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 Jesse Lyn Stoner, Art Petty, Marcella Bremer, Anne Perschel, and Aad Boot.

From Jesse Lyn Stoner: Why Your Vision Statement Puts People to Sleep And Why Theirs Doesn’t

“If your vision statement is like most, you don’t think about it much, and its best use is for bedtime reading as a cure for insomnia.”

From Art Petty: 6 Reasons Why We Should Apply Game Design Approaches to Designing Workplaces

“Imagine a world of work where your colleagues work tirelessly to complete the hard work that keeps everything moving. They voluntarily stay late and even deprive themselves of sleep to ensure the work is done.”

From Marcella Bremer: How can Organizational Culture make a difference in Leading Change?

“Are you frustrated about organizational change? I sure was! But then I started leading change based on culture. I worked with organizational culture – instead of against it. That made a difference! I’d like to share more about my work in culture & change – and show how culture can foster positive leadership and change while people engage and empower themselves. Ready to engage your organization around culture and change?”

From Anne Perschel: Culture Trumps Strategy? Never

“Culture and strategy are partners in a company’s success, or it’s failure.”

From Aad Boot: Leading Complex Change: How to Balance Strategy Development and Execution

“Finding the right balance between strategy development and execution has become a vital element in the success of your company. Many leaders struggle to find this balance. In my work I observe organizations getting stuck in a deadlock of what I would call ‘analysis addiction’, preventing the organization from making actual progress happen. On the other hand, I also witness organizations that are lead by a ‘compulsion to jump to action’ without having a proper notion of what, why, and how they want to do things.”

That’s it for this week’s selections from independent business blogs. If you liked this piece you may enjoy my regular post on “Leadership Reading to Start Your Week” points you to choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms about strategy, innovation, women and the workplace, and work now and in the future. Highlights from the last issue include five lessons in leadership from Sir Alex Ferguson, creative disruption in retail design, why smart people struggle to be innovative, a CEO’s guide to gender equality, and the five traits Google has found that its most successful teams have in common.

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.

Here, on Three Star Leadership, I post things that will help a boss at any level do a better job and live a better life. At the The 360 Degree Feedback blog, I join other bloggers with posts on leadership development. And, at Wally Bock’s Writing Edge, I share tools and insights to help you write better.

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