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 Ken Downer, Lolly Daskal, Suszn Mazza, Art Petty, and Ed Batista

From Ken Downer: Why I Resolve to do Nothing Next Year

“When it comes to hopes for the new year, there’s a problem with New Year’s resolutions that maybe hasn’t come up in conversation before. Here’s a fun look at why I think resolutions set us up for failure, and three ways to improve the odds of actually achieving what we set out to do.”

From Lolly Daskal: The Skills You Need to Be a Successful Leader

“The foundation of successful leadership is a set of specific skills. You may have earned a leadership position through a combination of knowledge, aptitude and hard work, but once you get there you need new skills and attributes as well. Here are some of the most important:”

From Susan Mazza: Why You Should Speak Less and Listen More

“Consider that when it comes to leadership, though, there are times when it is more effective to choose silence over speaking up with your words. The silence I am referring to is not to be confused, however, with the silence used for the purpose of actively ignoring someone or as a way to shun or silence them. Using silence as an act of leadership is always for the purpose of making a difference.”

From Art Petty: Ten Ideas to Help You Turbocharge Learning this Year

“While I’m not sure I can prove the physics in that statement, I’m confident in the principle. We talk about creating learning organizations where we’re able to learn and adapt faster than our competitors. In reality, organizations don’t learn—people do. And for each of us to truly accelerate learning, we have to fight the inertia of the routines that dominate our lives.”

From Ed Batista: The Uneasiness of the Open Office

“A theme in my coaching practice is leaders’ profound ambivalence regarding open offices. On the one hand, open space is easily reconfigurable, a key advantage for rapidly growing organizations; it can be less expensive to lease, allowing a company to obtain more space at a preferable location while containing costs; and it’s consistent with our stereotypes of modern working environments, which can be useful when competing for talent in tight labor markets”

That’s it for this week’s selections from independent business blogs. If you liked this piece you may enjoy my other curation posts on this blog. On Fridays you can wrap up your week with “Weekend Leadership Reading” consisting of choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms.

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.

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