Weekend Leadership Reading: 6/12/20

  |   Weekend Leadership Reading Print Friendly and PDF

Weekends are time when things slow down a little. Your weekend shouldn’t be two more regular workdays. That’s a sure road to burnout. Take time to refresh yourself. Take time for something different. Take time for some of that reading you can’t find time for during the week.

Here are choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms. This week there’s a buffet of articles offering you food for thought.

From Time: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on COVID-19 and George Floyd

“All of us, including the leader of one of the world’s most influential companies, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, are learning to take on world-changing challenges. Diversity in tech—and other industries—is not where it needs to be. In the wake of the unrest that has unfolded following the death of George Floyd, Nadella says the company has ‘goals and programs to improve representation in all roles and at all levels.’ Nadella is also increasing his company’s support for criminal justice reform and minority-owned businesses. ‘We must do more and do it faster,’ Nadella says.:”

From Wharton: Living to 100: How Will We Afford Longer Lives?

“As more and more Americans look forward to living longer, many lack the resources to sustain themselves in terms of income, housing, health insurance, and long-term care. They are at one end of the so-called ‘longevity risk’ spectrum; at the other end are sponsors of retirement plans who now have to finance people for much longer periods after they retire. That setting provides opportunities for public-private partnerships to help create financial products that help offset, pool, or transfer the longevity risks to other market participants while helping aging Americans support themselves.”

From Jeffrey Pfeffer: COVID-19 Changes Everything — and Nothing — about Managing Workers

“For employers, best practices during a pandemic are no different than before: take care of your people.”

From Management Today: Charles Handy explains the difference between leadership and management

“In an exclusive interview, the management sage explains why good managers can be hopeless leaders, and predicts the ‘’disintegration of everything we’re used to.’”

From Irving Wladawsky-Berger: The Coming Era of Decision Machines

“In April, 2017 I attended a seminar by University of Toronto professor Avi Goldfarb on the economic value of AI. Goldfarb explained that the best way to assess the impact of a new radical technology is to look at how the technology reduces the cost of a widely used function. For example, computers are essentially powerful calculators whose cost of digital operations have dramatically decreased over the past several decades. Over the years, we’ve learned to define all kinds of tasks in terms of digital operations, e.g., financial transactions, word processing, photography. Similarly, the Internet has drastically reduced the cost of communications and of access to all kinds of information, – including text, pictures, music and videos.”

From CNBC: AnitaB.org CEO Brenda Wilkerson interview

“Brenda Wilkerson is disappointed with Silicon Valley’s repeated diversity failures, and says time is running out. Nearly two years ago, the former computer programmer and entrepreneur took the CEO role at AnitaB.org, a non-profit organization named after famed computer scientist Anita Borg and dedicated to advancing women in technology roles. She’s now pushing the 23-year-old organization toward a ‘moonshot’ goal of reaching a 50/50 female-male gender split in the tech industry by the year 2025.”

From Douglas Brinkley: Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind

“Given the nature of our relationship, I felt comfortable reaching out to him in April after, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, he unexpectedly released his epic, 17-minute song “Murder Most Foul,” about the Kennedy assassination. Even though he hadn’t done a major interview outside of his own website since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, he agreed to a phone chat from his Malibu home, which turned out to be his only interview before next Friday’s release of “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” his first album of original songs since “Tempest” in 2012.”

Book Suggestions

SALT Summaries, Condensed Ideas About Long-term Thinking by Stewart Brand and Brian Eno

The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott

Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time by Jeffery Pfeffer

Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business as Usual by David Burkus

Join The Conversation

What People Are Saying

There are no comments yet, why not be the first to leave a comment?