Positive Leadership has also been recognised as a Top 50 Leadership Expert to Follow on Twitter.

Follow us on Twitter @posleadership


LEADERSHIP IS A PROCESS OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE, WHICH MAXIMISES THE EFFORTS OF OTHERS TOWARDS THE ACHIEVEMENT OF A SHARED GOAL.

Friday, March 04, 2011

Positive Leadership: Managing Yourself: Zoom In, Zoom Out

Zoom buttons on digital devices let us examine images from many viewpoints. They also provide an apt metaphor for modes of strategic thinking. Some people prefer to see things up close, others from afar. Both perspectives have virtues. But they should not be fixed positions, says Harvard Business School’s Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter. To get a complete picture, leaders need to zoom in and zoom out.

A close-in perspective is often found in relationship-intensive settings. It brings details into sharp focus and makes opportunities look large and compelling. But it can have significant downsides. Leaders who prefer to zoom in tend to create policies and systems that depend too much on politics and favours. They can focus too closely on personal status and on turf protection. And they often miss the big picture. When leaders zoom out, they can see events in context and as examples of general trends. They are able to make decisions based on principles. Yet a far-out perspective also has traps. Leaders can be so high above the fray that they don’t recognise emerging threats. Having zoomed out to examine all possible routes, they may fail to notice when the moment is right for action on one path. They may also seem too remote and aloof to their staffs.

The best leaders can zoom in to examine problems and then zoom out to look for patterns and causes. They don’t divide the world into extremes—idiosyncratic or structural, situational or strategic, emotional or contextual. The point is not to choose one over the other but to learn to move across a continuum of perspectives. 

For more, see: http://ht.ly/46yCH

Share/Save/Bookmark

Positive Leadership: The New Business Elite

Here are the top companies in the Fortune Magazine listing of the World's Most Admired Companies 2011, ranked by attribute, as reflected in the last survey before the recession (2007) and in this year’s survey.

(The top ranked British company is British American Tobacco, albeit it does not feature in the World's Top 50.):


Attribute
Pre-recession champ
New champ
Ability to attract, develop, and keep talented people
General Electric
Goldman Sachs
Effectiveness in conducting its business globally
Nestlé
McDonald’s
Innovativeness
Apple
Apple
Quality of management
Procter & Gamble
McDonald’s
Quality of products and services
Anheuser-Busch
Amazon.com
Responsibility to the community and environment
UPS
Statoil
Soundness of financial position
Exxon Mobil
Google
Value as a long-term investment
Berkshire Hathaway
Google
Wise use of corporate assets
Exxon Mobil
McDonald’s


For more, see http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/02/news/companies/most_admired_intro.fortune

Share/Save/Bookmark