Friday, November 26, 2010

Innovation Found in Female Leadership Traits

It may be time for you to tap into your "female" side in order to succeed in today's business environment, according to the book, Social Nation: How to Harness the Power of Social Media to Attract Customers, Motivate Employees, and Grow Your Business (Wiley/Available now). Author Barry Libert contends that the profound cultural shift that's taking place as social networks grow in popularity will raise the value of executives whose management style includes traits that have been traditionally considered "female."

Primary Traits listed include;
1) Listening
2) Knowing what you are not
3) Sharing Rewards
4) Understanding that Business is Personal

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Diverse Teams Improve Innovation

Why is it that our star performers do not necessarily create star teams? Is it even possible to improve the collective intelligence of a team and make them more innovative? That’s the question that a team of academics set for themselves.
Being a team themselves, of course they believed in collective intelligence but the harder question was: can it be measured? Is there a group equivalent of IQ? Can the collective intelligence of the group as a whole go above and beyond the abilities of the individual group members? And, if it can, what factors contribute to making a team smarter?

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Leading Change in a Web 2.1 World

Recent advances in Web 2.0 technology enable new leadership processes and guidelines that can create great value for organizations. In this important new book—the first title in the new Brookings series on Innovations in Leadership—management expert Jackson Nickerson proposes a combination of processes and guidelines utilizing Web 2.0 technology, which he refers to as Web 2.1, that will not only lead and direct change in an organization but actually accelerate it. He calls this set of processes and guidelines “ChangeCasting,” and it should be an important part of any organization’s leadership toolkit.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Innovation in Mobile Computing for Science and Technology

Enterprise mobile computing is a significant innovation having impact across all professional disciplines. The future vision for mobile computing is influencing science and technology and mobile applications have been developed to enhance education, access to global scientific references, chemical and biological utilities and medical tool sets. New mobile applications for science and technology can be hard to find so I thought I'd compile a list. I listed more that 70 science, research and technology applications designed for mobile devices.

Let me know if you find other great mobile science and technology application and I'll update this list.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Leadership 2025, Essential Qualities for the Future

A recent report on executive leadership reveals that conveying a great sense of vision, as well as a knack to anticipate business developments and respond to them in nimble fashion - will be the most critical leadership qualities for executives to cultivate through 2025. Leadership traits that served executives well in the past, such as a talent for boosterism or an ability to get everyone "on the same page", are now taking a backseat. These conclusions arrive after a decade in which the speed and volume of information has skyrocketed, while a rocky economy and globalization have presented a host of unique challenges demanding an overhaul of the leadership skills need to meet them. "Gone are the days where people are seeking a leader who simply embodies great salesmanship and builds consensus among followers" said Michael Kemper, president and CEO of MWW Group. "In today's global world-and due to the perfect storm of economic crisis, unprecedented competition and limited access to capital that we've experienced in recent years - people are longing for leaders who can anticipate, rather than react".

What leadership qualities do think will be essential in the future?

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Picking a Business Coach, Learn from Apple and Google Exec's

Have you ever considered getting a business coach. Apple's Steve Jobs and Google's Eric Schmidt are arch rivals in the mobile phone business, yet they share at least one thing in common. They both rely on Bill Campbell as a mentor and business coach. Campbell is the former CEO of Intuit (now chairman of the board) and he did exactly what Jobs and Schmidt are trying to do; build a publicly traded consumer-oriented technology company.

So how do you find a mentor and business coach? The key is to find someone who has done what you are attempting to do. Like Steve Jobs, Bill Campbell had led a company in which engineers wanted to make things complex while customers preferred easy-to-use products. Campbell successfully balanced those two interests at Intuit and therefore makes a good coach for Jobs. Eric Schmidt led Google from entrepreneurial leadership under Sergy Brin and Larry Page to an era of professional management while Brin and Page were still in the building. Likewise Campbell led Intuit while founder Scott Cook was still actively involved in the company. Campbell found a way to involve Cook without undermining his own authority to lead. Therefore Schmidt made a good choice in selecting Campbell as his coach.

Who is your mentor or business coach and how did you select them?

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Leadership Under Pressure

What is it that makes a good leader under pressure? A more important question is can one learn the traits required to lead under pressure? New York Times business writer Paul Sullivan, author of  Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don’t recounts a talk he gave at West Point on the subject.
All leaders under pressure display five traits, he said: focus, discipline, adaptability, being present, and fear and desire.

There are three things business leaders can learn that will help them be successful under pressure:
  1. Focused on a goal. Everything they do prepares them for the pressure filled moment and they know the responsibilities and the risks. Do you know what your primary mission is at work?
  2. Continuous improvement. They develop an organization that is continually striving to be better. When a mistake happens, they try not to let it happen a second time. Are you aligned with the right organization? Or if you’re leading that organization, are you prepared to change things that aren’t working, even if change could be hard or even a reversal of something you implemented?
  3. Practice for success. They know they have to be able to perform a task perfectly under normal conditions before they can expect to do it in a stressful situation. Can you say the same thing? Are you able to do your job at a high level every day? If not, then you should not be surprised when you make the wrong decisions under pressure.”
Will following this advice make you can lead under pressure? Well, maybe not–some people are just hard-coded for success in tough situations. But working at focusing on the objective, adaptability to the environment and improvement of skills sure puts whatever natural abilities you have in the best position to succeed when the going gets tough.

Have you developed any traits that help you lead under pressure?