Leadership Reading to Start Your Week: 6/5/17

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Here are choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms, to start off your work week. I’m pointing you to articles about leadership, strategy, industries, innovation, women and work, and work and learning now and in the future. Highlights include reinventing management, four behaviors that define successful leaders, learning’s role in innovation, the promises and limitations of big data, trends in remote working, and leadership lessons from watching a great cook.

Be sure to look for dots that you can connect.

Note: Some links require you to register or are to publications that have some form of limited paywall.

Thinking about Leadership and Strategy

From Per-Ola Karlsson, DeAnne Aguirre, and Kristin Rivera: Are CEOs Less Ethical Than in the Past?

“As this year’s CEO Success study shows, boards of directors, institutional investors, governments, and the media are holding chief executives to a far higher level of accountability for corporate fraud and ethical lapses than they did in the past. Over the last several years, CEOs have often garnered headlines for all the wrong reasons: for misleading regulators and investors; for cutting corners; and for failing to detect, correct, or prevent unethical or illegal conduct in their organization. Some high-profile cases, involving some of the world’s largest corporations, have featured oil companies bribing government officials and banks defrauding customers.”

From the London Business School: Reinventing management

“Jyoti Bachani on why management structures need to shift away from controls and compliance to purpose and people.”

From Wharton: Myth vs. Reality: Four Behaviors That Define Successful Leaders

“What makes some CEOs successful while others crash and burn? The stereotypical view — often promoted in magazines and on television — is that these leaders are charismatic, armed with an Ivy League degree and larger than life. That impression is both superficial and wrong, according to Elena Lytkina Botelho and Kim Powell, consultants at ghSMART, a Chicago-based management consulting firm. After a 10-year study, Botelho, Powell, and their colleagues found that successful CEOs have four behavioral attributes that are often overlooked because they are not particularly glamorous. These CEOs make decisions quickly; they are relentlessly reliable; they excel at managing relationships; and they adapt swiftly to changing circumstances.”

Industries and Analysis

From Amit Garg, Davide Grande, Gloria Macias-Lizaso Miranda, Christoph Sporleder, and Eckart Windhagen: Analytics in banking: Time to realize the value

“By establishing analytics as a true business discipline, banks can grasp the enormous potential.”

From George Taninecz,: Benchmarking Beer

“Nationwide, the number of craft breweries has grown from 2,420 in 2012 to 5,234 in 2016. I hope (and believe) that the market for these breweries will continue to expand as well. Consumers crave craft products, and it’s hard to see the trend reversing, especially among younger drinkers.”

From Sarah Nassauer and Heather Haddon: Why Wal-Mart Is Worried About a Discount German Grocer

“Lidl, which has upended England’s grocery sector, is headed to the U.S.”

Innovation and Technology

From Clark Quinn: Learning’s Role in Innovation

“Practices like working out loud, developing community, experimenting and tolerating failure are the path to learning.”

From Joerg Niessing and Clémence Knaébel: Setting the Stage for Digital Transformation

“Being customer-centric in a digital world requires not a plan but a process.”

From Sean Silverthorne: The Promises and Limitations of Big Data

“Recent stories chart the rise of big data, its impact on business, and how it affects our lives every day.”

Women and the Workplace

From Malin Malmstrom, Jeaneth Johansson, and Joakim Wincent: We Recorded VCs’ Conversations and Analyzed How Differently They Talk About Female Entrepreneurs

“When venture capitalists (VCs) evaluate investment proposals, the language they use to describe the entrepreneurs who write them plays an important but often hidden role in shaping who is awarded funding and why. But it’s difficult to obtain VCs’ unvarnished comments, given that they are uttered behind closed doors. We were given access to government venture capital decision-making meetings in Sweden and were able to observe the types of language that VCs used over a two-year period. One major thing stuck out: The language used to describe male and female entrepreneurs was radically different. And these differences have very real consequences for those seeking funding — and for society in general.”

From Sarah McBride: At Top VC Firms, More Women Partners Doesn’t Mean More Women Funded

“A Bloomberg analysis shows firms with female senior investing partners were not more likely to invest in companies founded by women.”

From Claire Cain Miller: A Proven Way to Win in Business: Have a Daughter, Hire Women

“Here’s one of the surest routes for men to think of women as equals: Have a daughter.”

Work and Learning Now and in the Future

From Art Petty: Is the End of Remote Working in Sight? Revisiting the Debate

“IBM is the latest firm to announce an end to remote working arrangements—a practice it popularized and enabled through its products and advertising. It seems there’s a trend, particularly in struggling companies ranging from Best Buy a few years ago, to Yahoo, and now, IBM (20 quarters of declining revenues) to find it a requirement to house employees near one another. For knowledge worker organizations dependent upon the best and brightest, this reversion to old thinking seems…old, and mostly wrong. Nonetheless, I acknowledge that it is a complicated issue.”

From Stephane Kasriel: IBM’s Remote Work Reversal Is A Losing Battle Against The New Normal

“Until recently, IBM was one of the first and biggest proponents of remote work. But no longer. In March, the company began directing thousands of employees to work from set locations or else look for another job, an ultimatum it extended more widely last week. The move is an alarming policy reversal that neither current trends nor recent history suggest is wise.”

From Matt Kaminer and Deon Roberts: Why some big employers in Charlotte are cutting back on work-from-home jobs

“At a time when technology allows people to work from virtually anywhere, more companies are cutting back on work-from-home programs, including in Charlotte. Wells Fargo said this week it’s considering removing a remote-work option from an undisclosed number of Charlotte-area employees when it moves into a new Ballantyne building this summer. Earlier this month, tech giant IBM, which has operations in Charlotte, told some remote employees in the U.S. they’d no longer be allowed to work at home.”

More Leadership Posts from Wally Bock

Boss’s Tip of the Week: The Learning Loop

If you want to master the craft of leadership, the Learning Loop is your friend. One of 347 tips from Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time.

Leadership lessons from watching a great cook

When it comes to mastery leadership and cooking are a lot alike.

Leaders and Strategies in Real Life: 5/30/17

Articles about real leaders and real companies in real life. This week it’s article about the recent CEO change at Ford.

From the Independent Business Blogs: 5/31/17

Pointers to posts by Harold Jarche, Michael Bungay Stanier, Susan Mazza, Suzi McAlpine, and Mary Jo Asmus

Writing well gives you the edge in business and in life. If you want to get a book done, improve your blog posts, or make your web copy more productive, please check out my blog about business writing. My coaching calendar for authors and blog writers currently has time open. Please contact me if you’re interested.

The 347 tips in my ebook can help you Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time.

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