Leadership

World Champions – Phinally!

/ Susan Hendrich / 2 Comments
Phinally!
Phinally!

What does it take to be a champion?  Here are excerpts from just a few everyday heroes who outta know:

 

Jim Loy: “Most great athletes will tell you that to get where they are took practice, practice, practice, work, work, work.” 

Zig Ziglar: “Learn the importance of:

  • Replacing bad habits with good habits.
  • Seeing the best in people.
  • Taking time to reflect.
  • Meeting challenges with assurance.
  • Greeting others with confidence and enthusiasm.
  • Balanced living.”

Stephen Downes: “Decide what’s worth doing. If you don’t decide what is worth doing, someone will decide for you, and at some point in your life you will realize that you haven’t done what is worth doing at all. So spend some time, today, thinking about what is worth doing. You can change your mind tomorrow. But begin, at least, to guide yourself somewhere.” 

The Philadelphia Phillies proved tonight that they can do all of the above. Congratulations, Phils!

2008 World Champions!

Stayin’ Alive is savin’ lives?

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 Old Song Finds a New Purpose

In the Offbeat department, I am inspired by a disco song’s new-found purpose—saving lives:

Under most circumstances, it’s best to keep the beat of the Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive” out of your head, but heart specialists have come up with one good reason to remember: It could save someone’s life.

Turns out the 1977 disco hit has 103 beats per minute, a perfect number to maintain — and retain — the best rhythm for performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR.

A small study by University of Illinois College of Medicine researchers in Peoria has found that 10 doctors and five medical students who listened to the “Saturday Night Fever” tune while practicing CPR not only performed perfectly, they remembered the technique five weeks later. See the rest of the story at: http://blogs.usatoday.com/betterlife/

Shake your head if you want; it’s just plain cool to see that the BeeGees served a higher purpose after all.

How does the BeeGees’ CPR thing relate to leadership and training?

Here’s what this has to do with leadership and training. As leaders and trainers, we must find a way to tie new concepts to that which is familiar. Everyone knows the song. Not everyone knows how fast to compress when doing CPR. Add Barry Gibb and POOF, you can make a decent attempt at saving a life.  Does it get more magical than that?

Ah – Ah – Ah – Ah…

Susan Hendrich

Learning maps

/ Susan Hendrich / 1 Comment

How do you enable strategic organizational change?

More and more these days, I’m being asked to find ways of facilitating meaningful and successful change in organizations.  Invariably, leadership needs a strategy for bringing about desired change. And there are millions of strategies out there (just google “Change management strategy” and you’ll see). So, I try to keep a pulse on change management efforts that are working out there. Today I came across Root, a forward-thinking group making interesting use of learning maps.  Their concept is simple. Their process is fun. Their results are amazing.

What is a Learning Map?

The gist of these Learning Maps is that they use visual mapping to enable rapid communications within organizations about new strategy execution. These visual depictions of a new process or strategy tap into a collaborative process and help every employee to see beyond their own job functions to the bigger picture that is “where we are going.”  These learning maps engage their workforces by communicating an understanding about the industry and internal business.

Let me see this for myself

Take a “look” at ROOT’s Learning Maps and let me know what you think: http://www.rootlearning.com/www/index.htm

Susan Hendrich

Be decisive

/ Susan Hendrich / 2 Comments

The Best Decision

How important is it for leaders to be decisive?  Consider these words from Theodore Roosevelt: 

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Sometimes shooting from the hip, good leaders can make decisions quickly — often with incomplete data. And, yes, hasty decisions can cause problems. But making no decision at all can worsen an already-bad situation. I’ve decided I’m going to try to be more decisive in my day-to-day business as a leader and a team player.

 

What will you decide?

 

Susan Hendrich 
 
 
 

 

Creative leadership: Scary for some?

/ Susan Hendrich / 1 Comment

Creative Strategist, Innovator & Leader, James (Not Jim) Patsalides, asks the following question:

Does “creative leadership” scare some people?

He says, “Those of us who are Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) alums would clearly value creative leadership, but are there companies/executives out there who might be nervous of the “creative” part? How can you tell these companies from those who might embrace creativity? Why would they be nervous?”  

Here’s what I think:

Creative leadership, scary or not, is the survival key for these uncertain times.

This question reminds me of the following wise words: “Human creativity is the ultimate economic resource.” — Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class

Creative leadership, therefore, is the management and guidance of our ultimate economic resource.

Here’s how I distinguish companies that embrace creative leadership from those that are run scared:

When I talk to company representatives, I listen to the language they use to describe company happenings. Do they speak in terms of “how we work,” or do they specify individual stories about specific people and teams that creatively solve problems? When I hear specific “breaking the mold” stories about people and ideas, I know that the company is valuing creative leadership.

“The key difference between checkers and chess is that in checkers the pieces all move the same way, whereas in chess all the pieces move differently. … Discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it.” —Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know

I’d say more, but I don’t want to scare anyone…