Single-Tasking is Back!

I love this video from Fast Company Magazine. Our workplaces have become havens for multi-tasking, and thus, potentially less productive. That seems counter-intuitive, but watch the video:

Mixing Up the Message

The next time you fly, take notice of the passengers when the flight crew is doing its usual safety talk. Most of them won't pay a bit of attention. They will continue reading their paper, talking to their neighbor, sleeping, etc. That's because the message never changes and is always conveyed in the same way. It becomes nothing more than background noise right before takeoff.

As leaders, when we communicate, we face the same problem. We may have a really compelling vision or idea, but how it is conveyed makes a difference.

The video below of a Southwest Airlines flight attendant serves as a great example of how we can get people engaged in our messages if we are willing to mix up the delivery. This can be applied to how we conduct meetings as well. If we surprise others with a new approach, we are likely to get and keep their attention.

Yahoo CEO on Leadership

I found this great interview in the New York Times with Carol Bartz, the CEO of Yahoo. Several of the questions have to do with her approach to leadership.

A couple of good quotes:
"A lot of it is just picking the right team and just picking people so much better than you are, and involving them in a decision. Everybody on my team — I couldn’t do their jobs. I could not. I really mean that."

"If I had my way I wouldn’t do annual reviews, if I felt that everybody would be more honest about positive and negative feedback along the way. I think the annual review process is so antiquated. I almost would rather ask each employee to tell us if they’ve had a meaningful conversation with their manager this quarter. Yes or no. And if they say no, they ought to have one. I don’t even need to know what it is. But if you viewed it as meaningful, then that’s all that counts."

You can read the full interview here.

What About Work Ethic?

If feadership and social change are hard work, we might be in trouble. Here is a very intriguing article from the City Journal. It's one of the best I've read recently (although it's way too long). Do you agree with the author? Have we lost the work ethic this nation was built upon? Or, does work ethic just show up differently? At first read, I agree with the author.

Here's a good quote: "In the wake of the market crash, our national discussion about how to fix capitalism seems limited to those who believe that more government will fix the problem and those who think that free markets will fix themselves. Few have asked whether we can recapture the civic virtues that nourished our commerce for 300 years."

The loss of those virtues have an impact on leadership, as I believe we are less willing to stick with difficult endeavors.

Another quote: "What would Tocqueville or Weber think of America today? In place of thrift, they would find a nation of debtors, staggering beneath loans obtained under false pretenses. In place of a steady, patient accumulation of wealth, they would find bankers and financiers with such a short-term perspective that they never pause to consider the consequences or risks of selling securities they don’t understand. In place of a country where all a man asks of government is “not to be disturbed in his toil,” as Tocqueville put it, they would find a nation of rent-seekers demanding government subsidies to purchase homes, start new ventures, or bail out old ones. They would find what Tocqueville described as the “fatal circle” of materialism—the cycle of acquisition and gratification that drives people back to ever more frenetic acquisition and that ultimately undermines prosperous democracies."

Lessons from a Broken Escalator

I love this clip (thanks to Jack Needham for sharing it with me). It brings about some interesting thoughts, including:

• On a very basic surface-level, it portrays our over-reliance on technology.
  
• How much control over decision-making have we relinquished to technology?
  
• How often do paradigms of thinking get so deeply ingrained, that we'll do almost anything to cling on to them?
• In our efforts to be wise, unique, and/or trendsetting, do we sometimes forget that many of the best solutions are the mundane and obvious ones? Just walk up the stairs!
• Are our followers waiting for us to save them? Have we created this dependency by building escalators for them instead of stairs?

Intentional Influence

BusinessWeek featured a nic article about the idea of "influence" as it relates to leadership. My favorite part:

"Many leaders think influence consists of little more than talking people into doing things. It's no wonder most influence efforts start with PowerPoint presentations. But profound, persistent, and overwhelming problems demand more than verbal persuasion. Anyone who's ever tried to talk a smoker into quitting knows there's a lot more to behavior change than words.

Leaders make the same mistake when they publish platitudes in the form of Mission and Values statements, give a few speeches on why these values are crucial, and then assume their job is done."

Here is a link to the article.

60 Minutes Founder on Storytelling

Here is an article from Businessweek discussing the late Don Hewitt's (founder of 60 minutes) views on storytelling and it's connections with leadership:

The article is here.

Google on Leadership

Below is a Washington Post interview I stumbled upon with Evan Wittenberg, who is the head of leadership development at Google. His philosophy and approach seems to confirm a shift to postindustrial models of leadership in the business world. Good stuff.