In Open Leadership – Charlene Li

“Be open, be transparent, be authentic are the current leadership mantras – but companies often push back. Traditionally, business is premised on the concept of control and yet the new world order demands openness”. (p1)

Ms. Li provides why open leadership is so very important as the social technologies are spurning the transparency within organizations.

I truly believe after the last several years of complete disregard for law and order and regulations of greed would be helpful if our organizational leadership took the ideology of letting go of the command and control style of management and were more transparent in their communications with their staffs. This situation could be our next tipping point to open leadership and be the commencement of a new beginning.

It truly is a tall task, asking leadership to let go of a style of management that feels natural to a commander and chief. The transformation may have been brought on by the social technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace and enhanced with search capabilities with Google and Yahoo. Yet the true concern is letting go of the command and control style of management and truly embracing transparency in management.

Organizational structures don’t tend to operate that way even though there is a great deal of desire to be open. It took Knowledge Management and the ability to transfer bits of tacit knowledge within our workforce years before it was embraced.

There are four open-driver objectives to support the open strategy, they are:

• Learn (harkens back to the learning organization – Peter Senge) – leadership must stay open and continually learn from their employees, customers and partners
• Dialog – Communicate – internal and external – the value of our technology.
• Support – Customer-Centric support internal and external
• Innovate – Fostering the ability to be creative (p 53-54)

As we become more immersive in our social technologies to collaborate with others in the world there is hope that our leadership will become transparent and customer-centric with the messaging to help the transition to the ideology of open leadership. I support the effort that our leadership is making in this area.

Ms. Li’s book provides several assessments for our leadership as a beginning step to reflect on their mind-set and what traits it will take them to either learn or unlearn skills and behaviors to take this genuine step forward to openness.

If we can use this current time to assist our elected governmental officials to use some of this open leadership style to begin a new era of diplomacy and civility in our leadership it surely would be a tipping point in history. Our new man and woman of the year would be that of open leadership and showing honor and respect to the role of leadership on the cover of the Rolling Stone Magazine.

Thank you Ms. Li for kicking off a positive effort!

Li., C. (2010) Open leadership: how social technology can transform the way you lead. San Francisco, CA. Jossey-Bass.

The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance.Tony Schwartz with Jean Gomes and Catherine McCarthy

In reviewing our organizations needs for speed and reconfigurability and ‘speed’ being a ‘shaper’, the issue that Tony Schwartz in his newly released book entitled, “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working” (2010) truly should help us stop and think about our current world and its dilemma. Technology has pushed our ability to speed up the business cycles, make decisions in nano seconds, yet in all of the glory the human being is being depleted of their best energy to perform at their best in this environment.

Schwartz reviews the four core needs that energize great performance in the individual,

1) Sustainability (physical);

2) Security (emotional);

3) Self expression (mental) and;

4) Significance (spiritual).

Schwartz outlines where organizations are undermining high performance from their people yet organizations do not address the core needs of the individual and what keeps them inspired at work daily. After all, Schwartz points out people are not computers.

I do see some of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs being addressed in what Schwartz mentions as the four core needs. Maslow’s work is foundational in seeing people’s potential.

Schwartz addresses the purpose of passion and he quotes, “ To fuel spiritual energy, and organization must define a set of shared values and a purpose beyond its continuing profitability….A new way of working ultimately requires an evolutionary shift in the center of gravity in our lives – from “me” to “us” (p 296).”

In terms of shared leadership, in collaborative teaming environments, to me this is critical in us being unified in our mission, especially as we work in competitive environments demanding of each of us to be a bit more reflective of others in our quickly changing world.

Schwartz, T. Gomes, J., McCarthy, C. (2010) the way we’re working isn’t working: the four forgotten needs that energize great performance. New York, NY: Free Press Publishing.

Does the Internet Make You Smarter?

Clay Shirky’s new book release “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.”

Saturday/Sunday, June 5-6, 2010 – WSJ

“Amid the silly videos and spam are the roots of a new reading and writing culture, says Clay Shirky (W1).”

Based on the WSJ’s survey results, (as of 6/11 – approx 66%-33% – people believe that the Internet is making us smarter).

Shirky points to digital media where we all can create our own video content; we can be our own writer and post our editorial pages for others to read. As he points out we are getting more immersed in the process of creating on the internet rather than passively sitting back and having television programs delivered to us. It would be great if we increased our reading and writing skills as we begin down this path of creativity in digital media. Regarding interactive games that are played on Facebook (FB) they immerse us the users in the experience. The question, what are we gaining from the social interactivity online? Do we feel more connected and creative? Are we becoming immersed into the online worlds and improving our critical thinking skills? Are we improving our social skills? Do we feel connected across the world as the world becomes more flat?

See the WSJ article in full:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704025304575284973472694334.html

Shirky, Clay. (2010).Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. New York, NY. Penguin Press HC

“The Shallows:What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” by Nick Carr

“The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” by Nick Carr

In an article from the Wall Street Journal on Friday, June 4, 2010 entitled So Many Links, So Little Time by Journalist John Horgan he reviews Nicholas Carr’s new book entitled The Shallows (p A17).

This book is a timely piece as our world has become so digitized. As we know our lives have been transformed by the Internet and the connectivity it provides to every device that we have at our disposal.

Regarding our work lives and our home lives and our downtime is really our “up time” by being connected through our social networks. We are always multitasking so we think we are doing a great job. Yet as the article begins to highlight is that the Internet is actually making us dumber because we are skimming everything we read in short distracted ‘sittings’.

When we go online as is suggested we are entering another world where we begin to have more websites and media at our disposal and we begin clicking through content reading our e-mail, doing our work tasks all while we are talking to someone on the telephone.

The question how much of this information are we truly retaining?

As an example, to design curriculum for the adult learner to [teach/transfer] soft skills, business skills and/or functional skills, graphics, pictures with less text are used to provide the context of the message. The design is used to capture and hold the attention span of the learner in an online segment with 10 minute segments or less. (Even this is too much time spent on a concept)

The conundrum is highlighted in Carr’s (2010) book as he talks about the price we are paying for plugging in.

“Many studies “point to the same conclusion,” he writes. “When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. (p A17)”

“What we gain from the Internet in breadth of knowledge – or rather, access to knowledge – we lose depth. Mr. Carr quotes the playwright Richard Foreman’s lament that we are becoming “pancake people – spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button (A17).” Or in another another metaphor that I enjoy “an inch deep and mile wide”…unfortunately I see this behavior demonstrated in Grad school and within the curriculum design in the workplace.

So are we (curriculum designers) contributing to this ‘dummying’ down by creating “biggy graphics” for concept learning?

Carr, N. (2010).The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York, NY. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Horgan, J. So Many Links, So Little Time. WSJ. (A17) June 4, 2010

Get Rid of the Performance Review!

Samuel A. Colbert and Lawrence Rout recently released their book entitled, Get Rid of the Performance Review! 2010. Additionally, there was a write up in the WSJ on Friday May 21, 2010, on this book and “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working” by Tony Schwartz with Jean Gomes and Catherine McCarthy, released in May 2010 – Free Press

The reason I am quoting Colbert’s work here is because I believe that he’s right in what he has to say and as an OD professional if there is something that I could do to help change the mindset I would do so. From my own personal experience I have found the performance review to be frightful as well just because there seems to be an exaggeration of the truth or falsifying information. I think as managers and people we can do better.

I truly wish that people would take into consideration the three levers by Buckingham and what great managers do (see enclosed document), to me if I could help managers see their employees through the eyes of the three levers I would be doing them more favors them what the performance review does today.

Buckingham, M. (2005). What great managers do. Harvard Business Review, 83(3), 70-80

“It’s time to finally put the performance review out of its misery

This corporate sham is one of the most insidious, most damaging, and yet most ubiquitous of corporate activities. Everybody does it, and almost everyone who was elevated it’s a pretentious, bogus practice that produces absolutely nothing that any thinking executive should call a corporate plus.

And yet few people want to kill it.

How could that be? How could something so obviously destructive, so universally despised, continue to plague our workplaces?

In part it’s because the performance review is all executives ever have known, and they’re blind to the damage caused by it.

In part it’s because few managers are aware of their addiction to the fear that reviews create amongst staff, and too many lack the confidence that they can lead without that fear.

In part it’s because HR professionals exploit the performance review to provide them a power base they don’t deserve.

And it’s in part it’s because few people know an alternative for getting the control, accountability, and employee development that reviews supposedly produce-but never do.

Don’t get me wrong: Reviewing performance is good; it should happen every day. But employees needed evaluations they can believe, not the fraudulent ones they receive. They need evaluations that are dictated by need, not at date on the calendar. They need valuations that make them strive to improve, not pretend they are perfect.

In fact, if firms did nothing else but just kill off this process they’d immediately be better off. When it comes to performance reviews, there’s no question that nothing is better than something that’s how bad they are.

The mission of this book is to put corporate executives on notice that they created a monster. With the help of performance reviews, they built a corporate culture where bullshit, not straight talk, is the communication etiquette of choice. The result is a managerial mess that they better deal with and fast(p 1 & 2).”

Colbert, S. & Rout, L. (2010) Get rid of the performance review! NY, NY: Business Plus, Hachette Book Group.