“You either lead by example or you don’t lead at all”

By Joyce E.A. Russell in The Washington Post   Article

Career Coach: How leaders can boost their credibility with staff

“Credibility is often considered to be at the foundation of leadership. Regardless of how smart, sophisticated and savvy you might be, if your colleagues or direct reports don’t believe you, then they won’t willingly follow. People have to believe that your word can be trusted — you will do what you say you will do — and that your actions are aligned with your words.

To be seen as credible, you must be honest. Leadership experts and writers Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner found people around the globe report honesty as the most important characteristic of “admired leaders.” As they say, “before someone will voluntarily heed your advice, take your direction, accept your guidance, trust your judgment, agree to your recommendations, buy your products, support your ideas and implement your strategies, people expect that you will be honest.”

Credible leaders must also have integrity, adhering to moral and ethical standards. Consistency is key to being seen as credible. Tell the truth, keep confidentialities, apply standards reliably and walk the talk each and every day. Don’t be the leader who promises to do something, but never follows up, or says it is important to treat employees with appreciation, but doesn’t practice what he preaches.”

Inside Intellectual Ventures, the most hated company in tech

By Jim Kerstetter and Josh Lowensohn  from CNET, News, Politics and Law   Article

“To many in the high-tech business, a troll plots his schemes in a white office building on a hill in this leafy suburb of Seattle. This is the home of Intellectual Ventures, which, depending on whom you ask, is either the biggest, most aggressive patent troll on the planet or a pioneering company that’s helping inventors get their fair share.

The question of “whom you ask” is a big one, of course. Since it was founded in 2000 by Microsoft veterans Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung, Intellectual Ventures has — through $5 billion in investment funds and its own brainstorming efforts — collected nearly 70,000 “intellectual assets” on technologies ranging from nuclear power to camera lenses. It currently controls about 40,000 intellectual assets.

In the process, Intellectual Ventures has become a boogieman for aspiring entrepreneurs and big tech companies alike. (Ironic, since some of its early investors include Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Nokia, Apple, Google, and eBay.) Rolling out a new feature for your Web site? Have a better way to reflect light through a camera lens? Better watch out, Intellectual Ventures might have a patent for that.” …

Nathan Myhrvold is a very, very, very smart man. He may be the wealthiest man on Earth when all is said and done,” said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of the health care startup CareZone and the former chief exec of Sun Microsystems. “Congratulations on arbitraging the patent system.”"

Patent Research Just Got Easier

From Inc.   Article

“Google knows a thing or two about patents and has been the target of plenty of lawsuits involving them over the years. So it makes sense the company trying to “organize the world’s information” would come up with a better way to search for patents. In a blog post on Aug. 14 the company announced two new features for its Patent Search tool: The ability to search the European Patent Office, and a new way to find “prior art.”

The ability to search prior art is key when it comes to proving your idea deserves a patent. ”Typically, patents are granted only if an invention is new and not obvious,” wrote Google engineering manager Jon Orwant. “To explain why an invention is new, inventors will usually cite prior art such as earlier patent applications or journal articles.” But that process usually involves a laborious search.

In one click, Prior Art Finder searches multiple sources–Google Patents, Google Scholar, Google Books, and the Web–for related content that existed at the time a patent was filed. To learn more about how start-ups might use this tool, I checked in with Van Lindberg, an IP and open-source attorney with the international corporate law firmHaynes and Boone.

How will the Prior Art Finder tool be userful to patent-holders and patent-seekers?”

6 Signs Your Market is Maturing

From Inc. 5000   Article

1. “Customer needs/desires do not appear to be evolving rapidly.
2. Consolidation by leading competitors is reducing competitive intensity.
3. Disruptive innovations and new entrants are gaining share only gradually and top out at relatively low levels.
4. Market shares of leading competitors have solidified and are changing gradually, if at all.
5. Price, brand and/or channel strategy has supplanted product innovation as key value drivers.
6. Cash flows are increasingly turning positive and being returned to investors rather than invested into the market. …

Strategies for Mature Markets

If your market is maturing, there are still likely to be plenty of value creation opportunities in front of you. Here are some strategies you might pursue: ….”

The real definition of management

By Michael Josephson in Business Ethics and Leadership   Article

“The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work.” – Agha Hasan Abedi

Where are the Main Street-mom-and-pop equity investors?

By Barry Ritholtz in The Washington Post Business Section   Article

Where has the retail investor gone?

“Lots of folks are wondering what happened to the Main Street-mom-and-pop retail investors. They seem to have taken their ball and gone home. … We see evidence of this all over the place: The incredibly light volume of stock trading; the abysmal television ratings of CNBC; the closing of investing magazines such as Smart Money, whose final print issue is on newsstands as it transitions to a digital format; the dearth of stock chatter at cocktail parties. Why, it is almost as if America has fallen out of love with equities.

Given the events of the past decade and a half, this should come as no surprise. Average investors have seen not one but two equity collapses (2000 and 2008). They got caught in the real estate boom and bust. Accredited investors (i.e., the wealthier ones) also discovered that venture capital and private equity were no sure thing either. The Facebook IPO may have been the last straw.

What has driven the typical investor away from equities? ….”

Seeing Through Your Blind Spots

By Tony Schwartz in HBR Blog Network   Article

“In the workplace, we rarely share what’s going on beneath the surface. At most companies, the unspoken expectation is that you park your emotional life at the door, put on your game face, and keep things light and professional. In short, you bring a part of yourself to work and try to suppress the rest. But at what cost — including to productivity? The more preoccupied we are with emotions we can’t express, the less focus we bring to our work.

As the CEO of a small but fast-growing company, I’m spending more and more of my time focused on our internal community…. I’m convinced that how we take care of ourselves, and each other, profoundly influences how well we serve our clients. …

To facilitate this discussion, we used a tool called the Enneagram — a personality typing system akin to Myers-Briggs, but for my money, much richer, more penetrating and more practically useful. The Enneagram posits that there are nine separate personality types. Each one is marked by a central defense or preoccupation — a specific lens through which each of us reflexively and narrowly views the world, in order to feel safe.

Type one, for example, derives a sense of safety above all from trying to be perfect; Type eight from staying in control; Type three from being successful: Type two from being generous and giving. Each type tends to be excessively focused on its primary need, and to feel endangered when that need isn’t fully met. …  The Enneagram by Helen Palmer, … provides a rich description of the nine types and makes a great deal of psychological understanding highly accessible.”

What Chains Do You Revere?

By Jamie Notter  in Get Me Jamie Notter Blog  Article

“That’s a beautiful quote. And in case you’re wondering, the real application of this quote is not in you feeling superior to all those fools who revere their chains. It’s in figuring out what chains YOU revere.

We often really love the things that hold us back, even if we sometimes don’t realize it or admit it. As much as we like to complain about email and how it keeps us from doing what’s important, we all still spend lots of time checking our email inbox. In many cases, I think we actually like it. We like feeling busy, even if we know it’s taking us backwards.

Much of what we call “management” could probably fall in this category too. Let’s start making it easy on everyone and shed our own chains.”

Where Free Speech Goes to Die: The Workplace

By Michael Dolgow in Bloomberg Businessweek   Article

“In America you can say pretty much whatever you want, wherever you want to say it. Unless, that is, you’re at work. Simply put, there is no First Amendment right to “free speech” in the workplace—potentially perilous for many employees in a polarized political year with a tight presidential race. …

Bosses and those who work under them are not equal when it comes to free-speech legal claims. Employers have the right to take action against any employee who engages in political speech that company leaders find offensive. With a few narrow exceptions the Constitution and the federal laws derived from it only protect a person’s right to expression from government interference, not from the restrictions a private employer may impose, lawyers say.

Employers are not similarly restricted in expressing their political views or encouraging support for a particular candidate or cause. Not only can employers remind employees of the upcoming election and encourage them to vote, but they can base continued employment on whether a worker agrees to contribute money or time to the boss’s favorite political candidate, so long as there’s no state law prohibiting it. (Eight states and the District of Columbia have laws protecting employees from such mandates.)”

Stretched not Crushed

By Dan Rockwell in Leadership Freak Blog   Article

“Every time things start going wrong we look to the leader for solutions. Beware! The pressure to provide solutions crushes leaders. When solutions come from the top, organizations crumble from the bottom. …

Leaders who can’t ask people to do hard things can’t get hard things done. Meaningful contributions require deep commitment and effort. Weak leaders assume others can’t or won’t step up. They rule out before they ask. …

It’s the team:

Carrying the load alone crushes;
carrying the load together stretches.

Shared values are magnetic; they pull people together. Success is always about people before it’s about programs and initiatives. People committed to shared values make deep commitments to each other. Connections sustain and energize when things get hard. Blame separates and defeats.

How do you ask others to do hard things?”

$100 Million Just to Get Our Engineers

Source

Genuine and Wholehearted Praise

By Mary Jo Asmus in Leadership Solutions Blog  Article

“I love to see and hear a leader visibly supporting their organization, their team, and their employees. It can be inspiring to everyone else who comes within earshot. I thought that many of the Olympians did a nice job of expressing their support for their families, their coaches, and their country; it was a lovely way to thank all of the help they received to get to where they were.

Yet there can be a dark side to a leader’s expression of support; it occurs when the line is crossed into “cheerleading”. One dictionary defines a cheerleader as “one who expresses or promotes thoughtless praise”. Ouch. …

Maybe you’ve seen it; the overly-enthusiastic leader who oozes positive adjectives dripping with false emotion. We roll our eyes, sigh, or stop believing that they really mean what they say. We all crave genuine approval with heartfelt enthusiasm and encouragement that inspires us to move on at times when we really want to stop.” …

Before you put on your praise face, consider the following: ….”

5 Questions Great Job Candidates Ask

From Inc. Blog   Article

“Be honest. Raise your hand if you feel the part of the job interview where you ask the candidate, “Do you have any questions for me?” is almost always a waste of time. Thought so. The problem is most candidates don’t actually care about your answers; they just hope to make themselves look good by asking “smart” questions. To them, what they ask is more important than how you answer. Great candidates ask questions they want answered because they’re evaluating you, your company–and whether they really want to work for you. Here are five questions great candidates ask:

What do you expect me to accomplish in the first 60 to 90 days? …

What are the common attributes of your top performers? …

What are a few things that really drive results for the company? …

What do employees do in their spare time? …

How do you plan to deal with…?

Every business faces a major challenge: technological changes, competitors entering the market, shifting economic trends… there’s rarely a Warren Buffett moat protecting a small business. …

A great candidate doesn’t just want to know what you think; they want to know what you plan to do–and how they will fit into those plans.”

Going Boss-free: Utopia or ‘Lord of the Flies’?

Published in Knowledge@Wharton   Article

“Recent articles in the business press have extolled the benefits of work environments where there are no bosses and no titles, where employees decide among themselves which projects to pursue and which people to hire and fire, and where each employee is responsible for deciding his or her own salary, raises and vacation days. … A bossless office “is a very democratic way of thinking about work,” says Wharton management professor Adam Cobb. “Everyone takes part in the decisions, so it’s not being directed from above. …”

Peer Pressure

On the other hand, Cobb says, an office with no boss or manager overseeing the work flow can be disastrous. He cites an academic paper from several years ago that examined the fate of a small company whose owners decided to try and stave off bankruptcy by letting the employees run the company. “Over time, the workers became more oppressed than when the bosses were there,” notes Cobb. “Everyone became a monitor, constantly checking up on their fellow employees, even setting up a board to track what time people came into work and when they left.” …

Thomas Davenport, a senior consultant with Towers Watson and co-author of a book titled, Manager Redefined: The Competitive Advantage in the Middle of Your Organization, says the model of being a boss these days is evolving into what he calls “offstage management.”The idea, he notes, is that “nobody comes to work in the 21^st century and says, ‘Please manage me.’ They say, ‘Create an environment where I can be successful.’”"

Help everyone learn something from your mistakes, including professionalism under fire

By Art Petty in Management Excellence by Art Petty Blog   Article

A Mistake is a Horrible Thing to Waste

“6 Suggestions for Dealing with and Benefiting from Your Mistakes:

1. Practice saying the words, “I was wrong.” For some of us, those words don’t flow easily, but they are the most powerful words in your vocabulary when it comes to dealing with your mistake. Anything less will sound like an excuse.

2. No “Buts” Please. Saying, “I was wrong, but,…” is just as bad as making up an excuse. Don’t be tempted to qualify your mistake…it just sounds weak and hurts your credibility.

3. Resist the urge to point your finger. If it happened on your watch or on your team, it’s your fault. Stories of bosses pointing fingers at others for their mistakes (and at themselves for the success of others) are legendary. …

4. Share where you went wrong. If your gaffe was an interpersonal one, admit to the other party that you recognize what you did wrong. … If the mistake was related to a decision, assess where you might have gone wrong and share the mistake. “ … This is powerful credibility building juice and a teaching moment for everyone involved.

5. Apologize. The fine art of the workplace apology is often ignored in the workplace. Instead of a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of character and strength. 

6. Keep a journal and review it to support your own improvement. I’m a huge fan of maintaining a decision and issue log and noting how my decisions work-out over time. Log the results and take a few minutes to jot down what you learned. Review the journal frequently.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Rather than dwell on or attempt to hide your mistakes, confront them head-on, help everyone learn something, including professionalism under fire and move on!”

“Tiny pushes of of each honest worker”

By Michael Josephson  in Business Ethics and Leadership Blog   Source

“The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.” – Helen Keller

You Are (Probably) Wrong About You

By Heidi Grant Halvorson in Harvard Business Review Blog Network   Article

“If you want to be more successful — at anything — than you are right now, you need to know yourself and your skills. … And yet your own ratings of your personality traits — for instance, how open-minded, conscientious, or impulsive you are — correlate with the impressions of other people (who know you well) at around .40. In other words, how you see yourself and how other people see you are only very modestly correlated.

… other people’s assessment of your personality predicts your behavior, on average, better than your assessment does. The truth is, we don’t know ourselves nearly as well as we think we do. When it comes to performance, our surprising self-ignorance makes understanding where we went right and where we went wrong difficult, to say the least. …

When you fail to reach a goal — say, for instance, you give an important presentation and it doesn’t go well — you become the detective (once again, largely unconsciously). You gather up the usual suspects to see who is responsible for your failure: lack of innate ability, lack of effort, poor preparation, using the wrong strategy, bad luck, etc.

Of all of these possible culprits, it’s lack of innate ability we most frequently hold responsible …. The problem is that the evidence — the kind gathered by scientists over the last thirty years of study of motivation and achievement — suggests that innate ability is rarely to blame for either succeeding or falling short.”

7 Statements Every Leader Needs To Use Often

By Ron Edmondson in RE Ron Edmonson blog  Article

“Here are 7 phrases leaders should memorize and use often:

I believe in you.

You are an asset to this team.

Let me know how I can help you.

You are doing a great job.

I need your help.

I want to help you reach your personal goals.

You are making a difference here.

You may not be able to use these phrases every day. You shouldn’t overuse them. They need to be genuine, heartfelt and honest.”

This or that?

Seth Godin Blog   Article

“Don’t follow, lead.

Don’t copy, create.
Don’t start, finish.

or even,

Don’t sit still, move.
Don’t fit in, stand out.
Don’t sit quietly, speak up.

Not all the time, sure, but more often.”

Don’t Count America Out

Eric Bleeker, The Motley Fool   Article

“The storyline around America has taken a sudden, and to many, unexpected turn in the past couple months.  Just two weeks ago, The Economist featured a cover with a shirtless Uncle Sam flexing with the words “Comeback Kid” above the muscle-bound American icon. This wasn’t your father’s Uncle Sam poster. This Uncle Sam had red, white, and blue pasties on its nipples. The new America seems to have an edge.

The message behind that Economist cover? America has managed to come out of the recession with a leaner, more powerful economy, and is quietly becoming an energy superpower on par with Saudi Arabia thanks to recent advancements in finding new oil and gas. Along with a revitalized energy future, America has begun paying down its debts, closing its trade gap, and was the first to clean up its banking system.”

Ethical Quandary at Work? Here’s How to Handle It

By Beth Braccio Hering, CareerBliss Blog   Article

“The severity of the situation undoubtedly will have an impact on the course of action. Leigh Steere, co-founder of Managing People Better, LLC, suggests reflecting on the following questions:

• Is this issue so bothersome to you that it occupies your thoughts and makes it difficult to concentrate on the work at hand?
• Is this a show-stopper for you? If you can’t get it stopped or fixed, can you in good conscience remain a part of the company?
• Does the issue have the potential to take the company down? (Think: 2001 Enron scandal.)
• Would any employee, customer, shareholder or other stakeholder have cause to sue the company because of this issue?
• Is the company clearly violating environmental, consumer protection, employment discrimination or other laws/regulations?

The Meaning of Silence

Once you have a firm grasp of the problem and its potential consequences, the next step is figuring out what action to take. While keeping quiet is an option, remember that silence isn’t golden, it’s compliance. …

The Chain of Command

Just as you wouldn’t want people immediately going over your head if they had a problem with your behavior, your colleague or boss deserves the same consideration. “Have an honest conversation with the offender,” Lee says. “Voice that you feel the behavior is inappropriate.””

Capitalism works best when ….

Source

Managing Up: How Do You Build a Relationship With Your Manager?

By Ron Thomas, The Business of HR Blog  Article

“1. What do you think about managing up to your boss?

… Managing up is working with your boss to obtain the best possible results for you, your boss, and your organization. This has nothing to do with kissing up. Rather, it is a deliberate effort to build a relationship between two different individuals where one is in charge of the other.

2. How do you manage your boss?

First and foremost, you must be the best employee you can be. … In order to manage your boss, your first order of business is to figure out their style. …. Ask your new manager how you would like to interact. Ask them about what type communication they prefer: voice mail or face-to-face, detail or overview? What is their preferred method for sharing information? Concentrate on making their job easier. Get to know their style. Until you figure out their style, you are going nowhere.

3. How do your best subordinates manage you?

Now the table is turned — how have your subordinates managed you? Think of your best subordinate over the years (if you have managed people). My best were the ones that, whenever there was a problem, always mentioned it but also would say that they have given it thought and offered up a solution. …

4. “It is not your actual performance that counts, but your manager’s perception of your performance.”

I have always loved the phrase “perception is reality.” What we perceive is usually what we believe, and it is based on what we see, hear, and think. So based on that thinking, it is important that your manager hear the right things about you. This had to do with departmental feedback, peer feedback, etc. If they see us struggling with deadlines, interactions, and contribution, that is how we are going to be perceived.”

Women: Want a promotion? Find a boss whose wife has a career.

By Anne Fisher, CNN Money Blog   Article

“FORTUNE — Let’s suppose you’re female and puzzled by why you keep getting passed over for promotion — despite having qualifications equal to, or maybe even better than, your male peers’. Here’s a factor you probably haven’t considered: If your boss is a married man, what does his wife do for a living? If she’s a stay-at-home spouse, he is less likely to see you as a serious contender in the workplace than if she has a career of her own outside the home.

At least, that is the conclusion of a study, based on six years of research covering 1,200 men in the U.S. and Britain, led by management professor Sreedhari Desai. Male managers whose wives are homemakers are “a pocket of resistance to the gender revolution in the workplace,” says Desai, who teaches at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina and at Harvard.

In five separate research projects, she says, “We found that employed husbands in traditional marriages, compared to those in modern marriages, tend to view the presence of women at work unfavorably — and, more frequently, to deny qualified female employees opportunities for promotion.”"