Independent business blogs are blogs that aren’t supported by an organization like a magazine, newspaper, company, or business school. Those people provide lots of great content, but they don’t need any additional exposure. In this post, every week, I bring you posts of quality from excellent bloggers that don’t get as much publicity.

This week, I’m pointing you to posts by David M. Dye, Suzi McAlpine, Kevin Eikenberry, Eric D. Brown, and Tanmay Vora.

From David Dye: How to Delegate Work – One Secret to Ensure Nothing Falls Through the Cracks

“How often have you delegated something, only to find yourself many weeks later thinking, ‘Whatever happened to that project?’ It happened to me so many times – until I learned one vital step
about how to delegate work effectively. This one delegation secret changed everything for me and ensured that almost every delegated assignment came back on time and complete.”

From Suzi McAlpine: Why You Should Always Choose to Go Above The Line

“As each month end rolled around and the red numbers shouted at me from the P&L, the prospect of making people redundant and asking my team to work part-time to save their jobs became a reality. I felt sick, angry, and a victim of circumstance. ‘Why me?!’ was my daily lament for months as I drove to work each day dreading what it would bring.”

From Kevin Eikenberry: Why Training is Always Pushed Down the Priority List

“If you goal is to preserve and maintain the training dollars in your budget, you need to know these reasons before you try to influence decisions in a different direction.”

From Eric D. Brown: The Data Way

“That’s all well and good but what about all the other questions you don’t know you have? You’ll never find the answers to those questions sticking with pivot tables and vlookups to answer the ‘original’ question because you didn’t know you were supposed to be asking any additional questions.”

From Tanmay Vora: Make More Art

“A project delivered successfully that enables a customer in a big way, a conversation that moves a needle for someone, generously sharing to build a community, a quick post that inspires someone, an improved process that eases life of your colleague, a talk that provokes thinking, a nudge for someone to raise the bar, a small handwritten note of gratitude to someone, thinking differently to challenge the status quo, learning something all the time, creating a piece of work that moves the conversation forward, initiating and delivering – it is all art if it makes world a better place. In fact, that’s also what real leadership looks like.”

That’s it for this week’s selections from independent business blogs. If you liked this piece you may enjoy my regular post on “Leadership Reading to Start Your Week” points you to choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms about strategy, innovation, women and the workplace, and work now and in the future. Highlights from the last issue include why everyone should see themselves as a leader, why authentic leaders tend to be effective as managers, two reasons you need to experiment with AI right now, why Sara Blakely thinks being underestimated can help women in business, designing workspaces to solve problems, and getting ready for the future of work.

How I Select Posts for this Midweek Review

The five posts I select to share in my Midweek Review of the Independent Business Blogs are picked from a regular review of about sixty blogs I check daily and an additional twenty-five or so that I check occasionally. Here’s how I select the posts you see in this review.

They must be published within the previous week.

They must support the purpose of the blog: to help leaders at all levels do a better job and lead a better life.

They must be from an independent business blog.

As a general rule, I only select posts that stand on their own, no selections from a series.

Also as a general rule, I do not select posts that are either a book review or a book report.

I reserve the right to make exceptions to the above.

Here, on Three Star Leadership, I post things that will help a boss at any level do a better job and live a better life. At the The 360 Degree Feedback blog, I join other bloggers with posts on leadership development. And, at Wally Bock’s Writing Edge, I share tools and insights to help you write better.

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