Leadership Reading to Start Your Week: 10/6/14

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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 the three foundations of effective CEOs , podcasts hit a profitable stride after a decade, the most innovative companies don’t worry about consensus, when women manage men who don’t respect women, and Tom Peters on leading the 21st-century organization.

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 China Gorman: Pump Up Your Change Management Competencies

“IBM recently released an executive report: ‘Making change work… while the work keeps changing – How change architects lead and manage organizational change.’ The report, based on data from their latest ‘Making Change Work Study’ seems a very pertinent one for the times. As a whole, we know that this is a period of significant change for the workforce, we talk about these changes, and how they can and are affecting organizations, but there is significantly less talk around how organizations are successfully managing such change – which is exactly what IBM’s report dives into.”

From Harvey Schachter: Five questions to hone your business strategy

“While the questions aren’t novel, bringing them together in a package is, forming a powerful way to stimulate discussion and thinking:”

From Stanislav Shekshnia and Nadezda Kokotovic: The Three Foundations of Effective CEOs

“CEOs agree that there are some essential traits and competencies fundamental to success.”

Industries and Analysis

From Kathryn Shattuck: Benefits of Joining the Herd

“The Adirondack Grazers Cooperative, based in upstate New York, markets and sells beef for its 36 members. But it also provides hope at a time family farms are rapidly vanishing.”

From Cecilia Kang: After a decade, podcasts hit a profitable stride

“Independent producers as well as media companies are making money from downloadable shows.”

From Shalini Ramachandran: Cable Companies Take TV Off Menu

“A growing group of small cable-TV providers are realizing that both they and their customers can live without expensive TV channels.”

Innovations and Technology

From Quentin Hardy: For High School Football Coaches and Fans, a New Digital Blitz

“Several websites and apps are transforming the way that players and coaches practice, scout other teams and analyze their own performance.”

From Hypebeast: Nike CEO Mark Parker Talks Innovation & Execution with BoF

“For the latest installment of its CEO Talk interview series, web imprint Business of Fashion (BoF) sat down with Nike‘s head Mark Parker at his meticulously-cluttered office at the famous Nike campus in Oregon.”

From Maxwell Wessel: The Most Innovative Companies Don’t Worry About Consensus

“Consensus is a powerful tool. When CEOs set out to conquer new markets or undertake billion-dollar acquisitions, we’d hope they’d at least sought out some consensus from their trusted advisors. We hope they’d be as sure as possible that their teams are ready, that their strategies are sound, and that they’d done their diligence. The problem with consensus is that it’s expensive. And while it’s worth the cost of consensus in the pursuit big, bold moves, it’s often crushing to small experimental ones.”

Women and the Workplace

From Michelle Angier and Beth Axelrod: Realizing the power of talented women

“In 2010, eBay embarked on a journey to bring more women into its top ranks. It found that commitment, measurement, and culture outweigh a business case and HR policies.”

From Hilary Burns: A positive sign – 30 percent of board nominations this year were women

“This year, more women than ever are being nominated for corporate board seats, according to a new report from the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), a provider of proxy advisory and corporate governance solutions. The report, released yesterday, indicates that almost 30 percent of new board nominees for S&P 500 companies have been women this year, up from 15 percent in 2008.”

From Rebekah Campbell: When Women Manage Men Who Don’t Respect Women

“What really gets me is knowing that it may be fundamentally impossible to lead some people who cannot respect me because I am a woman.”

Work and Learning Now and in the Future

From Laura Montini: This Is How Evernote’s Phil Libin Thinks You Should Work

“At Evernote’s annual conference, the founder explained why the business world needs to move away from documents, folders, and slide decks, for the sake of productivity.”

From Tom Peters: Leading the 21st-century organization

“Thirty years after leaving McKinsey, the prolific author returns to discuss tomorrow’s management challenges and the keys to organizational change and transformative leadership in any age.”

From the Economist: Philosopher kings

“IT IS hard to rise to the top in business without doing an outward-bound course. You spend a precious weekend in sweaty activity—kayaking, climbing, abseiling and the like. You endure lectures on testing character and building trust. And then you scarper home as fast as you can. These strange rituals may produce a few war stories to be told over a drink. But in general they do nothing more than enrich the companies that arrange them. It is time to replace this rite of managerial passage with something much more powerful: inward-bound courses.”

More Leadership Posts from Wally Bock

10 Things that will help you in business and you didn’t learn in school

I learned many good things in school, but here are ten important things I had to learn elsewhere.

By and About Leaders:9/30/14

Pointers to pieces by and about Juetten, Jeff Weiner, Karen Kaplan, Penny Herscher, and Michael Cascio

From the Independent Business Blogs: 10/1/14

Pointers to posts by Karin Hurt, Lolly Daskal, Mary Jo Asmus, Steve Roesler, and Terry St. Marie.

Stories and Strategies from Real Life: 10/3/14

Pointers to stories about Kohl’s, Ericsson, King Kase, Darden, and McLaren.

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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