Leadership Reading to Start Your Week: 1/23/17

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Here are choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms, to start off your work week. I’m pointing you to articles about leadership, strategy, industries, innovation, women and work, and work and learning now and in the future. Highlights include three strategies from the 2016 CEO Digital Transformation Summit, CEOs rank culture as #1 priority for success,  the state of technology at the end of 2016, reinventing the workplace for greater gender diversity, IBM’s secret to building strong female leaders, and ten workplace trends you’ll see in 2017.

Be sure to look for dots that you can connect.

Note: Some links require you to register or are to publications that have some form of limited paywall.

Thinking about Leadership and Strategy

From HBS Working Knowledge: How Do Leaders Manage the Tension Between Pride and Arrogance?

“As recent headlines suggest, managing the tension between pride and arrogance is one of the most difficult, sensitive issues facing top executives. James Heskett asks what leaders can do to prevent pride in an organization from becoming arrogance.”

From Jennifer Pellet: 3 Strategies from the 2016 CEO Digital Transformation Summit

“In an era of ‘transform or be transformed,’ it’s increasingly critical that companies seek out ways to gain a competitive edge by using data and analysis tools to better understand customer decision-making, speed processes and improve operations. Here are 3 things companies exploring digital transformation should consider.”

From Michelle M. Smith: CEOs Rank Culture as #1 Priority for Success

“Leadership development can play a vital role in helping to accelerate, reinforce and sustain culture, and culture is definitely born in the executive suite – when leaders change their behaviors, others do too. It’s leaders who need to define the culture, communicate it to all organizational levels, and act and behave in ways that reflect and reinforce their desired outcomes.”

Thanks to Smartbrief on Leadership for pointing me to this story

Industries and Analysis

From Claudia D’Arpizio, Federica Levato, Daniele Zito, Marc-André Kamel and Joëlle de Montgolfier: Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study, Fall-Winter 2016

“Slower growth worldwide, and strategy becomes paramount”

From Raffaella Bianchi, Michal Cermak, and Ondrej Dusek: Omnichannel, not omnishambles

“Providing an omnichannel customer experience requires companies to become more flexible and responsive.”

From Mark Cohen: A Primer: Retailing Stands on Five Pillars

“Retail businesses stand or fall based on their strengths and weaknesses with regard to five pillars (P5): PRICING, PRODUCT, PRESENTATION, PRODUCTIVITY and the talent, energy and dedication of PEOPLE. Leaning too hard on one, specifically promotional pricing, can threaten a retailer’s very existence.”

Innovation and Technology

From BCG Perspectives: The Most Innovative Companies in 2016

“The pace of technology-driven change is faster than ever before as new technologies play a bigger role in all industries.”

From Ben Thompson: The State of Technology at the End of 2016

“This is the third year I have written an article summarizing the state of technology. In 2014 I described the three historical epochs of consumer technology — the PC, the browser, and mobile — and the outline of the fourth, which I suggested was messaging; in 2015 I refined the fourth to be Facebook specifically (it is clearly WeChat in China) and wondered if Slack could form a similar foundation for the enterprise.”

From Irving Wladawsky-Berger: The Transformative Power of Cloud Computing

“I was recently involved in two different meetings, each convened by an IT research organization focused on providing strategic advice to CIOs. My participation in each of the CIO meetings was in the form of a fireside chat with a senior analyst of the organization. Given that I’ve closely followed cloud computing over the years, the state of cloud was one of the main topics we discussed.”

Women and the Workplace

From Sandrine Devillard, Alix de Zelicourt, Cecile Kossoff, and Sandra Sancier-Sultan: Reinventing the workplace for greater gender diversity

“Three efforts could kick-start progress to get more women in leadership positions.”

From Arva Shikari: Relationships, IBM’s Secret to Building Strong Female Leaders

“Men aren’t from Mars, and women aren’t from Venus, but they are different. IBM’s BRI program capitalizes on those differences and sets women up to successfully transition into senior leadership roles with the company.”

From Adam Gale: Do we give women leaders a hard time?

“From Theresa May to Marissa Mayer, senior women are scrutinised more than men. And it’s all our fault.”

Work and Learning Now and in the Future

From Steve Lohr: Robots Will Take Jobs, but Not as Fast as Some Fear, New Report Says

“The robots are coming, but the march of automation will displace jobs more gradually than some alarming forecasts suggest.”

From Dan Schawbel: 10 Workplace Trends You’ll See In 2017

“Every year I give my top 10 workplace trend predictions for the upcoming year. You can read my predictions from 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 if you missed them. These trends are based on hundreds of conversations with human resource executives and workers, a series of national and global online surveys and secondary research from more than 160 different primary and secondary research sources, including think tanks, consulting companies, non-profits, the government and trade associations.”

From Mark Seabright: Workplace coaching – what’s the verdict?

“In 2012 the International Coaching Federation estimated that the coaching industry, which includes workplace coaching as well as personal and life coaching, was worth $2bn annually. Just over half of coaches, around 28,000 people, were workplace coaches, specialising in executive, business or leadership coaching. These are big numbers. But does workplace coaching work, and if so, how can businesses get maximum value from their coaching spend?”

More Leadership Posts from Wally Bock

Boss’s Tip of the Week: Lose the adjectives

Using language that’s not judgmental will help you have more productive conversations about behavior or performance

How will you get better today?

You won’t become a great leader all at once. It takes time and lots of little improvements, strung together. Here are some simple things to help you.

My pick of the “Best Book” lists for 2016

At the end of any year more people and publications than I can count make lists of the year’s

Leadership and Strategy in Real Life: 1/17/17

Articles about real leaders and real companies. This week it’s article about Yolk, Taki Kastanis, Sears, Eddie Lampert, Apple, and Ronaldinho.

From the Independent Business Blogs: 1/18/17

Pointers to posts by Julie Winkle Giulioni, Kate Nasser, Art Petty, Lolly Daskal, and Ed Batista.

Writing well gives you the edge in business and in life. If you want to get a book done, improve your blog posts, or make your web copy more productive, please check out my blog about business writing. My coaching calendar for authors and blog writers currently has time open. Please contact me if you’re interested.

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