3/16/14: Leadership Reading to Start Your Week

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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 now and in the future. Highlights include culture, car makers and small cars, how diversity is not good for creativity, women in the SET industries, and work-family conflict.”

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 Aubrey Daniels: 6 Steps To Ensure Nadella’s Success at Microsoft

“There are two types of newly minted CEOs and each exhibit characteristics that are highly predictive of their success: those who hit the ground running, making changes within the first week or so, and those who wait to get their feet on the ground before making changes. The latter almost always succeed, while the former struggle – in some cases, significantly.”

From Tim Kuppler: Culture and Leadership: They’re Simply Two Sides of the Same Coin

“The good news is that culture has caught on as a concept. but leading culture expert Edgar Schein, says it’s just as a ‘word’ and people need to be aware that 90 percent of their behavior is driven by cultural rules and not personality.”

From BCG Perspecitives: Conversations with Leaders About Thriving amid Uncertainty

“To understand the best approaches to addressing complexity, we kicked off our annual leadership series by interviewing four leaders of global companies and—to provide a public-sector perspective—one prime minister. We will add additional interviews as they are conducted.”

Industries and Analysis

From  Gilles Castonguay and David Pearson: Car Makers Try to Make It Big With Smallest of Models

“Big auto makers are taking a fresh crack at solving the problem of how to make money on the tiny cars that European regulators, and many consumers, want them to sell.”

From Ana Veciana-Suarez: Kitchen incubators are popping up to help new food-preneurs

“As South Florida’s food trade simmers into national recognition and food-preneurs try to catapult their products into bigger markets, companies are cropping up to provide shared kitchen space and advice on everything from license applications to social media marketing. Dubbed kitchen incubators, these spaces enable a new business to make and package foods that meet strict preparation and sanitation standards for a fraction of what it would cost a starting entrepreneur to outfit her own commercial kitchen.”

From Tony Costa: How Location Analytics Will Transform Retail

“Despite its success online, relatively few companies with physical venues employ advanced analytics solutions that track customer behaviors in their physical spaces. As a result, most companies are flying blind when it comes to understanding their customers in the analog world.”

Innovations and Technology

From Irving Wladawsky-Berger: Is the Link Now Broken Between Innovation, Jobs and a Higher Standard of Living?

“Last week I wrote about innovation in the digital economy and some of the puzzling questions we are now wrestling with.  Is innovation accelerating or slowing down?  Have we stopped solving big problems or are we solving bigger problems than ever before?  Is innovation in the digital economy fundamentally different from the industrial age innovation of the past two hundred years?”

From John Ward: Necessity is the Mother of Innovation

“It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention. I think necessity is the mother of innovation. Semantics? Perhaps. But consider the number of inventions discovered by accident. Superglue, Teflon, and anesthesia are all examples. Throughout history, some of our most impressive discoveries have lingered as little more than curiosities or parlor games until the world figured out what to do with them.”

From  Kristen Frasch: Study: Diversity Not So Good for Creativity

“After all the positive press that diversity in the workplace has been getting over the years, including here at HRE, a surprising study published in a recent issue of the Academy of Management Journal presenting an actual negative caught my eye.”

Women and the Workplace

From W. P. Carey: Young women in business get a hand up from field’s finest

“When Gloria Feldt was little, her father told her that she could do anything her ‘pretty little head’ desired. She didn’t believe it, though, instead buying into the culture that confined her to a ‘Help Wanted: Female’ career. Yet Feldt ended up breaking out of that confine, eventually becoming president & CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America — a position she served in for nine years. Since retiring from Planned Parenthood, Feldt has written a New York Times bestseller. Most recently, she co-founded Take The Lead, to ‘figure out why women remain far from parity in top leadership roles — and how we will get there.'”

From Sylvia Ann Hewlett: What’s Holding Women Back in Science and Technology Industries

“Virginia Rometty at IBM. Marillyn Hewson at Lockheed Martin. Meg Whitman at HP. Ellen Kullman at DuPont. Marissa Mayer at Yahoo. Phebe Novakovic at General Dynamics. The presence of these women would imply that science, engineering, and technology (SET) industries welcome women. The fact is, senior female leaders in SET industries are still too few and far between.”

From Peggy Drexler: Over Working Holds Women Back

“A  CDC study found that 16 percent of women ages 18 to 44 reported feeling ‘very tired,’ ‘exhausted,’ or otherwise worn out most days, compared with 9 percent of men in the same age range. Is it because women are taking on more than their share? Or because they have difficulty saying no?”

Work and Learning Now and in the Future

From Stewart D. Friedman: Is Work-Family Conflict Reaching a Tipping Point?

“I’m talking today with Stew Friedman of the Wharton School. His most recent book is Baby Bust- New Choices for Men and Women in Work and Family.”

From Brad Brown, David Court, and Tim McGuire: Views from the front lines of the data-analytics revolution

“This past October, eight executives from companies that are leaders in data analytics got together to share perspectives on their biggest challenges. All were the most senior executives with data-analytics responsibility in their companies, which included AIG, American Express, Samsung Mobile, Siemens Healthcare, TD Bank, and Wal-Mart Stores. Their backgrounds varied, with chief information officers, a chief data officer, a chief marketing officer, a chief risk officer, and a chief science officer all represented.1We had seeded the discussion by asking each of them in advance about the burning issues they were facing.”

From Angela Chen: Who Needs to Know How to Code

“As the ability to code, or use programming languages to build sites and apps, becomes more in demand, technical skills are no longer just for IT professionals. Children as young as 7 can take online classes in Scratch programming, while 20-somethings are filling up coding boot camps that promise to make them marketable in the tech sector. Businesses such as American Express Co. send senior executives to programs about data and computational design not so they can build websites, but so they can better manage the employees who do.”

If you liked these selections, you should check out my other curated posts. Here are the ones from last week.

3/11/14: By and About Leaders

This week I’m pointing you to posts by and about Nathaniel Ru, Phil Libin, Gurbaksh Chahal, Tom Falk, and Lynn Good.

3/12/14: From the Independent Business Blogs

I’m pointing you to posts on resilient leadership, when did everyone become a leader, not doing, dealing with differences, and one important question.

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

Pointers to stories about Stone Brewing, Costco, Eric Scott Leathers, Procter & Gamble, and Apple.

Mental Rehearsal” and “Failure as prototype” were popular posts on my blog last week.

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