Don't Innovate Italian Soccer Style

In business as in sports, capabilities decline quietly and smoothly. If companies don't constantly invest in innovation, they will perform well for a while and then, suddenly, they will fail — as the Italian team did during the recent World Cup.

For more, see: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/09/dont_innovate_italian_soccer_s.html

Don't Innovate Italian Soccer Style

Being Terrible is Not All Bad

If tomorrow you were given the chance to be great at every single skill in your life — we are talking world-class level, in each of your various interests — would you do it?

For many of us, the answer comes easily: Yes. Being number one at everything is considered Life’s Big Goal. Accordingly, we spend a lot of our time fervently traveling toward the promised land — shoring up weaknesses, honing strengths, targeting where to excel.

But this way of thinking misses out on a potentially important point: that there are some real advantages to being terrible.  There’s an underrated beauty in clumsiness. 

At this point we would like to introduce the piece de resistance of bad, the great pyramid of terribleness: the golf swing of former NBA basketball star, Mr. Charles Barkley (see below). It is not just bad. It is an Everest of ineptitude.

Historically speaking, there are two ways of looking at being bad:

1) It’s bad. It’s to be ignored, avoided, and spoken of as little as possible.

2) It’s secretly kind of good, because it teaches important lessons we can’t learn anywhere else.

In this second way of thinking, being bad contains a potential silver lining: character development, teaching the invaluable skill of resilience. We see this all the time, not just in the work of psychologists like Albert Bandura, but also in the biographies of luminaries like Beethoven, Churchill, Darwin, Emily Dickinson, Harry Truman, and John Grisham — all of whom endured excruciating stretches of ineptitude before they got good.

What’s more, we can take this idea even farther.  Because the advantages of being terrible go well beyond the necessary benefits of resilience and character. Being terrible can be useful because:

• It gives us freedom to experiment. Maintaining greatness is a narrow pursuit — you are essentially playing defense, vigilantly guarding against erosion. Being terrible, on the other hand, is a license to try new things. It permits a looseness and a creativity, since there is very little to lose.
• It connects us to other people. It’s interesting to see the contrast between the way people treat the ever-smiling Barkley and the ever-grim Tiger Woods.  People admire greatness. But they relate to Barkley’s awfulness because we’ve all been there.
• It lets us practice the vastly underrated skill of knowing when to quit. In this overprogrammed world, it’s all too easy (especially for parents and kids) to say yes to tennis, music, golf, theatre, everything. But to get really good at anything, you can’t say yes to everything. Knowing when and how to quit is not just handy — it’s a survival skill.
• It keeps us humble and grounded. Lives built on the relentless pursuit of perfection tend to be relentlessly narrow. Witness some of the indefensible behaviour we’ve seen lately from perfectionists in the City, Whitehall and in the sports arena.  Being terrible is a reminder that we’re like everybody else — vulnerable, human, prone to error. It tilts us toward a learning mindset.

Being Terrible is Not All Bad

Building The Team That Could Save Your Life

Mountaineer Chris Warner on teambuilding, the dangers of K2 and why in climbing the ties that bind make the difference between life and death: 

Building The Team That Could Save Your Life

Preparing for Peak Performance

People are finally starting to realise that "the right stuff" isn't something you have to be born with. The fact that we can learn to tap previously unexplored potential has been quickest, perhaps, to take hold in the world of professional sports. However, the principles involved will work just as well outside this elevated world.

One of the best-known techniques, for what sports psychologists and counselors call "performance enhancement," is visualisation. Now, visualisation is simply a form of mental practice. It's doing your sport over and over again in your mind, with all the right moves and the desired end result. You can do this with your eyes closed in a quiet room, riding the bus, in the shower, while you're waiting to see the dentist – virtually any time.

All that's required is that you see yourself performing. It doesn't matter what the action is, as long as you are doing it perfectly. This is because your subconscious doesn't know the difference between a vividly imagined picture and the actual event. And while mental practice can't replace the discipline and hard work of physical practice, in some ways it's even better. It guarantees that you are practicing perfection, and when you practice perfection, you are far more likely to perform perfectly.

Preparing for Peak Performance

Frustration

Frustration is a feeling all of us experience from time to time.....but how do we go about overcoming it?

One of the roadblocks on the path to success is frustration. Everyone feels it from time to time. It's kind of like anxiety with a little anger thrown in, isn't it? You feel like a tiger in a cage, filled with tension and negative energy but accomplishing nothing. And that tension and negative energy represent both the danger and the opportunity in frustration.

The danger is the tension and the negativity, because negativity blocks all the positive feelings you need in order to keep going and solve the problems at hand – and you just can't be very creative in a tension-filled environment. The opportunity is the energy, because you can use it to overcome whatever obstacle you're facing, as soon as you get the negative thinking under control. “Ah-ha,” you may be saying, “there's the catch. If I could do that, I wouldn't be frustrated.” Well, you can do it.

Cognitive psychologists teach people to do it, too. It's simply a question of knowing how. If you'd like to learn how, pick up a copy of Dr. Martin Seligman's book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. It will give you a simple technique you can use to minimise negative thoughts and substitute positive ones. It's quite simple to master and it will make a big difference in your frustration level and the time you spend spinning your wheels.

Frustration

Why Great Leaders Are Always Destined to Fail

The traditional autocratic style of leadership is dead in both politics and business, according to psychology research published recently that argues leaders succeed only by responding closely to their followers.

A group of psychologists distilled the results of their research at the 2010 British Science Festival in Birmingham. 

“The fundamental point is that effective leadership is not about ‘me’ but about ‘us’,” said Alex Haslam, psychology professor at Exeter University.

The research analysed 85 recent books about leadership and studying public attitudes to leaders. “The patterns that emerge challenge traditional models of leadership which suggest that this is simply about the character of the people at the top,” said Prof Haslam. “Instead they suggest that leadership is always bound up with followership, and that groups work best when leaders and followers perceive themselves to share a common sense of identity.”

The problem is that this art of being ordinary usually starts to break down at the height of your powers as success sets you apart from your peers.

For more, see: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b1867790-c00f-11df-9628-00144feab49a.html

Why Great Leaders Are Always Destined to Fail

Can Exercise Help Develop Intelligence?

In an experiment published last month, researchers recruited schoolchildren, ages 9 and 10, who lived near the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois and asked them to run on a treadmill. The researchers were hoping to learn more about how fitness affects the immature human brain.

The results of this and other recent research are clear: exercise is good for the intelligence of young people. 

For more, see: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/phys-ed-can-exercise-make-kids-smarter/?scp=1&sq=the%20fittest%20brains&st=cse

Can Exercise Help Develop Intelligence?

Make Leadership Positive, Rational and Information-focused

In his book, Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy, Bill Gates writes admiringly of General Motors’ legendary leader Alfred P. Sloan, who is considered one of the pioneers of modern management.

Gates writes, “It’s inspiring to see in Sloan’s account of his career how positive, rational, information-focused leadership can lead to extraordinary success.” 

Clearly, Gates has adopted these same qualities of being positive, rational, and information-focused in his approach to leadership, both in Microsoft and in his foundation, and achieved with it extraordinary success.

Make Leadership Positive, Rational and Information-focused

The Leaders We Need For Tomorrow

Through Imagining the Future of Leadership, a symposium at the Harvard Business School and accompanying blog series, expert thinkers gathered to investigate what is necessary today to develop the leaders we need for tomorrow.

Featuring:
Andrew Pettigrew, Professor, Sïad Business School, University of Oxford
Bob Johansen, Distinguished Fellow, Institute for the Future
Barbara Kellerman, Lecturer in Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School
Deborah Ancona, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Daisy Wademan Dowling, Executive Director, Leadership Development at Morgan Stanley
Dr. Ellen Langer, Professor, Harvard University
Evan Wittenberg, Head of Global Leadership Development, Google, Inc.
Gianpiero Petriglieri, Affiliate Professor of Organizational Behavior, INSEAD
Marshall Ganz, Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Scott Snook, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School and retired Colonel, US Army Corps of Engineers

The Leaders We Need For Tomorrow

Five Keys to Good Leadership

1. Be aware. Understand yourself and your context. Know your own strengths, limitations, and development needs. If you don't have time to build your skills, bring people into your team who will complement you. Be aware of the organisation and the people you are leading.

2. Have a plan. Know where you are going. One great definition of leadership is to have followers. If you cannot create a sense of the future, no one can follow you.

3. Build relationships. Give more of yourself. A leader has to get things done through others, so people skills are critical. Take time to get to know your peers, bosses, and subordinates. Talk less, listen more, and remember the details of what people say. Investing time to understand the roles, ideas, and personalities of those around you will yield a strong network, corporate allies, motivated staff, and personal goodwill.

4. Deliver. Get things done. Whatever your line of business, you need to show the results of your leadership. So whether it's a better product, an improved service, a higher profit or share price, make sure you deliver.

5. Have integrity. Get your values right. Your values define who you are and why others should work for you. The important point here is that values should be lived, not written down or occasionally talked about. Show by your own example that honesty, truth, transparency, respect, and sustainability matter. 

Five Keys to Good Leadership

More Tomorrow than Today

When you can see yourself, not as you are, but as you can become, you stimulate incredible growth and previously unbelievable change. People who find life exciting and who continue to grow and expand their accomplishments are people who have an expanding self-image.

Now this doesn't mean that you go around completely out of touch with reality. But it does mean that you have a vision of reality that includes not just the past and the present, but also the future. It also means that your primary focus is not on what you are today, but what you can be tomorrow. It is this technique, this ability that motivates people to grow, to surpass themselves, to break records, to change in positive, exciting ways.

After all, if you can't see it, how can you be it? This is what you want to do for your children, friends, relatives and colleagues – indeed, all whom your life touches. Keep painting a vivid mental picture for them of all that they can be and do. Let them know you believe in their abilities, and watch them move towards that picture. Help them be more today than they were yesterday, and on their way to a greater tomorrow.

More Tomorrow than Today

Building A Team That Loves What They Do

Global Business School Network president Guy Pfeffermann talks about the importance of building a team that loves what they do. 

Building A Team That Loves What They Do

Presentation Advice

Presentations go wrong for numerous reasons, but the most common reason is poor preparation. 

Follow these two rules to make sure you're ready before you step up to the podium:

1. Know your audience. Speeches are about the audience, not the presenter. Before you write anything down, be sure you know who you're addressing. The size, attitudes, and emotional state of your audience should affect the length, style, and content of your presentation.
2. Tell them one thing. The sad truth is that audience members remember very little of what they hear. Keep it simple. Focus on one idea and eliminate everything that doesn't support that idea.

Presentation Advice

Think Like a Golfer

The amazing thing about golf is that at the end of the day golfers don't remember the poor shots they made. All they remember is their one great shot and this memory inspires them to come back again and again in an attempt to make another great shot. It’s no wonder that golf is so addicting.

Compare this thought process to how many of us approach work and life. Instead of focusing on the one good thing that happened to us each day we often think about the 100 things that went wrong. Instead of thinking about our successes we replay our failures over and over again in our mind. No wonder so many of us retreat from life and work instead of getting addicted to it.

The key is to think like a golfer and remember the one great conversation, the one energising meeting, the one act of kindness, the one meaningful accomplishment or the one special moment that made you smile, laugh and cheer.

No matter how difficult our days are, there’s always a positive moment we can choose to focus on. The key is to remember them, focus on them and get addicted to them. Let them inspire you to wake up and take on each day just as you would a golf course. You'll go through life learning from your mistakes but remembering and focusing on your successes.

Sure, there will be days that make you want to give up but the memory of your successes and positive experiences will motivate you to come back again and again. You'll forget the 100 things that went wrong and you'll remember the one thing that went right. You’ll get addicted to the moments that make life the greatest game in the universe and you’ll intoxicate yourself with positive energy, happiness, joy and success! 

Think Like a Golfer

Redefining Success in a Recession Economy

A recession is a great reminder that all of us need to learn, as Samuel Beckett said, to “fail better” - http://www.newsweek.com/video/2010/09/13/the-power-of-failure.html

Redefining Success in a Recession Economy

Positive Leadership partners with Scotland rugby head coach Andy Robinson

Positive Leadership is delighted to be partnering with Scotland rugby head coach, Andy Robinson, to bring the lessons of sports leadership into the boardroom. 

In an event organised by the IOD entitled; ‘Living Your Leadership Values – Even Under Pressure – To Achieve Desired Results: Lessons from the Six Nations’ you can hear from Graham Watson and Gavin Hastings of Positive Leadership and Andy Robinson how values play a hugely significant role in delivering high performance on a consistent basis. 

Details of the event, which is being held on 28 September 2010 in Edinburgh, can be obtained at http://www.iodscotland.com/local or by contacting the event organiser, Gillian Rose at Gillian@cognito-events.com .

For a chance to win a free seat at the event, please email;  graham.watson@positiveleadership.co.uk 

Positive Leadership partners with Scotland rugby head coach Andy Robinson

Managing Clashing Leadership Styles

If everyone had the same management style as you, life at work would be easier, wouldn't it? Not necessarily. While managing the tension can be challenging, working with someone who has a different approach than you can often yield innovation and creativity. 

Here are three ways to make the most of differing styles:

1. Unpeel the onion. On the surface, you may seem to have little in common with your colleague. But if you look deeper, you are likely to see shared values or a mutual goal. Focus on what you have in common, not on what you don't.
2. Manage your expectations. Recognise that you and your colleagues are going to have different expectations about how things should be done. Communicate about these disparities and be open to doing something another way.
3. Push for innovation. The true value of diversity is a richer end product. Use your relationship to find innovation and benefit in the work you do together.

Managing Clashing Leadership Styles

Character Counts

Surveys suggest that worker satisfaction is more profoundly affected by perceptions of top management than by their immediate supervisor. What lessons can top leaders glean from this?

One of the key lessons is that the leader's character has a profound effect on the development and maintenance of an organisation's culture. 

Those at the top are presumed to merit their positions because of competence, but their character also matters. What differentiates the most effective leaders, no matter where they reside in the hierarchy, is the combination of these two attributes. These are the leaders with integrity; they have a high degree of congruence between their values and their actions. They engender trust and commitment, evoke a comforting, non-stagnant predictability, and cultivate confidence in the long term viability of their organisations. 

This combination of competence and character provides meaning and inspires hope to those whose dreams may be dimmed by middle management's tendency to divide the work force into leaders and losers. In top-down bureaucracies where status and title matter most, the individual at the top of the pyramid is always accorded formal authority and power. Whether they are authorised to lead or not is actually determined by who they are and what they do. The most effective leaders understand this; they know that leadership by title is insufficient and superficial without the legitimisation of those being led.

Character Counts

Why Some Executives Fail

Here are some common executive ‘derailers’ :

- Lack of ethics and values
- Overly ambitious
- Arrogance

- Blocked personal learner

- Defensiveness
- Insensitive to others
- Non-strategic
- Failure to build a team
- Lack of composure
- Unable to adapt to differences.

Why Some Executives Fail

What is Talent?

Talent can be found in extraordinary and ordinary places if we choose to be completely open about what talent actually 'is'.

So, what does it mean to be “talented” or “gifted” or a “genius”?

According to David Shenk, the author of  The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong, the traditional view of talent as a “gift” that is somehow given to us through our genes is both simplistic and outdated. 

Genes mean very little, considering that, as Shenk points out, “genes are constantly activated and deactivated by environmental stimuli, nutrition, hormones, nerve impulses and other genes.” In other words, our genes don’t guarantee anything.

He also goes into great detail about the hard work and focus that some of the most talented people in history – including Mozart and Michael Jordan – put into developing their skills. His finding is that talent has less to do with the “gifts” that nature has endowed us with as it does with environmental and behavioural factors. That is, most of us aren’t destined to be talented or untalented. It’s something that happens over time, due to conscious effort and environmental stimuli.

The inspirational upshot of Shenk’s research is that “few of us know our true limits and that the vast majority of us have not even come close to tapping what scientists call our ‘unactualised potential.’”

This is exciting news, and hopefully it will inspire many of us to work harder at developing our skills. Too often we hear people label themselves as “not gifted at math” or “not artistic” or “not creative.” According to the research cited in Shenk’s book, we can’t let ourselves off that easy.

If we broaden our understanding of talent, we’ll start seeing it in unexpected places. The truth is, we’ve all got unbelievable potential. it’s just up to us, our mentors and our leaders to tap into it and put it to good use. A tall order, to be sure, but one that’s definitely worth the work. 

What is Talent?

Connecting

The two key elements of all leadership are simply: 1) to connect everyone to the mission, and 2) to each other. Other aspects of leadership may be critical, but not as indispensable as these two. Connecting everyone to the mission takes identifying that mission. Only top leaders can do that. Only they can set the whole organisation's direction, and give it meaning.

The larger, the more important the mission, the more satisfaction people have in pursuing it. As Shakespeare says:

'O, the blood more stirs
To rouse a lion than
To start a hare.' (Henry IV, I)

People get more satisfaction from coping with a big challenge, like rousing a lion, than going after small tasks, like chasing a rabbit. It's the responsibility of top leadership to explain how and why their whole organisation is pursuing a big, important mission. Supervisors can repeat their message, and specify their unit's role in that mission.

Both elements, connecting folks to the mission, and to each other come together magnificently when Shakespeare's Henry V inspires the "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers" at the Battle of Agincourt on October 25, 1415.

His St. Crispin Day's Speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9fa3HFR02E) is the greatest motivational speech ever made. That's why Sir Winston Churchill adapted its approach and beauty to his powerful speeches during the British Empire's darkest days of 1940.

Connecting

The Secrets of Resilient Leadership: When Failure is Not an Option

When faced with adversity, leaders can get caught up trying to manage their own stress. In the worst cases, such as the demise of Enron or the fiasco after Hurricane Katrina, they become so concerned for their own position that they jeopardise the entire operation.

The authors of The Secrets of Resilient Leadership: When Failure Is Not an Option.Six Essential Characteristics for Leading in Adversity remind us of a simple fact -

Resilient leadership is not only about how well you survive, it is about helping others rebound. The true test of leadership, they point out, is how well others follow.

“Although a leader may have the vision and courage to lead, he must do so in a way that followers respond to”, they say. The prerequisites for this are trust and devotion. Leaders must act with “bold and decisive action built on honour and honesty.”

These are basic qualities that most leaders are already aware of, even if they do not always exhibit them. The strength in this book is in the authors’ ability to break down these abstract concepts into concrete, achievable steps. 

The book is structured on their top six components of resilient leadership:

(1) Acting with integrity. Bold, decisive action is not enough; it must come from integrity. Integrity inspires trust, trust enhances a sense of safety, and safety helps fulfil the most fundamental need—survival.

(2) Communicating effectively and honestly. There is no such thing as an information vacuum—if you don’t talk, others will.

(3) Using the power of decisiveness, optimism, and self-fulfilling prophecies. Optimism has been shown to influence outcomes: Your thoughts define and create reality as much, or possibly more, than vice versa. Leaders must not only see opportunity in adversity, they must model it, convey and create optimism in others.

(4) Persevering and taking responsibility for actions. Perseverance is what provides strength, and responsibility generates honour. To your employer, your first duty is to earn your income; to others, it is understanding and respect; to your community, consideration and appreciation; and to those you lead it is to protect, act in their best interest, and teach.

(5) Building a resilient culture.  Fostering a group identity, or sense of belonging, combined with group cohesion—the degree of interpersonal affinity, commitment or attraction that members share—are keys to cultural resilience. The tenet “No one left behind” creates the sense of safety without which followers won’t follow.

(6) Developing physical and psychological health as a competitive advantage. Overwhelm, frustration, fatigue and illness will undermine any effort towards resilience. To combat this, leaders need to follow, model, and promote common sense rules for physical and mental health.

The Secrets of Resilient Leadership: When Failure is Not an Option

See Direction as a Result of Process?

See Direction as a Result of Process?

Value Creation and Sport

Over the last two decades, professional sport has grown to be one of the biggest and most influential industries in the world.

There is a great deal that managers and business leaders can learn from examining the unique role sport plays in the global economy – and specifically by analysing what makes certain franchises economically successful. And yet, there’s a real shortage of research on this topic. Few people are thinking and writing about it intelligently.

Enter Sandalio Gómez, Kimio Kase and Ignacio Urrutia. Their new book, Value Creation and Sport Management proposes an insightful and academically rigorous framework for understanding the growth of the sport industry over the last few decades. 

As they point out, “twenty years ago Real Madrid football team had a budget of less than €60 million; today, it is €400 million.” Something is going on here, and these three authors do a superb job of getting to the bottom of it.

Sport taps into the deepest emotional feelings of the world’s population, regardless of geography age or demographics. This is territory that today’s business leaders need to be deeply knowledgeable about, especially as it is in the arena of experiences (rather than products) where optimum value is being created. Emotional experiences like the ones provoked by sport that will be at the core of the successful businesses of tomorrow, which is why it is important to study the underlying forces that govern this vibrant, unique industry.

Gómez, Kase and Urrutia have hit upon an important and overlooked research project, and hopefully their work sparks a firestorm of academic investigation into the inner workings of sports franchises.

Value Creation and Sport