Serendipity and Learning

A s I read Leadership BS - I found myself agreeing to many of the points raised by James Pfeffer. The first thing was the use of inspiration,  the second is an over focus on charisma (or executive presence); the fact that many consultants are only trainers, not practitioners. For trainings(I have had many clients tell me - I want you to inspire the team) of which I am not a great fan of - I believe inspiration is more a personal journey and people get inspired by different things in different ways. So, if your training program promises to be inspirational, you are probably being led up for short term feel good but long term zero utility value.  For those who of you who know me and have attended my trainings, I rarely, if ever use examples or stories like Steve Jobs (or <insert favourite tech tycoon names>) . The only place I do use is to share an example of say, first principle thinking. Else I believe that those are stories anyone can read in books and you need a traine...

Continuing from Leadership BS  Why do leaders think they are leaders? Once you attend leadership programs workshop, read it, see it, talk about it - you end up believing you are doing all of it - while you are not doing it in reality.  And leaders begin believe their own story. And this happens not just to leaders, happens to athletes, businessmen, artists and so on... And they begin to believe that they are infallible and then boom! So, how to ensure a reality check? 

In Leadership BS - this is the authors  take on what is wrong with the leadership industry. It is 1, well intentioned, values laden. 2, set of prescriptions - lots of shoulds and oughts. 3, that are mostly not representative of most people in leadership roles and 4 are recommendations that are almost certainly not implementable and may be fundamentally misguided.  In which case, what should a training program look like? 1. Assessments, observations, honest feedback (the most difficult part in my view). This is difficult because unless observations are unbiased and feedback is honest (best from peers) this cannot happen. Also leaders are leaders - people do not share honest feedback to leaders for a variety of reasons. Assessments are also expensive - so often they are the first thing that is ditched (second being the next one) 2. Lots of practice. That comees by investing in long term behaviour change (the second most difficult thing) It is difficult because of budgets and tim...

I was reading "How Innovation Works" by Matt Ridley . And in that he asks a question - what came first - the moon landing or baggage with wheels? You will be surprised to know that it was the former. The reasons for baggage not having wheels are many - from the travel pattern to the design of travel areas to the demography of travel - but whatever it is, many a times, there is a particular time that an innovation takes root - and some ideas are simply ahead of their time. This was a fascinating story and there were others from olden to modern times. One of the myths about innovation is the flash of insight that changes everything. While that flash does happen and you might get that insight or that brilliant idea - from there to actually making, selling and creating an impact are a far longer road. And the history of innovation has repeatedly proven that innovation is a long and often difficult process. Innovations and innovators build from each other (and rightly so), jump di...