November 25, 2008 - 14:47, by Dostalek, Kevin
This is Richard St. John from the TED conference 3 years ago. He defines success in 8 simple words in under 3 minutes.
Ted Video
Passion, Work, Good, Push, Ideas, Focus, Persist, Serve
I especially like the term "workafrolics" :)
November 13, 2008 - 12:40, by Dostalek, Kevin
I just finished both listening to the audiobook and reading the paperbook of Seth Godin's newest book
Tribes. Of all the books I've read/listened to this year (and the list is considerable, > 25), this one shot straight to the top of my list.
I highly recommed this book to everyone (I'm buying many copies to give away as Christmas presents). And for those of you with Audible accounts (or the willingness to create one), you can get a
FREE copy of this book
HERE. Also, if you use iTunes (blah), then I believe if you search you will find it for
$0.99.
[Correction: Looks like that was just for a limited time, it's now $5.95] Seth is a great narrator, so I almost would recommend the audiobook over the print copy... but if you're like me, after listening to it, you'll want your own print copy too.
September 17, 2008 - 02:19, by Dostalek, Kevin
Imagine...
- an organization that was committed to innovative ideas and technology and had a passion to give life to those ideas and improve the world.
- an organization that held learning and teaching as its highest values and encouraged- no demanded continuous self-improvement.
- a workplace that was not only diverse in race, culture, age, and gender, but also experience, skillsets, and worldviews.
- an environment where it was ok to try and test new ideas and the words "failure is not an option" are forbidden.
- an organization that values clarity and simplicty, knowing that something is not perfect when we can add nothing else, but when we can not take away anything more and still achieve the same result-- and even then it can still be improved.
- a place where your co-workers not only participate in the every changing community, but are the ones causing the change.
- an environment where you measure your success each day by the number of people you helped kick ass.
- a job in which , not sometimes, or even most of the time, but EVERY DAY you go home know YOU kicked ass.
This place might be kind of like a traditional IT department, because it will certainly look for opportunities to leverage technology to reduce costs and make people more productive.
This place might be kind of like a traditional HR department, because it will certainly have talent recruiting, continuous learning, and mentorship programs.
This place might be kind of like a traditional R&D department, because it will certainly produce new ideas, test them, develop them into innovations, and monetize them as products.
This place might be kind of like a traditional Marketing department because it will certainly examine new ways to expand our markets and build trust and engagement with our customers.
Except that, because of the bullet points above, this place is like nothing traditional. It is fast, flexible, dare I say, agile, and just a bit quirky. But more than anything, it is different because the people that make up its parts have an burning passion to make a difference in the world.
To quote one of America's greatest innovators:
"If we can imagine it, we can do it." --Walt Disney
Where were you in the scenes you imagined above?
December 12, 2007 - 03:05, by Dostalek, Kevin
I've often written about leadership out in front. After all, you can't be leading if no one is following-right? Anyone that knows me is also keenly aware that I love being in that trailblazing position and enjoy leading by example. However, recent events have caused me to reflect on this notion and explore the potential traps.
Presumably, if you are leading from the front then you are delegating the tasks of tactical execution to those following in your wake. Great leaders always surround themselves with great people, so on the surface this may be acceptable. However, if you don't stay engaged in the execution phases, how are you to know that the direction you are leading is still the correct one? Perhaps implementation details turned out to be more challenging than you thought and costs need to be reconsidered. Maybe things went really well and now you should tweak your risk acceptance and be more aggressive. The worst case is that without proper follow-through you may end up letting customers down in delivering less than excellent results, hurting your reputation in ways that are immeasurable.
Another problem with leading from the front is that often you tend to fixate on the direction you're headed and develop a sort of tunnel vision. You spend so much of your energy generating enthusiasm amongst your followers that you lose sight of the bigger picture. Visionary leaders are especially susceptible to this. Even though generating enthusiasm takes little or no effort for them, the harness of their own ego keeps their "eyes on the prize".
Leadership out in front can be very glamorous, but it also takes a lot of work. If you, as a leader always take this position and never let anyone else "drive the bus", what you may find is that your best employees leave (they want the glamour) and your worst employees stay (after all, you are doing most of the work). In the mean time you put yourself on the path of burn-out.
So, if leading from the front can cause execution problems, tunnel vision, and staff degradation, what is the alternative? Well, I'm going to call it "leadership from behind." In this model you place your rotating "kingpins" out in the front and manage their overall direction from behind. In this position you can also see the bigger picture, make course corrections and insure proper follow-through for the delivery of excellence. You give your best people the opportunities to shine and don't end up burning yourself out in the process. I firmly believe that any good leader must be able to lead from the front, but I'm now convinced that every great leader must master leading from behind.
I'm sure everyone is familiar with the story of the Canadian Geese and how it relates to teamwork and leadership (if not see this blog), however I'd like to try and add a bit of a conspiratorial twist to it. The next time you look up and see the "Power-V" formation flying overhead and a lone goose flying somewhat out of formation behind the V, maybe- just maybe- that goose isn't being lazy. Perhaps he's actually leading from behind, purposely flying in a zone that takes more work (no drafting) so that he can ensure execution, see the bigger picture, and share the glamorous point position with other valued leaders.
May 23, 2007 - 01:53, by Dostalek, Kevin
Never lose site of the fact that a challenge is an opportunity for triumph. Here's a video to inspire you to triumph over whatever challenges life brings you.
YouTube Video