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| November 20, 2007 |
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I love Thanksgiving. What a wonderful holiday! Its sole purpose is to remind us of the powerful energy of gratitude. And gratitude itself is a powerful expression of intention. When you send the energy of appreciation out into the world, I believe your likelihood of your intentions becoming reality is dramatically increased. I believe that when the collective energies outside of us - other people, other forms of life, our physical environment, higher powers - feel the energy of our appreciation, they react just like we do when someone expresses appreciation to us: they want even more to please us.
How does this apply to leadership? Simply put, leadership is ultimately about producing results, the practice of intention greatly increases the likelihood of your producing desired results, and the expression of gratitude is a powerful way to practice intention.
Happy Thanksgiving! |
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| November 19, 2007 |
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As readers of this blog and my book know, I've been talking for quite awhile about a leadership crisis across most sectors of society. The just-released results of the third annual Center for Leadership/U.S. News poll confirm the existence of the crisis and put some numbers to it.
Over 75% of people either strongly agree or agree that we have a leadership crisis today.
Nearly 48% believe the country is moving in a negative direction, with another 37% believing we are staying about the same. Only 14% believe we are moving ahead. 51% believe we are falling behind other nations.
63% believe we have worse leaders than we had 20 years ago. Only 18% believe we have better leaders today.
While 40% of people have a great deal of confidence in military leaders and 27% have a great deal of confidence in medical leaders, less than 25%, and in most cases far less than 25%, have that level of confidence in political, judiciary, educational, nonprofit, business, Wall Street, media, and entertainment leaders.
It's grim out there. New tools are needed to lead effectively. Check out The Source of Leadership. |
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| November 15, 2007 |
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| I have always been a fan of John Chambers, CEO of Cisco. For a lesson on how a master leader builds a responsive structure in what may be the most competitive and complex environment that a technology company has ever faced, check out the article entitled "Cisco's Display of Strength" in the November 12, 2007 issue of Fortune. Chambers reinvented the company after the 2001 tech collapse, and today it is a hotbed of innovation, a powerful player in Web 2.0 and seemingly well-positioned for Web 3.0. |
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| November 14, 2007 |
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The November 5, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek has an article, entitled Saving Energy by Fighting Friction, that talks about a new trend throughout the broader energy sector. It's called "friction fighting". It's based on the concept that overcoming resistance accounts for as much as one-third of the energy we consume on the planet. Thus, the energy industries have a new focus on fat pipes, lubricants, coatings, and aerodynamic design.
Resistance is good when we want resistance. In a hydro-electric turbine, for instance, we want the force of water to impact a turbine, knowing that the movement will be transformed into electric energy. But it is amazing how often resistance develops, often unconsciously, when we have no use for it and, in fact, it harms us. The result, it seems, is that our lives revolve around managing resistances. I don't believe it has to be that way. The energy sector may have a lesson for all of us here. |
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| November 12, 2007 |
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There is a disturbing article, entitled Perform or Perish, in the November 5, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek, about the intense amount of performance pressure on CEOs of companies financed by private equity firms. The article mentioned a study being done by Steven Kaplan, a professor at University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, of 150 CEOs running companies backed by private equity. Kaplan found that CEOs who bring "hard" qualities such as aggressiveness, persistence, insistence on high standards, and the ability to hold people accountable are more likely to succeed. Those who offer primarily "soft" skills such as listening, developing talent, being open to criticism, and treating people with respect are unlikely to work out and do better at public companies.
I find this disturbing. I completely agree that shareholder return generally is, and should be, the primary objective of companies backed by outside investors. It's the essence of capitalism. But I believe there is a duration element that must be factored in. Private equity firms and their investors have determined that maximum economic returns in a three- to five-year period, culminating with a liquidity event such as a sale or public offering, is the overriding objective. By definition, this overriding objective eliminates concern about events or conditions after that liquidity event beyond how it might affect that liquidity event. Thus, things like oppressive work environments, short-sighted strategic planning, and neglect of leadership development might all be very positive things for these companies in the shorter term, but very negative over the longer term. |
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| November 11, 2007 |
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The idea seems pretty prevalent these days among many people, including many of our elected representatives, that we are all overreacting on the health care issue. I think not. A new study conducted by the Commonwealth Fund and published in Health Affairs on November 1, 2007, asked patients (the ones who ought to know, right?) in the U.S., Australia, the U.K., Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand several questions about health care in their country. To the statement that their country's system needs to be completely rebuilt, 34% of Americans believe so, higher than in any other country. To the question of whether they have experienced medical mistakes in the past two years, 32% said they had, more than in any other country. To the question of whether they can get an appointment the same day or next day when sick, only 49% of Americans believed they could, lower than in any country except Canada.
More health care data. The Centers for Disease Control says Americans spend 16% of GDP on health care (nearly twice as much as any of those countries listed above), have a life expectancy of 77.9 years (lower than in any of those countries), and have an infant mortality rate of 6.89 (far higher than in any of those countries). To all those claiming we are crying wolf on health care, I say explain why the statistics say we are paying more for worse care than in most industrialized counties. Let's see a little leadership around this, Washington! You are quickly losing whatever credibility you have left after this Iraq debacle and your failure to address global warming. |
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