Given the right circumstances, from no more than dreams, determination, and the liberty to try, quite ordinary people consistently do extraordinary things.
– Dee Hock
Category: Leadership
Leadership is an insanely important discipline. Here you’ll find the thought, tools and tricks of the trade of great leaders.
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Movie review: Startup.com
The makers of this brilliant documentary got permission to follow the rise and decline of internet startup govworks.com VERY closely. We’re there as the idea slowly takes form. As the first rounds of financing are secured. We cheer as the company grows, and the future looks rosy. And we’re very much there as the whole thing goes wrong, and ends up costing the founders their friendship.
This is my favourite epitaph of the dotcom years. See it!
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Book review: An unused intelligence
There are many different theories about learning, but not a single one of them states, that the best way to learn, is to sit passively on a chair, while a teacher talks about the subject in question. No theory ever in the history of the world has claimed it, and yet this is how schools, colleges, universities, business training and countless other learning concepts operate.
This book subtitled “Physical thinking for 21st century leadership” marks a departure from that school of thought and describes a way to ground learning in the body.
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I hear people everywhere saying that the trouble with our time is that we have no great leaders any more. If we look back, we always had them. But to me it seems that there is a very profound reason why there are no great leaders anymore. It is because they are no longer needed. The message is clear. We no longer want to be lead from the outside. Each of us must be our own leader. We know enough to follow the light that’s within ourselves, and through this light we will create a new community.
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Book review: The power of spirit
Harrison Owen is the inventor of Open Space Technology, the most exciting and productive way of meeting with other people that I know of. In The power of spirit, how organizations transfrom he describes what an organization might look like, if it lived by the open space principles. And let me say this right away: If they’re hiring, I want to work there!
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Book review: The soul at work
Complexity science is appearing more and more often in business literature (and just about everywhere else). This book with the subtitle “unleashing the power of complexity science for business success” shows a better way to manage organizations than the old command-and-control way, and describes some of the tools needed to get there. It helped put me on to the “joy at work” project.
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Exercise: Faster or slower
Is faster always better? Try this exercise, and see what you think.
Let’s say that you want to optimize some process to save time.
In many activities, you can take all the fun out of it if you hurry too much. For example, I used to be a hell-bent skier. This happens when you’re living in flat, snow-less Demark, and you only have the chance to ski for one week every year. By god, I wanted the most skiing I could possibly get! So I got up really early every morning, I took almost no breaks (except for a short lunch break), and I generally drove myself and everybody around me to exhaustion and desperation. Then on a trip a couple of years ago, I learned that by relaxing a little, taking a lot of breaks, I’d get less skiing done, but I’d enjoy it a hell of a lot more. Say 20% less skiing, 80% more fun! And I’ve found that this equation holds in many other activities.
So, what is it that happens when you try do something faster? Odds are, that beyond a certain point, the faster you do it, the less you enjoy it. Maybe it’s just more fun when you do it slowly. Alternatively, you may become stressed because you’re not doing it as fast as you’d like.
So this is the exercise: Find a process or action you’d like to optimize (it can be anything really, your morning drive to work, your evening meal or something you do at work), and then try to do it faster or slower. Keep a journal where you log the time it took and how you liked the experience. Then try to see if there’s a connection, and try to see if there’s an optimal “hurry level”, that doesn’t eliminate the fun.
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Book review: Orbiting the giant hairball
Gordon Mackenzie spent 20 years working for Hallmark, and his experiences there have enabled him to write what he calls “a corporate fools guide to surviving with grace“. There’s no doubt that Gordon is a free spirit, and here he shares the mindset and that allowed him to survive and prosper in a large, conservative organization. That’s how he came up with the mental image of the corporate hairball – a disgusting but instructive metaphor…
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Politicians and morals
Thor Pedersen, the danish minister of finance, is accused of owning a farm without living on it, even though danish law requires him to. He is being attacked relentlessly by both the opposition and the media. He’s admitted to breaking the law, and promised not to do it anymore.
Thor Pedersens guilt or innocence aside, there’s one question you have to ask yourself.
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Book review: The fifth discipline
The fifth discipline by Peter M. Senge is one of those books that truly make a difference. It is referred to in many different contexts, and it played an important role in shaping the concepts of the learning organization.
