New Dance Challenge for the Office!

Whichever person/team loses the challenge, they must do a public dance of this at the next team night!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEWVwgDnuzE

Quote

"Habits are powerful factors in our lives.  Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character and produce our effectiveness...or ineffectiveness."

--THe 7 Habits of HighlyEffective People, page 46

Leading in Emotional Times

Written in 2002 from Boston Consulting Group, this article on managing during a recession continues to be relevant for today's leaders.   During unceratin times, managers should reach out to individuals on an emotional level to increase confidence and hope for the future.

Leading in Emotional Times

Emotions and values drive behavior. They are the fuel of human performance. In these tumultuous times, spiraling emotions and a hunger for values are providing leaders with the opportunity of a lifetime to create change—whether that change is to chart new directions, establish new priorities and work practices, or inspire their organizations to achieve unprecedented levels of performance.

Since September 11, the longing for community and purpose has been intense. The job losses and insecurity generated by the current recession have only magnified those feelings. People in all walks of life yearn for leaders to provide context, meaning, and direction—as well as opportunities to make positive contributions. Now it’s up to business leaders to step up and provide their followers with a sense of purpose and a chance to make a difference.

The Personal Touch

As always, the right strategy for change is critical. Equally important, however, is the way the organization is led to embrace and then to execute that change. In a period of uncertainty and high anxiety, six fundamental tenets of leadership are particularly crucial.

Be highly visible. In times of stress, the more available and approachable leaders are the better. You need to be out and about. You need to interact constantly with employees, customers, and suppliers. Avoid communicating solely by memo—remoteness is not reassuring.

Provide relevant information. Everyone knows we’re in a recession. But they don’t know, and desperately need to hear, what their leaders think it means for them. People will not expect you to have definitive answers. But they will expect you to have contingency plans for different scenarios and to be able to explain what the different plans will require of them.

By telling employees and suppliers what you know, what you don’t know, and how you will make decisions—and by communicating that information frequently and in a personal manner—you will provide comfort while helping people feel in control of their own lives.

Ask for help and share the credit. Many leaders find themselves in unfamiliar territory: having to lead during a major recession and a new kind of war. No one expects a single person to have all the answers, but your employees and suppliers do hope you will have the wisdom to know when to ask for help from people inside and outside the company in order to get through these tough times. And, of course, share the credit. Making space for others to contribute and be recognized has enormous payoffs.

Be human. People want to think their leader is in control and in charge, but they won’t go the extra mile for someone who is all logic and no emotion. Especially in times like these, that kind of behavior is a turnoff. It makes people wonder, Doesn’t he care about what has happened or what we’re facing?In other words, it’s not just the information that you share that matters; it’s also how you communicate that information.

Speeches at large group meetings or videotaped addresses will not suffice. You should also talk individually to as many people as you can. Take the time to listen—to show that you genuinely care about how your employees, suppliers, and customers feel. Just as important is conveying how you feel. Authenticity, connection, and humanity are powerful aspects of leadership—and ones that cannot be faked. A major reason why Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was so effective in the wake of the terrorist attacks was his demeanor: he was calm and strong, while also being human and vulnerable.

Offer hope and a renewed sense of purpose. Business leaders need to put a stake in the ground for the future, to show the way to a better tomorrow. People can endure a lot when they believe that there will be an end to the turmoil and that the hardships and demanding initiatives are part of a credible strategy for creating a brighter future.

Encourage people to get excited. The events of recent months have been so depressing that people often feel shallow, disconnected, or even guilty if they are in a good mood. What people need now is permission to feel good, to be excited about their work and confident about the future. The challenge for leaders is not only to give direction and goals worth striving for but also to exemplify the energy and enthusiasm needed to get there.

Connecting Emotionally

The yearning for leadership has never been greater. Companies led by leaders who can connect emotionally to their employees, suppliers, and customers—and who can satisfy the hunger for direction and purpose—will emerge vastly stronger from these tumultuous times than they entered them.

Three Basics of Leadership

Three Leadership Traits that Never Go Out of Style

Click here for the original article on HBR.org.

When I was a kid, the children in our neighborhood would play in a nearby park every evening. Our undisputed leader was a boy barely a year older than I was, I think. He introduced the new kids to everyone, taught them the rules of games we played, and made sure no one felt left out. We also trusted him blindly because he had our backs whenever we messed up.

None of the leadership lessons that I have learned, unlearned, or relearned ever since have left as indelible an impact as the ones I learnt as a child. Three, in particular, stand out:

Trust: Do your team members trust you? Do they accept that you will, without doubt, stand up for them whatever the situation? Only that kind of trust makes people feel empowered, gives them the courage to innovate, take risks, and to push themselves beyond their comfort zones to find success.

David Maister, Charles Green, and Robert Galford, who wrote The Trusted Advisor, outline four attributes on which to assess your trust quotient: Credibility, reliability, intimacy and self-orientation. Take this online assessment to evaluate yourself on this parameter.

Empathy: Did you notice that look of anxiety as your teammate walked into office this morning? Or did you miss it because you were busy fretting about deadlines? Do you treat your team members as human beings, and not just as workers?

Emotional intelligence is widely recognized as a leadership quality, but being transparent about your emotions isn't. I'm puzzled by the fact that leaders are expected to maintain a stiff upper lip, as the British say, at work. Why can't we rejoice in our successes, or show concern about our setbacks rather than taking them in our stride? Why don't we laugh and cry with the highs and lows in the lives of our colleagues? We are human beings, and knowing that our bosses care for us is a fundamental human need.

Mentorship: No matter how talented we may be, we crave the guiding hand, the mentor who will teach us the rules of the game. Pat Riley, the widely respected NBA coach, once said that there was no great player who didn't want to be coached. The same holds true of work. Would you be where you are today if your first manager hadn't nudged you in the right direction? When people are perplexed about what the future holds for their organizations and themselves, mentorship is critical.

Little did I know when I was out playing in the shadows of the Himalayas that I was learning some principles that would never go out of fashion. At a time when people everywhere are questioning their leaders' values, those characteristics seem to resonate even more.

Read your way to leadership!

We completely agree with this article!   Talent is Overrated and 50 Success Classics are currently at the top of our managers' reading lists, and our library keeps on growing!

For Those Who Want to Lead, Read

by John Coleman  |  

When David Petraeus visited the Harvard Kennedy School in 2009, one of the meetings he requested was with author Doris Kearns Goodwin. Petraeus, who holds a PhD in International Relations from Princeton, is a fan of Team of Rivals and wanted time to speak to the famed historian about her work. Apparently, the great general (and current CIA Director) is something of a bibliophile.

He's increasingly an outlier. Even as global literacy rates are high (84%), people are reading less and less deeply. The National Endowment for the Arts (PDF) has found that "[r]eading has declined among every group of adult Americans," and for the first time in American history, "less than half of the U.S. adult American population is reading literature." Literacy has been improving in countries like India and China, but that literacy may not translate into more or deeper reading.

This is terrible for leadership, where my experience suggests those trends are even more pronounced. Business people seem to be reading less — particularly material unrelated to business. But deep, broad reading habits are often a defining characteristic of our greatest leaders and can catalyze insight, innovation, empathy, and personal effectiveness.

Note how many business titans are or have been avid readers. According to The New York Times, Steve Jobs had an "inexhaustible interest" in William Blake; Nike founder Phil Knight so reveres his library that in it you have to take off your shoes and bow; and Harman Industries founder Sidney Harman called poets "the original systems thinkers," quoting freely from Shakespeare and Tennyson. In Passion & Purpose, David Gergen notes that Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein reads dozens of books each week. And history is littered not only with great leaders who were avid readers and writers (remember, Winston Churchill won his Nobel prize in Literature, not Peace), but with business leaders who believed that deep, broad reading cultivated in them the knowledge, habits, and talents to improve their organizations.

The leadership benefits of reading are wide-ranging. Evidence suggests reading can improve intelligence and lead to innovation and insight. Some studies have shown, for example, that reading makes you smarter through "a larger vocabulary and more world knowledge in addition to the abstract reasoning skills." Reading — whether Wikipedia, Michael Lewis, or Aristotle — is one of the quickest ways to acquire and assimilate new information. Many business people claim that reading across fields is good for creativity. And leaders who can sample insights in other fields, such as sociology, the physical sciences, economics, or psychology, and apply them to their organizations are more likely to innovate and prosper.

Reading can also make you more effective in leading others. Reading increases verbal intelligence (PDF), making a leader a more adept and articulate communicator. Reading novels can improve empathy and understanding of social cues, allowing a leader to better work with and understand others — traits that author Anne Kreamer persuasively linked to increased organizational effectiveness, and to pay raises and promotions for the leaders who possessed these qualities. And any business person understands that heightened emotional intelligence will improve his or her leadership and management ability.

Finally, an active literary life can make you more personally effective by keeping you relaxed and improving health. For stressed executives, reading is the best way to relax, as reading for six minutes can reduce stress by 68%, and some studies suggest reading may even fend off Alzheimer's, extending the longevity of the mind.

Reading more can lead to a host of benefits for business people of all stripes, and broad, deep reading can make you a better leader. So how can you get started? Here are a few tips:
Join a reading group. One of my friends meets bimonthly with a group of colleagues to read classics in philosophy, fiction, history, and other areas. Find a group of friends who will do the same with you.

• Vary your reading. If you're a business person who typically only reads business writing, commit to reading one book this year in three areas outside your comfort zone: a novel, a book of poetry, or a nonfiction piece in science, biography, history, or the arts.
• Apply your reading to your work. Are you struggling with a problem at work? Pick up a book on neuroscience or psychology and see if there are ways in which you can apply the lessons from those fields to your profession.
• Encourage others. After working on a project with colleagues, I'll often send them a book that I think they'll enjoy. Try it out; it might encourage discussion, cross-application of important lessons, and a proliferation of readers in your workplace.
• Read for fun. Not all reading has to be developmental. Read to relax, escape, and put your mind at ease.

Reading has many benefits, but it is underappreciated as an essential component of leadership development. So, where have you seen reading benefit your life? What suggestions would you have for others seeking to grow their leadership through reading?

Billionaire Philanthropist

Love to see businesses and their executives seriously involved in philanthropy!  Link to original post here from the wonderful Kottke.org.

Real life Brewster's MillionsAUG 14 2012

In 1985's Brewster's Millions, Richard Pryor played a man who stood to inherit $300 million if he could spend $30 million in a month without telling anyone why. Great movie. They should remake it. It's not a perfect analogy, but billionaire Charles F. Feeney is trying to spend all of his money just the same. In 1982, he used $6 billion of his fortune to fund Atlantic Philanthropies. Feeney was able to run the foundation anonymously for 15 years by utilizing Bermuda's flexible disclosure laws. This also meant he wasn't able to deduct these donations from his taxes.

He's raised his profile lately with the hope of inspiring other rich people to spend their money the same way, and Warren Buffett refers to him as the "spiritual leader" of the effort to encourage billionaires to pledge half their fortune to philanthropy.

When the last of its money has been spent and it closes its doors sometime around 2020, Atlantic Philanthropies will be by far the largest such organization to have voluntarily shut itself down, according to Steven Lawrence, director of research for the Foundation Center. (The much bigger Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation plans to shut down 50 years after its founders die.)

By its end, Atlantic will have invested about $7.5 billion in direct medical care, immigration reform, education, criminal justice advocacy and peace-building initiatives. It was an invisible hand at the end of armed conflicts in South Africa and in Northern Ireland, providing funds to buttress constitutional politics over paramilitary action. It has supported marriage-equality campaigns, death penalty opponents and contributed $25 million to push health care reform.

Excellent article on entrepreneurship, and using existing business models to lower the risks of owning one's own business!

Link to the original article here.

Creative Business – Tie Society

2012 by Mark Shead

Some time back I wrote an article called You Are Self-Employed. The premise was that being an employee doesn’t really offer any job security and if it doesn’t offer job security, you may want to consider starting your own business. I also mentioned that it is probably easier to start a business today than it ever has been. The comments were where things got interesting though. It turns out a lot of people think of starting a business as something that requires huge amounts of capital. But not every company requires millions of dollars to start–particularly if you are willing to be creative.

This past week I got a call from a company that is doing just that–being very creative. They are called Tie Society and the best way to describe them is Netflix for neckties. The idea started when Zac Gittens and Otis Collins began trading ties to keep variety in their wardrobe without buying new ties all the time. They took that idea and created their company that lets you borrow ties, keep them until you don’t need them anymore, and then send them back for different ties. Pricing is $11 to $50 per month. The cheapest plan lets you have a single item out each month while the top plan lets you have 10.

If you only wear a tie every few month, Tie Society may not make sense. But if you wear a tie every day the economics can start looking attractive–particularly if you are in a position where you need to have a lot of variety in the way you dress. Tie Society also gives you the ability to purchase the ties that you decide you need as a permanent part of your wardrobe.

In addition to ties, Tie Society also carries cuff links and pocket squares. The shipping process is very much like NetFlix. You get a mailer prepaid mailer that can be used to ship items back when you are ready for a change.

The thing that impressed me the most about Tie Society is the creativity that went into their business model. $80 seems to be typical price for a tie at a men’s clothing store, but sales are very common at up to 50% off. Tie Society skips the clothing store and buys direct, so their costs are presumably much lower. At their $30 plan, the cost is probably similar to buying a new tie every other month, but Tie Society gives you 5 items and the ability to swap them out at any time.  So for the consumer who wears ties all the time and needs lots of variety the pricing makes sense.

Ties are also one of the few things that are pretty much interchangeable. This let them launch their business without needing a huge inventory to start with. I can wear the same tie as 98% of the other men in the world. But pretty much every suit jacket I have has been altered in someway to make it fit better. Ties are unique in their interchangeability and allows this company to launch their business without requiring a huge investment of capital in nearly duplicate inventory.

Ties, pocket squares and cuff links also are easy and inexpensive to ship back and forth using the postal service. And ties don’t take up much space. They don’t need a huge warehouse to house there inventory.

So back to the idea of starting your own business, if you are looking for an example of a small business with a lot of creativity behind it, take a look at Tie Society. If you want to start your own business, don’t try to copy their business idea, but by all means pay attention to the way they creatively came up with a business that has a good chance of success without requiring a huge amount of startup capital.