Vision

"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet." - Theodore M. Hesburgh

Regardless of What They Think

"If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practicing leadership - you are practicing followship." - Margaret Thatcher

Seeing It Coming

One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.

--Arnold H. Glasgow

Leadership Training

"The only real training for leadership is leadership."
--Anthony Jay

Living for a Higher Purpose

"This is the true joy in life...being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one...being a force of Nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making your happy....I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It's a sort of splendid torch which I've got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. "-- George Bernard Shaw

Leadership Assessment Tools

There are a host of leadership assessment tools available. Sorting out which one is best for you is not easy. I ran across a useful guide by the Center for Creative Leadership that helps. You can download it here.

Learning Outside Work Matters

If you were to ask managers and executives where they get the most influential and effective developmental training, the answer you're likely to get is "on the job."

Too often, those same managers and executives discount what can be learned from experiences outside of work. Leadership research demonstrates that activities that take place outside of the regular workday contribute to a leader's effectiveness as a manager.

Learn more about how to increase your learning from everyday life.

Institute for Healthcare Leadership

Transformational leaders use their emotional intelligence to bring about meaningful change in people and organizations. Healthcare is one the fastest growing industries across the country. Transformational leaders are needed in this strategic industry.

Do you know about the Institite for Healthcare Leadership? Interesting group.

The Institute for Healthcare Leadership provides training programs to improve the healthcare workplace climate and bottom-line performance. The institute focuses on building the emotional intelligence of people working in health-related organizations.

Emotional Intelligence Services include:

Introductory Presentation on "The Healthcare Business Case for EQ."

One-Day Workshop on EQ Leadership (key concepts for managing the "human side" of superior performance).
Two-Day Workshop EQ Leadership Intensive (proven tools for exceptional leadership).

"Lights, Camera, Action," an Online Survey to Measure Organizational Climate (a powerful tool for building shared awareness).

Five-Day EQ Certification for internal advocates (managers and trainers learn how to maintain the program).

The Death of Competition: Leadership & Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems
By Moore, James F.
Harper Business 1996

Partial Review by Change Management Monitor:

The idea that businesses and organisations are better compared to organisms than to mechanisms and that they inhabit something analogous to an ecosystem has been gaining currency for some time now. There is also a growing literature accessible to non-scientists that explores the parallels (for example Waldrop's Complexity and, on a quite different plane of sophistication, Capra's The Web of Life).

Moore has written a wonderfully rich and sustained exploration of business strategy round the analogy of ecosystems. It is notable both for power of the comparison and for the author's use of systems (or systemic or holistic) thinking and language to drive home his message. To underpin his ideas, he suggests two key terms:

1. Business ecosystem: 'The term circumscribes the microeconomies of intense coevolution coalescing around innovative ideas. Business ecosystems span a variety of industries. The companies within them coevolve capabilities around the innovation and work cooperatively and competitively to support new products, satisfy customer needs, and incorporate the next round of innovation.'

2. Opportunity environment: 'a space of business possibility characterised by unmet customer needs, unharnessed technologies, potential regulatory openings, prominent investors, and many other untapped resources.'

Waldrop points out that it is a property of complex adaptive systems to seek out, evolve into and exploit new and emerging niches in their environment, and that it is another property of this process that the future of the system is, in consequence, unpredictable.

Moore takes up these points, applies them to an analysis of business ecosystems and draws out the consequences, while pointing out the crucial difference of consciousness; in a biological ecosystem, the organisms are not conscious of the whole system, whereas in a business ecosystem it is possible for a business to guide its own evolution - at least within limits.

The CEO and the Monk: One Company's Journey to Profit and Purpose
By Robert B. Catell, Kenny Moore, Glenn Rifkin
ISBN: 0-471-45011-1
Hardcover256 pages
January 2004
US $27.95

In a nutshell:

"This is a wonderful story of commitment, integrity, and the power of relationships. It offers the possibility that executives who care about community and people bring both honor and economic success to their business. Inspiring and practical, The CEO and the Monk threatens to restore our faith in those who lead us. I tip my hat to Bob and Kenny for telling the story of how human values can be brought into the marketplace. This book is unique and much needed."
--Peter Block, consultant, speaker, and author of many bestselling books

The Transformational Leader: The Key to Global Competitiveness
By Noel M. Tichy, Mary Anne Devanna
ISBN: 0-471-12726-4
Paperback, 336 pages
September 1997

In a nutshell:

"Lee Iacocca is one. So is GE's Jack Welch. And Unisys's Michael Blumenthal. They're "transformational" leaders—a special breed capable of managing the kind of massive turnaround most U.S. companies will have to undergo in the next decade to stay competitive. But what makes them able to steer their huge organizations down new paths? The Transformational Leader gives senior executives and managers the answers, not by profiling personalities, but by dissecting the process of transformational leadership and giving managers specific ideas for transforming their own companies."