Leadership
Can you relate to this story?
Four monkeys are sitting in a cage staring at a bunch of bananas accessible only by a ladder hanging from the roof. Whenever the monkeys try to climb the ladder to reach the bananas, a blast of cold water blocks them. After a few days, realizing there’s no point in trying to get the fruit, the monkeys give up. Later, some humans remove the water hose and replace one of the original monkeys with a new one. On seeing the bananas, the new monkey starts up the steps, but the other monkeys pull it down. The new monkey is confused, looks around, and tries repeatedly to scale the ladder, only to be repeatedly pulled back. Finally, the new monkey accepts the group code of conduct and abides by the unwritten rule: “you don’t grab the bananas around here.”
This management fable was popularized in the book Competing For The Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad. I share it because it illustrates what happens when culture trumps common sense. If you’re planning to roll out training at any level in the workplace this year, keep this fable in mind. Will participants come out of the training committed to change only to be rejected by cultural antibodies?
Research published in the Harvard Business Review shows that learning organizations put three things into place before rolling out training efforts:
1) The training is highly visible and championed by senior leaders
2) Conditions are created for learners to apply what they’ve studied
3) Systems are put in place that help sustain the learning
If you want your organization to benefit from learning and growth, take time to identify the unwritten cultural barriers to change. Is the resistance coming from what’s often referred to as “the frozen middle”—a change-resistant layer of middle managers? Is the resistance looking back at you in the mirror? Unfortunately, too many leaders want transformation to happen at unrealistic speeds, with minimal effort, and everywhere but within themselves.
Cultural norms ingrained by past management practices remain ingrained far beyond the existence of the practices that formed them, even when new training is introduced. Don’t pour money into training year after year to trigger organizational change without creating the conditions that challenge assumptions, embrace new ideas, and provide the fertile soil for the seeds of training to grow.
Question: What conditions do you put in place to make learning and growth “stick”?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
Leadership
It’s time to decide how you want to lead your organization in 2020. How did your leadership team impact organizational culture, and, ultimately, performance, in 2019? Were they too busy focusing on daily demands to read case studies and dig through reports about the latest leadership topics? Since 2006, TED Talks have provided accessible content on topics that stimulate new ideas about unexplored topics.
Here are six TED Talks from 2019 worth sharing and discussing with your leadership team this year.
1. How to break bad management habits before they reach the next generation of leaders by Elizabeth Lyle (Posted January 2019)
What it’s about and why watch it: Companies are counting on their future leaders to manage with more speed, flexibility and trust than ever before. But how can middle managers lead the organizations of tomorrow while also challenging the way things have always been done? Leadership expert Elizabeth Lyle offers a new approach to breaking the rules while you’re on your way up, sharing creative ways organizations can give middle managers the space and coaching they need to start leading differently.
2. What are you willing to give up to change the way we work? by Martin Danoesastro (Posted January 2019)
What it’s about and why watch it: What does it take to build the fast, flexible, creative teams needed to challenge entrenched work culture? For transformation expert Martin Danoesastro, it all starts with one question: “What are you willing to give up?” He shares lessons learned from companies on both sides of the innovation wave on how to structure your organization so that people at all levels are empowered to make decisions fast and respond to change.
3. The anti-CEO playbook by Hamdi Ulukaya (Posted May 2019)
What it’s about and why watch it: Profit, money, shareholders: these are the priorities of most companies today. But at what cost? In an appeal to corporate leaders worldwide, Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya calls for an end to the business playbook of the past — and shares his vision for a new, “anti-CEO playbook” that prioritizes people over profits. “This is the difference between profit and true wealth,” he says.
4. The human skills we need in an unpredictable world by Margaret Heffernan (Posted August 2019)
What it’s about and why watch it: The more we rely on technology to make us efficient, the fewer skills we have to confront the unexpected, says writer and entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan. She shares why we need less tech and more messy human skills — imagination, humility, bravery — to solve problems in business, government and life in an unpredictable age. “We are brave enough to invent things we’ve never seen before,” she says. “We can make any future we choose.”
5. What productive conflict can offer a workplace by Jess Kutch (Posted October 2019)
What it’s about and why watch it: Got an idea to make your workplace better? Labor organizer and TED Fellow Jess Kutch can show you how to put it into action. In this quick talk, she explains how “productive conflict” — when people organize to challenge and change their work lives for the better — can be beneficial for employees and employers alike.
6. The business case for working with your toughest critics by Bob Langert (Posted November 2019)
What it’s about and why watch it: As a “corporate suit” (his words) and former VP of sustainability at McDonald’s, Bob Langert works with companies and their strongest critics to find solutions that are good for both business and society. In this actionable talk, he shares stories from the decades-long transition into corporate sustainability at McDonald’s — including his work with unlikely partners like the Environmental Defense Fund and Temple Grandin — and shows why your adversaries can sometimes be your best allies.
Bottom line. To lead effectively today, you need to constantly test your assumptions and recalibrate outdated thinking. Help your leadership team challenge its perception by building a library of resources that challenge perceptions and build new leadership models for the 21st century.
Question: What resources do you use to stimulate new ideas with your leadership team?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
Leadership
Last week, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 91. While it is customary to look to our elders for sage advice, King knew that he was walking a path of imminent danger, but that his words could not be silenced by a bullet. Before his assassination at age 39, King reached deep within himself to find messages that would ring as clear and true today as they did during the turbulent times in which he was called to lead.
Here are 12 quotes from 1960 (at age 31) to 1969 (the night before he was killed eight years later) that are part of Dr. King’s enduring legacy.
1. In the final analysis, the question will be, “What did you do for others?” (Three Dimensions of a Complete Life, Sermon delivered in Pasadena, CA, February 28, 1960.)
2. I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other. (Lecture given at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa, October 15, 1962.)
3. History has proven that social systems have a great last-minute breathing power, and the guardians of the status quo are always on hand with their oxygen tents to keep the old order alive. (Ibid.)
4. We often end up with the high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. (Ibid.)
5. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, written while in solitary confinement after being arrested on charges of violating Alabama’s law against mass public demonstrations, April 16, 1963.)
6. Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. (I Have A Dream, Address given at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.)
7. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. (Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech in Oslo, Norway, December 11, 1964.)
8. We must learn to live together as brothers — or perish together as fools. (Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, Commencement Address for Oberlin College, June 1965.)
9. A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus. (Domestic Impact of the War, Speech before National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace, November 1967.)
10. I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear. (Where Do We Go From Here?, Address delivered at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention, August 1967.)
11. Everybody can be great because everybody can serve. (The Drum Major Instinct, Sermon given at Ebenezer Baptist Church, February 4, 1968, two months before his assassination.)
12. Either we go up together, or we go down together. (I’ve Been to the Mountaintop, Speech given at the Mason Temple, Memphis, TN, April 3, 1968, the night before his death.)
The last words of King’s speech at the Mason Temple were borrowed from The Battle Hymn of the Republic, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” At his funeral, his wife, Coretta, completed the stanza that King had been too overcome by emotion to add, “His truth is marching on.”
Question: Which of these quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. do you find most compelling today?
Leadership
The year 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the origins of servant leadership. Robert K. Greenleaf was a mid-20th century iconoclast who argued that leaders should use their positions of power to help their teams succeed rather than for self-interest and personal glory. It’s a powerful concept that has been put to the test by many organizations, including Southwest Airlines and WD-40.
Servant leadership still has a strong appeal for today’s leaders who have a bias for stewardship. Yet, many people who practice servant leadership in the 21st century are unclear about its origins. Whether you’ve never heard of the term servant leadership or consider yourself naturally drawn to this style of leadership, you may be interested in learning more about how Greenleaf came to develop the concept.
Midwestern values. Greenleaf was born in Terra Haute, Indiana, and bred with strong midwestern values. He was one of the first leadership theorists to introduce the concept of spirituality into management systems. Yet, Greenleaf did not refer to his experience with organized religion as important in shaping his ideas about leading organizations. In his essay, Seeker and Servant: Reflections On Religious Leadership, Greenleaf wrote, “I treasure the Judeo-Christian tradition. I do not value it above other traditions, but it is the one in which I grew up. The great symbolic wisdom of this tradition grows on me day by day. I regret the dogma that people have built around this tradition, which limits access to it. I cringe when I think of the wars that have been fought and may yet be fought because of the human tendency to forge hard doctrine out of the stories by which the wisdom of people and events, which make our tradition, have been handed to us…Much as I value the tradition in which I live, I feel compelled to leave it a mite better than I found it.”
Change from the inside. Greenleaf attended Carleton College in rural Minnesota in the mid-1920’s. One day, he was struck by a lecture given by his Economics professor, who said, “We are becoming a nation of large institutions – government, churches, businesses, universities – and none of these big institutions are serving well, either the people whom they are set up to serve or the people who staff them to render the service. They can only be changed from the inside, by somebody who knows how to do it and who wants to do it. Some of you students should make your way inside these institutions and become the ones who help them do better.”
Greenleaf took this lecture to heart. When he graduated, he took a job with American Telephone & Telegraph, then the largest company in the world. He worked his way up to eventually become in charge of management development. As he studied the company’s expansive business units over the next four decades, he found that the ones that performed the best over time had leaders who operated outside of the traditional command-and-control model. This experience gave Greenleaf both the quantitative and qualitative basis for establishing a business case for servant leadership.
Of E.B. White, Quakers, and LSD. Greenleaf was a brilliant thinker and researcher with a voracious appetite for soul searching. He gleaned insight from thought leaders, spiritual groups, and psychedelic drugs alike. In My Debt to E.B. White, Greenleaf concludes that White was gifted with, “seeing things whole” and “the language to express what he saw,” were key to his power as a writer. In the Quaker practice of consensus, Greenleaf found a way of making group decisions that honored all voices using silence, listening, and the role of the Chair – or Clerk – as a first among equals, no better or worse than anyone else. When experiments with mind-altering drugs were emerging in the late 1950’s, Greenleaf participated in several guided sessions that resulted in what he described as “permanent learning” of the heightened perception of color.
The orange booklet. In the late 1960’s, Greenleaf wrote an essay called The Servant as Leader. In the essay, he wrote, “The pyramid organizational structure with its dominating leader is no longer adequate . . . Followers choose leaders – authentic moral leaders– because they have proven their willingness to serve and even risk losing leadership by ‘venturing out for the common good.’” The servant leadership model reversed the polarity of power. In effect, it turned the pyramid upside down. It was an antidote to the command-and-control model that had served as the natural order of doing business for hundreds of years. The orange-covered essay began to circulate in the halls of some of Americas corporations, became the tinder for spreading the model of servant leadership in the U.S., and is still in publication today.
Robert K. Greenleaf died on September 29, 1980. The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that he was, “a management consultant who preached that the human spirit is more important than the bottom line.” According to biographer Don Frick, Greenleaf summed up his life through the epitaph on his tombstone: “Potentially a good plumber ruined by a sophisticated education.”
Question: What do you know about the origins of servant leadership?
![Doing Well by Doing Good: 12 Companies that Got it Right in 2019]()
Leadership
The best organizations today understand that culture is their strongest asset and can be the glue to retaining top talent. Whether you nurture it or not, you have a culture. It may be empowering or toxic. Either way, the results are showing up on your bottom line.
Here are the 12 companies we featured in CEE News this year that show how doing well and doing good are not mutually exclusive.
1. Pike Place Fish Market, “Look for ways to make others’ day.”
The city of Seattle, Washington, is home to the world famous Pike Place Fish Market where fresh fish have been hawked for nearly a century. The open air market is known for its team of fun loving fishmongers who hurl customers’ selections from the ice packed displays at the front to the scales in the back. The story of the market’s success is rooted in the story of its former owner, John Yokoyama. Its future lies in the sure hands of four former employees to whom Yokoyama sold the market to in July of 2018. The fish market was not always a place that drew crowds. In fact, 21 years after Yokoyama bought the market in 1965, the business was facing bankruptcy. [Read more]
2. Houwzer, “Our mission is to change the real estate industry for good.”
“Would you like a career with a stable and steady income? Then being a real estate agent is NOT the job for you.” That’s a description of what it’s like to work in the real estate industry according to a recent article posted in Redfin. It’s also a model that Philadelphia-based Houwzer founder, Mike Maher, set out to break. A 2018 Gallup survey found that Americans perceive real estate agents as having very low standards of honesty and ethics. Part of that distrust is due to the fact that the very people who advise you through the largest purchase of your life base 100% of their income on whether or not you sign on the dotted line. That’s a model that Houwzer is disrupting. [Read more]
3. KPMG, “The recipe for success is good work. Do good work and you will get work. There is no other way.”
You might think that getting hired at an accounting giant of over 30,000 global employees requires attention to detail and a knack for numbers. At KPMG, it also requires heart. In 2014, the company launched an initiative aimed at inspiring its workforce to reframe and elevate the meaning and purpose of their work. It started with a simple question, “What do you do at KPMG?” and a video that answered: “We Shape History!” The video was shared with employees along with an app that enabled all team members to create and share digital posters for a 10,000 Stories Challenge. [Read more]
4. EchoPark Automotive, “To infect the world with highly contagious CARE (Caring Acts Randomly Expressed).”
Before the 2008 financial crisis hit, Steve Hall was riding high on $70 million in annual revenues from the Dallas-based used car dealership he’d built in just 3 ½ years. His bank account was full, but his life was empty. It took the financial crisis to shake him out of his maniacal focus on profit maximization, and shift to a model of purpose maximization. That’s when Hall found the Conscious Capitalism community. In 2010, Hall re-ignited his company, driverselect, with a new purpose – to infect the world with highly contagious CARE (Caring Acts Randomly Expressed). The focus on purpose, culture and values sent revenues soaring and attracted the attention of Fortune 300 company Sonic Automotive, which acquired driversselect in September 2017. [Read more]
5. Chewse, “Making sure no one eats alone.”
By the age of 10, Tracy Lawrence had been bullied so much in school that she regularly ate lunch alone in the bathroom. She was naturally drawn to the new students, especially ones from other countries and different backgrounds. The ‘in’ girls were merciless in their torment. For years, Tracy tried to bury the pain of bullying and isolation. In a recent article in Forbes, she recalled, “As I grew older, I told myself that I had to move on. That remembering it wasn’t helpful. But the opposite of ‘remembering’ isn’t ‘forgetting’–it’s ‘dismembering.’ I took an important part of me, my past, and I tried to throw it out of my identity. As if I could actually do that.” [Read more]
6. IntelliGenesis LLC, “We hold ourselves to the highest standards in the way we conduct business, manage our missions, and support our employees.”
Angie Leinert credits her career trajectory over what can be described as a “chili dog epiphany.” At age 19, Leinert realized that the best part of her job as a gas station attendant was eating a chili dog while on break. She knew that she wasn’t living up to her potential, and set about to find a better path. She started by serving six years as a linguist for the U.S. Air Force, earning an MBA, then joining BAE Systems as a project manager for technology systems for the U.S. intelligence service. In 2007, she set out with nine colleagues to start IntelliGenesis, a data analytics and cybersecurity firm with a head for business and a heart for people. [Read more]
7. Heap, “Power business decisions with truth.”
Despite the Brotopia reputation of many Silicon Valley tech companies, not all startups in the San Francisco Bay Area operate like a frat house. In fact, Heap has earned the #1 spot on Glassdoor’s 2019 list of Best Places to Work in the small-to-medium sized business category. Heap provides a data management technique that automatically captures every web, mobile, and cloud interaction—like clicks, submits, transactions, emails—and retroactively analyzes data without writing code. If you work in the data engineering field, you just saved 60% of your time cleaning and organizing data in preparation for analysis. [Read more]
8. Relativity, “In order to grow the business, people also need to grow.”
If you’re mildly curious about the volume of daily data traffic circling the globe, you might check out Internet Live Stats for fun. But if you’re a litigator whose case depends on organizing and selecting the data you need to win a case, wading through oceans of discovery can be grueling. A 2012 Rand study found that records collection and review consumed nearly three-quarters of litigation expenses. Data has only become more complicated and voluminous since then. That’s a problem that Relativity is solving. The software engineers, analysts, and designers at Relativity run a platform that stores trillions of documents and handles billions of requests every day. That’s right. We’re nerds,” proudly says Relativity team member, Shawn, in this about us video. [Read more]
9. Greyston Bakery, “We don’t hire people to bake brownies, we bake brownies to hire people.”
In 1982, Bernie Glassman, a Brooklyn-born Zen Buddhism teacher, was living with his students in a home called Greyston Mansion located north of Manhattan. Along with the Zen Community of New York (ZCNY), Bernie opened a small bakery café nearby as a way to employ the students. The café successfully supported the students, but Glassman wanted to do more. His Buddhist beliefs drew him to community development and work with the homeless and unemployed. His opportunity came when the mayor of Yonkers invited the ZCNY to move the business to his city. The ZCNY sold Greyston Mansion, closed the café, and moved into one of Yonkers’ most troubled neighborhoods. There, an abandoned lasagna factory became home to Greyston Bakery [Read more]
10. Health Catalyst, “Continuous Learning, Hardworking, Humble, and World-Class.”
In early 2013, Kyle Salyers walked into what he thought would be a typical post-financing board meeting. As Managing Director of CHV Capital and recent investor in Salt Lake City-based Health Catalyst, Salyers’ job was to ensure that his company’s investment was in good hands with the Health Catalyst management team. What happened in that meeting, however, was anything but typical. Rather than address the 128-page board packet previously submitted to Salyers and other attendees of the board meeting, Health Catalyst’s management team chose to focus on just two slides: 1) Cultural Attributes, and 2) Operating Principles. The team explained that they would put the new capital to work by hiring smart, hardworking and humble people. [Read more]
11. Danone North America, “One Planet. One Health.”
You may not immediately recognize the Danone logo, but you’ve likely enjoyed some of its many yogurt products like Dannon, Wallaby, or Oikos. Not only is Danone North America one of the top food and beverage companies in the U.S., but its commitment to social and environmental responsibility is evident in its products, its people, and its impact. The origins of the company’s slogan, “One Planet. One Health” can be traced to 1919 Barcelona, Spain, when the founder’s son, Daniel, was among many of the city’s children who suffered from digestive problems. That’s when Isaac Carasso dove into making yogurt, convinced of cultured milk products’ ability to strengthen the children’s digestive systems. [Read more]
12. Fiasco Gelato, “Enriching People’s Lives One Tiny Spoonful at a Time.”
The fire of 2009. The flood of 2013. The fire in the new headquarters in 2015. Each of these incidents in the past ten years might have made the owners of Fiasco Gelato seriously consider a name change. Instead, the Calgary-based small-batch artisan gelatiere kept cleaning up the damage and racking up recognition for its unwavering pursuit of greatness. All this while earning a B Corp rating of 110.9, slightly edging out Ben & Jerry’s. [Read more]
It’s been an honor to feature organizations that are clear about their why this year. Their show that a for impact business model can thrive regardless of whether they’re selling real estate, baking brownies, or mining data. We look forward to finding and sharing 12 more such organizations in 2020.
Question: What thought leaders did you follow most in 2019? Did you learn anything that helped you become a better leader?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
![Doing Well by Doing Good: 12 Companies that Got it Right in 2019]()
Leadership
After the presents are wrapped and before we ring in the new year, we’re looking forward to curling up on the couch with a meaty book on history, culture, or science to improve our leadership acumen. Here are the top picks that we’ve added to our holiday wish list this year.
1. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell
What it’s about: Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.
Why pick it up: For a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. Gladwell revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. In his first book since his #1 bestseller, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.
2. Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It by Felipe Fernández-Armesto
What it’s about: Traversing the realms of science, politics, religion, culture, philosophy, and history, Felipe Fernández-Armesto reveals the thrilling and disquieting tales of our imaginative leaps—from the first Homo sapiens to the present day. Through groundbreaking insights in cognitive science, Fernández-Armesto explores how and why we have ideas in the first place, providing a tantalizing glimpse into who we are and what we might yet accomplish. Unearthing historical evidence, he begins by reconstructing the thoughts of our Paleolithic ancestors to reveal the subtlety and profundity of the thinking of early humans.
Why pick it up: A masterful paean to the human imagination from a wonderfully elegant thinker, Out of Our Minds shows that bad ideas are often more influential than good ones, that the oldest recoverable thoughts include some of the best, and that the pace of innovative thinking is under threat.
3. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
What it’s about: Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History, Blight has drawn on new information held in a private collection as well as recently discovered issues of Douglass’ newspapers to write a biography of one of the greatest orators of his day and writers of the nineteenth century.
Why pick it up: A history professor at Yale who has long been a major contributor to scholarship on Douglass, slavery, and the Civil War, Blight portrays Douglass unequivocally as a hero while also revealing his weaknesses. At the same time, he speaks to urgent, contemporary concerns such as Black Lives Matter. Blight is a white man who has written the leading biography of the most outstanding African American of the 19th century. His sensitive, careful, learned, creative, soulful exploration of Douglass’s grand life, however, transcends his own identity. [excerpted from The Atlantic]
4. The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing by Merve Emre
What it’s about: An unprecedented history of the personality test conceived a century ago by a mother and her daughter—fiction writers with no formal training in psychology—and how it insinuated itself into our boardrooms, classrooms, and beyond.
Why pick it up: Drawing from original reporting and never-before-published documents, The Personality Brokers takes a critical look at the personality indicator that became a cultural icon. Along the way it examines nothing less than the definition of the self—our attempts to grasp, categorize, and quantify our personalities. Surprising and absorbing, the book, like the test at its heart, considers the timeless question: What makes you, you?
5. Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Dr. Jennifer L. Eberhardt
What it’s about: You don’t have to be racist to be biased. With a perspective that is at once scientific, investigative, and informed by personal experience, Stanford University psychology professor Jennifer Eberhardt tackles one of the central controversies and culturally powerful issues of our time.
Why pick it up: To understand the neuroscience and social science about how racial bias works in our own minds and throughout society. Eberhardt’s research reveals critical information that can help leaders better understand how biases can impact our judgment and how we are perceived by those we lead.
6. The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
What it’s about: In finite games, like football or chess, the players are known, the rules are fixed, and the endpoint is clear. The winners and losers are easily identified. In infinite games, like business or politics or life itself, the players come and go, the rules are changeable, and there is no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers in an infinite game; there is only ahead and behind. Sinek surmises that many of the struggles that organizations face exist simply because their leaders were playing with a finite mindset in an infinite game. These organizations tend to lag behind in innovation, discretionary effort, morale and ultimately performance.
Why pick it up: To consider the perspective of adopting an infinite mindset as a prerequisite for how to leave your organization in better shape than you found it.
7. The Library Book by Susan Orlean
What it’s about: Orlean, a longtime New Yorker writer, has been captivating us with human stories for decades, and her latest book is a wide-ranging, deeply personal and terrifically engaging investigation of humanity’s bulwark against oblivion: the library. [excerpted from New York Times Book Review]
Why pick it up: Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist’s reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever.
Question: What books would you like to add to your leadership library this year?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
