Leading Thoughts for December 7, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Consultant Robert "Dusty" Staub on the courage to face our current reality:

“Why do so many intelligent people miss the obvious, focusing on what they wish to be true versus what is currently true and staring them in the face? The answer lies in how our minds distort reality to protect us from doubts or to protect our cherished assumptions and beliefs. For many of us, we simply do not wish to see something that indicates we might have to change our lives and our ways of doing things. Current reality can be inconvenient and downright unpleasant. It often challenges conventional wisdom. Courageously facing current reality means we may upset people who are unwilling to see it, and they will, in turn, pressure us to back down or subscribe to their viewpoint.”

Source: The 7 Acts of Courage : Bold Leadership for a Wholehearted Life

II.

Henry Kissinger on the leader’s challenge:

“Whatever their personal characteristics or modes of action, leaders inevitably confront an unrelenting challenge: preventing the demands of the present from overwhelming the future. Ordinary leaders seek to manage the immediate; great ones attempt to raise their society to their visions.”

Source: Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:03 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 30, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia on stewardship:

“People come into this world with gifts and talents, full of possibilities and unrealized potential. Our responsibility as leaders is to help them realize those possibilities by looking for the talents and goodness that exist in them and inspiring them to become what they are meant to be. Leaders are called to help people become what they were put on this earth to be as individuals and as part of a team or community.”

Source: Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family

II.

Barbara Kellerman on the context of leadership:

“We need to think of leadership as a creative act for which leaders and followers both are educated, for which leaders and followers both are prepared over a lifetime of learning.”

Source: The End of Leadership

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:48 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 23, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Anthony Iannarino on how to start practicing gratitude:

“One way to start a gratitude practice is to take an inventory of all things for which You should be grateful. Include every good thing you have now and good things you have had in the past, including the experiences you’ve had throughout your life. It is sometimes easier to make a list, as it challenges your mind to fill in the blanks. This list should include the people who have had a profound impact on your life. Or negativity bias has us constantly looking for what is wrong. An inventory of what you are grateful for can help you recognize what you have that is positive and worth being grateful for.”

Source: The Negativity Fast: Proven Techniques to Increase Positivity, Reduce Fear, and Boost Success

II.

Brian Johnson on gratitude:

“As Tal Ben-Shahar tells us: “The word appreciate has tw0 meanings. The first meaning is to be thankful,’ the opposite of taking something for granted. The second meaning is ‘to increase in value’ (as money appreciates in the bank). Combined, these two meanings point to a truth that has been proved repeatedly in research on gratitude: when we appreciate the good in our lives, the good grows and we have more of it. The opposite, sadly, is also true: when we fail to appreciate the good—when we take the good in our lives for granted—the good depreciates.”

Source: Areté: Activate Your Heroic Potential

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:08 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 16, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Brad Stulberg on getting comfortable with change:

“If we cannot get comfortable (or at least comfortable enough) with the fact that everything changes, we risk going through life at an arm’s length from its most poignant offerings. In trying to protect ourselves from the experience of change, we end up limiting the depth of our lives.”

Source: Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You

II.

William Vanderbloemen on self-awareness:

“Being self-aware makes you better at finding solutions. Knowing yourself comes with a guaranteed pinch: (or more) of humility, so when a self-aware person is faced with a challenge, they can decenter themselves from the issue. Being self-aware is knowing all about you while knowing that it’s not all about you. Whatever the crisis, the Self-Aware remain even-keeled and committed to the goal.”

Source: Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:33 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 2, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Prasad Kaipa and Navi Radjou on wisdom:

“Wisdom itself grounds us, helping us to shift from using our smartness for our own benefit—and often with a zero-sum mindset—to using it for creating new value for a higher purpose.”

Source: From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom

II.

Amy Jen Su on boundaries:

“Boundaries are not about putting on a suit of armor and assuming a defensive posture in trying to protect your time, energy, or emotions like a soldier stationed at the top of a fortress keeping enemies at bay. They’re also not about opening your door so wide that everyone and anything can get in. They’re about finding that middle ground that honors and protects your needs while remaining judiciously available to others.”

Source: The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self—Every Day

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:52 AM
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Leading Thoughts for October 26, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Paul Schmitz on the idea that everyone leads:

“This does not mean that everyone can lead any effort, organization, or institution, or that one who is a good leader in one context is a good leader in other contexts. It does mean that a great leader can come from anywhere, and that unless more people believe in themselves, take responsibility, and work with others to make a difference, we all lose out from the lost potential.”

Source: Everyone Leads: Building Leadership from the Community Up

II.

Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer on the need for a clear hierarchy:

“Co-leadership can kill both ideas and people, because it creates uncertainty over who is really in charge. Of course, co-led teams are not always ineffective and dangerous. But when there is not clear division of labor among these leaders, coordination becomes difficult, patterns of deference can disappear, and conflict can erupt.”

Source: Friend & Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:13 AM
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Leading Thoughts for October 19, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Richard Winters on collaborative decision-making:

“A top-down process for decision-making by edict may work fine in predictable situations or during times of crisis. But when it comes to making strategic decisions in complex and unpredictable environments, the all-too-familiar method of reflexive decision-making breaks down and delivers poor results. Our expertise and our power to decide get in the way of optimal outcomes. This occurs not only when we lead groups of people, but also when we have one-to-one conversations with colleagues.”

Source: You're the Leader. Now What? Leadership Lessons from Mayo Clinic

II.

Mark Sanborn on pulling others to achieve their potential:

“Nobody likes to be driven by someone else; it feels like being pushed. But when someone can show us how to be bigger on the inside—in our attitude and mindset—that can help attract or pull us toward what we can become.”

Source: The Encore Effect: How to Achieve Remarkable Performance in Anything You Do

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:39 AM
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Leading Thoughts for October 12, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter on how careers evolve:

“Nobody knows what they’re doing at first. You have to find something you are interested in, throw yourself at it, do the best you can, and pick things up as you go along. I never saw myself as having a career path. I’ve sort of muddled through from one thing to the next and, for most people, that’s just the way careers evolve.”

Source: Getting There: A Book of Mentors by Gillian Zoe Segal

II.

Fashion designer Rachel Zoe on career goals:

“I never made a blueprint for my future, and I don’t believe in setting rigid career goals. Career paths usually require a lot of trial and error, and you have to allow yourself the freedom to go with the flow. Sometimes, you think you should go in one direction, but it doesn’t work out or feel right. Occasionally, a better opportunity presents itself and you start over in a different area. If you set a goal that isn’t fairly realistic, you could be setting yourself up for failure—which can really set you back emotionally.”

Source: Getting There: A Book of Mentors by Gillian Zoe Segal

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:49 PM
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Leading Thoughts for October 5, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Brian Tracy on how to test the validity of your excuses:

“There is a way that you can test your excuses to see if they are valid. It is simply to ask yourself, ‘is there anyone else who has my same excuse but who is moving ahead and succeeding nonetheless?’

“If you are honest with yourself, you will immediately realize that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who have it worse than you could ever imagine but are succeeding anyway. If this is the case, your excuse is invalid. Don’t let it hold you back anymore.”

Source: Crunch Point: The 21 Secrets to Succeeding When It Matters Most

II.

Google’s former Jolly Good Fellow Chade-Meng Tan on self-confidence:

“The type of deep self-knowledge and blatant self-honesty needed for sustainable self-confidence means having nothing to hide from oneself. It comes from accurate self-assessment. If we can assess ourselves accurately, we can clearly and objectively see our greatest strengths and our biggest weaknesses. We become honest to ourselves about our most sacred aspirations and darkest desires. We learn about our deepest priorities in life, what is important to us, and what is not important that we can let go. Eventually, we reach a point where we are comfortable in our own skins. There are no skeletons in our closets we do not already know about. There is nothing about ourselves we cannot deal with. This is the basis of self-confidence.”

Source: Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace)

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:03 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 28, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Bill Taylor on humility and ambition:

“Exceptional performance begins with extraordinary insights. But that doesn’t mean it’s your job to come up with those insights. In businesses built on new ideas, generating and evaluating ideas is everybody’s business. That’s why humility and ambition need not be at odds. Indeed, humility in the service of ambition is the most effective mind-set for leaders who aspire to do nig things in a world with huge unknowns.”

Source: Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways

II.

Andy Cohen on assuming people think just like you do:

“It’s quite common to get frustrated with another person in your group for not thinking the same way as you do or to become angry when the person acts differently than you would have under the same conditions. There is no right or wrong in these types of situations because each party assumes he or she understands what to do. Yet when things don’t turn out as expected, each party is convinced that the other ‘didn’t listen’ or ‘should have known.’ The ability to create division between people so quickly is what makes [assuming people think like you do] so dangerous.”

Source: Challenge Your Assumptions, Change Your World

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:44 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 21, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

John Tierney and Roy Baumeister on it’s what you don’t do:

“Being able to hold your tongue rather than say something nasty or spiteful will do much more for your relationship than a good word or deed.

“Remember the Negative Golden Rule—it’s what you don’t do unto others that matters most—you can avoid grief and save energy.”

Source: The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It

II.

Sean Glaze on complacency:

“Being uncoachable is really about being stuck in a comfort zone that a person refuses to acknowledge or leave.

“Turns out most people want to get better, but they want to do it their way. That usually means doing what they already know, which is just repeating the same stuff that got them stuck. ”

Source: Staying Coachable

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:53 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 14, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Brad Stulberg on diversifying your identity:

“One of the most important parts of developing an identity that can thrive, persist, and endure change is to diversify your sense of self. You can think of identity like a house. You want the house to have multiple rooms. Perhaps there is a ‘parent’ room; an ‘athlete’ room; an ‘employee,’ ‘entrepreneur,’ or ‘executive’ room; a ‘community member’ room, and so on. It’s okay to spend a lot of time in just one room, but you’ve got to ensure you keep the others in good enough shape. This way, when you experience a massive change or disorder event in one area of your life, in one room of your identity, you can step into other areas to gain your footing and stability. Like a diversified portfolio in investing, diversifying your sense of self makes you more rugged and flexible in the face of change.”

Source: Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You

II.

Peter Block on freedom and accountability:

“The search for freedom—freedom being the choice to be a creator of our own experience and accept the unbearable responsibility that goes with that. Out of this insight grows the idea that perhaps the real task of leadership is to confront people with their freedom. This may be the ultimate act of love that is called for from those who hold power over others.

Choosing freedom is also a source of our willingness to choose to be accountable. The insight is that freedom is what creates accountability. Freedom is not an escape from accountability, as the popular culture so often misunderstands.”

Source: Community: The Structure of Belonging

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:22 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 7, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Carey Nieuwhof on character:

“If you don’t nurture your character daily, you can be most admired by the people you know least, while the people who know you best struggle with you the most.

Character development for the most part doesn’t happen in some monastery with stone walls and dank cellars. It happens in the grind of everyday life. It has to because that’s where your character gets challenged the most: in parking lots, during meetings, amid marital conflict, and at home when you’re exhausted and the garbage still needs to be taken out and you trip over the kids’ shoes.

If you don’t have a day-to-day strategy, you’ll never win the battle for your soul.”

Source: Didn’t See It Coming: Overcoming the Seven Greatest Challenges That No One Expects and Everyone Experiences

II.

Jeffrey Pfeffer on not deceiving yourself into getting complacent:

“Once people believe they are better leaders—possibly because they have given talks or written about positive leadership, have attended lots of leadership trainings, or because they were once acknowledged for their good leadership—they are less likely to be as vigilant about their subsequent behavior, having already demonstrated their leadership credentials.

It is perhaps not that surprising, then, that some of the most harmful and hypocritical leaders are those who enjoy the most favorable leadership reputations and do a lot of teaching and writing about leadership—actions that then provide them the discretion to not actually live up to those reputations in their real behavior.”

Source: Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:26 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 31, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Associate Professor Tod Bolsinger on leading change:

“Groups are hardwired to believe that survival usually means reinforcing the way things have always been. So when an organization feels stress, the default behavior of most organizational leaders is to solve the problems for our organizations rather than change our organizations for meeting the needs of the world. The result is that instead of undergoing transformation to be more effective in our mission to serve the world, organizations unconsciously reinforce the very status quo that is not working.”

Source: Tempered Resilience: How Leaders Are Formed in the Crucible of Change

II.

Science journalist Mark Buchanan on great individuals:

“What makes an individual notable and ‘great’ is his or her ability to unleash pent-up forces—the will of an age—and so enable those immeasurably greater forces to have their effect.”

Source: Ubiquity: The Science of History . . . or Why the World Is Simpler Than We Think

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:03 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 17, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Martin Moore on why leadership is hard:

“Leadership is hard because, more than anything else, it’s about people. Most of us struggle to manage ourselves: our subconscious drivers, our relationships, our emotions, our mental health, our habits. Leadership demands not only that we master ourselves, but also that we become strong enough and capable enough to help others do the same.”

Source: No Bullsh!t Leadership

II.

Steven Kotler on achieving the art of the impossible:

“Motivation is what gets you into the game; learning is what helps you continue to play; creativity is how you steer; and flow is how you turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations.”

Source: The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:43 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 10, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

John W. Gardner on building meaning into your life:

“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like an answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure—as the world measures success or failure—is of less account.”

Source: Living, Leading, and the American Dream

II.

Molecular biologist John Medina on work and family:

“There is no such thing as a firewall between personal issues and work productivity. That’s because we can’t have two brains we can interchange depending on whether we are in our office or in our bedroom. Stress in the workplace affects family life, causing more stress in the family. More stress in the family causes more stress at work, which in turn gets brought home again. It’s a deadly, self-feeding spiral, and researchers call it “work-family conflict.” So you may have the most wonderful feelings about autonomy at work, and you may have tremendous problem-solving opportunities with your colleagues. But if your home life is a wreck, you can still suffer the negative effects of stress, and so can your employer.”

Source: Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:00 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 3, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Ray Dalio on embracing reality as indispensable to making good choices:

“People who confuse what they wish were true with what is really true create distorted pictures of reality that make it impossible for them to make the best choices.”

Source: Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

II.

Timothy Keiningham and Lerzan Aksoy on the art of loyalty:

“Loyalty by its very nature demands that we commit ourselves to a person, group, or cause. We suppress our short-term self-interests to maintain our bond. In its most noble form, we serve a cause greater than ourselves, designed to unite with another. Therefore, in our training to be loyal, we need to learn the real meaning of service to something greater than oneself.”

Source: Why Loyalty Matters: The Groundbreaking Approach to Rediscovering Happiness, Meaning and Lasting Fulfillment in Your Life and Work

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:28 AM
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Leading Thoughts for July 27, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Gary Hoover on the need for leaders with a renaissance mind:

“The more specialized we become, the greater our need for leaders who can help bring unity to our efforts. We need people who can think, write, and speak with clarity and conviction, people who can relate to and motivate accountants and salespeople, nurses and electrical engineers, systems analysts and social workers.”

Source: Hoover's Vision: Original Thinking for Business Success

II.

Jen Goldman-Wetzler on acknowledging feedback:

“Because humans have an innate need to maintain a positive view of ourselves, we tend to be threatened by, and therefore ignore, reject, or become defensive or even aggressive, in reaction to information that does not confirm this view.”

Source: Optimal Outcomes: Free Yourself from Conflict at Work, at Home, and in Life (Blog Post)

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:45 AM
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Leading Thoughts for July 20, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Siimon Reynolds on how vagueness leads to failure:

“The average person has no clear purpose, and that’s why people end up average. It’s not unusual to see people working 12 hours a day and still not getting anything substantial done. Why? At the heart of it, their lack of clarity about the best use of their time leads them to work on what’s urgent, not what’s important. Foggy purpose always leads to mediocre results, no matter how intelligent you are.”

Source: Why People Fail: The 16 Obstacles to Success and How You Can Overcome Them

II.

Kobe Bryant on the focus necessary to become a champion:

“Basketball, for me, was the most important thing. So everything I saw, whether it was TV shows, whether it was books I read, people I talked to—everything was done to learn how to become a better basketball player. Everything. Everything. So when you have that point of view, the world becomes your library to help you become better at your craft.

“What I found in the NBA is a lot of guys played for financial stability. When it came to the NBA, they got that financial stability, so therefore the passion, the work ethic, and the obsessiveness was gone. I’m looking at that, and I’m like, ‘This is going to be like taking candy from a baby. No wonder Michael Jordan wins all these championships.’ This is crazy. And then you had the players that had that passion but weren’t willing to commit their entire lives to doing that. It’s a choice. You have other things. You have family, and you have all these other things you have to do. The game really can’t be your number-one priority. I’m looking at that, and I’m like, this is going to be fun.”

Source: Valuetainment, Kobe Bryant’s Last Great Interview

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:01 AM
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Leading Thoughts for July 13, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

John Mattone on the importance of critical thinking:

“Much of your natural thinking as a leader, when left unchecked, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or downright prejudiced. Your effectiveness as a leader, however, depends precisely on the quality of your thoughts. Critical thinking is that mode of thinking, about any given subject, in which you, the thinker, improve the quality of your thinking by skillfully taking charge of its very structures and imposing intellectual standards upon them. Effective critical thinking, however, involves consideration of the full range of possibilities to a problem, including emotional, cognitive, intellectual, and psychological factors.”

Source: Intelligent Leadership: What You Need to Know to Unlock Your Full Potential

II.

Tiffani Bova on the need to focus on input metrics to get at the source of problems:

“When businesses realize they are falling short in delivering great employee and customer experiences, they tend to make the same mistake: they set out to fix the problems without really knowing why they are coming up in the first place. Without data, companies don’t have the ability to determine causes. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop many of them from moving forward with important strategic decisions. By focusing on symptoms before diagnosing causes, they overlook the actual problems that, inevitably, continue to cause trouble in measurable or, worse, hidden ways.”

Source: The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:57 AM
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Leading Thoughts for July 6, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

John Bogle asks us what rabbit we are chasing:

“[We need to] ask ourselves whether we’re chasing the fake rabbit of success or the real rabbit or meaning, defined by the contributions to our society that stem from principle, virtue, and character.

“While our best and brightest are exquisitely trained to pursue the false rabbis of success, on the whole they are being poorly trained in the intangible qualities that become the virtues that bring real success.”

Source: Enough. True Measures of Money, Business, and Life

II.

Noel M. Tichy on the need to produce leaders at all levels:

“Leadership is the whole game. No institution—religious, military, educational, political or business—can be great unless it has a great leader at the top who develops leaders at all levels of the organization. The goal is leaders at all levels who all teach and develop other leaders.”

Source: The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach Their Companies to Win

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:34 AM
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Leading Thoughts for June 29, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Jon Gordon on our connectedness:

“In Los Angeles—home to some of the worst traffic in the United States—a brilliant sign read, ‘You are the traffic.’ In essence, since we are all one, we are all the traffic. When you realize this truth, you stop seeing others as separate and part of the problem. In fact, the circumstance is not even a problem. The lie that you are separate is the problem. Remember the truth and enbjoy the ride.”

Source: The One Truth: Elevate Your Mind, Unlock Your Power, Heal Your Soul

II.

Robert Waterman on bureaucracies:

“Bureaucracy gets us through the day; it deals efficiently with everyday problems. The trouble is, change ignores conventional bureaucratic lines. The real action in organizations occurs outside ‘the proper channels.’”

Source: Adhocracy

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:16 AM
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Leading Thoughts for June 22, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire on mindful daydreaming:

“It may be wise to question whether we should always be living in the moment and whether this is the best way to foster creative thinking. Finding this ‘middle way’ between mindfulness and mind wandering can help us enjoy the optimal benefits of both ways of thinking. Mindfulness helps us truly see what’s around us—a skill of paramount importance in life and art—but it must be balanced with giving the mind space to dream, fantasize, and simply roam free.”

Source: Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind

II.

Martyn Newman on how your self-confidence determines your success:

“If you grew up in an environment in which you were continually criticized, you probably learned to focus on your faults and inadequacies. You may do a number of things really well, but when you make a simple mistake, you enlarge it out of proportion. It’s like your attention is conditioned to ignore the things you have done well; instead, it is drawn like a magnet to focus on the negative parts of your performance. And there is a direct relationship between your performance in any area and your level of self-confidence.”

Source: Emotional Capitalists: The New Leaders

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:48 AM
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Leading Thoughts for June 15, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Boyd Clark and Ron Crossland on how leaders need to fill in the blanks:

“When leaders communicate facts alone, constituents fill in the emotional and symbolic blanks. The same is true for the other channels. We always fill in the blanks. Remember your brain works this way. When constituents fill in the blanks left by leaders, they construct a different message than the leader sent. Leaders, believing they have communicated completely, not fall into the fatal assumptions trap. What results is one of four things: a lack of understanding, a lack of agreement, a lack of caring, or a lack of appropriate action.”

Source: The Leader’s Voice: How Your Communication Can Inspire Action and Get Results!

II.

Scott Adams on knowing where to start:

“When you do something the wrong way, the people who know how to do things the right way will generally jump in to tell you what you are doing wrong. Take advantage of all that free advice.

“If you don’t know how to do something the right way, and Googling doesn’t help, the only alternative to doing things the wrong way is to do nothing at all. That’s loserthink. Waiting until you know how to do something exactly right is a poor strategy. You could be waiting forever. Better to jump in, make your mistakes, and see what kind of free assistance that attracts.”

Source: Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:03 AM
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Leading Thoughts for June 8, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

John Daly on the importance of repetition:

“There is a wonderful story of a man who was so in love with a woman who lived far from him that every day, for 500 days, he mailed a love letter to her. On the 500th day, she married the postman. Exposure works. Up to a point, it can enhance decision-maker’s feelings toward an idea.”

Source: Advocacy: Championing Ideas and Influencing Others: Championing Ideas and Influencing Others | (Blog Post)

II.

Neen James on deliberate attention:

“I think paying attention means listening with our eyes and our ears, thinking with our brains, understanding with our hearts, and giving with our souls. Deliberate attention means identifying the people, priorities, and passions that matter most in our lives and then purposefully and proactively focusing our conscious attention on them.

“Conscious attention is stopping what we are doing on the computer to give our full attention to a team member who comes into our office to talk.

“Deliberate attention is organizing your attention toward a particular purpose. It’s saying no to some things so you can say yes to the important things that deserve your time and focus.”

Source: Attention Pays: How to Drive Profitability, Productivity, and Accountability

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:40 AM
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Leading Thoughts for June 1, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

T.D. Jakes on disruptive thinking:

“Every period of chaos brings with it a gift—an opportunity to disrupt the chaos by providing a solution rather than joining the debate. Disruptive thinking isn’t about picking a side in the argument; it’s about stepping past the argument toward a solution.”

Source: Disruptive Thinking: A Daring Strategy to Change How We Live, Lead, and Love

II.

Retired Navy SEAL commander Rich Diviney on dynamic subordination:

“In a high-performance team, leadership shifts to wherever, and whomever, the leader needs to be at any given moment. Those teams understand that information, challenges, and obstacles can come from any angle at any time. And they’re effective because the teammate closest to the problem is able to step up and lead, while the rest of the group defers to that temporary leader.”

Source: The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:50 PM
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Leading Thoughts for May 25, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Schoolteacher Alice Moore Hubbard, on how to teach:

“Teaching is successful only as it causes people to think for themselves. What the teacher thinks matters little; what he makes the child think matters much.”

Source: Life Lessons: Truths Concerning People Who Have Lived

II.

Ray Bradbury on the lost art of contemplation and real connection:

“Across the street and down the way the other houses stood with their flat fronts. What was it Clarisse had said one afternoon? ‘No front porches. My uncle says there used to be front porches. And people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn’t want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turning things over. My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches. And the gardens, too. Not many gardens any more to sit around in. And look at the furniture. No rocking chairs anymore. They're too comfortable. Get people up and running around.’”

Source: Fahrenheit 451

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:22 PM
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Leading Thoughts for May 18, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Daphne Jones on looking beyond the distractions:

“Focus on the outcomes. You need to be like a football team that is focused on getting that ball in the end zone. You can’t be distracted by the people who seem to be ‘coming after you.’ Even though you will be aware of the naysayers, the haters, those who will try to drag you down, don’t focus on them, but merely calculate how you will go around them or through them to get to your outcome and goal.”

Source: Win When They Say You Won't: Break Through Barriers and Keep Leveling Up Your Success

II.

William Dawson on the value of limitations:

“The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The man who can buy anything he covets values nothing that he buys. There is a subtle pleasure in the extravagance that contests with prudence; in the anxious debates which we hold with ourselves whether we can or cannot afford a certain thing; in our attempts to justify our wisdom; in the risk and recklessness of our operations; in the long deferred and final joy of our possession; but this is a kind of pleasure which the man of boundless means never knows.”

Source: The Quest of the Simple Life

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:52 AM
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Leading Thoughts for May 11, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Morra Aarons-Mele on labeling:

“Such an error in thinking gets you off the hook when it comes to improving a situation. If you think you’re inherently bad (I am a failure), rather than a normal person who makes mistakes or bad decisions (I occasionally fail), you’ve essentially given up before even trying. The same thing occurs when you label other people. ‘You see them as totally bad,’ David Burns writes. ‘This makes you feel hostile and hopeless about improving things and leaves little room for constructive communication.’ Labeling makes it difficult to create a workplace culture with constructive communication and teams committed to improving performance.”

Source: The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower

II.

Douglas McGregor on motivation:

“The motivation, the potential for development, the capacity for assuming responsibility, the readiness to direct behavior toward organizational goals are all present in people. Management does not put them there. It is a responsibility of management to make it possible for people to recognize and develop these human characteristics for themselves.”

Source: Leadership & Motivation

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:26 AM
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Leading Thoughts for May 4, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Susan Fowler on letting go of the notion that you can and should motivate people:

“Attempting to motivate people is a losing proposition, no matter your resources. Why? Because people are already motivated—but maybe not in the way you want. When you assume people aren’t motivated, you tend to fall back to strategies proven ineffective, wrongheaded, or even counter to what you intended. You incentivize, and when that doesn’t work, you add more carrots (rewards, incentives, bribes). When you run out of carrots, you may try wielding a thicker stick (threats, fearmongering, and punishment). At some point, you realize your attempts to motivate people are fruitless or, even worse, more harmful than beneficial.”

Source: Why Motivating People Doesn't Work...and What Does, Second Edition: More Breakthroughs for Leading, Energizing, and Engaging

II.

Former NASA engineer-project manager and launch director at SpaceX John Muratore on the importance of purpose:

“Tom Holloway, a very famous Program Manager, and head of Flight Directors for a long time, told me something very interesting. He said, ‘People ask us what our greatest resource is, and we always say, ‘our people.’ We have some bright people, but the truth of the matter is we don’t have any better people than anybody else has. Our people aren’t our greatest resource. Our sense of mission is our greatest resource. When we lose our sense of mission, we are in the most jeopardy. When we have a high sense of mission, we can overcome any obstacle. Where we get in trouble is where we lose the sense of mission. We get wrapped up in politics, we get wrapped up in budget and schedule. We get wrapped up in personal issues. If we want the best for NASA, we’ve got to keep our mission, focus on what’s our mission.’ If our activity is not clearly, demonstrably, absolutely, most effectively supporting that mission, we’ve got to change what we’re doing. No matter how painful or how difficult. Because our people sense it, and then we no longer get the best out of them.

“Finding what the mission was and instilling that sense of mission in our people has always been the difficult challenge, and it’s probably the most difficult challenge today because I think people are confused beyond all shadow of a doubt right now about our mission. They don’t understand what the mission is, and that’s the biggest challenge. I think the cool thing about it is that’s something we can do something about it. It’s something totally within our control. ”

Source: NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Interview, May 14, 2008

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:46 AM
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Leading Thoughts for April 27, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

INSEAD professor Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries on wisdom:

“Wise people recognize that life moves with an ebb and a flow. There will be highs and lows and there will be peaks and valleys. Life is never going to be an easy ride, but during this journey that is your life there can be discovery, change and growth if that is what you seek. During this journey, you can have a choice: you can acquire wisdom or you can remain blinded. What you decide to do is all up to you. This journey towards wisdom very much implies living in the present, planning for the future, and profiting from the past.”

Source: Leading Wisely: Becoming a Reflective Leader in Turbulent Times

II.

Adam Markel on what’s worth fighting for:

“Part of keeping calm is just doing the thing that’s I front of you and not getting your emotions lost in fighting battles about what is fair or unfair. That’s a losing proposition. Even when we’re correct and we’re fighting over what is fair or unfair, we’re losing. There’s right and there’s wrong. That’s different. That’s worth fighting for.”

Source: Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-term Resilience

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:41 AM
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Leading Thoughts for April 20, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

As the new CEO of United Airlines, Oscar Munoz on listening:

“Perhaps it wasn’t as important that I proved to employees that I had all the answers to every problem. If I simply demonstrated that, before I intended to lead, I wanted to listen and learn from them, perhaps that would be enough to generate goodwill.

If I could just break down this wall of distrust, it would be more important than getting every decision right. The only way to do that was to speak honestly about where I came from, how I was raised, and the values my experiences in life had instilled in me.”

Source: Turnaround Time: Uniting an Airline and Its Employees in the Friendly Skies

II.

Bertrand Russell on how to grow old:

“Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age. One of these is undue absorption in the past. It does not do to live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about friends who are dead. One’s thoughts must be directed to the future, and to things about which there is something to be done. This is not always easy; one’s own past is a gradually increasing weight. It is easy to think to oneself that one’s emotions used to be more vivid than they are, and one’s mind more keen. If this is true, it should be forgotten, and if it is forgotten it will probably not be true.

The other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth in the hope of sucking vigor from its vitality. When your children are grown up they want to live their own lives, and if you continue to be as interested in them as you were when they were young, you are likely to become a burden to them, unless they are unusually callous. I do not mean that one should be without interest in them, but one’s interest should be contemplative and, if possible, philanthropic, but not unduly emotional. Animals become indifferent to their young as soon as their young can look after themselves, but human beings, owing to the length of infancy, find this difficult.”

Source: Portraits from Memory and Other Essays

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:38 AM
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Leading Thoughts for April 13, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Laura Gassner Otting on just taking action:

“When struggling to make big life choices—leaving a job, ending a relationship, seeking more education, quitting smoking—studies show people who flip a coin and ‘go for it’ regardless of the outcome are more satisfied with their decisions and much happier six months later than those whose coin toss instructed them to maintain the status quo. Action beats stagnation. When you’re unsure about what to do, you’ll be happiest if you just choose something to do.”

Source: Wonderhell: Why Success Doesn't Feel Like It Should . . . and What to Do About It

II.

Admiral William H. McRaven on death before dishonor:

“Leadership is difficult because it is a human interaction, and nothing is more daunting, more frustrating, more complex than trying to lead men and women in tough times.

To live life above the common level of life: to be noble when others may be unprincipled, to be honorable when others may be shameless, to be men and women of integrity when others may resort to dishonesty. What I found in leading and being led by great officers from all branches of service was the importance of character and having a personal code of honor to help guide you through the difficult times. ”

Source: The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple (But Not Easy)

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:56 PM
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Leading Thoughts for April 6, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Dave Ramsey on momentum:

“Momentum is an interesting and somewhat elusive thing. When you have momentum in any area of your life you look better than you are. When your star is shining everyone thinks you are smarter and prettier than you really are. Conversely when you don’t have momentum you are better than you look. What we discovered is that momentum is not a random lightning strike, but on the contrary, it is actually created.”

Source: EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches

II.

Associate professor Mark de Rond on lovable fools and competent jerks:

“The analysis suggests that if someone is strongly disliked, it is almost irrelevant whether or not he is competent. By contrast, if someone is liked, her colleagues will seek out every bit of competence she has to offer, meaning that a little likeability has far more mileage than competence in making someone a desirable team player.”

Source: There Is an I in Team: What Elite Athletes and Coaches Really Know About High Performance

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:35 AM
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Leading Thoughts for March 30, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Will Marré on making choices based on our outer identity:

“Instead of making authentic choices, we make choices based on the part we’re playing. Our lives are dictated, to a large degree, by what we think we must do to remain members in good standing of whatever club we have decided to join.”

Source: Save the World and Still Be Home for Dinner

II.

John Baird and Ed Sullivan on what could derail you:

“It is crucial for leaders to be very clear about what their values mean in practice. Transparency can be conflated with having no privacy. Honesty can be conflated with oversharing. And inclusion can be conflated with consensus.”

Source: Leading with Heart: Five Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:59 AM
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Leading Thoughts for March 23, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Bob Chapman, Chairman and CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, on developing human potential:

“When somebody comes into our organization and agrees to join us, when we invite them into our organization, we become stewards of that life, just as we are when a child comes into our life. A different level of intensity but the same concept. And the way we treat that person who joins our organization will profoundly affect that person’s marriage and the way that person raises their children and interacts with our community.”

Source: The Lean CEO: Leading the Way to World-Class Excellence

II.

Former president of Florida Hospital’s Central Region, Brian Paradis on the hero leader:

“Our society has a case of the hero leader. We admire a strong leader. Even if we fear them, we believe they will get things done. He or she will have a direction and we won’t flounder. The responsibility for success rests with them, not us, so we don’t have to be accountable. This is seductive but it does not hold up under scrutiny. There is a long list of organizational and personal failure under this brand of leader.”

Source: Lead with Imagination

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:19 AM
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Leading Thoughts for March 16, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Ritch Eich on natural born leaders:

“Too often we hear things such as ‘he (or she) is a natural-born leader.’ A person may, indeed, have the make-up, temperament, patience, and vision to lead, but without the right attitude, experience, approach, and training, that individual’s ‘knack’ for leadership doesn’t translate into real leadership.”

Source: Real Leaders Don't Boss: Inspire, Motivate, and Earn Respect from Employees and Watch Your Organization Soar

II.

NFL Offensive tackle Rayfield Wright on leading our youth:

“Parents, teach your children well. Encourage them with your faith and leadership. Remember that you are the windows through which your children see this world. Take notice of yourself and the things that you do in hopes that your example will stir their hearts and souls.”

Source: Speech, Don’t Be Afraid to Travel the Road Less Traveled, August 5, 2006, NFL Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:12 AM
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Leading Thoughts for March 9, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Matt Higgins on why you need to go all in:

“Backup plans can make you feel safer and help you cope with uncertainty, but they also reduce the likelihood that your primary goal will ever be achieved. The mere act of contemplating a Plan B sets in motion a feedback loop that dramatically lessens the probability that Plan A will come to fruition. You spend too much of your emotional energy on contingency planning instead of on success.”

Source: Burn the Boats: Toss Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential

II.

Robert E. Quinn on the courage to change ourselves:

“One key to successful leadership is continuous personal change. Personal change is a reflection of our inner growth and empowerment. Personal change is the way to avoid slow death. When we are continually growing, we have an internal sense of meaning and impact. We are full of energy and radiate a successful demeanor. To have such feelings in a continually changing environment, we must continually realign ourselves with our environment.”

Source: Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within  

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:48 AM
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Leading Thoughts for February 23, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Matt Mayberry on avoiding slogans and no action when transforming your culture:

“Culture is not just about turning values into behaviors. It’s about turning values into repeatable behaviors, into actions that become daily habits that are shared across the organization.

Doing something most of the time, especially in the context of exchanging a negative behavior for a new and more positive behavior, is a good first step in the right direction, but it’s still just a step. Doing something repeatedly, to the point where it becomes ingrained into what an organization does daily and becomes common practice, is where cultural excellence lies.”

Source: Culture Is the Way: How Leaders at Every Level Build an Organization for Speed, Impact, and Excellence

II.

Abraham Lincoln on the requirements for facing new challenges:

“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country”

Source: Annual Message to Congress – Concluding Remarks, December 1, 1862

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:29 AM
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Leading Thoughts for February 16, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Nine-time Grammy-winning producer Rick Rubin on awareness:

“Awareness is not a state you force. There is little effort involved, though persistence is key. It’s something you actively allow to happen. It is a presence with, and acceptance of, what is happening in the eternal now.

As soon as you label an aspect of Source, you’re no longer noticing, you’re studying. This holds true of any thought that takes you out of presence with the object of your awareness, whether analysis or simply becoming aware that you’re aware. Analysis is a secondary function. The awareness happens first as a pure connection with the object of your attention. If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it.”

Source: The Creative Act: A Way of Being

II.

Professor Robert Mayerovitch on teachability:

“Curiosity doesn’t negate what you know and treasure. Instead, it offers the promise of even more: more richness, more depth, and breadth, more opportunities to be amazed and troubled and challenged and stimulated and ultimately uplifted by what you find.”

Source: Speech, The Challenge of Otherness, May 7, 2006

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:46 AM
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Leading Thoughts for February 9, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Robin Sharma on leadership roles:

“Know your role. Everyone needs to behave like a leader—no matter what they do. Everyone needs to demonstrate leadership traits—regardless of their position. That means everyone needs to take responsibility for getting results that they generate. Everyone needs to do their part to shape culture. Everyone needs to be positive and inspirational. Everyone needs to keep customers happy and protect the brand. Everyone is a leader. But not everyone is the same.”

Source: The Greatness Guide: Powerful Secrets for Getting to World Class

II.

Rose Patten on true collaboration:

“Spirited collaboration – enabling and encouraging dissent, with the ultimate objective of arriving at a better outcome. A harmonious group of like minds becomes an echo chamber of agreement. A leader who doesn’t allow diverse opinions and ideas for improvement will perform suboptimally. Today’s leadership challenges – a more complex and diverse workplace, digitalization, far-reaching stakeholder expectations – will push the need for inclusive and dissenting (“spirited”) collaboration.”

Source: Intentional Leadership: The Big 8 Capabilities Setting Leaders Apart

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:13 AM
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Leading Thoughts for February 2, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Robert Kaplan on learning to ask the right questions:

“Fortunately, the key to managing and leading your organization and your career does not lie in ‘having all the answers.’ The key lies in making a conscious effort to regularly step back to reflect, and then identify and frame the issues that are central to leading your organization effectively into the future.”

Source: What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Reaching Your Potential

II.

Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn on creativity:

“Regardless of exactly how you define creativity, the key thing is that we never create out of whole cloth. Instead, we connect what we have, bringing together two or more elements in a new way. Abundant ideaflow requires enormous amounts of raw material to make more of these unexpected combinations.”

Source: Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:54 AM
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Leading Thoughts for January 26, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Niccolò Machiavelli on resistance to change:

“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”

Source: The Prince Translated by Thomas G. Bergin (1947)

II.

George Steele and Paul Kircher on innovation:

“Picture a man in charge of weapons for a medieval king. If he is scientific minded, he will try to improve his bows and arrows by working on different parts of the product. The searcher may be assigned to study the properties of feathers. He will try to improve the breed of birds, study feather selection, and storage, investigate whether they should be trimmed ½- or ¾-inch wide, and so on. This man will conduct what many call ‘scientific research’ for years. He may achieve many improvements, giving arrows better stability and accuracy; but what is the chance that such a man will ever invent a gun? If he should hear about one, the chances are he will do his best to point out how unstable and dangerous it is to carry a powder horn, how inaccurate the new guns are, and how many families depend for their livelihood on the chicken feather business.”

Source: The Crisis We Face: Automation and the Cold War

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:44 AM
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Leading Thoughts for January 19, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Susan Scott on being with someone prepared to be nowhere else:

“It’s amazing how this seemingly small thing—simply paying fierce attention to another, really asking, really listening, even during a brief conversation—can evoke such a wholehearted response. A Chinese proverb says, ‘When a question is posed ceremoniously, the universe responds.’ When someone really asks, we really answer.”

Source: Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time

II.

Ray Bradbury on the power of always taking the next step:

“Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you’ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I’ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad—you did it. At the end of the week you’ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I’ll be damned, it’s been a good year.”

Source: Interview: The Art of Fiction No. 203

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:48 AM
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Leading Thoughts for January 12, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Nathan and Susannah Furr on uncertainty:

“Behind every uncertainty you are facing—even the unwanted and unpromising varieties—insight, growth, and possibility are waiting in the wings. We are all wired to fear the downsides of uncertainty, but we forget that change, creation, transformation, and innovation rarely show up without some measure of it.”

Source: The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown / (Blog Post)

II.

Scott Sonenshein on pushing ourselves into action:

“The wait for the ‘right’ resources can be long or even never-ending, but acting immediately teaches us to appreciate and work with what we do have.”

Source: Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less—and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined / (Blog Post)

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:09 AM
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Leading Thoughts for January 5, 2023

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Ed O’Malley and Julia McBride on asking, “What’s my part of this mess?”:

“One person can see a problem, get more curious about it, and use their influence to make things better. But real change begins when lots of people get curious about what’s really going on with a problem or challenge.”

Source: When Everyone Leads: How The Toughest Challenges Get Seen And Solved

II.

Journalist and essayist Pico Iyer on uncertainty:

“We’re always living in a state of uncertainty — two years ago, two years from now — and that therefore, part of our challenge as I see it is to make uncertainty our church in New Jersey — to make it our home. This is where we’re living, every day of our lives. And so, as you said, let’s rejoice in it, furnish it, close the door, rearrange the books, and say, Make this as beautiful as it can, given that forest fire, earthquake, or who knows what will be coming tomorrow — or tremendous beauty and love may be coming in the door tomorrow.”

Source: Pico Iyer interviews with Elizabeth Gilbert, The Future of Hope Series

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:34 AM
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Leading Thoughts for December 29, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Charles Handy on the nature of vision:

“A plan or a strategy which is a projection of the present or a replica of what everyone else is doing is not a vision. A vision has to reframe the known scene, to reconceptualize the obvious, connect the previously unconnected dream.”

Source: The Age of Unreason

II.

Korn Ferry CEO Gary Burnison on failure:

“The most important aspect of failure is not the moment of defeat or loss. Rather, it is what happens the moment after failure occurs and a choice is presented: to allow fear to rule or to shift from setback to lesson learned. Henry Ford said, ‘Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.’ I don’t know a CEO who can’t identify with that sentiment, knowing that it takes both success and failure to shape one’s ability to lead. Success may instill confidence, but it is failure that imparts wisdom. With wisdom comes the inner serenity needed to change a bridge between failure and success.”

Source: No Fear of Failure: Real Stories of How Leaders Deal with Risk and Change

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:09 AM
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Leading Thoughts for December 22, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Erica Ariel Fox on developing an internal Lookout so you can see your reactions rather than just acting on them:

“When life hands you a situation, your Lookout sees where you’re headed. Before you do or say anything, the Lookout lets you know. With that information, you might or might not choose to change course. If you do, you’ll get a different outcome than what you’ve gotten before. Developing your Lookout skills over time will create the lasting change you want, in your leadership and in your life.”

Source: Winning from Within: A Breakthrough Method for Leading, Living, and Lasting Change

II.

Gary Hamel on the need for leaders to be stewards:

“If you are a leader at any level in any organization, you are a steward—of careers, capabilities, resources, the environment, and organizational values. ... What matters now, more than ever, is that managers embrace the responsibilities of stewardship. ... If you’re a manager or an executive, your stewardship obligations extend far beyond yourself and your family. Yet in recent years many business leaders have blithely dodged those responsibilities. So, ask yourself, am I really a steward?”

Source: What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:45 AM
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Leading Thoughts for December 15, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Theologian Richard Foster on the need for deeper thinking:

“Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or a gifted people, but for a deep people.”

Source: Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth

II.

Science writer Stephen Johnson on the mental routines that you typically experience in unison:

“The more you learn about the brain’s architecture, the more you recognize that what happens in your head is more like an orchestra than a soloist, with dozens of players contributing to the overall mix. You can hear the symphony as a unified wash of sound, but you can also distinguish the trombones from the timpani, the violins from the cellos.”

Source: Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:02 AM
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Leading Thoughts for December 8, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Jim Wallis on moving forward after a crisis:

“Not all of our old habits, behaviors, and institutions are bad, just as not all new ones are good. We need to uncover some forgotten lessons that have served us well in the past and make sure the baby of our better choices doesn’t get thrown out with the bathwater of our mistakes.”

Source: Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street by Jim Wallis

II.

Alan Stein Jr. on character:

“Character means you understand that there are more things beyond winning and losing. The workplace and the business world are not all zero-sum games. There can be more than one winner, and a workplace of battling egos inevitably suffers in productivity.”

Source: Raise Your Game: High-Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:26 AM
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Leading Thoughts for December 1, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Designer Mauro Porcini on getting the question right:

“The quality of the question is fundamental: far too often, people generate a whole set of correct answers for a whole set of wrong questions. And too often, people forget to question the validity of their questions, finding comfort instead in the correctness of their answers.”

Source: The Human Side of Innovation: The Power of People in Love with People

 

II.

Crisis management consultant James Lukaszewski on integrity:

“Each scenario begins with and is made worse by breakdowns in integrity. Before somebody breaks the rules, before somebody breaks the law, before some executive gets into deep difficulty and becomes highly visible, there is a systemic fracture, sometimes even collapse, of integrity. I define integrity as the inherent tendency in individuals and organizations to do the right thing at every opportunity when confronted with choices, options, or dilemmas.”

Source: Speech, Avoiding Integrity, March 2, 2007

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:53 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 24, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Ryan Hawk on the quality of gratitude that you find in transformational relationships and people:

“They compliment people behind their backs. When you’re talking with these types of people, they are constantly shining a light on the goodness of others. When something goes well in their life, they are quick to point out how it couldn’t have been done without the great work of other people.”

Source: The Pursuit of Excellence: The Uncommon Behaviors of the World’s Most Productive Achievers

II.

Jonathan Sacks on the benefits of gratitude:

“When individuals focus on and express thankfulness, they experience more positive emotions. Gratitude encourages the savoring of positive experiences. It bolsters feelings of self-worth. It helps people cope with stress. It inhibits invidious comparisons with others. It encourages moral behavior—grateful people are more likely to help others. It tends to dissipate negative emotions such as anger. And it counteracts the hedonic treadmill. Gratitude is the opposite of the mindset of the market-led, consumer society. It is about satisfaction with what we have, not hunger for what we do not have.”

Source: Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:51 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 17, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Computer scientist and venture capitalist Paul Graham on the tendency to go with the crowd:

“Let’s start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you’re supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn’t. Odds are you just think whatever you’re told.”

Source: Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

II.

Consultant Anish Batlaw on building a pipeline of talent inside the company:

“Companies will need systematic programs for identifying people inside the company and grooming them so they are ready when important opportunities open. And this talent cannot be a carbon copy of the leaders who came before. In the knowledge economy impacting all areas of our lives, business leaders need a broader range of skills than previously required to deliver multiples in value creation. In the globally networked world, organizations must collaborate more than ever, internally as with other organizations and partners, across boundaries, and across disciplines. Future generations of leaders must be more agile and comfortable with ambiguity and be able to anticipate and build capabilities ahead of the curve. They are going to need to learn at a much faster pace than ever before and be the drivers of innovation and change.”

Source: Talent: The Market Cap Multiplier

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:47 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 10, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

David Abshire on trust:

“Trust, in its fullest sense, extends beyond simply having great confidence in a person, of faith that a task will be performed. Trust manifests itself when one becomes committed to the protection and care of someone else—he is entrusted to that person who holds his faith in trust.”

Source: Speech, “Trust and General Hal Moore,” June 11, 2006

 

II.

Peter Drucker on the responsibility dictated by choice:

“In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time—literally—substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.”

Source: Leader to Leader, Spring 2000, “Managing Knowledge Means Managing Oneself”

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:57 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 3, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Political commentator Walter Lippmann claims that when the press exists primarily for its own purposes and agenda, it threatens democracy whenever it has an agenda other than the free flow of ideas:

“We shall advance when we have learned humility; when we have learned to seek the truth, to reveal it and publish it; when we care more for that than for the privilege of arguing about ideas in a fog of uncertainty.”

Source: Liberty and the News

 

II.

Sociologist and educator David Stanley Eitzen on avoiding trends that deprive us of humanity:

“Modern technology often encourages isolation. Because of computers and telecommunications, there is a growing trend for workers to work from home. At last count, 28 million Americans worked out of their homes, using computers or telephony instead of face-to-face interaction. While home-based work allows flexibility and independence not found in most jobs, these workers are separated from the rich social networks that often give rise to numerous friendships and make working life enjoyable or at least tolerable.”

Source: Speech, “Avoiding Trends That Deprive Us of Humanity,” October 16, 2003

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:09 AM
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Leading Thoughts for October 27, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Conductor Benjamin Zander and family therapist Rosamund Zander on the power of perspective:

“Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.”

Source: The Art of Possibility : Transforming Professional and Personal Life

 

II.

Founder of Catalyst for Peace, Libby Hoffman on listening with:

“Not a passive or one-way listening, that way of asking for and receiving someone else’s one-directional offering. There is a special kind of listening that can only happen over time, and I have come to think of it as one of the great untapped social change resources available to us, if we cultivate the commitment and the sensibilities to utilize it. It is both a listening to and a listening with another. Listening with implies a common standpoint and/or a common vision or purpose calling you forward. With ongoing presence and engagement, this kind of listening can be generative and creative—co-creative.”

Source: Answers Are There: Building Peace from the Inside Out

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:09 AM
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Leading Thoughts for October 20, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Computer programmer Ward Cunningham on the learning experience of decision-making:

“I can't tell you how much time is spent worrying about decisions that don't matter. To just be able to make a decision and see what happens is tremendously empowering, but that means you have to set up the situation such that when something does go wrong, you can fix it. When something does go wrong, it doesn't cost you or your customer an exorbitant amount. It isn't ridiculously expensive. When you get in situations where you cannot afford to make a mistake, it's very hard to do the right thing. So if you're trying to do the right thing, the right thing might be to eliminate the cost of making a mistake rather than try to guess what's right.”

Source: Interview, Collective Ownership of Code and Text

 

II.

James MacGregor Burns on the changing context of leadership:

“American leadership went into decline after the revolution. The leaders were generally the same men, many far-famed and even venerated, but they were projected now into a different situation. They had been united behind transcending goals. Now they were divided over mundane policies. They had offered a striking example of bold, collective—even transforming—leadership. Now they were expected to practice piecemeal, transactional leadership.”

Source: Fire and Light: How the Enlightenment Transformed Our World

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:33 AM
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Leading Thoughts for October 13, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Consultants Kevin and Jackie Freiberg on finding the right fit when hiring:

“Consultants Kevin and Jackie Freiberg on finding the right fit when hiring: Have you defined what it takes to be a great employee in your company? Identify people who already work for you who fit the description. Then ask their customers, employees, peers, and managers what makes them so effective and easy to do business with.

Take the answers and make a list of the relevant attributes, such as establishes great rapport with customers; works efficiently; knows the technology better than anyone; has a special knack for helping staff develop; can find humor in difficult situations. From this list, create a profile of a great employee and see to it that new hires match it. ”

Source: Guts: Companies that Blow the Doors Off Business-As-Usual

 

II.

Mike Myatt on the leadership gap:

“When leadership is perceived as little more than a title granting access to a platform for personal gain, rather than a privilege resulting in an opportunity to serve, we’ll continue to find ourselves in a crisis of leadership.”

Source: Hacking Leadership: The 11 Gaps Every Business Needs to Close and the Secrets to Closing Them Quickly

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:34 PM
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Leading Thoughts for October 6, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsk on why leadership is dangerous:

“Each day brings you opportunities to raise important questions, speak to higher values, and surface unresolved conflicts. Every day you have the chance to make a difference in the lives of people around you.

And every day, you must decide whether to push your contribution out there, or keep it to yourself to avoid upsetting anyone, and get through another day.

The hope of leadership lies in the capacity to deliver disturbing news and raise difficult questions in a way that people can absorb, prodding them to take up the message rather than ignore it or kill the messenger.”

Source: Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading

 

II.

Anthropologist Grant McCrackenon the need to move things outside of the gravitational field of the corporation:

“If you ideate in the same space as you work in, you are going to come up with the same solutions.”

Source: Culturematic: How Reality TV, John Cheever, a Pie Lab, Julia Child, Fantasy Football...Will Help You Create and Execute Breakthrough Ideas

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:45 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 29, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Paul Magnone, Christopher Frank and Oded Netzer on how we consider data in decision-making without taking the time to ask for context:

“Humans tend to claim they know the absolute truth about something without appreciating the whole picture. They rely heavily on their own subjective experience to draw generalized conclusions, and they ignore other people’s limited subjective experience, even though combining their own experience with that of others would produce the most comprehensive and objectively accurate picture of something.”

Source: Decisions Over Decimals: Striking the Balance between Intuition and Information

 

II.

Saj-Nicole Joni and Damon Beyer on the need for leaders to create a certain amount of healthy struggle and positive change by fighting the right fights … right:

“You cannot win with a team that is badly aligned. The problem is, it’s not sufficient. Achieving perfect or near-perfect alignment is not the end of the road. It’s merely the beginning

In an environment where alignment is the only goal, alignment robs us of necessary dissent, of the checks and balances that mitigate risk, and of the tensions that create innovation and sustainable value. People and organizations perform optimally when they are under the right kinds and amounts of stress.”

Source: The Right Fight: How Great Leaders Use Healthy Conflict to Drive Performance, Innovation, and Value

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:35 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 22, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Richard Feynman on regret:

“If you want to live a regret-free life, you need to stop thinking about what others think about you and your life. We spend our entire lives thinking, and in fact overthinking about people, society, teachers, and others think, who do not know our paths, our struggles, our good and bad, and unfortunately, we allow them to control our lives. It’s you who has to decide what makes you happy and pursue it accordingly. It would be stupid of you to try and stand by someone else’s expectations. Do what you feel is good for you, and right for you, In doing so, it is very obvious that you will come across failures and disappointments, but that will teach you a great deal and the best part would you, it would you and only you responsible for that.. Prof. Feynman”

Source: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

 

II.

Journalist Ferris Jabr on why walking helps us think:

“Perhaps the most profound relationship between walking, thinking, and writing reveals itself at the end of a stroll, back at the desk. There, it becomes apparent that writing and walking are extremely similar feats, equal parts physical and mental. When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps. Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands. Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts. Ultimately, maps like the one that Nabokov drew are recursive: they are maps of maps.”

Source: Why Walking Helps Us Think, The New Yorker, September 3, 2014

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:11 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 15, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Military strategist Sun Tzu on preparation:

“The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”

Source: The Art of War

 

II.

American novelist Mary Flannery O’Connor on growth:

“Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.”

Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:59 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 8, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Queen Elizabeth II on the value of stepping back and reflecting:

“We all need to get the balance right between action and reflection. With so many distractions, it is easy to forget to pause and take stock. Be it through contemplation, prayer, or even keeping a diary, many have found the practice of quiet personal reflection surprisingly rewarding, even discovering greater spiritual depth to their lives.”

Source: Queen's Christmas message, December 25, 2013

 

II.

Queen Elizabeth II on courage:

“Today we need a special kind of courage. Not the kind needed in battle, but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics, so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.”

Source: 1957 Christmas Broadcast

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:56 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 1, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Jon Gordon on the ultimate rule of positive energy:

“Your positive energy and vision must be greater than anyone’s and everyone’s negativity. Your certainty must be greater than everyone’s doubt. There will always be people who don’t share your vision. There will always be the doubters who doubt, doubt, and doubt and tell you you can’t do this and you won’t be able to accomplish that. They think that dreams were meant for others but not for people like you and them. And there will even be people who don’t want you to succeed because it makes them see their own weaknesses and failures. Rather than driving their own bus they are trying to ruin everyone else’s ride.”

Source: The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy

 

II.

Wally Amos on facing your problems:

“One of the realities of existence is this: If you don’t get it right the first time, life will give you another chance to master that aspect of things. And if you miss your next chance, that same challenge will again present itself to you. The process continues until you get it right. The inevitable cycle is a curse if you are running away from your problems, and a blessing if you are seeking to grow through them. In every challenge lies an opportunity.”

Source: Man With No Name: Turn Lemons into Lemonade

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:02 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 25, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Fred Harmon on the value of self-restraint:

“Situational rather than habitual self-restraint is always a strain. Self-mastery lets us relax and focus on results even in tense situations. The world-famous tennis star does not lose her concentration because she is behind in the deciding set. Long practice in controlling her emotions permits her to continue playing at her peak. The practice of self-restraint in making common everyday acts more perfect builds up a similar inner calm on which one can rely in any crisis.”

Source: The Executive Odyssey: Secrets for A Career Without Limits

 

II.

Andrew and Nada Kakabadse and Linda Lee-Davies on staying forever refreshed as a leader::

“Successful leadership is never truly mastered as it is an organic service which must be ever refreshed and refined. The changing nature and demands of the follower and the changing nature and demands of the external environment mean that even once the leader has reached a point of maximum provision for their troops in their current state, they must put some serious planning into the next likely situation they will face. There is no rest, learning to lead never stops and the truly successful, the truly great leader knows that they are leading to learn.”

Source: Leading for Success: The Seven Sides to Great Leaders

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:48 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 18, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Former Blue Shield of California CEO Bruce Bodaken and Robert Fritz on opinion dumps:

“Telling someone your opinion is not the same as exploring reality. Groups that really tell each other the truth are the ones that ask each other questions, seriously seek to understand opinions that are different from their own. They strive to comprehend rather than simply impose their ideas on others, and they engage in a collective dialogue in which people together seek understanding.”

Source: The Managerial Moment of Truth: The Essential Step in Helping People Improve Performance

 

II.

Ram Charan on the roadblocks to moving forward:

“Today transformational change is the norm. Every company has to be able to perceive what will make their best-laid plans obsolete tomorrow and change direction quickly. Dissatisfaction with the status quo and a search for what’s next is a universal human endeavor. It does not reside in one person, department, or organizational layer. The flow of ideas cannot be blocked by bureaucratic layers. Do the people at traditional companies welcome change? What happens to the good ideas that emerge? How quickly do they get converted into action?”

Source: Rethinking Competitive Advantage: New Rules for the Digital Age

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:20 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 11, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Historian John Lukacs on turning points:

“A turning point is not a milestone; the latter is a numerically fixable place, foreseeable, linear, and sequential. A turning point may occur in a person’s mind; it may mean a change of direction; it has consequences that are multiple and unpredictable, consequences that are more multiple and unpredictable, consequences that are more often than not recognizable only in retrospect. A turning point may sometimes be foreseeable, but not with certainty.”

Source: Five Days in London: May 1940

 

II.

Professor Emeritus at Fuller Theological Seminary Eddie Gibbs on what we find in the absence of good leadership:

“Feedback is no longer oriented to how people can succeed but to how they have failed—not just in their work but as human beings.”

Source: Leadership Next: Changing Leaders in a Changing Culture

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:40 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 4, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Performance coach Jason Selk on the need to heat up your performance:

“All day long, the thermostat governs the temperature in the room and won’t allow the room temperature to rise or drop from the desired temperature for long. Human beings are the same way: we neither outperform nor underperform our self-image for very long. That’s why it is so important to set your self-image gauge high enough to achieve your life goals. Set your self-image gauge too low, and by definition, you’ll underachieve because your mind won’t call for the motivation to achieve more.”

Source: Executive Toughness: The Mental-Training Program to Increase Your Leadership Performance

 

II.

Jim Loehr explaining that the key to mental recovery is to give the conscious, thinking mind intermittent rest explaining that the key to mental recovery is to give the conscious, thinking mind intermittent rest:

“Much like the body, the brain needs time to recover from exertion. After we have learned new information or had new experiences, it takes time for the brain to consolidate and encode what it has learned. In the absence of downtime, or recovery, that learning cannot take place as efficiently.”

Source: The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:36 AM
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Leading Thoughts for July 28, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Betsy Myers on how leadership is about how you make people feel not only about the work but themselves:

“The truth of life is that it doesn’t unfold through lofty mission statements or happen in broad strokes. It is a personal, everyday experience for every one of us.”

Source: Take the Lead: Motivate, Inspire, and Bring Out the Best in Yourself and Everyone Around You

 

II.

Mike Thompson on becoming a discerning leader:

“Being a discerning leader isn’t about making a good decision, but rather about forming the habit of making good decision after good decision. To become a discerning leader, you need to immerse yourself in a constant state of evaluation. It means continuously gathering and analyzing information, seeking various points of view, and scanning the horizon for coming shifts. Because these leaders never view their decisions as static, they aren’t consumed by trying to make the perfect call. They can confidently move forward, knowing that they can, and will, make adjustments as they go.”

Source: The Anywhere Leader: How to Lead and Succeed in Any Business Environment

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:23 AM
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Leading Thoughts for July 21, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Jack Zenger, Joe Folkman, and Scott Edinger on how clarity tells people what not to do:

“Clarity of vision helps all members of the group to be vigilant about not attempting to serve everyone who wants to be a customer, or to embark on any project about which someone becomes enthused, or to create a new product because one prospect or client expresses interest in it. These are hard decisions to make, especially for newly created organizations that are scratching out their existence. But given limited resources, it is especially crucial for those companies to stay focused.”

Source: The Inspiring Leader: Unlocking the Secrets of How Extraordinary Leaders Motivate

 

II.

Musician and speaker David Usher on the opportunities to apply creative principles to all areas of our lives:

“Once you start to look at the world through the lens of creativity, everything looks different. Creative thinking is an integral part of everything we make, but also every relationship we have and every interaction in our lives. It’s not just about the world of things. It exists in the connections we make, how we formulate sentences, the way we negotiate with our bosses, and how we choose to look at the world. Once you see the creative process as the underpinning of all these connections and interactions, then the world really is different. Instead of just acting by instinct and routine, repeating the same patterns over and over, you begin to view interactions as possibilities, and you become an active participant. Every moment and interaction becomes an opportunity to apply the principles of creative thinking.”

Source: Let the Elephants Run: Unlock Your Creativity and Change Everything

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:32 AM
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Leading Thoughts for July 14, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Former president of Chick-fil-A, James Collins, on the correlation between authority and responsibility:

“Authority properly used comes packaged with responsibility. Therefore, as I discovered over the years, more authority can be gained in bits and pieces. I gained more authority without having it given to me; all I had to do was figure out what the boss didn’t like to do, take responsibility, and do it.”

Source: Creative Followership: In the shadow of Greatness

 

II.

Bill George on why leaders lose their way:

“Leaders whose goal is having power over others, maximizing their wealth, or becoming famous tend to look to other people for fulfillment and acknowledgment of their status.

Before you take on a leadership role, ask yourself, “What motivates me to lead this organization?” If the honest answers are simply power, prestige, and money, you are at risk of being trapped by external gratification as your source of fulfillment. There is nothing wrong with desiring these outward symbols if, and only if they are balanced by a deeper desire to serve something greater than yourself. Extrinsic rewards exert a force that can pull you away from your True North if not counterbalanced by a deeper purpose or calling that gives you a passion to lead.”

Source: Discover Your True North

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:52 AM
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Leading Thoughts for July 7, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Henry Kissinger on the need for leadership:

“Any society, whatever its political system, is perpetually in transit between a past that forms its memory and a vision of the future that inspires its evolution. Along this route, leadership is indispensable: decisions must be made, trust earned, promises kept, a way forward proposed. Within human institutions—states, religions, armies, companies, schools—leadership is needed to help people reach from where they are to where they have never been and, sometimes, can scarcely imagine going. Without leadership, institutions drift, and nations court growing irrelevance and, ultimately, disaster.”

Source: Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

 

II.

In a caution to all leaders, Professor Ngaire Woods at the University of Oxford on why Vladimir Putin would turn Russia into a pariah state without achieving any of the goals of his invasion:

“Why would such a powerful leader make such a major blunder? The answer lies in the very nature of power itself. Leaders in positions of tremendous authority often wear blinders that can cause them to make profound mistakes. Power can mislead insofar as it prevents the powerful from taking full stock of the consequences of their actions.

“But these blind spots are not inevitable, nor are democracies doomed to them. The leaders of powerful countries can protect themselves from the pitfalls of power and make sure that short-term expediency doesn’t get in the way of the big picture.

“A first line of defense from error lies in the group around a leader. Beyond the cabinet, other institutions need to be fully functioning. Public officials and technocrats, the courts, legislatures, the media, and public opinion each play a role in making sure the leader is not blinded by power.”

Source: Foreign Affairs, July/August 2022, “What the Mighty Miss: The Blind Spots of Power”

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:50 AM
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Leading Thoughts for June 30, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Scientist Marie Curie on the importance of self-improvement for the betterment of self and others:

“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”

Source: Pierre Curie (Autobiographical Notes)

 

II.

Thomas Mitchell, a farmer, on productivity:

“It is wonderful how much work can be got through in a day, if we go by the rule—map out our time, divide it off, and take up one thing regularly after another. To drift through our work, or to rush through it in a helter-skelter fashion, ends in comparatively little being done. ‘One thing at a time’ will always perform a better day’s work than doing two or three things at a time. By following this rule, one person will do more in a day than another does in a week.”

Source: Essays on Life by Thomas Mitchell, Farmer

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:03 PM
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Leading Thoughts for June 23, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Engineer, designer, entrepreneur, and investor, Tony Fadell on becoming a manager:

“Remember that once you become a manager, you’ll stop doing the thing that made you successful in the first place. You will no longer be doing the things you do really well—instead you’ll be digging into how others do them, helping them improve. Your job will now be communication, communication, communication, recruiting, hiring and firing, setting budgets, reviews, one-on-one meetings (1:1s), meetings with your team and other teams and leadership, representing your team in those meetings, setting goals, and keeping people on track, conflict resolution, helping to find creative solutions to intractable problems, blocking and tackling political BS, mentoring your team, and asking ‘how can I help you?’ all the time.”

Source: Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

 

II.

Former Nike Chief Marketing Officer Greg Hoffman on passion:

“Passion is a risk-taking emotion because it demands that we reveal so much of ourselves to others. If you’ve ever found yourself in a conversation with someone about their passion, then you know what I mean. You can feel it; they get carried away. And when they finally stop talking, they can be a little embarrassed. But that’s good. Show that to your audience. Imbue your brand, your stories, your spaces with passion unbridled. Start talking about what you love and don’t ever stop.”

Source: Emotion By Design: Creative Leadership Lessons from a Life at Nike

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:36 AM
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Leading Thoughts for June 16, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Amor Towles’ character Count Alexander Rostov on withholding judgement:

“The Count had to acknowledge once again the virtues of withholding judgment. After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of the hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration--and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”

Source: A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel

 

II.

Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter on rights and civility:

“If we fail to distinguish desire from right, we will not understand that rights are sensible and wise only within particular contexts that give them meaning. The Constitution protects a variety of rights, but our moral norms provide the discipline in their exercise. Sometimes what the moral norm of civility demands is that we restrain our self-expression for the sake of our community.”

Source: Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 02:44 PM
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Leading Thoughts for June 9, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

INSEAD professor Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries on the importance of being kind:

“Quite often, when people are hurting others, it is because they are hurting themselves. This does not mean that you should try to explain it away, that you should try to justify and rationalize inappropriate behavior. The decision to set boundaries concerning certain behavioral patterns is part of being morally responsible. Still, in trying to understand why these people are doing what they are doing, you could also keep in mind the words of Carl Jung: ‘Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.’ It may give you additional insights about what is happening as we all have a tendency to project unwanted parts of ourselves on to the other. It is far too easy to deposit on the other aspects of our shadow side—to use the other as some kind of ‘garbage can.’”

Source: Leading Wisely: Becoming a Reflective Leader in Turbulent Times

II.

Darryl Stickel on the growing cynicism surrounding leadership:

“As the world evolves, our expectations of leaders seem to be getting broader and increasingly contradictory. Ultimately, we tend to trust those who have strong abilities and demonstrate excellence in their field. Are leaders supposed to give us decisive direction? Be consensus builders? Inspire us? The answer to all of these is yes, but how are they supposed to do that in environments where those judging leadership qualities appear to agree on so little? Also, our definition of leadership excellence changes with different situations. The challenge we have is that if we don’t clearly define excellence for leaders, it is almost impossible for them to strive for it.”

Source: Building Trust: Exceptional Leadership in an Uncertain World

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:57 AM
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Leading Thoughts for June 2, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Professor emeritus of medicine Jon Kabat-Zion on problem-solving:

“In general, if you feel you’ve got a problem to solve that is ‘out there’ and you don’t necessarily see or want to see any possible relationship between the ‘you’ who is trying to solve the problem and what the problem actually is, you may wind up not being able to see the problem accurately, in its fullness. You therefore may unwittingly be contributing to maintaining the undesired situation rather than allowing it to evolve and perhaps dissolve.”

Source: Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future

II.

Writer David Chapman on how to improve your thinking:

“Learn from fields very different from your own. They each have ways of thinking that can be useful at surprising times. Just learning to think like an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a philosopher will beneficially stretch your mind.”

Source: How to Think Real Good

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:36 AM
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Leading Thoughts for May 26, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Former president, CEO, and chairman of Procter & Gamble, John Pepper on values:

“Over the years, I’ve seen that the strongest leaders are those who have enough confidence to seek input from others without losing the direction provided by their own internal compass. They understand that the objective of learning is not comfortable consensus. It is to make wiser, more informed choices.”

Source: What Really Matters: Service, Leadership, People, and Values

II.

Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsk on having compassion when leading change:

“The people who fight the hardest also have the most to lose; and therefore, they deserve the most time, attention, care, and skill.”

Source: Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:32 AM
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Leading Thoughts for May 19, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

London Business School professors Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones on conforming yet remaining authentic:

“Leaders must conform enough if they are to make the connections necessary to deliver change. Leaders who succeed in changing organizations challenge the norms—but rarely all of them, all at once. They do not seek out instant head-on confrontation without understanding the organizational context. To change an organization, the leader must first gain at least minimal acceptance as a member.”

Source: Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? What It Takes to Be an Authentic Leader

II.

Harvard Professor Joseph Badaracco on quiet leadership:

“The most effective leaders are rarely public heroes. These men and women aren’t high-profile champions of causes, and don’t want to be. They don’t spearhead ethical crusades. They move patiently, carefully, and incrementally. They do what is right—for their organizations, for the people around them, and for themselves—inconspicuously and without casualties.”

Source: Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:17 AM
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Leading Thoughts for May 12, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Anthropologist Grant McCracken on inspiring innovation and creativity:

“People who escape familiar groups and make contact with unfamiliar ones become smarter and more creative.

“The trick is to invent our own serendipity to establish a cloud of possibilities in which we can spot the telling pattern.

“We need ideas we can’t guess we need. We must canvass concepts that are entirely unrelated to our present problem set. Only thus do we give our deeper powers of pattern recognition a chance to work.”

Source: Culturematic: How Reality TV, John Cheever, a Pie Lab, Julia Child, Fantasy Football . . . Will Help You Create and Execute Breakthrough Ideas

II.

Former Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens on servant leadership:

“Do you want to be around somebody who lifts you up, or somebody that breaks you down? That’s why whenever people ask me what’s your leadership style, my answer is, ‘It should be you.’ There’s an authenticity that is needed for leadership. If it’s not real, then it’s not going to work.

“You have to be empathetic in knowing that everybody has their own lives, and everybody has something tough going on. You need to make sure you understand that before you coach them.”

Source: Getting to Us: How Great Coaches Make Great Teams by Seth Davis

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:03 AM
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Leading Thoughts for May 5, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Professor Scott Galloway on the worst advice given to young people:

“Your job is to find something you’re good at. And then spend thousands of hours and apply the grit and the sacrifice and the willingness to break through hard things to become great at it. Because once you’re great at something, the economic accouterments of being great at something, the prestige, the relevance, the camaraderie, the self-worth of being great … will make you passionate about whatever it is. Here’s the problem with believing you should follow your passion: Work is hard. And when you run into obstacles and you face injustice, which is a common guaranteed attribute of the workplace, you’ll start thinking, ‘I’m not loving this. This is upsetting and hard. It must not be my passion.’ That is not the right litmus test.’”

Source: The Pursuit of Excellence: The Uncommon Behaviors of the World’s Most Productive Achievers by Ryan Hawk

II.

Stephen M. R. Covey on command and control:

“Command & Control is about getting things done, but it misses the potential power of the people who get those things done. Command & Control is about being efficient with people, trying to motivate them instead of inspiring them. It’s about self-interest and competing rather than serving and caring. And if all else fails, it’s about barking out the orders so everyone does exactly what they’re supposed to do—not because they want to, but because they have to. In short, it’s about controlling people instead of unleashing their potential.”

Source: Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:27 AM
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Leading Thoughts for April 28, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

David Baldacci’s character Aloysius Archer on resilience:

“From now on his life path would be pointed steadily forward, right at the fresh waves coming for him, rather than the choppy ones that had just passed underneath and battered him.

“Hell, they can only hit you once.

“It was all about what was coming up. And whether you could handle it. And even if you couldn’t handle it, it was about how you tried to handle it.”

Source: Dream Town

II.

Tim Elmore on the difference between adapting and adopting:

“The key to good leadership is catching the wind and capitalizing on it to take you where you need to go. And, perhaps more importantly, to take the students under your care where they need to go. Our job is not merely to adopt what’s trending in our culture. Leaders don’t just fit in. Our goal is to adapt, not adopt. There’s a huge difference. We adapt to the realities of our day, leveraging current methods to say what must be said to our young. Once again, we are timely in our methods, but timeless in our mission. We are timely in our communication style, but timeless in our content. We are timely in our pedagogy, but timeless in our purpose.”

Source: Marching Off the Map: Inspire Students to Navigate a Brand New World

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:12 AM
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Leading Thoughts for April 21, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Consultant Stan Slap on the purpose of leadership:

“The irreducible essence of leadership is that leaders are people who live their deepest personal values without compromise, and they use those values to make life better for others—this is why people become leaders and why people follow leaders.”

Source: Bury My Heart at Conference Room B: The Unbeatable Impact of Truly Committed Managers

II.

Tom Morris on the Rule of Reciprocity:

“One problem with the Rule of Reciprocity is that when you live by it, you allow others to call the shots. Like it or not, we deal with people every day who fall into this pattern of conduct and just reflect back to us whatever we do to them. This is a truth of great importance since it gives us one of the main reasons why unethical business practices are self-destructive. It may be easy to treat people badly one by one, or a few at a time, but over the long run, if you have treated enough other people terribly, and they are living reciprocally, then they are out there as a growing multitude preparing to do the same to you. And together, they’ll eventually have the power to bring you down.”

Source: Art of Achievement: 7C’s of Success In Business and Life

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:40 PM
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Leading Thoughts for April 14, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Creative director, designer, and agency owner Michael Janda believes every position can be electrifying:

“You don’t have to be the art director, creative director, CTO, or VP of blah-de-blah agency to be a key member of a company. Any role, any position, in any organization can have a huge impact on the success of the organization. Throughout my career, I have seen junior programmers and junior designers make HUGE impacts on company success. By striving to maximize your contribution, regardless of the position you fill on the org chart, you can make an impact.”

Source: Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff They Don’t Teach You In Design School But Should

II.

The twentieth president of the United States, James A. Garfield, on the sovereignty of the family:

“There are several sovereignties in this country. First, the sovereignty of the American people, then the sovereignty nearest to us all—the sovereignty of the family, the absolute right of each family to control its affairs in accordance with the conscience and convictions of duty of the heads of the family. In the picture before us, that is bravely symbolized. I have no doubt the American people will always tenderly regard their household sovereignty, and however households may differ in their views and convictions, I believe that those differences will be respected. Each household, by following its own convictions, and holding itself responsible to God, will, I think, be respected by the American people.”

Source: The Life and Work of James A. Garfield by John Clark Ridpath

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:24 AM
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Leading Thoughts for April 7, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Wayde Goodall on why people fall:

“There are reasons people make bad choices, and it doesn’t happen overnight. There is an evolution—one thought, decision, or move at a time. They decided to go to the wrong place, ask the wrong question, look at illegal or immoral materials, or have a conversation with someone they knew was compromising. The behavior began somewhere.

“I don’t believe this kind of “life-altering” failure just hits like a brick on some particular day. There is a process—sometimes it can be short-lived—sometimes it works on a person for years. Some call it temptation; others call it a hazard of success.”

Source: Why Great Men Fall

II.

Ringo Starr on Paul McCartney’s work ethic:

“The other side of that is—I was telling someone the other day—if Paul hadn’t been in the band, we’d probably have made two albums because we were lazy buggers.

“But Paul’s a workaholic. John and I would be sitting in the garden taking in the color green from the tree, and the phone would ring, and we would know, ‘Hey lads, you want to come in? Let’s go in the studio!’

“So I’ve told Paul this. He knows this story. We made three times more music than we ever would without him because he’s the workaholic, and he loves to get going. Once we got there, we loved it, of course, but, ‘Oh no, not again!’”

Source: BBC Interview: Ringo Starr - Talks about Change The World EP, Beatles, Joe Walsh & more

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:15 AM
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Leading Thoughts for March 31, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Richard Rumelt on listening:

“When another person speaks, you hear both less and more than they mean. Less because none of us can express the full extent of our understanding, and more because what another says is constantly mixing and interacting with your own knowledge and puzzlements.”

Source: Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

II.

Ram Charan on leadership:

“Leadership matters. It creates and harnesses the energy of people, gives them direction, and synchronizes their efforts. In fact, it is a leading indicator of a company’s prospects, unlike financial results, which tell you only where the company has already been. Strong leadership makes a good company better just as surely as weak leadership lowers its prospects and over time ruins it.”

Source: Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:03 AM
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Leading Thoughts for March 24, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Sebastian Mallaby on forecasting the future:

“The revolutions that will matter—the big disruptions that create wealth for investors and anxiety for workers, or that scramble the geopolitical balance and alter human relations—cannot be predicted based on extrapolations of past data, precisely because such revolutions are so thoroughly disruptive. Rather, they will emerge as a result of forces that are too complex to forecast—from the primordial soup of tinkerers and hackers and hubristic dreamers—and all you can know is that the world in ten years will be excitingly different. Mature, comfortable societies, dominated by people who analyze every probability and manage every risk, should come to terms with a tomorrow that cannot be foreseen. The future can be discovered by means of iterative, venture-backed experiments. It cannot be predicted.”

Source: The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future

II.

Jeffrey Sutton and Robert Sutton on the relationship between knowing and doing:

“There is only a loose and imperfect relationship between knowing what to do and the ability to act on that knowledge. Competitive advantage comes from being able to do something others can’t do. If you and colleagues learn from your own actions and behavior, then there won’t be much of a knowing-doing gap because you will be knowing on the basics of your doing, and implementing that knowledge will be substantially easier.”

Source: The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:35 PM
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Leading Thoughts for March 17, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Lawyer Michael L. King on identity:

“One of my happiest childhood memories is of a ride with my father in our old clunker of an automobile. A shiny red Cadillac whizzed past and daddy remarked how pretty and expensive it was. “Why do Cadillacs cost so much money?” I asked. “Is it the name?”

“Well,” he responded deliberately, “that’s part of it. But it’s also what that name means. It’s like your name. It says that you are a [product] of the Chessies, and the Taylors and the Kings, and that you are so very, very special.”

“Ever since, I have carried that praise with me. And I have never looked to another human being for my worth. My father convinced me that I didn’t need to. Even in my lowest times, I believed I was special.”

Source: “Fatherhood and the Black Man,” Wall Street Journal, June 6, 1988

II.

American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz on learning:

“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.”

Source: The Second Sin

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:51 AM
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Leading Thoughts for March 10, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Julie Winkle Giulioni on career development:

“We have come to believe that career development is exclusively about the climb up and around the corporate structure. And because we’ve accepted this limited view of career development, we too are blind to the broader definition of the experience, the enormous possibilitities that are present, and the many other ways you as a manager can help employees succeed and grow.

“The result is we’ve inadvertently funneled people toward a ladder that can never accommodate them all—never mind that some of them don’t want to climb anyway. This promotes competition, confusion, and frustration among employees that frequently fuel unwanted turnover for you and your organization.”

Source: Promotions Are So Yesterday: Redefine Career Development. Help Employees Thrive

II.

Phil Nolan, former CEO of Eir, on distributed leadership:

“The concept of distributed leadership will keep you in touch with the environment. If you want to prepare people for this environment, you have to get leadership further down the organization. We generally tend to drive managing down the organization, but not leadership. As an organization, we have to prepare for acts of leadership further down the organization. I think that that is the hardest thing for us to do as people sitting at the top. It feels like an unnatural act.”

Source: A Time for Leadership

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:38 AM
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Leading Thoughts for March 3, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

P. M. Forni on the art of going over your life:

“You reflect to review the past, take stock of the present, and build a better future. The learning you acquire from reflecting on your experiences and those of others will depend on your willingness to ask yourself tough questions and to stick around for the uncomfortable answers. Here you must exercise caution. Do not dwell on the past unless you can learn from it. Do not look back to hurt yourself or others. The point is to use the past in ways that are beneficial to you.”

Source: The Thinking Life: How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction

II.

Performance psychologist Jim Loehr on our moral operating system:

“The combination of personal beliefs, ideology, and strong emotion can completely overwhelm our capacity for rational thought and sound judgment. Once we declare a belief to be unfettered truth, we close the door to introspective inquiry. Rather than using our powers of reason to investigate weaknesses and inconsistencies in what well could be a faulty belief, we instead use our capacity for creative logic to garner support for what our gut tells us to believe. Once a belief is successfully dressed up as truth, we feel justified in whatever moral judgment or decision we render.”

Source: Leading with Character: 10 Minutes A Day to A Brilliant Legacy

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:34 AM
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Leading Thoughts for February 24, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Former CEO of Best Buy, Hubert Jolly, on the value of more decisions to keep moving forward:

“A good plan is all we needed to create momentum and hope and get people engaged. Making decisions fast—like matching online prices and reinstating the employee discount—was crucial. It boosted people’s energy and created a sense of possibility and hope. What separates great leaders from good leaders is not the quality but the quantity of decisions. More decisions create more momentum and energy. These decisions will not all be good ones. But if you know how to ride a bicycle, then you know that it is much easier to correct course when you pedal your way forward than when you stand still.”

Source: The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism

II.

Michael Mauboussin writes that how you improve your skill depends on where the activity lies on the continuum between pure luck and pure skill:

“In cases where there is a clear relationship between cause and effect, and in activities that are stable and linear, deliberate practice is the only path to improvement. For activities near the luck side of the continuum, a good process is the surest path to success in the long run. Accurate feedback is essential no matter where you are on the continuum. Improving your skill means constantly looking for ways to change your behavior, either because what you’re doing is wrong or because there’s a slightly better way of doing it. No matter what your profession or level of expertise, the chances are very good that accurate feedback can improve your performance.”

Source: The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:32 AM
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Leading Thoughts for February 17, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Dov Seidman on why organizations can compete through culture:

“Culture can’t be copied. The collective experience of any group of people forms a unique narrative, a story that lives and breathes in the halls, offices, and factories of that enterprise. The way people connect, spark against one another to create new ideas or refine old ones, solve problems, and overcome adversity build the synapses that make an organization thrive or die, and no two groups conglomerate these experiences alike. Each is as unique as any family; the number of children can be the same but the ties that bind them will always be unique. Because of this singularity, culture, as an expression of the collective hows of a group or enterprise, gives us our greatest opportunity for differentiation.”

Source: How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything

II.

Forrester's Law:

“In complicated situations efforts to improve things often tend to make them worse, sometimes much worse, on occasion calamitous.”

Source: MIT Sloan Professor Emeritus Jay W. Forrester quoted in The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 by George H. Nash

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:20 AM
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Leading Thoughts for February 10, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Alan Deutschman on the effects of walking the walk:

“When you walk the walk, you reveal the ranking of your values. Martin Luther King Jr’s actions showed that nonviolence was his paramount value for the movement he led. Although he sought many important things for black people in America—equality, respect, power, prosperity—he wouldn’t sacrifice nonviolence to achieve any of them. Nonviolence was nonnegotiable. It was number one.”

Source: Walk the Walk: The #1 Rule for Real Leaders

II.

Thomas Sowell on intellectuals:

“It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon—that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock.”

Source: Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:11 AM
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Leading Thoughts for February 3, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Manfred Kets de Vries on developing emotional intelligence:

“Certain kinds of learning can’t be rushed; they have to be approached one step at a time. This is particularly true of becoming more emotionally attuned. To acquire this kind of knowledge, there are two secrets. The first is to have patience; the second is to be patient! Acquiring higher emotional intelligence—that is, gaining a better understanding of the psychodynamics of human behavior—is never instantaneous. Becoming more psychologically minded requires not only time, but also persistence. Patience and persistence can move mountains. They are the keys to becoming more emotionally astute.”

Source: The Leader on the Couch: A Clinical Approach to Changing People & Organisations

II.

John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison on the importance of serendipity:

“We need serendipitous encounters with people because of the importance of the ideas that these people carry with them and the connections they have. People carry tacit knowledge. You can’t learn brain surgery just from a text. Nor can you learn how to make tasty homebrew without watching someone else carry out the process. In both cases, you’ve got to stand next to someone who already knows and learn by doing. Tacit knowledge exists only in people’s heads. As edges arise ever more quickly, all of us must not only find the people who carry the new knowledge but get to know them well enough (and provide them with sufficient reciprocal value) that they’re comfortable trying to share it with us.”

Source: The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:55 AM
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Leading Thoughts for January 27, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Amelia Dunlop on grace:

“Grace is what we offer to each other when we show kindness to the parts of our humanity that are in need of elevating. It is too easy to point to the failings of my colleagues around me and not extend grace. I find myself saying things like, ‘With grace, he might not have known that this was important.’ Or ‘If we extend grace, she might have a lot going on right now and simply missed the email.’ It is because we are human, not perfect, that we need to learn to extend grace to each other, something that I find very much needed every day in the workplace.”

Source: Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work

 

II.

Sandra Sucher and Shalene Gupta on regaining trust:

“We tend to believe that trust, once broken, cannot be regained, when actually the truth is somewhat more complex. Trust, once broken, cannot easily be regained. We fall into this fallacy for two reasons. First, trust is so hard to regain that so few do it, making us think that broken trust is truly lost forever. Second, because trust is so hard to regain, it makes more sense to focus on protecting your reputation and avoiding losing trust in the first place. However, consider Boeing, Volkswagen, Wells Fargo, and Uber. All of these companies are battered but still in business. A trust betrayal does not necessarily mean game over. Still, be warned, trust regained looks different than trust that was never betrayed.”

Source: The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:09 PM
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Leading Thoughts for January 20, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Kevin Roose on resisting machine drift:

“We’ve talked mainly about external forms of automation—industrial robots, machine learning, algorithms, back-office AI software. But there is a kind of internalized automation taking place inside many of us that, in some ways, is much more dangerous.

For a long time, all of this lifestyle automation seemed harmless. But eventually, I began feeling that surrendering my daily decisions to machines wasn’t making me happier or more productive. Instead, it was turning me into a different person—a shallower one, with more fixed routines and patterns of thought, and an almost robotic predictability in my daily life.”

Source: Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation

II.

Warren Bennis and Philip Slater on understanding the social territory:

“It is important for the leader to follow the maxim ‘know thyself’ so that he can control some of the pernicious effects he may create unwittingly. Unless the leader understands his actions and effects on others, he may be a carrier rather than a solver of problems.”

Source: The Temporary Society

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:18 AM
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Leading Thoughts for January 13, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Consultant Larry Miller on the need for leaders to respond creatively to challenges:

“Both cultures and companies continue to progress so long as leaders recognize the challenges and respond creatively. Each successful response leads not to a condition of ease, but to a higher level of challenge, requiring yet another new and creative response. Creative response is the essential function of leaders. The moment leaders relax and rely on yesterday’s successful response in the presence of today’s challenge, the decline begins. It is natural for leaders in every stage to rely on responses they find most comfortable and to fail when they do not adopt innovative responses. Both the history of civilizations and of corporations demonstrate this relationship between the behavior of leaders and the cycle of growth and decline.”

Source: Barbarians to Bureaucrats: Corporate Life Cycle Strategies: Corporate Life Cycle Strategies

II.

Graham Duncan on the victim mentality:

“One great portfolio manager I know told the story of being driven somewhere by an analyst on a rainy night when a truck swerved and almost ran them off the road. “Why is stuff like this always happening to me?” the analyst instinctively responded. But to the portfolio manager, that response reflected a terrible mindset, whether on the road or in the market: a sense that the world is acting on you as opposed to your acting on the world. It is a mindset that is hard to change. But from what I’ve seen, great investors don’t have it. Instead, they’ve come to understand which factors in the market they can control and which factors they cannot.”

Source: The Playing Field blog post

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:54 AM
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Leading Thoughts for January 6, 2022

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter on learning to be compassionate leaders:

“The people who pose the biggest challenge often provide the greatest opportunity for our own development and growth. In this way, people provide the critical fuel for us to become compassionate leaders. Nearly every situation is an opportunity to learn. And the more we learn, the better ewe become. When we experience challenges from the people we work with, we have a chance: w can either resist them or we can see the situation as an opportunity to practice our leadership and our compassion.”

Source: Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way

II.

Professor John Kotter on the need for more leadership from more people:

“Although not everyone who seriously studies great figures would agree, we think it is very clear that if there was no Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Thomas Watson, the world would have evolved differently in some important ways. So the point is not that such people as inconsequential media figureheads, or had they not existed someone else would have played the same role, and just as brilliantly. Quite the contrary. The point is that we cannot depend upon mass producing heroic figures to solve humanity’s problems. There must be another way.

And there is. The solution is for many, many more people, regardless of where they sit in an organization or community, to step up and lead.”

Source: Change How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile Times

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:51 AM
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Leading Thoughts for December 30, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Robert Dilenschneider on knowing your strengths:

“By knowing your strengths and building on them in a hypercompetitive world, we can be more effective. You need to learn how to block out your weaknesses, prune them, and drive steadily from your strengths. That takes an enormous amount of discipline.”

Source: Power and Influence: The Rules Have Changed

II.

Michael J. Fox on optimism:

“I started to notice things I was grateful for and the way other people would respond to difficulty with gratitude. I concluded that gratitude makes optimism sustainable. And if you don’t think you have anything to be grateful for, keep looking. Because you don’t just receive optimism, you can’t wait for things to be great and then be grateful for that. You’ve got to behave in a way that promotes that.”

Source: “Unbreakable” by Andrew Corsello, AARP Magazine December 2021/January 2022

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:36 AM
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Leading Thoughts for December 23, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Michael Useem on what got you here won’t get you there or reinventing yourself as you move forward:

“The factors that led others to select you to manage a team, an office, or even an enterprise, are going to change as markets and methods evolve, pushing you to the edge, and making it vital to continually consider the additional leadership capacities required now. The best capacities of an earlier time thus remain informative but also incomplete for the challenges we face ahead.”

Source: The Edge: How Ten CEOs Learned to Lead--And the Lessons for Us All

II.

Alaa Garad and Jeff Gold on how disruption and crisis require strategic learning across the organization:

“Leaders must engage in learning that is continuous and strategic, that has to include a willingness to embrace critical thinking to avoid … functional stupidity whereby leaders can prevent learning and change for the sake of maintaining and sustaining an order that they avoid justifying. In a similar manner, some leaders can be accused of hubris, show contempt for criticism from others and become capable of inflicting damage on their organizations.”

Source: The Learning-Driven Business: How to Develop an Organizational Learning Ecosystem

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:37 AM
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Leading Thoughts for December 16, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi on leadership:

“The fundamental role of a leader is to look for ways to shape the decades ahead, not just react to the present, and to help others accept the discomfort of disruptions to the status quo.”

Source: My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

II.

Gaurav Bhatnagar and Mark Minukas on fear:

“Fear is neither good nor bad. It is merely an emotion you feel when you get an outcome that is different from what you expect. The story we create about fear matters more that the fear itself. We control those stories and can craft either a negative one of doom and gloom or see fear as a cue for growth. When we are able to do the latter, fear becomes a path that leads to a better future.”

Source: Unfear: Transform Your Organization to Create Breakthrough Performance and Employee Well-Being

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:34 PM
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Leading Thoughts for December 9, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Michael Dell on success:

“Success is not a straight line up. It’s fail, learn, try again, then (you hope) succeed. How successful you are is really a function of how well you deal with failure—and how much you learn from it. Many people don’t reach their greatest potential because they fear failure. In avoiding failure, they deprive themselves of a great teacher. Many others fall short because of a lack of opportunity, capital, knowledge, or skills. Persistence is an all-important quality on the road to success. (And success presents its own challenges, avoiding complacency being the first and biggest. Which is why, along with kaizen, PBNS—pleased but never satisfied—has been part of our culture since the beginning.)”

Source: Play Nice But Win: A CEO’s Journey from Founder to Leader

II.

Gary Vaynerchuk on the value of soft skills to build a successful company:

“Modern society’s definition of a ‘smart business decision’ is disproportionately predicated on analytics. Business leaders tend to find safety in the ‘black-and-white.’ They find safety in the academics, math, hard data, and what looks good on spreadsheets.

“It’s harder to gauge the 30-, 60-, -90, -365, or even 730-day effectiveness of empathy, kindness, and self-awareness in an organization, but their results will play out. When you can eliminate fear from your organization, very good things happen.

“Unfortunately, the bias toward short-term metrics can also make emotional intelligence a ‘nice to have rather than a requirement. ”

Source: Twelve and a Half: Leveraging the Emotional Ingredients Necessary for Business Success

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:10 AM
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Leading Thoughts for December 2, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Amelia Dunlop on elevating the human experience:

“Elevating the human experience is about acknowledging intrinsic worth as a human and nurturing growth through love. Sometimes the person we need to see most worthy of love is ourselves. Sometimes it is another person. Sometimes it is a group of people who have been unseen.”

Source: Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work

II.

John Parker Stewart and Daniel J. Stewart on understanding effective leadership is something you learn as you go along:

“One of our wonderful colleagues, John Zorbini, often said that if leadership were a car, you would think it must be a classic red Ferrari with the way we traditionally talk about it—or even the way we all think to ourselves about it. We sometimes put the idea of leadership on a pedestal and speak about it reverently. It’s the idea that when you become a leader, you are blessed with instant knowledge, judgment, and prestige.

“But, Zorbini pointed out, if leadership really were a car, it would be a beat-up old truck. It would have dents and dings. Maybe the side panels would be different colors and the interior worn out, but it would have four wheels, move, and get the job done. It’s functional, but not glamourous, and the messiness of learning to lead is visible.”

Source: LEAD NOW!: A Personal Leadership Coaching Guide for Results-Driven Leaders

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:05 PM
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Leading Thoughts for November 25, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Pastor Will Johns on seeing the world through the lens of gratitude:

“Gratitude is a lens that changes the perception of everything in your life. Your world will be transformed. You will begin to see good things you’ve never noticed before. You will begin to feel joy for things in your life you knew were good but never fully appreciated. You will be able to count your blessings even during difficult circumstances. Gratitude will affect your essential perspective of and attitude toward life. And it will bring you the happiness you have been seeking your entire life. However, it doesn’t happen naturally.”

Source: Everything is Better Than You Think: How Gratitude Can Transform Your Life

II.

Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton on how the best leaders know how people contribute and actively look for reasons to express gratitude:

“It is about seeing good things happening and then expressing heartfelt appreciation for the right behaviors. On the flip side, managers who lack gratitude suffer, first and foremost, from a problem of cognition—a failure to perceive how hard their people are trying to do good work—and, if they’re encountering problems, what they are. These ungrateful leaders suffer from information deficit.”

Source: Leading with Gratitude: Eight Leadership Practices for Extraordinary Business Results

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:41 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 18, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Liz Wiseman describes a practice of Impact Players:

“Impact Players practice a fluid model of leadership—leading on demand rather than by command. They take their cues from the situation, stepping up when needed, but when their stewardship is fulfilled, they step back and follow others with equal ease. While others wait for direction, Impact Players step up and lead.”

Source: Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact

II.

Peter Senge on getting to the root of the issue:

“The bottom line of systems thinking is leverage—seeing where actions and changes in structures can lead to significant, enduring improvements. Often leverage follows the principle of economy of means: where the best results come not from large-scale efforts but from small well-focused actions. Our non-systematic ways of thinking are so damaging specifically because they consistently lead us to focus on low leverage changes: we focus on symptoms where the stress is greatest. We repair or ameliorate the symptoms. But such efforts only make matters better in the short run, at best, and worse in the long run.

“It's hard to disagree with the principle of leverage. But the leverage in most real-life systems, such as most organizations, is not obvious to most of the actors in those systems. They don't see the 'structures' underlying their actions.”

Source: The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:10 AM
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Leading Thoughts for November 11, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Scientist Edward O. Wilson on the unification of knowledge:

“The ongoing fragmentation of knowledge and resulting chaos in philosophy are not reflections of the real world but artifacts of scholarship.”

Source: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

II.

The late professor and writer David Foster Wallace on focus:

“Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about "teaching you how to think" is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”

Source: This is Water

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:27 PM
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Leading Thoughts for October 28, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

John Hagel on how emotions spread and thus how this dynamic can be used for or against us:

“Emotions have an interesting network effect: Once a critical mass of people feel a certain emotion, it tends to spread exponentially, both in terms of the number of people who feel it and in terms of intensity with which it is felt. As the emotional cascade takes hold, it becomes harder and harder to resist.”

Source: The Journey Beyond Fear: Leverage the Three Pillars of Positivity to Build Your Success

II.

Thomas Sowell on the media gimmick of turning questions of fact into questions of emotion:

“Emotions neither prove nor disprove facts. There was a time when any rational adult understood this. But years of dumbed-down education and emphasis on how people feel have left too many people unable to see through this media gimmick.”

Source: The Media's Role

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:04 PM
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Leading Thoughts for October 21, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

The cellist, composer, and conductor, Pablo Casals, on being unique:

“Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you... You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work—we must all work—to make this world worthy of its children.”

Source: Joys and Sorrows: Reflections

II.

Frank Partnoy on the one word of wisdom in decision making – wait:

“Life might be a race against time, but it is enriched when we rise above our instincts and stop the clock to process and understand what we are doing and why. A wise decision requires reflection, and reflection requires a pause.”

Source: Wait: The Useful Art of Procrastination

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:40 PM
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Leading Thoughts for October 7, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Elon Musk with a counterpoint to the idea to just trust the process:

“I don’t believe in process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that ‘it’s all about the process,’ I see that as a bad sign. The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.”

Source: “Elon Musk's Mission to Mars,” Wired, October 21, 2012

II.

Canadian actor and director Antoni Cimolino on the value of the arts:

“One music teacher in a school does more good for our children than a truckload of computers — mere information, and the tools for processing it, are useless to people whom no one has taught to dream; bandwidth isn’t as important as mind width, and mind depth; training technicians will advance us not one whit unless we also nurture the imagination of potential visionaries.”

Source: Speech, Artistic Institutions: The Wellsprings of Our Spiritual, Emotional, and Intellectual Well-Being

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:50 PM
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Leading Thoughts for September 30, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Mark Sanborn on why culture matters:

“Culture is a corporate immune system that protects against variance, decline, or abandonment by identifying and combating threatening forces like toxic partners, disjointed processes, and bad decisions.”

Source: The Intention Imperative

II.

Thomas Berry on the need for a new story:

“It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The Old Story — the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it — is not functioning properly, and we have not learned the New Story.”

Source: The New Story: Comments on the Origin, Identification and Transmission of Values

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:07 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 23, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Alan Mulally on running a business in the midst of a crisis:

“Running a business is a design job. You need a point of view about the future, a really good plan to deliver that future, and then relentless implementation.

“You’ve got to trust the process. You need to trust and nurture your emotional resilience. Do you have a point of view about the future? Check. Is it still the right vision today? Check. Do you have a comprehensive plan to deliver that? Check. If you get skilled and motivated people working together through this process, you’re going to figure it out. But you’ve got to trust it.”

Source: American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company

II.

Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan on the need for leaders to create an organization that can confront reality:

“Exercising the power of realism requires an open and inquisitive mind, intense curiosity, the intellectual ability to sort out complexity, the ability to persuade others, and—undergirding it all—the courage of inner strength. People who lack these qualities can’t be considered leaders. They should look for other work.”

Source: Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Right

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:11 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 16, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldbach on the need for flexible thinking:

“We must dispel the notion that strong leaders don’t change their positions … or, dare we say, learn. Flipflopping when you have new information – flexing your thinking in an explicable way – is absolutely a hallmark of effective leadership in the face of accelerating change.

“Good leaders have an intuitive sense of things that must be true for their organizations to be successful and consistently check whether these conditions remain true in the external environment. They are on the lookout for things that could destroy the business model they have created. And if something changes that gives them pause, they aren’t afraid to make adjustments. When your business model may be at risk of implosion, it’s a very good thing that leaders changed their tune.”

Source: Provoke: How Leaders Shape the Future by Overcoming Fatal Human Flaws

II.

Historian Adrian Goldsworthy on concerns over the growth of organizations:

“It is only human nature to lose sight of the wider issues and focus on immediate concerns and personal issues.… All human institutions, from countries to businesses, risk creating a similarly short-sighted and selfish culture.

“Success produces growth and, in time, creates institutions so large that they are cushioned from mistakes and inefficiency.

“In most cases it takes a long time for serious problems or errors to be exposed. It is usually even harder to judge accurately the real competence of individuals and, in particular, their contributions to the overall purpose.

“For the vast majority of people, their work is less open to the public gaze but is similar in that the real consequences of what they do are not obvious.”

Source: How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:03 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 9, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Former vice president and corporate controller at The Boeing Company, Laurette Koellner, on our responsibility to self-empower and self-deploy:

“No one asked Amelia Earhart or Charles Lindbergh to do a solo flight across the Atlantic. No one asked Bill Boeing to build an airplane. They did these things because they wanted to. They did them because they wanted to open new frontiers. Similarly, we, as individuals, must decide how we are going to expand frontiers for ourselves — and for others who are working with us or for us. To do that, we must be prepared to do battle from time to time with the internal bureaucracy in our organizations. But even more than that, we have to be prepared to fight against our own inertia — or what one poet described as ‘mind-forges manacles.’”

Source: Speech, Managing Your Career: The Ultimate Solo Flight

II.

Author and writing teacher Julia Cameron on what it takes to improve:

“There will be many times when we won’t look good—to ourselves or anyone else. We need to stop demanding that we do. It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time.

“Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.”

Source: The Artist’s Way

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:26 AM
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Leading Thoughts for September 2, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Consultant Jeff Davidson on the need for breathing space:

“When your brain is always engaged, when your neurons are always firing, when you find yourself in a continual mode of reacting and responding, instead of steering and directing, the best and brightest solutions that you are capable of producing rarely see the light of day.

“You’re firmly caught in a trap without realizing that you are. Like everyone else, you’re adopting the same survival mechanisms, galloping along on the same treadmill, and defaulting into the same operational cycles. If new insights or fresh perspectives spring forth, will you, can you, actually act upon them? Do you have any chance of thinking new thoughts, or are you simply generating permeations of all your previous thoughts?”

Source: Speech, Taking Back Control of Our Days

II.

Philip Yancy on how art can help turn us from the world’s frivolities and given us time for reflection:

“Compared to any other time in history, we moderns scream and shout at each other. Listen to the music on any Top 40 station. Visit a museum of contemporary art. The world today contains no subtlety, no silence, no spaces.

“Spaces need filling. The father of cellist Yo-Yo Ma spent World War II in Paris, where he lived alone in a garret throughout the German occupation. In order to restore sanity to his world, he would memorize violin pieces by Bach during the day, and then at night, during blackout, he would play them alone in the dark. The sounds made by the reverberating strings held out the promise of order and hope and beauty. Later his son, Yo-Yo, took up the father’s advice to play a Bach suite from memory every night before going to bed. Yo-Yo Ma says, ‘This isn’t practicing; it’s contemplating. You’re alone with your soul.’”

Source: First Things, “What Art Can—and Can’t—Do” February 2009

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:40 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 26, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

French political philosopher and historian Alexis De Tocqueville on what democratic nations have to fear:

“I have no fear that they will meet with tyrants in their rulers but rather with guardians. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

Source: Democracy in America Volume 2, Fourth Book

II.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on the need for prudence or commonsense:

“Of the four cardinal virtues — courage, temperance, justice, and prudence — it is the last — prudence — that the ancient philosophers traditionally placed at the moral apex. They did so because they understood, quite rightly, that without that practical, seemingly rather dull, virtue none of the others could be correctly applied. You have to know when and how to be brave, or self-controlled or fair-minded, in particular situations. Prudence — or what I would prefer to call a good, hearty helping of commonsense, shows the way.”

Source: Ronald Reagan: The Greatness of His Achievements, Speech delivered to The Heritage Foundation’s 25th Aniversary, December 10, 1997

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:51 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 19, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

April Rinne on how to thrive in a fast-paced world:

“In an upside-down world that coaxes, cajoles, and coerces you to run ever faster, your key to true success and growth is to do the opposite: learn how to run slower.

“The old script says we must run faster to keep up. But a world in flux has different race conditions because the finish line keeps shifting. Whether it’s business demands, home and family priorities, responsibilities to juggle, relationships to nurture, or relentless uncertainty to decipher: the faster we run, the more we run without resting or reflecting or even paying attention, the worse our results will be over time.”

Source: Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change

II.

American educational philosopher Robert Maynard Hutchins, former chancellor of the University of Chicago, with a timely comment on a return to critical thought:

“As the Renaissance could accuse the Middle Ages of being rich in principles and poor in facts, we are now entitled to inquire whether we are not rich in facts and poor in principles. Our bewilderment has resulted from our notion that salvation depends on information. The remedy may be a return to the process of rational thought.”

Source: Robert Maynard Hutchins, Convocation Address 1933

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:37 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 12, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Mark C. Thompson and Bonita S. Thompson on taking action in a crisis:

“Challenges don’t come neatly packaged the way we planned them. So when you’re taken by surprise—and you don’t have the tools or support that you’d counted on—the first thing to think about is not what you’ve lost but what tools you still have. Start where you are. Figure out what you do have and use that to your advantage. When in doubt, take stock and then take action.

“People who are able to act during a crisis—even in the slightest way—are not as likely to experience post-traumatic stress syndrome. Action is what creates healing. By the same token, if we are overwhelmed by the size or difficulty of any task, taking some action toward the solution will mellow the overwhelm. We will be better equipped to manage our emotions after even a few small actions.”

Source: Admired: 21 Ways to Double Your Value

II.

John Wooden on self-control:

“Leadership starts with self-control. Remember, control of your organization begins with control of yourself. When you lose control, you sanction the same behavior for those under your leadership—the team. There is never an excuse for violating this imperative, and when you do, your credibility and consistency as a leader diminish accordingly.”

Source: Wooden on Leadership

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:58 AM
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Leading Thoughts for August 5, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

John Maxwell on how adversity introduces us to ourselves:

“Adversity always gets our attention. We can’t ignore it. It causes us to stop and look at our situation. And at ourselves if we have the courage. Adversity creates an opportunity for self-discovery. As the great Egyptian leader Anwar el-Sadat said, ‘Great suffering builds up a human being and puts him within the reach of self-knowledge.’”

Source: Leading in Tough Times

II.

Retired General Ronald Yates on the American tradition of total quality leadership:

“During the American Revolution, an officer in civilian clothes rose past a group of soldiers busy repairing a small fortification of rocks and tree limbs. Their commander was shouting instructions but making no attempt to help them. When the passer-by asked the commander why he wasn’t helping, the man in charge replied with great dignity, ‘Sir, I am a corporal!’

“The stranger apologized, dismounted, and proceeded to help the exhausted soldiers himself. When the job was completed, he turned to the corporal and said,

“‘Mr. Corporal, next time you have a job like this and not enough men to do it, go to your commander in chief, and I will come and help you again.’

“Too late, the corporal recognized General George Washington. Quality leadership also recognizes one person alone doesn’t make it happen – whether you’re the boss or out on the shop floor, you’re part of a team.”

Source: Total Quality Leadership: An American Tradition, Speech delivered November 1, 1994

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:16 AM
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Leading Thoughts for July 29, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Motivational speaker Les Brown on having an indomitable spirit:

“There are negatively charged people who allow events to control their lives, and there are positively charged people who remain in control of their lives no matter what life throws at them. You want to be positively charged. “

Good things happen to positively charged people because they look for good things even when others see only the bad. Positively charged people are both powerful and empowering. They are leaders…. They believe in themselves and their abilities, and their enthusiasm and self-confidence affect everyone around them.”

Source: Live Your Dreams

II.

Reid Hoffman and Ben Casocha say opportunities are the result of doing something—by being motion:

“Opportunities do not float like clouds. They are firmly attached to individuals. If you’re looking for an opportunity, you’re really looking for people. If you’re evaluating an opportunity, you’re really evaluating people. If you’re trying to marshal resources to go after an opportunity, you’re really trying to enlist the support and involvement of other people.”

Source: The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:18 AM
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Leading Thoughts for July 22, 2021

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Former CEO of Honeywell International, Larry Bossidy, on the behaviors a leader should look for in his or her direct reports:

“Over the years, I’ve observed that certain behaviors, on the part of both the subordinate and the boss, are conducive to productive and rewarding relationships. Indeed, I’ll favor someone who exhibits the behaviors I expect over someone who doesn’t, even if the latter’s numbers are slightly better because I know the former has the potential to contribute more to the organization over time.”

Source: Harvard Business Review, “What Your Leader Expects of You”

II.

Marc and Samantha Hurwitz on the importance of followership on management performance as you move up the organizational ladder:

“There is a lot less forgiveness for poor followership at the middle-manager level because much more of the job is about building partnerships, setting an example, and working in the larger organizational context. Being technically strong is no longer enough to shine. At senior management levels, followership becomes the primary consideration. In our experience, senior executives have the highest levels of followership skill and the greatest conceptual understanding of it, and are most likely to acknowledge followership behaviors.”

Source: Leadership is Half the Story: A Fresh Look at Followership, Leadership, and Collaboration

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:38 AM
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