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 Art Petty, Nina Simosko, Kevin Eikenberry, Lolly Daskal, and Terry “Starbucker” St. Marie.

From Art Petty: Create Big Changes in Performance from Small Adjustments to Behaviors

“Rapid wholesale change in human thinking and acting is rare in general and practically unheard of in the workplace. Mostly, if we change at all, we change incrementally.”

From Nina Simosko: To Create Innovation, Avoid the Shiny Object Syndrome

“Technology is seductive. Take a look at the devices that we carry around in our pockets or attach to our bodies – phones, monitors, bands and watches – each collecting, distributing and analyzing data. Think about how many of these you have – and think about their purpose. We use them for efficiency and optimization – to get things done better, faster and more reliably. They provide us with something that is missing – flexibility or the chance to gain some insight about our behaviors and actions.”

From Kevin Eikenberry: What’s Different Leading at a Distance

“In (important) ways, leading is leading, regardless of where you and those you lead are located. In all cases, as a leader, you are moving toward a goal, and are moving in the direction of that goal with and through the efforts of other people. And yet for all the ways that leadership is the same, there are nuanced differences that need to be understood and acted upon if you want to get great results and have people who feel good about their work and the working environment.”

From Lolly Daskal: 4 Powerful Ways to Improve Your Leadership Presence

“We can’t all be rock stars, of course. But whatever your leadership work looks like, there are things you can adjust to magnify its impact. Here are four of the most powerful:”

From Terry “Starbucker” St. Marie: 6 Quick Ways To Know If You Are An Effective Leader

“Fortunately, there are six indirect tell-tale clues that you can pick up on a daily basis to give you the feedback you need to be an effective leader:”

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 six ways to be a better manager, how strategy is evolving (and remaining the same), mastering complexity through simplification, technology trends in 2017, the best data scientists get out and talk to people, time for a new gender-equality playbook, the future of the corporate university, and how the org chart has given way to the network and why it matters.

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.

If you’re a boss, you should check out my Working Supervisor’s Support Kit.