Just Launched: InPower Women & The Woman Effect!
Women are powerful. Women's leadership in any organization will help it thrive. This is the Woman Effect. Visit InPower Women!
Breaking the Pattern of Management
Posted by Dana Theus in Corporate Culture, Innovation on February 22, 2012
Gary Hamel is awesome. I remember doing strategic planning in the 90’s and reading Hamel’s guru stuff. Here he is 20 years later still blowing our minds and giving us new change management insights to play with.
Measuring Leadership
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership on February 15, 2012
How do you measure leadership? It’s an odd question, isn’t it? Leadership is inherently challenging to even describe because it’s a quality of being human. Psychologists and Change Management Consultants find ways to measure everything and I’m sure they have some metrics for this. However, my Google research on this subject reinforced my experience that most people’s take on measuring leadership is really one of two things: 1) measuring management metrics (e.g., did revenue go up?) Or 2) measuring behaviors, absent their impact. Read the rest of this entry »
Change Leadership: Maximizing your ROL (Return on Luck)
Posted by Dana Theus in Change Management, Innovation on February 8, 2012
Sure, sometimes you’re the lucky recipient of spontaneous innovation, but according to business gurus, consistently good innovators actually have strategies for leveraging luck (the good and the bad) when it trips across their paths.
In “Great by Choice” Jim Collins and Morten Hansen have unearthed a fabulous idea they’re calling Return on Luck, and we all have something to learn from this concept. Read the rest of this entry »
Activating The Woman Effect
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership, Reclaimed!, Women In Leadership on February 1, 2012
Follow The Woman Effect online - www.TheWomanEffect.com.
This last year blogging here on Reclaiming Leadership has been fun and fascinating. Along the way I found myself speaking to and with wonderful, powerful women. And I’ve also been having fun blogging on women’s web sites, like Blogher, The Glass Hammer, Success in the City and Owning Pink. But I wanted to have a place of my own to speak to women about the trends I see from reading the leadership research that many women – heads down in their career – don’t get a chance to see. So I’m starting a new leadership and professional development blog and website for powerful, high-achieving women.
Here’s my opening play: The Woman Effect (1:48 min video).
Thanks for all of you who have friended, followed, commented, discussed and debated with me over the last year. I’ve never had so much professional fun in my life and it’s only getting better!
The Antidote for Toxic Corporate Culture
Posted by Dana Theus in Corporate Culture, InPower Leadership, The PRIMES on January 25, 2012
In a recent leadership development workshop I ran, one woman bravely spoke her truth about the reality of the toxic corporate culture they all worked in. It was dysfunctional. Managers were petty and their pettiness was only overshadowed by the pettiness of the leaders above them. All these great ideas we were generating in the training – all this great energy – how could they keep it alive when everyone went back to their regularly scheduled work life the next day?
Enter, Reality Read the rest of this entry »
Innovative Leadership 101: Develop a Perspective Protocol
Posted by Dana Theus in Corporate Culture, Innovation on January 18, 2012
Sometimes we have to accept the reality that innovation can’t always be planned, but when we find a pattern to help us increase the likelihood of spontaneity – why not try to learn it and bake it into the corporate culture?
In their new book “Great by Choice,” Jim Collins and Morten Hansen have identified some of these patterns. One I loved was “Zoom In Zoom Out” that describes how executives at innovative companies “Zoom Out” to take a strategic view of the situation before “Zooming In” to take action when the ground shifts under their feet. But they don’t just get all zoomy for the fun of it; they look for a specific data point when they Zoom Out, which is how much time do we have not to act before our risk profile changes? This designated time parameter then becomes the de facto boundary of our tactical response, allowing more strategic actions if more time is available and less if it’s not.
How Come Doctors Get All The Protocols? Read the rest of this entry »
What if Self-promotion is a Gender-Neutral Leadership Skill?
Posted by Dana Theus in InPower Leadership, Women In Leadership on January 11, 2012
Follow The Woman Effect online - www.TheWomanEffect.com.
Sometimes true wisdom hides behind sensational headlines. I often think this when I read gender wars articles; you know, the ones that toss the sexes in the ring?
Here’s my latest beef: Women need to self-promote to make more money. (Forbes Woman , Catalyst Inc.)
So apparently women suck at self-promotion. Is that the deepest wisdom here?
I’m not arguing the data, but rather the interpretation.
True Leadership is Gender Neutral Read the rest of this entry »
The Perils of “Easy” Consensus: Leaders, Do Your Job
Posted by Dana Theus in Corporate Culture, The PRIMES on January 4, 2012
Throughout my career I’ve had experiences with government, nonprofit and corporate cultures, and I’ve noticed a leadership pattern in all three that any leader can learn from.
Consensus means different things to different people. Be brave. Do Your Job.
Don’t take the ”easy” path.
The word consensus is based on the Latin word “consent,” which according to Dictionary.com means “to be in agreement.” Most people take this into the absolute realm and interpret consensus to mean, “everyone agrees with everything.”
Bad idea. Executive Coaching tip: people are designed at the molecular level NOT to agree on everything. So why set yourself up for the tyranny of the minority? Read the rest of this entry »
Leadership Test: Integrity During The Holidays
Posted by Dana Theus in eCoaching, Inspiration, The PRIMES on December 21, 2011
The holidays are a stressful time for all of us, when we struggle with work-life balance (or not) and work to serve our business and our families with equal gusto, too often at the expense of ourselves. Read the rest of this entry »
The Better to Innovate You With – Why Leaders Keep Fools Nearby
Posted by Dana Theus in Change Management, Corporate Culture, Innovation on December 14, 2011
In researching my eCourse on Speaking Truth to Power to help people use their own deep wisdom to advance their careers, I stumbled on this great article by James O’Toole (link). O’Toole gave several examples of corporate cultures that encourage people to challenge authority and who excelled because of it. A great example was 1980′s Motorola, led by CEO Robert Galvin. Galvin credited a deliberate culture of challenging ideas held by those in authority as the fuel that helped Motorola overcome Texas Instruments.
It seems pretty clear, from anecdotes like this and research conducted more recently, that a culture that encourages new ideas and open dialog breeds innovation, but human nature seems to work against us here. The research shows that due to “the boss effect” the higher up they go, the less bosses listen and (presumably because more messengers get shot), the more trepidation people have about speaking up.
Corporate cultures are so strong! What’s a leader to do?
Hire a fool.
Dana Theus
Give eCoaching A Try!
The 5 Principles of InPower - Free Video Series
30 days to productivity, career advancement, negotiating power & work-life balance? YES!
Activate The Woman Effect
Dana on YouTube
