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 Linda Fisher Thornton, LaRae Quy, Mary Jo Asmus, Jon Mertz, and Ed Batista.

From Linda Fisher Thornton: Research: Moving Beyond Cause-and-Effect Thinking

“The traditional view of research in the U.S. has been that something has to be proven to a statistically significant degree using established research procedures. It should be able to be replicated to confirm that the results are accurate and true. The problem is that established research procedures generally call for isolating one thing at a time to prove cause and effect, but we live in a world of complex, connected systems.”

From LaRae Quy: 4 Things You Need To Know If You Want To Be Successful In Life

“If you want to be successful in life, however, it takes more than intellect. It takes lots of self-awareness mixed in with a generous helping of spunk and grit. I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management. Fashion sounded like an exciting career, so I interviewed with a large department store chain. They hired me and soon promoted me to a buyer position. A dream job? Maybe, but not for me. I would never be a success because I hated my job. I had misinterpreted the barometers of meaning and worth in my life. Here are 4 things you need to know if you want to be successful:”

From Mary Jo Asmus: Secret sauce ingredients that make a manager an awesome leader

“Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of meeting some pretty awesome managers who are also awesome leaders. They’re fully aware that they have job descriptions that detail bottom lines to meet, projects to complete, and problems to troubleshoot. But the difference between these really smart and driven managers and those that are operating in a less-then-optimal way is that they also do things that aren’t in their job description.”

From Jon Mertz: More than One Way to Organize a Business

“Different business and organizational models exist. Even with this fact, most businesses are organized in a traditional, hierarchical way. Hierarchical organizations exist to establish order. Most business executives want order, although chaos and uncertainty appear often. While business leaders say they want higher employee engagement, the traditional models have stumbled. With more than one way to organize a business, why don’t we see other models used more?”

From Ed Batista: Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)

“When we’re in a leadership role or a position of authority, we’re faced with the task of both holding people accountable and empathizing with their difficulties (some of which we’ve caused), and how the members of a given group respond to this challenge defines that group’s culture. The leader is in a unique position to influence the culture, through the behaviors they model, acknowledge, ignore, reward and punish, but ultimately every member of the group has some responsibility for the culture that emerges…”

That’s it for this week’s selections from independent business blogs. If you liked this piece you may enjoy my curation posts on this blog. Every Tuesday, “Leaders and Strategies in Real Life” helps you learn about leadership by studying what real leaders do. 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.

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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