The Best-Run Businesses Run SAP

Remember when you were young, and threatened to run away and join the circus?  You bristled under your parent’s oppressive regime; every decision was made for you. They even chose what you had for breakfast. 

Remember when you first joined the workforce and longed for the day when you were in charge?  Your managers made such stupid decisions. They didn’t even know what was really going on.

If only you were in charge.  It’s good to be the king. All successful change management projects require executive support.  Strategy starts with the leaders.  If you aren’t the lead dog in the sled, the view always looks the same.  Baloney.

Read entire blog post on Management Information Exchange here.

We glorify leadership and encourage everyone to be leaders. There are hundreds of books on leadership, a plethora of expensive leadership consultants, and even a pithy saying about being the lead dog in the sled.

But we can’t all be leaders. After all, then there would be no one to follow the leaders. And without followers, leaders cannot implement any change.

But isn’t it easy to be a follower? Don’t you just do whatever the leader tells you to do?

Read the full blog post in Managing by Walking Around.

In the book “Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter”, Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown analyzed data from 150 leaders and categorized them as Diminishers or Multipliers. Diminishers drain energy from everyone around them, reducing commitment and focus. They need to be the smartest ones in the room, killing off ideas and innovation. Multipliers, on the other hand, amplify others’ intelligence and abilities. They inspire people to overcome obstacles, to generate new ideas, and to deliver results that surpass expectation.

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Most of us view work as a kind of economic transaction: people exchange labor for financial compensation. Depending on the job, increased quantity of labor (number of hours) or increased quality of labor (bonus or promotion) results in increased compensation. However, there is an increasing amount of research that shows that we are motivated not so much by money as by our social needs for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.

While people sometimes use the word ‘family’ to describe their work colleagues, neuroscience research makes it clear that our brains experience the workplace as a social system. Social interactions often decide whether an employee stays at a company; positive reinforcement from our boss or peers can improve our mood for an entire day. In contrast, lack of social interaction with peers and a non-supportive or critical environment are often cited as the primary reasons for leaving a job. (more…)