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, Greg Satell, Jesse Lyn Stoner, Tanveer Naseer, and Mary Jo Asmus.

From Ken Downer: How to Build Team Culture One Test at a Time

“We all recognize that building team culture is important We know a strong team culture can have a huge positive impact on team effectiveness, employee engagement, and overall productivity. The question is, where does it come from? How do we build it? To me, the short answer is that culture is shaped most powerfully by what happens when things go wrong.”

From Greg Satell: Here’s Why You Should Think Twice Before Listening To Business Gurus

“Probably the hardest thing in business is to innovate consistently, year after year and decade after decade. Take a look at any industry at any point in time and you’ll find one company that seems to have hit on a secret formula only to find that ten years later that things have gone awry.”

From Jesse Lyn Stoner: 15 Things Leaders Can Manage (and One They Can’t)

“1. Focus and Attention You can manage what you put your attention on. You can focus strategically on where you’re going, or you can focus on short-term fires and go from crisis to crisis.”

From Tanveer Naseer: 3 Keys For Building Relationships With Those You Lead

“For almost 10 years, I’ve been writing about leadership and in that time, perhaps one of the most significant shifts I’ve seen has been the willingness to recognize that the key to our success as leaders stems from the relationships we foster and nurture with those we lead.”

From Mary Jo Asmus: What is change asking of your leadership?

“Whether change comes as a result of something you’ve initiated (a career change) or something that has happened in your environment (a reorganization), awareness of the context of the change and the ability to adapt your leadership is key to your success. When you sense that a change is asking something more of you, ask yourself:”

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 where companies with a long-term view outperform their peers, four ways CEOs can conquer short-termism, the emerging, unpredictable age of AI, data as a service, Time for a new gender-equality playbook, and the history and future of work with futurist Marina Gorbis.

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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