I’ve been wanting to find a way to share with you books worth reading. Finally, I’ve settled on doing an interview. I’ve asked Pam Fox Rollin, a coach and leadership expert, & the new author of 42 Rules for Your New Leadership Role: The Manual They Didn’t Hand You When You Made VP, Director, or [...]
Tag Archives | Collaboration
Can Anyone Innovate?
As I went around the country last year giving leadership, innovation and collaboration talks at major companies and conferences, I started to hear the same question over and over again, and it amounted to this: Who is allowed to drive innovation? Now the actual questions that came up sounded more specific than that. If asked [...]
Curing the Yackity Yack Disease
At Apple, my best boss* once walked out of a room, after calling a bunch of us “Yackety-Yakers”. Even though I’ve lived in the Bay Area of California since I was 5 years old, I definitely miss a lot of cultural references. I like to blame this on the fact that I don’t watch television, [...]
Fearless Learning
By Nilofer Merchant on February 14, 2011 in Culture & Leadership, Entrepreneurship, The Personal Story
To learn, we must be willing to not yet know. And that means we need to stop silently criticizing ourselves and others for not already knowing the answer. When we think we “should” already know, then we spend energy eliminating seemingly conflicting data, information, opinions and stories. Only to never see what we need to [...]
What Surrounds Us, Affects Us.
We are all connected. We mostly know that. Do we also realize that who we hang with affects our moods, what we think about as valid, it shows up in our decisions, and it affects what we create? Maybe. This week, I worked with an editor to create my first post for the HBR (Harvard [...]
Are you a Rebel or a Leader?
Everyone was being so agreeable. The CEO nodded, the VPs agreed, the Directors were polished in their reviews. All the content was “good,” the timelines “reasonable,” the budgets “sufficient.” We were in a meeting to review the roadmap for the company’s new product. And it had all the hallmarks of a Potemkin village. I wanted [...]
Management 2.0
Ever notice that most job descriptions list about 10 things that are known that the person will be required to do and then some line that says “projects as needed”. That’s the catch-all line because what we get hired for isn’t everything we do; in fact, the functional job someone is hired for is only [...]
Management Reinvention Manifesto
Recently, I started a keynote with a hatchet in my hand. You might think i was being theatrical. The actual purpose of starting a talk with a tool in my hand was to point to a time when responsibility for a shared goal was built into the community. 4 Economies & How They Shaped Management: [...]
What Do YOU Think?
The next time someone comes into your office or cube and asks you to solve a problem, do this instead: Look at them in the eye. Then ask ‘em, “what do you think?”. Then wait. Don’t take the problem on. Don’t assume that because they have come to you, you should solve the problem. Cause [...]
Never Gender, Rank, Title
My son is reading Harry Potter and is literally devouring it. Soon, I’m thinking, he’ll reach Book 4, which poses a little problem. Not to be a spoiler or anything in case you haven’t read it, bad things happen to good people in Book 4. So as a parent, I’m thinking about what to do [...]