the conference was the very different views that people had on how the venture capital industry was developing in the present environment.  On the one hand, there were strong assertions that the VC industry was in good health and that there was a lot of money looking for investment.  Most of the VCs I encountered asserted that they were very much interested in early stage investments and that they provided a unique service to founders and early stage management.

However, this was in stark contrast to the intense frustration many startups were expressing when describing their hunt for capital.  They felt that VCs were far from interested in early stage investments and were mostly focused on follow-on investments in portfolio companies or syndicated deals.  Some (probably about 70% of the people with whom I spoke), who had received investments felt that the VCs were often a distraction on the Board and either were micromanaging or otherwise not helpful.  Yet these founders and executives have little choice but to continue to seek venture money to fund their growth.

Could these developments be due to the fact that many of those running the largest firms are no longer the seasoned operating managers that brought forth the storied companies of old, like Apple, Cisco, Fairchild Semiconductor, Silicon Graphics, etc.?  Many have the impression that the generation of VCs that joined when the names on the door wanted to kick back are simply bankers; portfolio managers unable to take risk or understand a vision.

The industry has always been prone to “herd mentality,” where a lot of VC firms invest in similar startups; as was blatantly obvious during the dot com debacle.

A preference for financial manipulation and unwillingness to take risks combined with a lack of operating experience and little vision could signal a death knell for the kind of leaps that created high tech in the first place.

The upside is found in younger VCs and angels; men and women who founded or worked in startups and are putting their money where their mouth is to help create the next wave.

The question is there enough of them or will it be a case of too little too late?

Image credit: AlwaysOn

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This month’s Carnival is hosted by Jason Seiden at Fail Spectacularly. It’s a packed Carnival today, so I’ll skip the commentary, except to say that you’ll find the ‘Plus’ at the end of the Carnival. Be sure to scroll down.

leadership

Mike Henry Sr. presents Biased Justification for Poor Leadership posted at Lead Change Group Blog, saying, “Response to some advice given in Entrepreneur Magazine suggesting that business leaders should be ‘benevolent tyrants.’”

Wally Bock presents Be the boss, but don’t be a jerk. posted at Three Star Leadership Blog, saying, “George Cloutier’s recent article in Entrepreneur was seriously silly, but it stimulated some good conversation about what a boss’s job is.”
JS: A great follow up piece to Mike’s article that includes a wonderfully illustrative anecdote about a young lieutenant that I’d personally like to see read to every graduating MBA class.

Mark Stelzner gives us The Art of Saying No at Inflexion Advisors.

Dan McCarthy presents Defensive Driving for Leaders: Watch Out for Your Blind Spots over at Great Leadership by Dan.
JS: Interestingly, I’ve never had a coachee disagree when I’ve told them they have a strength hidden in their blind spots…

Art Petty presents The Triple Threat to Good Decisions: Data, Time and Emotion posted at Management Excellence.

Meg Bear presents Picking and Delivering a Winner on the Talented Apps blog. This post focuses on what defines a winner, and the drivers that create one.

Sonia Di Maulo presents How to Give Negative Feedback Effectively at Ready to Feedback.

Tanveer Naseer presents 4 Questions To Help Your Team Keep Their Focus posted at TanveerNaseer.com, saying, “Article looks at four questions leaders can ask to determine whether their team is focused on the right tasks that will help them reach their objectives.”

Tanmay Vora presents 5 Ways To Build Trust (Lessons from a Conversation) posted at QAspire – Quality, Management, Leadership & Life!, saying, “How does a new leader build trust? 5 Lessons from a conversation with a friend who was about to join in a new leadership position.”

From Germane Insights, we get Leading Change: Lessons from the Sandbox. “Grab your beach blanket and don’t forget the sunscreen. We’ll be going to the beach for a live case study on mandated versus inspired change. While we’re there, we’ll also learn how to gain access to old boys network.”
JS: A surprisingly clear example of how to break down the barriers between groups—without any outside intervention at all.

Kevin W. Grossman presents Lead small. Think big. And be of self-aware endurance. posted at Leaders. Better. Brighter.™ The Glowan Consulting Group L3 Blog.
JS: I see I’m not the only one combining leadership and running…

Jane Perdue presents Got Influence? at Life, Love & Leadership. Jane took off her Fortune 100 HR VP hat and now loves life, helping folks to manage with their head and lead with their heart.

Guy Farmer presents Five Ways to Be a Better Leader posted at Guy Farmer – Unconventional Coaching and Training, saying, “Practical tips to become a better leader.”

Bret L. Simmons presents Leadership Is A Journey | Bret L. Simmons – Positive Organizational Behavior posted at Bret L. Simmons.

Dominic Rajesh presents The Leader’s “Mastery” Journey…. posted at Dom’s Blog ….

Kevin Eikenberry presents Six Ways to Respond Rather than React posted at Leadership and Learning with Kevin Eikenberry.

Shamelle presents The One Minute Manager: Highlights From The Book posted at Enhance Life. An overview of the book that validates the 1-minute concept.

Laura Schroeder presents Are High Performers the Worst Managers? posted at Working Girl.
JS: The path from individual contributor to manager is not as linear as org charts make it seem.

Taylor Coburn presents 3 Reasons for Confidence | Motivia posted at Motivia.

Jose Anajero presents Fame ? Is it Wrong to Desire to be Famous? posted at Real Life Success.

Michael Cardus presents a downloadable communication exercise for teams called Communicate This and Stick it here. More information at Create-Learning Team Building & Leadership Blog.

Graham Stoney presents Communication, Public Speaking, and Leadership Skills Development at Toastmasters | Communication posted at Graham Stoney’s Personal Development Adventure, highlighting the importance of communication in leadership skills development and the opportunities available at Toastmasters.

Daniel M. Wood presents The Key To Success; Confidence posted at Looking to Business, saying, “Earn the respect of your coworkers and employees by showing your confidence.”

management

Andy Klein presents Empowerment allows management to prepare for the unexpected posted at Fortune Group Blog, saying, “Management can prepare for all sorts of scenarios and implement protocols on how employees should respond, but most situations are unpredictable. So how do you deal with those? You put trust in your people and empower them to make decisions in the moment.”

Adi Gaskell presents Do looks matter in recruitment? | Chartered Management Institute posted at The Management Blog, saying, “A new study has revealed interesting insights into how looks influence the recruitment process.”
JS: This subject may not be polite to talk about, but it does impact you, and it pays to get smart about it.

Erik Samdahl presents We Need to Talk – i4cp posted at Productivity Blog, saying, “A researcher’s perspective on internal communication.”

Alice Snell presents Six Engaging Talent Practices posted at Taleo Blog – Talent Management Solutions.

Nick McCormick presents Get Hard Results Through Soft Skills posted at Joe and Wanda – on Management, saying, “In this ten minute Management Tips Podcast, Susan Cramm, president of Valuedance, talks about how to build a coalition of support in order to achieve results”

Sig presents Timing is Everything! Or is it?? posted at Zen and Mountain Biking, saying, “Manage your decision to get things done”

William Matthies presents Business Caution posted at Business Wisdom: Words to Manage By, saying, “Knowing when not to, is at least if not more important than knowing when to.”

executive development

Mike Myatt presents Identifying Leaders | N2Growth Blog posted at N2 Growth Blog, saying, “I hope you enjoy this post…”

other leadershipy stuff

Benjamin McCall shows What you NEED to be an effective trainer at Rethink HR

SpiKe presents Newspapers And The Forgotten Art Of Being Informed — Part-Time Wage Slave posted at Part-Time Wage Slave.

Chris Young presents Three Reasons Why Small Companies Do Not Use Pre-Employment Personality Assessments posted at Maximize Possibility Blog.

Plus

The plus is Becky Robinson’s July Roundup at LeaderTalk all about leaders and communications.

First, from Tanmay Vora, “Connecting, Building Relationships and Team Success,” gives leaders tips about how to communicate well and connect others in relationships.

It’s important to make communication clear and understandable –the first time. Miki Saxon tells you how in this post: “Clarifying Communication.”

Wally Bock has some great ideas for bosses in this post “Conversation: A Key Supervisory Tool.”

Listening is an important skill for leaders. Be sure to read all three of these posts from Mary Jo Asmus for some ideas about how to improve your listening skills.

We have weak relationships, according to Randy Seitz, because we don’t communicate well. This great post gives some ideas about how to cultivate quality communication.

Improve your ability to communicate by removing these communication blockers, Dan Rockwell says in this post.

Social media provides a great platform for leaders to communicate with others, leveraging influence. Read more in this post from Griff Wigley.

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Today we’re going to start with the general and move to the specific.

Last year we saw a generational shift during the Presidential election and that generational shift is happening in business, too.

Ethisphere recently spoke with William W. George, a professor of management at Harvard Business School who is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic and currently a director of both ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs. He talked about how leadership in business is going through a huge and dramatic transformation as the baby boom gives way to younger executives with very different ways of seeing the world, connecting and working. He also talked about what it takes to be a strong leader in a challenging time.

George considers Chip Conley too old at 49 to be one of those transformational leaders, which just goes to show how silly it is to define things by a random circumstance like birth date. It may seem to work as a generality for marketers, but it rarely holds up on a case-by-case basis. In a delightful post, Conley talks about his leadership lessons during junior high.

No, what Danari [13 year old grandson] wanted to know is which classes had the most profound impact on me as a leader today?

I do like Bob Sutton’s stuff, he’s a great writer and he always makes sense. In this post he looks the boss as a shield, not for herself, but for her people.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic lately, since it’s the focus of an article I’m publishing in September’s issue of Harvard Business Review called “The Boss as Human Shield,” and of one chapter in Good Boss, Bad Boss. There are many nuances to how bosses protect their followers, but it’s a useful simplification to say that the protection must be both tangible and emotional.

The recent stories of unbridled greed makes you think that nothing would surprise you, but any time you think that another story comes along and you realize that you ain’t seen nothing yet. The story of David H. Brooks, CEO of DHB, which makes body armor for the military and police, fits that category. It’s not just his greed, although that is stunning,

“What makes it interesting isn’t that there is anything novel legally about it, but just how egregious this guy’s alleged behavior is, how gross the abuses are and how much greed is involved,” said Meredith R. Miller, an associate law professor at Touro College in Central Islip, N.Y.

but it was his defense that blew me away.

His lawyers also defended the hiring of prostitutes for employees and board members, arguing in court papers that it represented a legitimate business expense “if Mr. Brooks thought such services could motivate his employees and make them more productive.”

Unbelievable.

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How important is leadership (in its generally accepted definition) with regards to student results and where does/should it come from?

The Science Codex writes about a new study funded by The Wallace Foundation gives interesting, but not surprising, insight.

“The rubber hits the road in the classroom; that’s where the learning happens,” said Kyla Wahlstrom. “Leadership is important because it sets the conditions and the expectations in the school that there will be excellent instruction and there will be a culture of ongoing learning for the educators and for the students in the school.” …

The study demonstrates a strong, positive link between educational leaders — particularly principals — and student learning outcomes.

I’s not surprising because we all know that in the workplace most people live up—or down—to their boss’ expectations and it’s been shown that kids do, too.

If you don’t feel like reading the whole study, the Codex lists the main findings, among them

Higher-performing schools generally ask for more input and engagement from a wider variety of stakeholders.

In districts where levels of student learning are high, district leaders are more likely to emphasize goals and initiatives that reach beyond minimum state expectations for student performance.

The stark lack of district support for principals’ professional development and a lack of regular contact between most principals and their district office.

Input from all stakeholders…engagement…goals…initiatives…striving for excellence…professional development. This is what works, what motivates most humans and leads to positive results.

Not surprising that it would be applicable in education, but not happening, either.

Flickr image credit: The Wallace Foundation

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How can a week of discussion focused on ethics and cheating not touch on politics? Especially when it’s that time of year and media is filling the air with conversation, clamor and rants by and about those running for public office.

It’s a frustrating time for those who don’t blindly vote an ideological ticket; frustrating because most campaigning is focused on trashing the opponent as opposed to anything constructive.

I listen to people complain about the negativity when it’s aimed at their candidate, while sagely nodding at its appropriateness when coming from their side.

I listen to the rants against incumbents, but hear little about what should be done, other than ideological platitudes.

They all talk of the importance of leadership, while demonstrating none.

In a post a couple of years ago I wrote, “Sadly, the oxymoronic coupling of ‘leader’ and ‘politician’ usually is just plain moronic.”

Proof of that is showcased in an analysis of how Rod Blagojevich got elected.

How did we, the people, end up with this mess?

It can’t just be blamed on Obama or even on Bush—it’s been developing for more than seven decades.

It stems from our collective MAP and the arrogant world-view we developed after WWII; the abandonment of our melting pot roots; the entitled mindset that taught generations of Americans to covet and indulge in unsustainable lifestyles and, more recently, the replacement of thought by ideology.

How can we, the people, clean it up? How can we find more statesmen and fewer politicians?

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There are many ways to consider leadership’s future and I often focus on schools and education (not the same thing) and kids—who are the leaders, actual and positional, tomorrow.

But there is another view of leadership’s future worth considering and that is of leadership as an industry, as opposed to an action or description.

Make no mistake, leadership, directly and indirectly, is definitely an industry.

Consider the standard definition of ‘industry’: A category used to describe a company’s primary business activity, usually determined by the largest source of a company’s revenues.

From individual coaches to major consultants and every size in-between, thousands of people earn their daily bread and pay their mortgages with money made through their activities in the leadership industry. Even those who aren’t paid in money are earning something, whether it’s enhanced reputation, a way to spread their opinions/beliefs, an ego boost or something still more esoteric.

I’m not saying that this is a bad thing or a good thing, but it is a thing worth noting.

In a previous post I warned of the need to digest and tweak expert information as opposed to swallowing it whole and this is even more important when it comes to leadership, considering the vast volume of it and the media’s constant focus and insistence that it is leadership that separates the winners and losers.

Even if you subscribe to that idea you need to develop a definition that is relevant to your world and stands the test of time, not some offered up by the industry.

Leadership terms are casually thrown around, applied by some to any and every action that a person does, may do or should do and by others only to the actions/words of those in positional leadership roles.

Perhaps these two points are worth accepting, although I’m sure many will disagree with me,

1. Leadership is an industry in which people, directly or indirectly, earn their living.
2. Leadership information comes in a multiplicity of forms and the quality varies widely.

Accepting these two ideas results in one conclusion: like investing information, leadership information should be digested, internalized and tweaked for your individual needs at both that point in your life and in your future.

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It’s a new month and Dan McCarthy over at Great Leadership is hosting this month’s Leadership Development Carnival. The 36 posts are loaded with useful information and helpful ways to improve your skills.

Enjoy!

Over at The People Equation, Jennifer V. Miller advocates for “management by asking” in her post “Socrates Was On to Something”:

Wally Bock presents Once Upon a Time posted at Three Star Leadership Blog. “ Lots of things have changed since I started in business. But the most important thing has stayed the same.”

Learn how to get the most out of blogs, books, seminars and other resources, whether the subject is management, leadership or any other self-improvement effort, the process for using the information is the same. Miki Saxon presents How to Improve Your Management Skill at MAPping Company Success.

Managers can’t let fear rule their decision making – Sharlyn Lauby presents Handling Workplace Retaliation posted at HR Bartender.

Mary Jo Asmus presents 7 Ways to Enjoy Others at Work posted at Aspire-CS.

Jane Perdue presents A Lobby Display of True Leader Colors posted at Get Your Leadership BIG On!.

If you want to really understand your culture, take time to understand the underlying rules: spoken and unspoken. Steve Roesler presents Want to Influence? Know the Norms posted at All Things Workplace.

Mark Stelzner presents SHRM 2010: Observations & Conclusions posted at Inflexion Point.

Alice Snell presents Public Sector Hiring Reform posted at Taleo Blog – Talent Management Solutions.

Art Petty presents Leadership Caffeine: Prepare Your Mind to Conquer Presentation Anxiety posted at Management Excellence.

Kevin W. Grossman presents Valuing meaningful work always plays better to the bottom line. posted at HRmarketer.com Blog.

Nothing is more inspiring than a noble purpose. Do you see your work as a “job” or a mission? You will be surprised how easy it is to make your purpose special. Mike Henry Sr. presents Inspiring Purpose posted at Lead Change Group.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has built an amazing culture. Most of us can learn a lot from what he did and how he did it. But there is one lesson we should NOT learn from Zappos. Anne Perschel presents What NOT to Learn from Zappos posted at Germane Insights.

Leaders make many decisions each day. What factors do you consider when making decisions? Becky Robinson presents Factors in Decision Making posted at Mountain State University LeaderTalk.

7 useful tips to take leadership repertoire to the next level: Utpal Vaishnav presents How To Caffeinate Your Leadership Repertoire? posted at Utpal Writes.

A fun post – a poem that links how we work with what we are seeing in the World Cup Football matches. David Zinger presents Working Zingers: Work as the World Cup posted at David Zinger Employee Engagement.

There is always friction between a unit and its higher headquarters, no matter the organization. In “Those Idiots Up At HQ,” Leader Business examines the firing of General McChrystal from a personal perspective. Tom Magness presents Those Idiots Up At HQ posted at Leader Business.

NY Times best selling author, Chuck Martin, shares his Management Tip, Play to your strengths, in this ten minute podcast. Nick McCormick presents Play to People?s Strengths posted at Joe and Wanda on Management.

With leadership development being defined and implemented differently from business to business, it is often difficult to find or create measurement around LDP programs. In this post I describe 7 approached to measure the leadership programs you create. Benjamin McCall presents Metrics of Leadership: 7 measurements for Leadership Development, at REThink HR.

This post links together England’s demise in the World Cup, Boris Groysberg’s new book on talent and performance, and whether what applies (may apply) in football / soccer applies in business too. Jon Ingham presents Chasing Stars and Socialism at Social Advantage.

Highlights an eye-opening study which finds that Talent Management systems are gender-biased and talk about what to do about it. Meg Bear presents Are your leadership competencies gender biased? posted at TalentedApps.

The ultimate motivations comes from knowing who we are and courageously acting upon that knowledge. What will you do in your “moment of truth”? Janna Rust presents Purposeful Leadership: Your Moment of Truth: What Will You Choose? posted at Purposeful Leadership.

Laura Schroeder presents Is Attrition a Key Component of Retention? posted at Working Girl.

Anna Farmery presents The Life Cycle of Thinking posted at The Engaging Brand.

Many managers don’t trust that their systems hire and keep people that will make good decisions. They “solve” this problem by giving staff no authority, which isn’t a solution. John Hunter presents Trust Your Staff to Make Decisions posted at Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog.

Research from i4cp/AMA reveal four key practices all companies should follow when developing global leaders. Erik Samdahl presents Four Key Practices for Developing Global Leaders posted at Productivity Blog.

Michael Lee Stallard presents The Need to Respect Legitimate Authority and One’s Colleagues posted at Michael Lee Stallard.

Nissim Ziv presents Problem Solving Interview posted at Job Interview & Career Guide.

There are lessons we can all learn from General Stanley McChrystal’s recent resignation. Sometimes choosing our words wisely is more important than sharing opinions. Kathy C presents Lessons Learned from General Stanley McChrystal posted at The Thriving Small Business.

Wise Bread presents Freedom From the Day Job posted at Wisebread.

This post speaks of reducing the clutter in Leadership and Learning & keeping things simple. Dominic Rajesh presents Clutter-free Learning and Leadership posted at Dom’s Blog ….

Bob Lieberman presents Gas! posted at Cultivating Creativity – Leadership Development for the Creative Economy.

Eliminating negative has a greater impact than accentuated positive. The challenge is to eliminate the negative in a way that does not create more negative. Michael Cardus presents Eliminating Negative to Increase Positive posted at Create-Learning Team Building & Leadership Blog.

Friso presents An introduction to Corporate Performance Management | Everyone can manage posted at Everyone can Manage.

This post talks about how to manage others successfully in a nonprofit setting. But it can be applied to any business. Mazarine presents Wild Woman Fundraising Advanced Fundraising: Managing Others posted at Wild Woman Fundraising.

Bauhinia Solutions presents The Benefits of Coaching posted at Bauhinia Solutions.

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That the things I read influence what I write as is obvious from today’s post and yesterday’s companion piece.

It started with summaries of, and links to, five major leadership research articles in The Washington Post, one of which concluded that “increasing team cohesiveness” was a far more important leadership act than the traditional one of “driving results.”

Other of the studies focused on the need for leaders throughout the organization, not just in the C suite, and the growing need for decision-making that considers more than the bottom line.

Next, a post by Wally Bock led me to Mike Myatt’s excellent post on defining leadership and the ensuing discussion, which is well worth reading.

But I have a question that I believe goes to the heart of any effort to define leadership.

Does your definition of leadership require the leader to agree with you?

Let’s look at Mike’s definition, since it is one with which most people would be comfortable.

“Leadership is the professed desire and commitment to serve others by subordinating personal interests to the needs of those being led through effectively demonstrating the experience, wisdom and discernment necessary to leverage trust & influence to cause the right things, to happen for the right reasons, at the right times.”

Would you consider the person a good leader if the right things happened at the right time, but for reasons with which you didn’t agree, i.e., their ideology was different from yours?

This distinction is most obvious in political and religious areas, but is present in business, too.

For example, if someone provided a solution to the oil slick who espoused an ideology the opposite of yours would you welcome the solution or would the differing belief/philosophy cause you to respond negatively?

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Leadership has become a catchword, a panacea, a supposed solution to whatever ails us as a nation and a world. It is what people get degrees in, strive to be and worry that they are failures if they aren’t recognizes as leaders.

There is a fantasy that positive leadership is an integral trait of positional leaders no matter how many times that has proved to be a false assumption.

Another assumption about positional leaders is their ability to see the big picture; also proven to be untrue. Here are two excellent examples of narrow, short-term thinking—one stupidity that just happened in a small biz and the other from a corporate titan 56 years ago.

The former is another stupidity from Subway, the company best know for $5 foot longs and a bullet-ridden foot. The most recent foot shot happened in Dartmouth, NS when a worker was fired for giving her own lunch to two fellow apartment dwellers after a fire left them homeless (she also offered them lodging in her own apartment which wasn’t damaged in the fire); Quiznos, being more publicity-wise, hired her.

The older stupidity was perpetrated by the original Bell Labs, one of the most prolific research organizations that ever existed, and is a story that has been repeated in one way or another by companies large and small ever since.

Executives recognized that many of those moving up the management ladder lacked the broad thinking skills that would enable them to function as leaders in the future, so they set out to provide an intense program to remedy the situation. The remedy succeeded beyond their expectations in that the attendees learned to thing for themselves and those thoughts didn’t dovetail with the slavish corporate mentality the executives desired the program was shut down, … executives came out of the program more confident and more intellectually engaged, they were also less interested in putting the company’s bottom line ahead of their commitments to their families and communities. (I hope you take a moment to read this fascinating story.)

It should be noted that authoritarian leaders, whether of companies or countries, have always known that education and strong positive values are anathema to their continued power.

How do you define leadership?

Join me tomorrow for a look at this question.

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