“…Last winter BusinessWeek ran a cover story, ‘Waking Up from the American Dream,’ that detailed how most Americans have a small and diminishing chance of moving up in socioeconomic class.
“Evidently, Americans accept this arrangement – at any rate they keep returning to office the politicians whose policies reinforce the divisions between the haves and have-nots. But it may be worth considering what happens to U.S. institutions as class barriers grow more difficult to surmount. If Americans lose faith in
Earl Mardle nails it. But so long as there is demand from insecure executives for rules they’re supposed to follow, there will be gurus to provide them with exactly that. ~Sébastien Paquet
“My kvetch about management gurus is that they observe patterns of behaviour in successful people,enterprises, etc. and then convert them into rules which other, less successful people or organisations are supposed to follow in order to be successful.
Five simultaneous conversations are essential to the art and discipline of leadership…
The first courageous conversation is the conversation with the unknown future – what lies over the horizon…”
The second conversation is the courageous conversation you’re not having with a present customer, a patient, a vendor, who all represent the future as it’s lapping up against the side of your organization….”
The third conversation is the courageous conversation you’re not having between different divisions of the organization…”
Leadership is not a heavy, difficult and isolating experience ~ it is rich with the joy of collaborating with others to create the newest new.
Leadership does not mean you’ll be the first to be judged and persecuted when the results come in ~ it means you lead the wave of excitement of discovery for all to find true richness and meaning in their lives.
“.seeking for personal salvation is anyway the wrong road to personal salvation. The only real path.was the path set forth in the Japanese movie ‘Ikiru,’ i.e., salvation via hard work and total commitment to doing well the job that fate or personal destiny calls you to do, or any important job that ‘calls for’ doing.” ~Abraham H. Maslow, Eupsychian Management
“Executive team members fail to devote enough attention to developing team cohesion….Often, issues pile up which are never dealt with, thus damaging the fabric of the team. Top teams need regular health checks but there’s a special skill in being able to see clearly what is going on in a team. The CEO has to decide how to lead members through problems and dysfunctions and get the team to adjust its collective leadership approach. How a CEO manages this team
“‘Chaos’ is a frightening word, but you will have to get used to it if you desire or hold leadership positions in today’s organizations. Snuggle deeper into the lexicographical security blanket. If you prefer ‘turbulence’ or ‘unrest,’ ‘conflict’ or ‘confusion’ – fine. Whatever term you’ve chosen, my point is that stability is no longer the prevalent condition of our age. All that seems simple and comforting is certain to give way to complex and nerve-wracking substitutes. The very core of
“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can expect is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war – neither in Russia, nor England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always
“The reason leaders must mediate values is that corporations have reached such levels of complexity that ‘giving orders’ rarely works anymore. What increasingly happens is that leaders’manage culture’ by fine-tuning values and dilemmas, and then that culture runs the organization. The leader defines excellence and develops an appropriate culture, and then the culture does the excelling.” ~Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner, 21 Leaders for the 21st Century
“My interest in leadership has always been from the perspective of those we
“Leaders and followers are both following the invisible leader – the common purpose. While leadership depends on depth of conviction and the power coming therefrom, there must also be the ability to share that conviction with others, the ability to make purpose articulate. And then that common purpose becomes the leader. And I believe that we are coming more and more to act, whatever our theories, on our faith in the power of this invisible leader. Loyalty to the invisible
