Back in January I provided a link to The Mix (Management Information Exchange) and recommended that you register and read hacks of interest to you.

If I hadn’t done so it’s doubtful I would have heard about Ricardo Semler and Semco Group.

Since the mid-80s when Semler arrived on the scene, that has meant an ever-evolving experiment in upending the organizational status quo: no organizational chart, no fixed offices or working hours, no fixed CEO, no HR department, no five-year plan (or two- or one-year-plan), no job descriptions or permanent positions, no approvals necessary—and an endless array of clever practices and initiatives to increase individual autonomy and agency, participation at every level, trust, and informality.

The result? Market success—Semco is private but Semler reports average annual revenue growth at 40% and profitability. (…)

“We constantly talk about passion—serving customers passionately, filling in forms passionately—but what if we created the conditions for people to feel exhilaration, to get involved to the point they shout ‘yes!’ and give each other high fives because they did it their way and it worked?”

Would your people thrive in a going concern that functions more like a startup than most startups?

If yes, why? If not, why not?

Knowing why it would/does work is useful because you can share the knowledge and lessons learned with others.

If you don’t believe similar actions, tweaked for your organization, would work you need to ask why not.

You can ask your peers or, better yet your people, but first ask the mirror.

You may need to look no farther.

Flickr image credit: Cea

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.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hikingartist/4582034468/

It’s been awhile since I posted one of my rules and this seems like a good time to give you another.

At first look it may seem to be targeted to a teen or twenty-something audience, but I don’t think so.

I think it’s applicable to anyone breathing.

It’s what you learn
after
you know it all
that counts!

Image credit: Mark Brannan on flickr

Failure isn’t really failure unless nothing is learned.

Learning from it means that you need to look at it differently.

Few individuals or companies enjoy dwelling on what they consider failures; most pick themselves up and move forward; the strongest dissect what went wrong.

They take the time to decompose the thoughts and actions that didn’t work and document them in a ‘lessons learned’ report.

Good so far.

But what happens to the report? Is it neatly filed with the project information or under another heading?

Investing effort in lessons learned reports only to file them makes it more likely that the errors will be repeated again in the future.

And that is frequently the case.

Instead, if the goal is to learn, then learn to LAUD IT.

Look at what went wrong, not what worked;

Analyze what was done;

Understand why it was done;

Determine how to fix/improve both thoughts and actions.

IT refers to using technology to share the information, making it easily available to everyone and searchable.

Try it. LAUD IT.

Image credit: Biology Big Brother on flickr