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Leadership

Collective Wisdom or Collective Folly: What Do you Nurture as a Leader?

I often say “we are smarter than me,”… referring to the increased capacity, deep wisdom, creativity, and solid decisions that groups of people can make – as opposed to one individual acting in isolation. No matter how smart that one person is, in general they will be “outsmarted” but a group of people. That is, of course, if that group of people can work together effectively.

Briskin, Erickson, Ott, and Callanan examine the phenomena of group decision making in their book, The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly. They answer how groups can come up with novel and powerful solutions to intractable problems at times – and at other times wallow in cobbled together solutions that are amazingly awful.

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Leadership

Demonstrating a Commitment to Inclusion

It is clear that organizations that can create workplaces where all talent can bring forth their best, will be the best situated for success. However, I must admit that the work is long and hard – and progress is slow. But it is too important to waiver. So, I’d love to hear. What is your organization doing to tap into the potential that diversity and inclusion bring?

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Leadership

Workplace Hazing

Say the word hazing and we immediately think of college fraternities and high school locker rooms. The idea that if you want to be “one of us” there is a price of admission – sometimes embarrassing, sometimes requiring great sacrifices, sometimes acts of daring, and sometimes outright danger or death.

It’s not called hazing at work. It’s called things like, “just the way we do things here,” or “our culture,” or “orientation”. None the less, many organizations have strange (and less than helpful) rituals designed to test new members before they become a part of the group.

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Leadership

5 Things You Can Do to Become a More Agile Learner

Learning and learning fast is imperative today. Your ability to push past your comfort zone, acquire new skills, explore different ways of thinking – a willingness to learn from the old and move on to the new will define your success.

But how does one do that? Today I’ll share five strategies you can use to increase your learning agility.

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Leadership

The Triple Bottom Line and Sustainable Organizations

In my next few posts I am going to explore the question of sustainability – of our organizations and the larger world in which those organizations exist. The topic is big – and this will only be a brush. But I hope that these posts might give you pause to ponder – what should we be doing to create vibrant organizations that are sustainable over time – not via brute force or domination but through the synergy of being in tune with their external environment, honoring that environment (both social and environmental) and existing in a harmonious ecosystem of give and take, change and adaptation, growth, decline, and rebirth.

Today’s post is about a way to measure sustainability using a framework called the Triple Bottom Line. Subsequent posts will examine the internal factors that enable an organization to be sustainable over time, and then the notion of “constructive capitalism”, a way in which companies can create enduring, meaningful and sustainable advantage that also benefits society.

So… about that Triple Bottom Line…

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Change

The New Normal: Unrelenting Change

As some level, I think every one of us knows that the old notions of stability are fiction. That the pace of change is breakneck, coming so fast and furious that we can’t assimilate and accommodate or make sense of it all. That the longevity of our position, our career, our company, our product, or our gadgets are measured at best in years, more likely in months and very seldom in decades. Love it or hate it – we need to reconcile that unrelenting change is the new normal.

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Challenges

The Hard Truth about Transformation

On April 19, 2011, our home was stuck by a tornado. It toppled six of the lovely and enormous 100 year oak trees that surrounded our house. It demolished our garage, blew the roof of our barn and totally destroyed the deep woods behind our house. In general, it was a gargantuan mess of debris and fallen trees and branches. Three years later, I am reminded of a hard, cold truth about transformation – that it takes time.

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Change

What College Students and Beer Can Teach Us about Leading Change

I had to chuckle when I heard the news story about the legislators who, with good intentions, prohibited the sale of kegs of beer in their college town and, as a result, made the problem they were trying to solve even worse. This is a story of unintended consequences, a peril each of us faces as we implement changes in the organizations we lead.

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