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09.05.24
Leading Thoughts for September 5, 2024
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Inky Johnson on burnout: “People don’t burn out because of what they do. People burn out because life makes them forget why they do it. Meaning life hits and hits them with something until they just like, “Man if I’ve got to go through that, I’m not bringing it today, man.” And every day is not a good day. Everything is not all peaches and cream. But that’s why the culture is so important. That’s why when the culture is set, we know what we bring to it, and we know how we get down because we know what we’re working for. And the purpose of it is greater than any individual.” Source: VIDEO: Control the Controllables Molly Fletcher stressing that drive is internal: “When we focus on the opponent instead of running our own race, we allow the measuring stick to be our competition instead of ourselves. We are distracted by something uncontrollable. Source: Dynamic Drive: The Purpose-Fueled Formula for Sustainable Success Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.   Like us on Instagram and Facebook for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:33 PM
09.01.24
First Look: Leadership Books for September 2024
HERE'S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in September 2024 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month.
This isn’t just another self-help theory: Dynamic Drive is your practical guide to unlocking your true potential. Through her decades of experience working with top athletes and peak performers across industries, renowned keynote speaker and leadership expert Molly Fletcher has created a proven formula backed by research that outlines the seven keys to sustainable success. The truth is fulfillment doesn’t come from setting and accomplishing goals in isolation. It comes from Dynamic Drive—a holistic approach that connects all parts of you with your purpose and allows you to engage in meaningful growth, both personally and professionally.
In The Upside of Disruption renowned disruption thinker and best-selling author Terence Mauri delivers a compelling set of mindset shifts for today's unique leadership challenges. In the book, you'll find the future-ready insights and tools you need to lead for today and prepare your organization for tomorrow. The author explains why so many of us continually overestimate the risks of bold decisions while underestimating the downsides of standing still for too long in an increasingly complex and volatile world. You'll learn about the upside of disruption and how to turn it into a tailwind for laser-like focus and strategic courage.
When the pressure is on, many of the world’s top CEOs turn to McKinsey & Company to reinvent themselves and their organizations. The Journey of Leadership brings the experience of one of the world’s most influential consulting firms right to your fingertips. This book is the first-ever explanation of McKinsey’s step-by-step approach to transforming leaders both professionally and personally, including revealing lessons from its legendary CEO leadership program, The Bower Forum, which has counseled more than five hundred global CEOs over the past decade. It is a journey that helps leaders hone the psychological, emotional, and, ultimately, human attributes that result in success in today’s most demanding top job.
Most people have experienced the slippery slope of dialogue that descends into -polarized argument. We yell at each other. We gaslight. We twist one -another’s words and meanings. We embrace facts that support our conclusions and ignore those that don’t. Or we sit in silence, afraid to discuss anything of substance. If how you treat others matters to you, this book offers powerful new habits that can give you the confidence to engage in dialogue about hard topics while building and strengthening relationships. Steven T. Collis, one of the world’s leading experts on civil -discourse, reveals ten practical habits that can help you navigate the potential minefields of hard topics and leave you and those you converse with feeling thoughtful and productive.
Learn the foolproof framework to take back control and create immediate and lasting change. Getting stuck in life is a guarantee. Staying stuck is a choice. In The Art of Changing Course, amputee, diabetic record-holding powerlifter, and renowned motivational speaker and author Chris Ruden provides a clear-cut process that walks readers through digestible, actionable stages to get unstuck, allowing you to rise beyond simple awareness of the desire to change and become the person you truly want to be. Backed by numerous psychological principles, management techniques, and organizational change theories, The Art of Changing Course focuses on helping readers make three distinct shifts: from subconscious to conscious, conscious to communicated, and finally, communicated to broadcasted.
Generative AI and the remote-work revolution show us every day that we're in a new era. The rules and norms have changed—and so must leadership. And yet, coercive bureaucracy, hierarchy, and control—old ways of thinking and working—are still with us, a deep-seated and powerful legacy. We are living through a profound transition from an old, industrial era to a new one that is digital, transparent, and complex. In this important new book by former dean of Harvard Business School Kim Clark, written with his business school professor son, Jonathan, and management consultant daughter, Erin, the dynamic struggle between two competing paradigms of leadership is compellingly illustrated: an old paradigm that involves control and power over people versus a new one that enables and inspires power through people.
   
“You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well. And I mean that last "well" in both senses. You have to be good at reading, and read good things.” — Paul Graham, Y Combinator co-founder
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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:55 AM
08.30.24
LeadershipNow 140: August 2024 Compilation
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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:10 PM
How to Survive, Reset and Thrive with Uncertainty
WE can’t predict the pivotal changes still ahead, but we can learn to make good decisions to succeed with them. And not just succeed but grow. Uncertainty is neither good nor bad, depending on what we are trying to do and how we are set up. We can’t make great predictions, but we can learn to make better decisions and look for the possible upsides. We may not be able to plan for uncertainty, but we can prepare for it. To this end, Rebecca Homkes offers Survive, Reset, Thrive as a playbook to help lead successful strategies through an unprecedented range of market conditions. Survive Reset Thrive is a loop. It is an ongoing practice. As you work through the process, you may need to go back to Survive before you Thrive to restabilize. Although it is tempting to think through this linearly, no organization will experience it linearly. It is important to keep in mind that your whole organization will not likely move through it at the same time. Managing all parts of the organization in the same way will not lead to success.
Survive Homkes reminds us that Survive is a part of growth and not the opposite of it. The question becomes, how do you stabilize your organization? A basic survival question to ask is: “Based on current expenses, current linear growth rate, and cash on hand, will the company continue to profitable if the current growth rate does not increase?” If not, you are default dead. More companies are “default dead” than they realize. They are assuming third- or fourth-year bump in growth numbers as the basis for their decisions. But what happens if that assumption is challenged? What happens when a shock triggers a movement into Survive mode? Reset The power of the Survive Reset Thrive loop is in the Reset. And working with this concept is at the core of the book. Reset is the power move. Reset means change. You won’t get to thrive without a powerful reset. How do you update and change your strategy for the changing market conditions? Reset is a revisit of these six key questions that together make up your strategy story:
Thrive In Thrive an organization begins executing an adaptable strategy. Often, the hardest part is to get moving waiting for everything to be in place. Execute with agility. Agility allows you to make good decisions quickly and learn as you go. Homkes talks about learning velocity. If you learn faster, you will grow faster.Getting to Thrive takes what I call disciplined flexibility. This phrase sounds like two contradictory words thrown together, but this is true of most high growth principles. Disciplined flexibility means having a methodical approach that involves testing assumptions, verifying beliefs, and building trackers. And then when you have an insight, you must move quickly! To get to Thrive, you must combine the rigor of developing and testing insights with speed of execution. What sets thriving, high performing organizations apart comes down to five elements that she calls BLAST.
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Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:03 PM
08.29.24
Leading Thoughts for August 29, 2024
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Deborah Gruenfeld on power: “Success, impact, and life satisfaction are not the result of how much power you can accumulate, or even how powerful others think you are; they are the result of what you are able to do for others with the power you already have. Source: Acting with Power: Why We Are More Powerful Than We Believe Robert Hurley on stewardship: “Stewardship is about service, not opportunism. The authority to solve complex problems and challenges will reside in the system of stakeholders, not in the leader. The leader’s job is to energize and facilitate, not dominate and control.” Source: The Decision to Trust: How Leaders Create High-Trust Organizations Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Like us on Instagram and Facebook for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:51 AM
08.27.24
Pattern Breakers
MOST people think that breakthrough ideas come from a vision of the future that is better than what we see today. It is based on the idea that the future will be a new and improved continuation of today. The vision relies on past experiences and then finding patterns that are used to predict the future. However, successful breakthrough ideas require pattern-breaking—unconventional thinking. In Pattern Breakers, authors Mike Maples and Peter Ziebelman explain how pattern breakers live in the future. This is a key idea. Most ideas about the future are an extension of today from people “living in the present, building on the norms of thinking and feeling, and acting that have been previously set by others.” This is what most of us do. In contrast, Pattern Breakers seek to “build for a future that will break from what we know today. They focus on creating a radically different future and commit to discovering inflections and insights that enable them to deliver a pattern-breaking solution.” This is difficult because you’re thinking and working in uncharted territory. And there’s nothing to unlearn. It’s all new. That brings us to two key elements of pattern breakers: inflections and insights. An inflection is an event that creates the potential for radical change in how people think, feel, and act. An insight is a nonobvious truth about how to harness one or more inflections to change human capacities and behaviors in a radical way. Together, these create the conditions for unconventional breakthrough success. Discovering an inflection and developing an insight from it is not easy. The authors offer clues on how to do it. An inflection is “an underlying change that makes an even greater change possible, one that adds to the inventory of what humans do.” For example, “livestreaming, tweeting, web surfing, and ridesharing all harnessed the power of inflections. None of these activities were possible until an inflection conferred new capacities on people.” From a start-up perspective, what makes inflections interesting is that they create an opportunity to alter the rules that govern competition in the future rather than simply improving existing products according to the current rules. Inflections are about exchanging old patterns of behavior for new ones. We tend to create within what we already know—the status quo—and so we never break the pattern to bring about breakthrough success. An insight is how one might use that inflection to change human capacities or behavior. Developing a compelling insight is the main job of the founder. From that, you come up with your idea for a product or service based on the insight. For a breakthrough success, timing is everything. Even if it has been tried before and failed, now may be the time. You may have correctly identified an inflection, but if you act too quickly to harness it, you’ve got a science project. It’s too soon to radically change human behavior. If you act too slowly, you’ve got what is a conventional idea, embraced only after it became obvious to many others—leaving your idea to compete against a crowded field. Pattern breaking is a non-consensus opportunity that forces a choice in the mind of the individual and not a comparison. A pattern-breaking idea isn’t better than the old choice; it is different. Here’s why: When you frame your story around being “better,” you inadvertently accept the existing standard set by established players. This tacitly concedes that the prevailing model defined by the status quo remains relevant. In doing so, you forfeit the opportunity to redefine the game on your terms, without fully realizing what you’ve given up. There are four tests to determine whether or not you have an insight: First, insights must be truths. Second, insights cannot be obvious. Third, insights must harness the power of inflections. And fourth, insights should answer the question, “Why now?” The book is written around start-up ventures, but the concepts are the same when developing an idea within established organizations or anything that needs reinvention. Often, what you see leaders doing is making incremental improvements on what worked before with little success because the playing field has shifted. Essentially, we are improving on what we have done before, which was designed for a world that no longer exists. What is called for is pattern pattern-breaking approach that comes from the future and is not tethered to the past. The enemy is the status quo. Key Reminders for Implementation By spreading too thin over numerous benefits, you risk being forgettable or failing to effectively communicate any one compelling reason for early customers to engage. Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:34 PM
08.22.24
Leading Thoughts for August 22, 2024
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: Neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall on guilt: “Trying to be guilt-free and have the highest self-esteem leads us into an irresponsible life no matter how successful we are in our careers and social lives. If our ultimate self-help goal is increasing and protecting our self-esteem, we risk preventing ourselves from making necessary substantive changes in our lives.” Source: The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need Jason Caldwell on mental processing: “Accessing the problem-solving power of your mind is not about pushing; it’s about stopping. Mental processes are at their most effective during times of stillness, but we’ve stopped giving ourselves that opportunity. Because we keep forcing our minds to process, we never give them space to think, and by doing so, we take away their ability to solve.” Source: Navigating the Impossible Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index. Like us on Instagram and Facebook for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:22 AM
08.19.24
3 Factors Inventors Share: How to Change the World
WHAT does it take to make an impact on the world? A great idea, yes, but also three common traits: opportunity, perseverance, and faith. As an inventor with seven patents in the energy and chemical areas I can cite my own experience to substantiate the importance of these traits as factors that lead to success. When I looked back into history to track the origins of some of the everyday innovations we take for granted today, I found that every inventor tended to embody some or all of these same traits. As far back as the Industrial Revolution, inventors have had to focus on more than that brilliant concept — they had to focus on seizing and seeing opportunities, persevering despite the odds, and having faith in their vision and themselves. Consider these four examples: The computer: A thru-line of seeing an opportunity for improvement. In the early 1880s, Charles Babbage, a British mathematician, constructed machines for computing mathematical tables and for conducting calculations using punched cards and a steam engine. Ada Lovelace and two other technicians subsequently wrote programs and built a printing calculator and a punch card tabulating machine. It took a financial entrepreneur, Charles Flint, to merge several of these companies, creating International Business Machines (IBM) in 1924. The radio: A young Italian student perseveres. Guglielmo Marconi was convinced there was a way to send signals through the atmosphere without wires despite being met with rampant skepticism. The technically gifted student conducted several years of promising experiments in Bologna. Finding no local support, he moved his experiments to England and gained the support of Sir. William Pierce, a high-level executive of the British Post Office. The British Marconi Company was founded in 1897. Marconi companies in other countries would dominate wireless transmissions for twenty years. The microwave oven: A company employee keeps the faith. A Raytheon employee named Percy Spencer was shooting down German planes during World War II when his radar gun accidentally melted a candy bar in his pocket. Realizing the device could be used for high-level heating, he and a Raytheon executive cooperated to develop the microwave oven. It took a lot of determination and detours to introduce this blockbuster kitchen appliance in the early 1960s — and it's become a kitchen staple. Post-its: Opportunity plus perseverance equals something we can't do without. Two 3M employees, Spencer Silver and Arthur Fry, discovered that a potential adhesive sticker applied to paper could easily be pulled off. While most 3M researchers had no interest in the development, the inventors stayed the course and had the faith their discovery would be recognized in time. The innovation-friendly culture of the company helped — and eventually, the discovery led to the immensely successful Post-it, first introduced in 1978. The moral of the story: discovery is thrilling, but a good idea is just the beginning. Persisting and tending that discovery by creating a foundation of support is even better. Historically, successful inventions have always been about personal initiative combined with support — a backer, a mentor, a sponsor. Further, the approach taken early in a career can help or hinder in the future, and that goes for any field. So pay special attention to these elements in any project and endeavor you're involved with:
Particularly when you're working in the fields of business, economic development, and innovation, and if you're an aspiring innovator, inventor, entrepreneur, or motivated employee, these three factors will create a solid foundation for later success. But while it's sometimes assumed that the act and business of invention were easier during the Industrial Revolution, think again. In so many cases, new technology exceeded most peoples' imaginations, and inventors had to break new ground in more ways than one. In today's climate, truly anything is possible, and we need all the solutions we can create. It's a good time to innovate.  Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:59 AM
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Dynamic Drive
The Upside of Disruption
The Journey of Leadership
Habits of a Peacemaker
The Art of Changing Course
Leading Through
Here is a selection of 
