5 Levels of Leadership - John Maxwell

No explanations required. Enough said! 

Likeability means Leverage

From the book "The Truth About Managing Your Career ......And Nothing But The Truth" by Dr. Karen Otazo

What’s the Status of Your Relationship With Innovation?

Nice article on Harvard Business Review
http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/09/whats-the-status-of-your-relationship-with-innovation/

• In 2008, the word 'Innovation' appeared 1,733 times in earnings calls for 435 large publicly traded companies. That’s an average of about four mentions per company (Starbucks topped the list with 139 mentions).
•  In the last four quarters where full data are available, the total was 3,299, or about 7.5 mentions per company (Nike, recently named the world’s most innovative company, topped the list with 239 mentions)
• In the last four quarters where full data are available, the total was 3,299, or about 7.5 mentions per company (Nike, recently named the world’s most innovative company, topped the list with 239 mentions).
• Innovation — particularly that which pushes a company into new markets or new businesses — requires a serious ongoing commitment

So how can you tell how truly committed your organization is? Inspired by the somewhat tongue-in-cheek quizzes that populate fashion magazines, we created a short quiz. Find a colleague, and see how you fall on the following seven questions.

1. Who is working on innovation?
a) What’s innovation? (You might want to stop the quiz now.)
b) Some people spend bounded time on innovation (e.g., “Free Thinking Fridays”)
c) We have dedicated resources who eat, breathe, and sleep innovation

2. What’s in it for them?
a) Suffering — it’s their job. If they screw up, they’ll feel it
b) Glory — the spotlight shines bright when they succeed
c) Riches — we have specific incentive programs for innovation

3. What is the background of the people working on it?
a) Some of our best performers
b) Internal talent that has a demonstrated history of successful innovation
c) Blend of internal talent and external hires with a proven track record

4. What are they working on?
a) Nothing specific — it takes 1,000 flowers, right?
b) All hands are on deck for a single make-or-break “bet the company” initiative
c) We have identified a handful of strategic opportunity areas we are exploring

5. Where does the money come from?
a) Our budget is focused on operating priorities, so there isn’t any money for it
b) We don’t have a budget for innovation, but we find money when we need it
c) We have a dedicated budget for innovation

6. What is leadership’s role? 
a) Get out of the way — we don’t want to constrain it
b) We have a special quarterly meeting where senior leaders talk about it
c) We have a member of the executive committee or board who owns it

7. Word association — innovation is…
a) Random! We just hope for the best
b) Fun! We support it but don’t constrain it.
c) A discipline! We approach it systematically.

Give yourself one point for every “A” answer, three points for every “B” answer, and five for every “C” answer in the right column.

If you scored:

• Fewer than 10 points: You tease! You are still just flirting with innovation.
• Between 10 and 25 points: All right, you’ve had your innovation fling. Are you ready to get serious?
• More than 26 points: Congratulations! You have made the life-long commitment to innovation

Ask colleagues to take the version of the quiz that we have posted at www.innoquiz.com. Once we get enough data we’ll summarize the results to see what patterns emerge.

Innovation has its moments of fun, no doubt, but success requires discipline and hard work. Just like many other areas of life, real results don’t come without real commitment

Blackberry: Once Upon a Time

BlackBerry’s decline has become a case study about what happens when a tech giant fails to innovate in a consumer-technology market evolving at breakneck speed. 

BlackBerry’s failure to keep up with Apple and Google was a consequence of errors in its strategy and vision.

First, after growing to dominate the corporate market, BlackBerry failed to anticipate that consumers — not business customers — would drive the smartphone revolution. 

Second, BlackBerry was blindsided by the emergence of the “app economy,” which drove massive adoption of iPhone and Android-based devices.

Third, BlackBerry failed to realize that smartphones would evolve beyond mere communication devices to become full-fledged mobile entertainment hubs.

Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/09/24/the-fatal-mistake-that-doomed-blackberry/#ixzz2frDIaYED


 

The Lewis Model Explains Every Culture In The World

A really nice article I read on Business Insider. 

Lewis plots countries in relation to three categories:

Linear-actives — those who plan, schedule, organize, pursue action chains, do one thing at a time. Germans and Swiss are in this group.

Multi-actives — those lively, loquacious peoples who do many things at once, planning their priorities not according to a time schedule, but according to the relative thrill or importance that each appointment brings with it. Italians, Latin Americans and Arabs are members of this group.

Reactives — those cultures that prioritize courtesy and respect, listening quietly and calmly to their interlocutors and reacting carefully to the other side's proposals. Chinese, Japanese and Finns are in this group

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-lewis-model-2013-9#ixzz2euJrIybc

Better Writing

These are some of the questions that I have often have when writing a document. Someone I know was kind enough to share some of the writing tips from his style guide.

• Single space after a PERIOD
• Periods and commas are always inside the closing QUOTATION MARKS (e.g. he said, “I love eating Chocolate.” Or “Sometimes I just feel lazy,” Peter remarked.).
• Use a HYPHEN (-) for hyphenated words and use the EM DASH (—) for interruptions in the sentence/side notes. The em dash is an extended hyphen. It can be found by pressing shift + option and hyphen symbol on a Mac. There should be a space on both sides of the em dash.

RULES FOR NUMBERS:

• • Spell out whole numbers below 10 and use figures for 10 and above.
• • Numbers at the beginning of a sentence are spelled out.
• • A year/era in full doesn’t have an apostrophe before the s (e.g. 1930s).
• • A year/era in short has a backward apostrophe at the beginning (e.g. ’30s).

Why you need a Sponsor

If you thought finding and cultivating a mentor with clout would be your key to career success, you were dead wrong.

Mentors may offer an open door and helpful guidance, but little more. To win, you need a sponsor, says Sylvia Ann Hewlett, CEO of think tank The Center for Talent Innovation (CTI...

http://www.businessinsider.com/you-need-a-sponsor-to-fast-track-your-career-2013-9