Leadership Reading to Start Your Week: 5/22/17

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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 why effective leaders must manage up, down, and sideways, Chief Executive’s 2017 CEO of the Year, The Global Game Changers List 2017, new models of healthcare, why best ideas can come from outside the business, why robots need adult supervision, the real reason Facebook’s female engineers aren’t moving up the way men are, what machine learning is teaching us about human learning, and our edge in a machine-dominated world.

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 Thomas Barta and Patrick Barwise: Why effective leaders must manage up, down, and sideways

“Strong team leadership isn’t enough. New research shows the importance—for business impact and career success—of also mobilizing your boss and colleagues.”

Chief Executive’s 2017 CEO of the Year: Henry Schein’s Stanley Bergman

“Chief Executive magazine today announced that Stanley M. Bergman, CEO of Henry Schein, Inc., has been named ‘2017 CEO of the Year,’ an honor bestowed upon an outstanding corporate leader, nominated and selected by peer CEOs.”

From Lauren Gensler: The Global Game Changers List 2017

“While plenty of corporate functionaries make headlines for successful turnarounds or record profits, we sought to identify true movers and shakers who are determining the course of the future for more than just their own shareholders or employees.”

Industries and Analysis

From Richard Bartlett, Penny Dash, Martin Markus, Sorcha McKenna, and Samantha Streicher: New models of healthcare

“Healthcare systems are struggling to meet the evolving needs of patients. Yet there are promising emerging delivery models.”

From Hal Sirkin, Justin Rose, and Rahul Choraria: An Innovation-Led Boost for US Manufacturing

“What can the US do to get more economic bang from the immense sums it already invests in R&D? Our analysis indicates that there is significant potential for the US to generate much more product and process innovation from its investments in basic and applied research by streamlining existing ‘adapters,’ such as universities, for linking government-funded academic research to private industry.”

From Ben Thompson: The Local News Business Model

“It’s hardly controversial to note that the traditional business model for most publishers, particularly newspapers, is obsolete. Absent the geographic monopolies formerly imposed by owning distribution, newspapers have nothing to offer advertisers: the sort of advertising that was formerly done in newspapers, both classified and display, is better done online. And, contra this rather fanciful suggestion by New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg that advertisers prop up newspapers for the good of democracy, nothing is going to change that.”

Innovation and Technology

From Julian Birkinshaw: Why best ideas can come from outside the business

“How Roche cast the net far and wide in its quest to discover new healthcare innovations.”

From the Economist: Data is giving rise to a new economy

“AN OIL refinery is an industrial cathedral, a place of power, drama and dark recesses: ornate cracking towers its gothic pinnacles, flaring gas its stained glass, the stench of hydrocarbons its heady incense. Data centres, in contrast, offer a less obvious spectacle: windowless grey buildings that boast no height or ornament, they seem to stretch to infinity.”

From Daniel Gross: Why Robots Need Adult Supervision

“Think about that for a second. In order to ensure that the biggest, most scalable social media platform — one whose operations, recommendations, and advertising placements are dictated by software and algorithms — operate more efficiently, the company will hire thousands of human workers who each possess significantly lower bandwidth than an iPhone.”

Women and the Workplace

From Deepa Seetharaman: Facebook’s Female Engineers Claim Gender Bias

“Analysis found female engineers received 35% more rejections of their code than men.”

From Kathryn Hempstalk: The Real Reason Facebook’s Female Engineers Aren’t Moving Up The Way Men Are

“Across the board, technology companies are still struggling to garner female representation among engineering teams. More recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that a former Facebook engineer conducted an analysis last year, and found that women’s code was rejected more than men’s. While Facebook called the data ‘incomplete and inaccurate,’ it admitted to a lack of representation of senior female engineers within its ranks, and across the tech industry as a whole.”

From Frank Witsil: At work, women advancing more in principle than practice

“Women held just 13% of executive officer positions in the state’s top 100 companies in 2015, the same percentage in 2013. In boardrooms, women were in 11.5% of the seats, down from 11.6% percent in 2013, and that was up less than 2% since 2003 when Inforum started looking at the numbers.”

Work and Learning Now and in the Future

From Annet Aris: Our Edge in a Machine-Dominated World

“People can’t win against computers; fortunately we are irrational.”

From Saga Briggs: What Machine Learning Is Teaching Us About Human Learning

“The primary goal of AI research may be to teach machines how to learn, thereby automating some of the tasks that complicate our everyday lives, but brain scientists are saying it goes both ways: We now know more about human learning as a result of machine learning, and it has some exciting implications for the classroom. Here are four especially intriguing insights from the field:”

From Paolo Sciacovelli: Teams going virtual: why focusing on trust matters

“Have you ever worked in a virtual team? Collaborating with colleagues at distance is now very common, just look at the success of virtual team working tools such as Google Hangouts, Google Drive and more recently, Slack. Using these tools reduces the need for sending e-mails by facilitating the creation of an online space just for your team. Moreover, information can continuously flow between team members and documents can be easily stored. We don’t even need phone calls anymore.”

More Leadership Posts from Wally Bock

Boss’s Tip of the Week: How to talk about behavior

Most bosses dread conversations about behavior. Here’s how to get them right. One of 347 tips from Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time.

Getting Candid about Candor

Everybody says you should have a culture of candor at work. It’s a good idea, but it’s really, really hard to do.

Reading Intentionally: How Tanmay Vora chooses what to read

Tanmay Vora thinks that knowing what kinds of books you enjoy is key to choosing what to read and he always has a backlog.

Leaders and Strategies in Real Life: 5/16/17

Articles about real leaders and real companies in real life. This week it’s articles about McDonald’s, Facebook, Dick’s, ESPN, and WalMart.

From the Independent Business Blogs: 5/17/17

Pointers to posts by Jesse Lyn Stoner, Suzi McAlpine, Kate Nasser, Steve Keating, and Mary Jo Asmus

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.

The 347 tips in my ebook can help you Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time.

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