Perceptions Matter | WriteforHR

A Leader’s Image Your image is the concept that others form about you as a result of the impressions you make on them. Your effectiveness as a leader is tied to your image. Your ability to project a leadership presence in the eyes of employees, customers, other important constituencies, and the general public is closely related to your ability to do your job well. Your image, then, can be either an asset or a liability as you engage in the tasks and roles of leadership. Many people make the mistake of assuming that paying attention to image building is superficial and therefore unimportant. However,

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Why CEOs Don't Get Innovation - A Nonsense Article from Stefan Lindegaard and BusinessWeek

I read with interest Business Week entitled why CEO's don't get innovation by Stefan Lindegaard another innovation speaker, network facilitator, and adviser on open innovation and intrapreneurship. He runs all the usual arguments about the inability of organisations to innovate, the spurious argument that leaders now emerging with MBAs are the first with innovation subjects in their degrees (that stat certainly doesn't stack up with our research which is telling us globally universities are failing badly with MBAs, most of whom don't have innovation in their programmes anyway) and summarises with this meaningless statement

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As the focus of design shifts from the production of finite goods to a practice of experimentation, ideas take precedence over products.

Earlier this spring, manufacturers and designers from all over the world were shipping their wares to Milan to prepare for the Salone del Mobile. Anybody involved in design knows this is the most important rendezvous of the year—or at least it used to be, when design meant mostly furniture and objects. Designers anticipate meeting new talent and inspiration; they seek out curators, writers, teachers, students, and, of course, each other—this is a chance to meet with their peers and trade war stories. It’s hard to tell in advance whether Milan will be blooming with wisteria or gray, rainy, and dreary at this time of year, but the event is inevitably alive with the sound of design. The Salone is to design what Cannes is to film: the most useful and most productive yearly trade meeting. But is the future of design here? Milan still represents a big red dot in the geography of design, but design is changing rapidly, and so are its maps. There are myriad forms of design, many of which don’t require movement of materials and artifacts; only curiosity, an internet connection, and the ability to seek, learn, and synthesize from other fields and cultures.

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The IT Leader's Hero Quest

Rising star Jim Barton has decidedly mixed feelings after being selected as the new chief information officer at the fictional IVK Corporation. On the one hand, he lacks an IT background; on the other, he's ambitious and up for a challenge. And a challenge it is: When Barton takes over as CIO, his company badly needs a jolt of energy and expertise to grow and to resuscitate its declining stock price. The chief executive who promoted Barton is hopeful but hard-nosed; and Barton's IT group—while talented and tech-savvy—is impatient, even borderline dysfunctional. So begins Barton's wild ride and ultimately an excellent journey to learning effective leadership skills in The Adventures of an IT Leader (Harvard Business Press). According to the novel's creators, a fictional approach allowed them to blend real-life incidents they had encountered as managers, consultants, and educators working with a diverse set of companies. "In this way, we could pool all this knowledge and distill it down to the essential principles that CIOs can generally apply, regardless of industry or size of firm, while describing 'realistic' and

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