How to Keep Talented People

On the comments of my previous post my regular commentator Daddy asked: "have you ever thought of becoming a professional consultant by yourself?" That is a tough question to answer publicly, as Daddy is commenting anonymously, and the only thing I know for sure is that he is from Finland (and could even be my boss or his colleague).

Here is my honest answer.

Yes I have thought of becoming a consultant. Several times a year, every time I work with good consultants. But I have too many reasons for not to take the risk. The company I work for meets several criteria that are important for me, and for any business.

Opportunities for professional development

Some weeks ago The Wall Street Journal published an article called How to Keep Your Best Executives. I am not an executive, and if I am talented or not, is for other people to judge.

Reading the article made me realize that I do not have a satisfaction gap on the opportunities for my professional development. The most important opportunities are summarized on the picture in the right, for details see the article.

I am given increased responsibilities and challenging tasks to develop diverse competencies. I am allowed and encouraged to accumulate marketable skills, to expand my professional network, and to build my professional reputation. Partly through my blog, which is no secret.

Matching values

My values match the company values. We are among the companies having received recognition from UN for outstanding Communications on Progress regarding Corporate Social Responsibility reporting.

We are included in the Cleantech Index which is comprised of 78 publicly listed companies that are global leaders in cleantech across a broad range of industry sectors.

Business fundamentals

We have a solid foundation for Achieving Business Excellence with (1) high-quality products and services, (2) solid financials, and (3) reacting to change.

Management fundamentals

We pay attention to important management fundamentals of (1) vivid vision, (2) best people, (3) robust communication, (4) sense of urgency, (5) disciplined execution, and (6) extreme customer focus. For more on these, see my earlier post about the book Awesomely Simple where these criteria come from. Or check how I rephrased the list as advice I gave my management team when I gave them the book.

Continuous improvement

Nobody's perfect, and we are working on to improve some of the above. I am able to influence many of them. From inside.

Yes I have thought of becoming a consultant, but why would I?

Instead, would you be interested to join us?

Lessons Learned = Some Advice

I created this blog about 3 years ago because I realized there were quite a number of things I needed to cover in my first management position. About two years ago I started updating my blog and it has become a way for me to process the challenges I face in my job.

Now it is time to summarize the lessons learned - next week is my last week in my current position before relocating back to the head office.

Today I gave my management team a book called Awesomely Simple by my friend John Spence along with the following advice:

Please remember to

1. Comment, follow and communicate the direction set by the head office
2. Develop our people
3. Ensure smooth communication locally and globally
4. Make sure that our processes concentrate on important things
5. Systematically manage all of the above
6. Last, but not least, please remember that everything we do must serve our customer

It's that simple, but it's not always easy.

These points pretty much cover all the challenges I had, and all the lessons learned during the past years. What is left outside is mainly the challenge of change resistance when trying to change the way things used to be done - when trying to lead a culture change.

I did my best, I hope with these advice you can do better!

Getting Promoted

Dan at Great Leadership blog listed last week how he would give an early warning to people who are being promoted. His list is actually pretty good list to think about - am I delivering any or many of these things and should I expect a promotion in the future?

Here is his script for delivering the good news:

Congratulations, you’re going to be promoted next month! You sure deserve it. Here’s why:

• First of all, you’ve consistently achieved outstanding results, ¼ after ¼, year after year. Even in this tough economy, you’ve managed to hit or exceed the targets that were established for you. And not just recently – you’ve consistently demonstrated the ability to get results, in any situation you’ve been in.


• You’ve demonstrated the ability to learn and adapt. The last few years, you’ve been given a series of “stretch” developmental assignments. In each one, you quickly got up to speed, got results, and more importantly, developed new skills and incorporated those skills into your repertoire.


• You’ve got rock solid values, including ethics, integrity, credibility, and unwavering respect for others, no matter who they are. We did 360 interviews with your peers, coworkers, clients, and suppliers. Your scores were consistently high on each of these attributes from all stakeholders.


• You’re been committed to developing your people. Quite frankly, given the importance of your current role, we were reluctant to let you go. But you’ve done such a remarkable job developing a pipeline of talent, we have three outstanding candidates from your team to choose from.


• You are seen as a leader amongst your peers. You are the one they turn to for advice and look at to see how you react. They respect you and will have no problem working for you. You’ve demonstrated the ability to reach across functions and work collaboratively for the greater good of the organization.


• You’ve got outstanding “leadership presence”. The executive team respects you, you don’t back down, and are able to influence decisions at every level of the organization.


• You’ve created a motivating and inspiring environment throughout your organization. We’re wondering if there is something in your department’s water coolers. People seem to love their work, are always positive and upbeat, and you’ve got the highest employee engagement survey scores in the company.

Dan also provides another list - what if you are not delivering any of these things, or even working against them as a leader? For his script for delivering the bad news, please visit his original blog post Head’s Up – You’re About to be Promoted or Fired

About Intrinsic Motivation

This TED.com talk by Dan Pink was posted recently on three blogs I follow.

Cheri at The Enlightened Manager commented that "It's a fascinating look into when money changes behavior, and when it doesn't."

The Heart of Innovation thinks it is a "Fabulous presentation on the power of intrinsic motivation and the utter goofiness of "carrot and stick" methodologies to improve business performance. 18 minutes. Worth every second."

Garr at Presentation Zen makes many good comments and I will highlight some below the video.



Based on my four years in Japan I (unfortunately) agree with this comment by Garr: "When I worked at Sumitomo in Japan through most of the '90s, I experienced the opposite spirit of (my flexible schedule in the US). Results were important, but just as important — and sometimes more important — was just to be there in the office and be seen as a good member of the team. Sometimes the motivation in Japan is a different kind of carrot and stick, the stick is really the fear of being an outsider or being labeled as one. Things are changing in Japan, but the idea of giving workers loads of freedom with their schedules is something that is hard for a lot of managers and firms to do."

Garr also posted some slides from the presentation he made last year based on Dan's book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko



I don't have anything to add on what Dan and the bloggers said, but I will definitely buy some of Dan's books.

Dirty Business

Last week I saw this presentation about A Trade / A Crime So Monstrous



It would be my pick to be the winner of World's Best Presentation Contest 2009. The last day for voting for presentations is today.

Yesterday TED.com published a talk by journalist Misha Glenny about his investication on the same industry.



About midway to his talk he says "A significan minority of those 500 million Europeans [as well as the US and Japanese] like to spend some of their leasure time and spare cash sleeping with prostitutes, sticking 50 Euro notes up their nose and implying illegal goods/labels (?) ... It is this Western desire to consume that is the primary driver of international organized crime."

This comment about desire reminds me of an article a read earlier this year, Why Sweatshops Flourish at HBS Working Knowledge. It's key concepts like "Moral standards about sweatshop labor are subject to change when desire for a product is high." and "Consumers have more power than they think to influence how products are made."

These are all excamples of worst practices and dirty business, while I try to collect best practices in my blog. The best practices in this case could be defined by The United Nations Global Compact, which is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.

And again, like in so many other cases, I am proud for the company I work for. We are among the companies having received recognition from UN for outstanding Communications on Progress regarding Corporate Social Responsibility reporting.

Let's keep up our moral standards and fight back!

About stress and work life balance

This spring was extremely stressful for me. Mainly because of things not related to my work - but my high stress level naturally effected also my contribution at the office. I had difficulties to sleep, which led to poor concentration resulting to delays and forgetting things. I was even too tired to ride my bicycle. And that is alarming, since riding bicycle is my main method of relaxation. I went to see a doctor who told me to “Relax!” and offered sleeping pills, which I refused to take. Instead I slowed down and my stress level came down. At the same time many things started to get solved and my stress was gone.

I did some thinking about stress and work life balance and decided to blog about it now on the first day of my summer holiday. I actually blogged about the same topic last year. I hope I have learned something and don’t need to blog about stress again next year.

Let’s start with finding your stress level right now by completing a simple online test provided by Canadian Mental Health Association. They also provide resources for Coping with Stress.

Many of the blogs I follow regularly have had posts related to stress. John Spence wrote about How to have Much Less Stress and Much More Happiness, Matt May wrote about the power of The Quiet Mind in producing Eureka! type breakthrough insights. Zen Habits has several posts about stress – see for example 20 Ways to Eliminate Stress From Your Life, or type stress on their search box.

But remember: dealing with stress starts with you - nobody else can stop you form pushing too much but you.

To save time (and reduce stress), I will use material from our Corporate Responsibility Report to describe how we deal with Work life balance in the office. And I dare to say I provide these possibilities for my team and our company provides them for me.

Work Life Balance

Work-life balance means different things in different cultures. Our approach to the issue is designed to meet the needs of our employees around the world. Working patterns, activities and benefits vary by country according to local legislation, culture and common practices but can include:

• Flexible working hours
• Healthcare services and programs
• Employee assistance program
• Generous time-off plans
• Telecommuting
• Fitness facilities and support for sporting activities
• Social and cultural activities
• Taking advantage of local rules to provide access to tax efficient retirement saving, child care, computers, charitable giving

Our managers have a key role in supporting and enabling our employees to achieve both professional and personal goals. Being a flexible employer benefits both staff and the company. Moreover, our leadership development programs help to focus our managers in promoting innovative and flexible solutions for job satisfaction, job performance and overall quality of life.

But again, at the end it is up to you as an individual to take advantage of the possibilities provided.

Tomorrow I will fly to Finland for summer holidays with my family and will not update this blog until late August. Meanwhile you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

Please enjoy the summer and relax with your family and friends!

If you need something to read, check out Slowness by Milan Kundera, one of my favorite novelist. According to him There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.

Your options in change

I have been writing a lot about organizational change from the organizational point of view, but this Nevin Danielson's ChangeThis Manifesto looks at change from the individual's point of view.

He is talking about organizational change, but you can actually apply his thoughts to political change, economical change or other types of major changes happening around you. Nevin examines the options you have for participating in that system. And submits this challenge: Will you flow with it, flee from it or fight it?

Our radar is constantly on, sensing the cues that we’ll synthesize to decide if we’re actually going to be engaged at work. The end result of our synthesis is
a feeling, a feeling of whether we’re content within the system. Are you accepting the status quo? If not, what are your alternatives?

The Flow Option

If you work in an optimal organization, you like it and how it allows you to contribute at your best level, then naturally you can flow with it - unless there is room for continuos imprvoment which is a form of slow change, not flowing.

Or are you just comfortable with the system and flow with it because you are less comfortable with the other options - flee or fight.

Nevin's manifesto argues that we should make the deliberate and courageous choice to NOT flow. You owe it to yourself to find true meaning in your effort. Flee if you must, but consider what it looks like if you choose to fight. It may be a watershed event that defines your career.

The Flee Option

In today's labor market you are free to flee the existing system if you want. By flee, Nevin means choosing to leave the system, ostensibly to go to another system more suited to your needs. But there are risks and challenges with this approach - you do not actually know how the other system looks form inside and it will take time for you to earn credibility in the new system.

Fleeing could be the best option when you know the system you are in is too entrenched to change. It will require too much energy from you to see meaningful progress. Shifting your energy to a new system can be valuable for you, the organization you leave and the organization you go to.

This is actually what I did seven years ago, when I had a mismatch of values and did not see any meaningful future for in at the system I worked for at that time - not even after a period of coaching and partly because the coaching made mee see I was not able to fulfill myself at the system I was in. I have never regretted that decision to flee - it opened me a whole new world in a system where I am able to contribute, and where I am allowed to fight for change.

The Fight Option

Fighting is a pretty strong word. Please forgive the alliteration. By fight, Nevin means that you can work to change the system. If you’re in the system and disagree with it but are passionate about the outcome the organization is pursuing, this may be more of an obligation than a choice.

The variables Levin sees in fighting the status quo:

Loud or Quiet? Are you going to state your intentions and go on the offensive? Alternatively, are you going to disagree with the system and choose simply to not participate? The quiet non-participation does not lead to anything except maybe to you been seen as a non-performer and to change resistance when the system will further develop to something you disagree even more.

Fearless or Pragmatic? If you choose to fight, it really boils down to deciding how much you’re willing to challenge the system. This choice is best envisioned as a continuum. At one end, you fearlessly behave the way you believe you should, even though the system may have consequences, either expressed or implied, for those who behave that way. At the other end, you gingerly select the safe route, expressing your displeasure at the system when you’re not stepping on toes, or perhaps toes of people who can’t hurt you. There can be a feeling of accomplishment if you lean towards the pragmatic option. You see that you are not flowing and you have not fled, ergo, you must be fighting.

Earlier I was more fearless, was about to step on too many toes and became more pragmatic. The pragmatic approach has led to the results I was hoping for. Slowly but surely. Slower than my fearless change agent would have wanted, but I have achieved them at the end anyway.

It’s a delicate balance, but Nevin believes a thoughtful blend of compassionate articulation, well-founded arguments and insightful behavior can be seen as an effort for a greater good. You can stir a change movement that affects the system and creates positive results for the organization.





Photo by bizior

How to Have Much Less Stress

During the past months I have been under quite some stress caused by unexpected difficulties in many areas of life. One by one these difficulties are being solved and my energy level is back to normal. When you are feeling stressed, one thing to do is to

Turn to your friends, family and mentors for advice!

While I was planning to write about stress, John Spence whose blog I follow, did me a favor and posted the outline of his stress workshop:

John Spence Workshop number one: Dealing with Stress and Anxiety

Step one: make a list of the top 10 things that give you stress, anger, anxiety and frustration in your life right now.

Step two: give each of the items you wrote a rating from 1 to 10. A score of one indicates that this is a stressor for you, but it does not really affect you too much - it is basically an annoyance, a nuisance. At the other end of the scale is a rating of 10, which means that this item is highly stressful to you and it causes a tremendous amount of frustration and pain in your life. Score each one now.

Step three: next to each of the stressors you have indicated, write either a “C” for the items you have control over — that you can directly impact, change or very strongly influence. Or write “NC” which indicates that although this might be a stressor for you, in reality there is nothing you can do to truly impact it. These are things like the economy, the government, taxes, other people… things that you might have a little bit of influence on but there is no way that you alone can dramatically change this issue. Be very honest with yourself when assessing each of your issues from step one.

The goal then is to have the courage and discipline to take massive control of the items you wrote a “C” next to and get those scores as close to one or zero as possible…AND… learn to completely let go, as much as a humanly possible, of anything on your list that you wrote “NC” next to.

It is the one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned: that the majority of pain, anger frustration and anxiety in most people’s lives… is caused by things that are completely out of their control. Even though there is literally nothing they can do to make any kind of significant impact on them, day in and day out they worry, stress and get angry over things that they should just try to put out of their mind and forget about. Learning to take control of what you can control, and letting completely go of what you will never control is one of the most important life skills anyone can develop.

Step four: Write out five specific and realistic ACTION STEPS that you can take right away to begin to take proactive control of the items you wrote a “C” next to. Hoping they get better, waiting for someone else to fix them, wishing they will go away on their own… not a good strategy. Getting busy on taking strong, positive control of them… a very good strategy indeed!

See also John Spence Workshop number two: The Happiness List for increasing the positive side of life while this stress workshop was aimed to decrease the negative side of life.

Now it is time to relax for the weekend!

Learning from the Best

This time my blog post is a little different. It is a case example of how

I have been trying to teach business strategy to my wife.

She is an elementary school teacher and could not care less about business strategy. But I decided to try, because her situation makes it rather relevant.

She has been a teacher for more than ten years in Finland, which has been ranked the highest-performing country in education. We currently live in Japan, and the Japanese are extremely interested on what is the secret behind Finland's success, and why their system is no longer as effective.

Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, defines a Hedgehog Concept. A concept which helps you, the hedgehog, to beat your competition, the fox, no matter how hard he tries. My wife has been able to combine the three elements for the concept

1. What you can best in the world at – she is the best expert of Finnish school system in Tokyo


2. What drives your economic engine – what she has done provides small extra income, enough to motivate her


3. What are you deeply passionate about – as any teacher, she is passionate of her job

Treacy and Wiersema describe three strategic value disciplines that can create customer value and provide a competitive advantage. One of them is customer intimacy - cultivating close and long term customer relationships and intimate knowledge of customer requirements. She has managed to do that with Gakken, the biggest educational publisher in Japan. And to some extent with Mrs Itokazu, a member parliament, who is hosting and advertising her next presentation.

On her presentations we have applied the tips from Presentation Zen. You can see some sample slides here. Being her secretary, it is really refreshing to be able to design simplistic slides. Naturally she has a handout to go along with the slides.

Teachers are professionals in delivering presentations. And her presentation is Made to Stick. It has the elements of SUCCESs, it’s Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and is told with Stories.

Her book, The power of Finnish education (in Japanese) was written by a Japanese journalist from a Japanese point of view. It contains Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible and Emotional Stories like in chapters called "My first time as home room teacher – of 33 students!", "Children deciding classroom rules", "Summer holiday without homework" and "Are field trips a nightmare for teachers?".

This is how I see her strategic position. She is not yet convinced about that and still wonders why people are interested to hear her presentation and even pay for that.

The name of this blog post is borrowed from an article written about her and the Finnish education system on page 48-49 on iNTOUCH magazine.

Coaching

Some years ago I was coached by a management consultant. Looking back the past couple of years in my recent position, I can say

There have been times when I could have used some coaching again.

Two specific features of coaching had a prominent impact on me earlier; the opportunity to openly discuss things without the political pressures and restraints of the organisation and receiving an outsiders perspectives on your situation, thoughts, aspirations and goals. Coaching helped me distance myself from the every day execution of tasks, allowing me to see and handle things more objectively. You can read more about my coaching experience here.

Coaching can be defined as “a structured process-driven relationship between a trained professional coach and an individual or team which includes: assessment, examining values and motivation, setting measurable goals, defining focused action plans and using validated behavioral change tools and techniques to assist them to develop competencies and remove blocks to achieve valuable and sustainable changes in their professional and personal life.”
(Zeus and Skiffington cited in Wikipedia)

The most tangible input my coaching program had was the personal development scheme which I drew up during the coaching. With the help of the tools provided by the coach, I set myself goals to achieve professionally as well as ones to achieve personally during the next six, twelve and twenty-four months. They have helped me ever since.

But coaching can only help you if you are willing to learn and change. The article in Wikipedia continues

All learning leads to nothing when people don’t change their thoughts and actions (read: behavior).

This is exactly what I have said before - I truly believe that learning must start within yourself. Only by first developing yourself, you can start to develop and improve bigger entities – your team, your unit, your company, our planet.

What is your experience and opinion?

Do you think that an outside perspective would allow you handle things more objectively?

Would it help you on setting measurable goals?

How about help on developing competencies?

Are you willing to admit and work on your weak points?


Photo by I'll never grow up

How Do I Decide What To Post On My Blog?

A couple of weeks ago I received this question from Laura.

I sometimes read your blog. I like the posts about designing impactful presentations. I also saw something that caught my eye about employees submitting ideas to their employer online. That sounds like an outstanding idea. I am known to be skeptical so I ask you, "How do you decide what to post on your blog?"

Are you concerned about accuracy or do you just reach for what is interesting?

I answered her.

I normally select to post some topic that is relevant to my work, or our company, or then just an interesting topic I run across in a couple of sources. Something that I feel I need on my everyday job as a leader and manager – in other words something that supports my mission and vision, and my strategy. I am not so concerned about (scientific) accuracy - I am more concerned about the usefulness of the topic. What I do is I combine the sources and try to keep the post under 1A4 page - keep it simple and specific and stick to one idea.

For example submitting ideas online is something I have proposed it in our company a couple of years ago. I heard about this tool a year ago, and proposed it again. In the spring I found a couple of articles about the tool being used by major companies and proposed it again. We might start considering it one day... But I also blogged it to remember the idea better.

Actually most of the posts are some ideas or advice I have given to my friends or colleagues (or needed on my own job). I realized I kept on sending same advice on email over and over again to different people. Those emails I have later converted to blog posts.

Why I decided to post this answer now, is because I read an interesting blog post at ZenHabits earlier this week.

The Dirty Little Secrets of Productivity Bloggers

1. We're making it up. Yes, you heard that right. Some of what we write about we read other places, and tested it out, and found it worthy of passing on. Other stuff we just make up as we go along, and see if it works.
2. We'e deathly afraid people will find out. Yes, we're afraid people will start pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes on, and we'll be in the middle of a crowd, naked, with everyone laughing at us. But because of this fear, we have to act like we know what we're talking about. Truth is, we don't know any more than anyone else.
3. We don't always follow our own advice. If you had a fly-on-the-wall camera and could spy on the best in the biz, even they have days when they're not motivated, when they don't follow their systems or tips or general productivity advice.
4. We can be lazy and let things go. I'll be the first to admit it. I take naps.
5. We didn't invent any of this. Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero, for example, is based almost entirely on David Allen's Getting Things Done. Allen's GTD, in turn, is based on productivity advice that has been around for generations — each productivity guru improving on the previous one a little, but basically giving the same advice.
6. We're just regular people, figuring things out. Think of our posts as the preliminary results of an ongoing experiment. We try things out, and if it seems to work, we pass it on. If it doesn’t, we'll let you know. But these posts aren't the final results — we're still testing things out, still trying to figure out what works when and for whom. It's an experiment that will probably last for as long as people do work.
7. We really do love all this stuff. Despite all of the above, despite our flaws and secrets, this is a great job, and we love it. It shows in the enthusiasm and passion in our writing.

These pretty much summarize my own toughts (though I do not take naps during office hours – I can't, as I am not self employed full time blogger).

I am happy to answer more of your questions by email or on the comments below.

Work-Life Balance

A week ago in Friday I heard about World's Best Presentation 2008 Contest and figured out that I would like to participate.

I have worked like crazy this week on the presentation, on marketing it, and on running the office in my job.

Now I need a holiday!

Luckily my holiday starts now.




Jack Welch wrote a chapter about Work-Life Balance in his book Winning:

In the '60 and '70s all my direct reports were men. ... I never once asked anyone, “Is there someplace you would rather be – or need to be – for your family or favourite hobby or whatever?” ... They did not attend ballet recitals on Thursday afternoons, or turn down job transfers because they didn’t want to disturb their kids' sports "careers." ... In general it was assumed that wives stayed at home to make everything run smoothly.

All that started to change in the '80s, when women started moving up in the workforce. … I started to hear a lot more about work-life balance. ... Managers started describe the pressures they felt trying to manage travel and transfers in two-career households.

Debate about the topic became more intense in the early '90s. These conversations forced me to confront ... the conflicts involved in managing two full lives – the one at work and the other after hours, be it caring for kids, volunteering at homeless shelter, or running marathons.

Basically work life balance has become a debate about how much we allow work to consume us. You can be like me and my type, and make work your major priority. Or you can attempt a kind of literal balance, with work and life each getting 50 percent of your time, or you can go to surfing 80 percent of your time and work 20 percent. There are as many work life balance equations as there are individuals.

Achieving work-life balance is a process. Getting it right is iterative. You get better at it with experience and observation, and eventually, after some time passes, you notice it’s not getting harder anymore. It’s just what you do.

This is surprisingly valid to my situation this week. I presented the world my view of women's right to education, which will eventually lead to them moving up in the workforce, also in the countries where wives still today stay at home to make everything run smoothly. This week I have made work my major priority – it was easy since my family was on the other side of the world (but I hardly had time to sleep). Tomorrow I will fly to them and start my holiday.

Due to my holiday and travel, I will not update this blog before beginning of August, but will follow the comments. And follow the contest. While posting this, my presentation is leading the Education category. I can take a holiday now, and let social media take care of the rest.

“Is there someplace you would rather be – or need to be – for your family or favourite hobby or whatever?”

Authentic Leadership

I have been busy doing other things this weekend and did not think of blogging, but

As I was reading some of my favourite blogs, I noticed an interesting post worth spreading.

John Spence blogged a list of 10 Things Authentic Leaders Do by Robin Sharma.

The post was so good that I decided to simply blog a short version of it. See John’s blog for the whole story.

10 things that authentic leaders do on a regular basis:

1. They speak their truth. In business today, we frequently ’swallow our truth’. We say things to please others and to look good in front of The Crowd. Authentic leaders are different. They consistently talk truth.
2. They lead from the heart. Business is about people. Leadership is about people. The best leaders wear their hearts on their sleeves and are not afraid to show their vulnerability.
3. They have rich moral fiber. Authentic leaders work on their character. They walk their talk and are aligned with their core values.
4. They are courageous. It takes a lot of courage to go against the crowd. It takes a lot of courage to be a visionary. It takes a lot of inner strength to do what you think is right even though it may not be easy.
5. They build teams and create communities. One of the primary things that people are looking for in their work experience is a sense of community.
6. They deepen themselves. The job of the leader is to go deep. Authentic leaders know their weaknesses and play to their strengths.
7. They are dreamers. Authentic leaders dare to dream impossible dreams. They see what everyone else sees and then dream up new possibilities.
8. They care for themselves. Taking care of your physical dimension is a sign of self-respect. You can’t do great things at work if you don’t feel good.
9. They commit to excellence rather than perfection. No human being is perfect. Authentic leaders commit themselves to excellence in everything that they do.
10. They leave a legacy. To live in the hearts of the people around you is to never die.

As always, some questions at the end. This time copied from John.

Look at the list and give yourself a brutally honest score of 1 -10 on each of his items.

10 = you are a living example of this — it describes you perfectly.
7 = you do this almost all of the time.
5 = 50/50, sometimes you behave this way - sometime you don’t.
3 = this describe you a little bit, every now and then, but this is not a typical behavior for you.
1= this isn’t you at all - you might wish it were, but the truth is - this is not the way you lead today.

John’s recommendation: Anywhere you scored a 7 or less is a good place to start working. Anything below a 4 means you need to get to work on that particular issue immediately. Remember: be 100% honest with yourself!

Does Your Boss Know You Are Blogging?

Mine does, I told him, and his boss and his boss. But due to generation gap, I do not know if they understand (yet).

This presentation should help understand how blogs work
and how they can be useful at work.

| View | Upload your own

Some facts about Generation Y: 97% own a computer, 76% use Instant Messaging, 44% read blogs, 28% author a blog.

I am not really Generation Y, since I was born in the 60s. This explains why I refer to John Lennon or The Blues Brothers.

But I am not a baby boomer either – according to a recent survey they in contrast have little or no interest in writing blogs or in participating in general social networking.

I try to balance somewhere in the middle. I am not looking for a job at IBM as Sacha, who made the presentation. I aim to continue on my journey of Lifelong Learning. I am finding more and more useful resources based on blogs, social networking and Web 2.0.

I also told about my blog to our head of HR, because I wanted to make sure I am not crossing any line. Her reaction was quite the opposite from this one on a Harvard Business Review cartoon:

"Frankly, we were looking for someone who's able to think outside the blog."

That is exactly what I am trying to do – think outside the blog. Just as Sacha outlined on her presentation:

1) Read and learn as much as you can (and not just books, but blogs and news feeds)
2) Write and share what you've learned
3) Reach out - find mentors, make friends
4) Rock - do a good job and tell how you would make it even better
5) Repeat from #1

I do that by collecting best practices in this blog and sharing them with my colleagues and with you. And I do that on my own time, not by Working in the Gray Zone.

Do you have a blog?

Do you follow blogs?

Do we share some of the same ideas?

Should we establish a connection somehow?

Which generation are you? (Does it really matter?)

Learning by Doing

I just can’t help quoting Josh Kaufman the editor of Personal MBA:

“The Personal MBA is a DIY approach to business education - it's taking responsibility for learning into your own hands. The best way to learn about business is to spend time gathering the most useful concepts you can, then putting them to use in the real world. Experience teaches better than any professor can.

Sure, you'll make a few mistakes along the way - everyone does. The important distinction is that, instead of doing meaningless homework, you're actively building your own business or improving your career.

When it comes down to it, formal coursework is overrated. You can learn more (and have more fun) by doing it yourself.”

That is exactly what I started doing long before I learned about PMBA - gathering the most useful concepts to this blog in order to be able to use them.

This week I spent two days in a strategy meeting. I was asked to make a summary of a discussion based on balanced scorecard viewpoints (which I happen to know inside out, having just prepared a presentation of them).

I also had two days of leadership training this week and we discussed among other things the 7 habits, which I had blogged last week.

Manager’s Toolbox really proved to be useful during strategy and leadership workshops and is serving its purpose in improving my management and leadership skills.

Now I will to return to my office and start using the new skills in real life – learning by doing. Nobody ever learned to play piano by listening to others or reading notes. They have learned by practicing. The same way I have to start doing what I heard from other people and what I read from several books. Start the real learning by doing.

Is there any skill you have learned without practicing it? Without learning by doing?



ps. During the four days I spent in workshops, over 4000 people around the world watched my BSC presentation and almost 500 of them downloaded it, causing my customer satisfaction to reach high levels!

Effective Habits

Another book I have been reading lately is a classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Yesterday Marina had posted this great visual summary of the book to SlideShare.

| View | Upload your own

I especially like these habits

Habit 1: Be proactive “You are respons-able: able to choose your respons!"
Proactive people focus their efforts in their circle of influence, causing the circle of influence to increase Reactive people focus their effort in the circle of concern. The negative energy generated by that focus causes the circle of influence to shrink.

Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood
We have such a tendency to fix things up with good advice, but often we fail to take the time to diagnose, to really deeply understand another human being first.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
Read, write, relax, exercise, play, love, get involved, meditate …

But all of the Habits are good and necessary.

There's a lot of good stuff out there at SlideShare. It seems to be a haven for people like me, who have seen too many bullet points (and used plenty of them also).

After understanding the problem (habit 5),
I read, view and exercsce new kind of presentations (habit 7)
to start a change within my expanding cicle of influence (habit 1).

Personal MBA

Post graduate studies have tempted me ever since I graduated from the university. I have had an urge to combine theory and practice. Earlier I did not have sufficient time for that (and was too busy with the practice), but now I have found a way

This blog is my personal MBA
- one page at a time.

There is a whole community of like-minded people out there. The Personal MBA (PMBA) is a project designed to help you educate yourself about advanced business concepts. It is easy to substantially increase your knowledge of business on your own time and with little cost, all without setting foot inside a classroom.

I am not actually following them literally, nor reading all the books they recommend. But I share their ideology. And that's what matters.

And yes, I read a lot on my own time, just take a look on how my bedside table looked yesterday. OK, I cleaned up a little bit, but all those books and magazines where actually there.

What unifies us is the inbuilt need for Life Long Learning, which is also my personal Mission. I truly believe that learning must start within yourself. Only by first developing yourself, you can start to develop and improve bigger entities – your team, your unit, your company, our planet.

It's all up to you. And who could say it better than Peter F Drucker

“Knowledge can’t be taught, but it can be learned”

Here’s a list of the books on my bed side table at the moment.

Zen Lessons - The Art of Leadership by Thomas Cleary

Meaning, Inc - The Blueprint for Business Success in the 21st Century by Gurnek Bains

Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heat & Dan Heat

Execution - The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck

The Pilates Method of Physical and Mental Conditioning by Philip Friedman and Gail Eisen

Latest Harvard Business Review and one earlier issue

A small book of Sudoku to reboot my brain after too much reading...

I am my own manager

I am not talking about managing self. What I mean is

I am my own CEO

"Each of us is a CEO" managing his own career, says Peter F Drucker on the final pages of The Definitive Drucker. The book is based on interviews Elisabeth Haas Edersheim had with Peter Drucker during the last years of his life. It can be called, as is printed on the cover “Final Advice from the Father of Modern Management”. When all the pieces started to fit together for this blog, his final advice became my first advice.

To become your own CEO you need the same three characteristics as a CEO
1) Maintaining broad field of vision requires having a sense of where you are going and what you are building
2) leaving your thumbprint on the organizational personality by knowing yourself and what gives you passion
3) influence others and be influenced by them

My intention in this blog is to maintain a broad field of vision and cover many aspects of management. I have a clear idea of where I am going and what I am building, but you have to wait a couple more posts before I get to my strategy.

I got the original idea for this blog last year, January 13 2007, to be precise. I read a book called Good Luck by Alex Rovira and Fernando Trias de Bes. I realized then that I need to act according to the

Fifth Rule of Good Luck:
If you postpone the creation of new conditions, Good Luck never arrives.
Creating new conditions is sometimes hard work, but ... do it today!

But only when I realized that I also need to be my own CEO many things became crystal clear. I will cover topics listed on the first post, Original Idea, and many other topics one by one.

My next post will be about the organization – if I am my own CEO, what is my organization? Do I leave a thumbprint on my organization personality by knowing myself and knowing what gives me passion? After all, I am not a CEO of any company, just a middle manager managing my own career.

And for the last characteristics I need to interact with you, hopefully influencing you and definitely being influenced by you if you give me comments. Which I hope you would give to my posts.

Are you managing your own career?

Are you actively creating conditions for Good Luck?

Being active gives better results than just waiting for something to happen.

Another year has passed

A year has passed since I decided to start this blog. A year ago I though of this as a project, but it was not. It's a hobby. A year ago I was thinking of making a project plan for this blog, but how could I do a project plan for a hobby? And that's what has been taking all this time.

But I have not forgotten the idea. How could I forget a hobby?

Actually, this was just another year that passed. The hobby started around April 8, 1997 when a made a summary of Nonaka's article The Knowledge-Creating Company in Harvard Business Review. Since then I have been collecting these best practices. For some years now I have been planning to put them on paper. I decided to document them here virtually instead. They are usefull in my work, and I am more than happy if somebody else finds them usefull in his/her work also.

I am not worried at all about the slowness of the start. During this year I have collected more best practices and this week I finally realized how all the pieces fit togehter. Besides, one of my favorite novelist, Milan Kundera in his novel Slowness says

There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.

I may have been slow, but I have had my sensors out and I remember more of what I have read. My concious became clean when I realized this is part of my life long learning - not a project, and thus there is no schedule and there are no dead lines!

Nevertheless I intend to post more frequently in the future.