Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future - Archive

S4-Ep47: Wake Up and Smell The Coffee: The Imperative of Teams

Guest: Simon Mac Rory
We will talk about Simon’s book Wake Up and Smell the Coffee: The Imperative of Teams. Teamwork is such a quintessential and critical element of organizational life. Teams are an imperative to agile and effective organizational performance. With a consistent and sustained effort much can be achieved in terms of improving team effectiveness and the associated benefits of increased productivity and impact to the bottom line. Around 90% of what we do in the organization today happens through collaborative effort. This makes teamwork the imperative that it is. In today’s challenging and increasingly complex business environment we need teams to deliver. If the organization can deliver a 5% improvement across the entire organization in terms of team effectiveness, imagine the impact to the bottom line. Simon believes that the approach he advocates, if implemented across the organization, can deliver up to a 20% improvement in effectiveness.
 
Building Teams By Doing Meaningful Work
This blog is a guest post by Simon Mac Rory as a companion to the podcast where he talks about his latest book, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee: An Imperative for Teams.
Alison Green, advice columnist, consultant, and author of the Ask Manager website, had a very interesting article on the BBC news website recently entitled Why corporate team-building events can be terrible – (see article at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45260246). I couldn’t agree more with her, and in my recent book “Wake up and Smell the Coffee – The Imperative of Teams, I address the same issue in a chapter debunking the myths around teamwork. Here is an excerpt from the book on the issue.

S4-Ep46: Love at Work: The Essential Guide to a Life of Inspired Purpose

Guest: Olivia Parr-Rud
We know in a knowledge economy, we need to use different skills and mindsets to drive success. This means different cultures and systems. People need to feel comfortable showing up as their whole selves rather than cogs in a wheel. Many of us are waking up… We yearn to make a difference – to use our innate gifts in a way that improves our lives and the lives of others. We want to be seen for who we are, not what we do. We yearn to connect, to be heard, to hear others. We ache to share our stories, our talents, and our passions – to make a positive difference in the world. If this resonates with you, then I have good news! Not only are we waking up – Corporate America needs us to wake up! The businesses that are most successful today and will thrive going forward, are the ones that require us to show up fully and in deep connection with our hearts and the hearts of others. During the interview, we explore the book and concrete practices that can be applied appropriately at work.

S4-Ep45: Position Success Indicator: Identify Where You Fit

Guest: Mark Palmer
According to a McKinsey study in 2018 focusing on the future of work: “technologies will transform the nature of work and the workplace itself. Machines will be able to carry out more of the tasks done by humans, complement the work that humans do, and even perform some tasks that go beyond what humans can do. As a result, some occupations will decline, others will grow, and many more will change. While we believe there will be enough work to go around (barring extreme scenarios), society will need to grapple with significant workforce transitions and dislocation. Workers will need to acquire new skills and adapt to the increasingly capable machines alongside them in the workplace. They may have to move from declining occupations to growing and, in some cases, new occupations.” The interview explores how the Position Success Indicator assessment identifies "job DNA" based on occupational traits that help people determine their best role fit to support workforce transitions.

S4-Ep44: Leadership Insight: Dedication to Truth, A Civic Responsibility

Guest: Katherine Tyler Scott
As leaders, it is imperative that we are continually committed to understanding the truth. Since we continue to learn, this translates to a commitment to update what we think and how we lead. Effective leaders must continue to evolve and face the difficult realities so that they can inspire and lead others around them. As citizens, we must be committed to being engaged, we must learn about the issues that impact us personally and those that impact the broader community and vote for some balance between personal gain and collective gain. Katherine talks about how we become more informed. She leads a "book group" for women where they study the constitution. She sees the constitution as a contract between our elected officials and the governed. As a smart citizen, we should understand the contractual arrangements we are engaged in. This interview interweaves her broad range of experiences in leadership studies, running a company and promoting civics and civility.

S4-Ep43: Enterprise-Wide Success As A Result Of Talent Development Award

Guest: K. R. Ravi
In a time where companies are competing aggressively for talent, Mr. Ravi talks about what Larson and Toubro (L&T) did in their recent talent initiative to support significant business growth and meet the objective of running increasingly complex initiatives. L&T takes pride in ‘imagineering’ which, coupled with employees’ commitment, has made them transform from Construction space to Engineering-Procurement-Construction (EPC) Company with proven track record of executing complex mega projects each exceeding USD 2 Bn. L&T won the top award from the global Training and Development Association for their demonstration of enterprise-wide success as a result of talent development (BEST award 2018). Mr. Ravi led the initiatives that earned the award. He talks about how his team used talent development as a strategic business tool to drive success. He will give us details about the talent development program that earned L&T the #23 ranking in the world for the BEST award.

S4-Ep41: Moving Into ’C’ Level: Angelo Mazzocco Career

Guest: Angelo Mazzocco
As a CIO and member of the executive team, Angelo's focus is well beyond that of CIO – he focuses on overall success and health of his organization, Central Ohio Primary Care. This means he shifted his activities and mindset when promoted to “C” level. During this interview, Angelo talks about how his career evolved and how he made these important shifts. He also talks about how his personal life events prompted him to make specific job choices and how these choices unfolded to create success. He discusses the following topics: 1. How did your role change when you got your first “C” level role? 2. How was this different than you anticipated? 3. Where do you spend your time? 4. What is your technology role? How much time? 5. What is your role in the community? 6. Why do you invest so much in building cross industry CIO success, student success and manager success? If you aspire to fill a "C" level or senior role, this conversation provides great insight!

S4-Ep39: A Case Study of Doing Well By Doing Good: The Internet Backpack

Guest: Dale Meyerrose
We have been hearing about the topic of doing well by doing good for a few years. Should tech leaders take adopt this concept to reevaluate how they do business? If so, why would they? How would they? To take the question further, what accountability (if any) do leaders have for the uses of their products and services? During this conversation, Dale and Maureen will discuss the questions posed above and a project Dale has been involved with where Imcon International Inc., the developer of the Internet Backpack, a remote connectivity solution that allows users to communicate from almost every location on the planet, the School of Information Studies (iSchool) at Syracuse University and the Republic of Liberia will collaborate on a far reaching project that will digitally transform Liberia by increasing the nation’s current internet penetration of about 7% to 40% by 2021. This project is a strong example to illustrate how technology leaders can solve global challenges.

S4-Ep38: How Developmental Maturity Aligns with Organizational Maturity

Guest: Terri O'Fallon
During this show, Terri, Kim and Maureen talk about the interconnection between organizational issues and levels of developmental maturity. The conversation focuses on three types of issues and how they map to maturity as well as approaches to address them: 1. Existential, the group is moving to a new developmental level. How does it look for the organization? How do you see individuals? Do you have recommended course of action to help move forward? 2. Breadth, the group has the necessary philosophy and capacities at the level they are at, but they don’t have the skills they need. How does it look for the organization? How do you see individuals? Do you have recommended course of action to help move forward? 3. Shadow, the group has an adequate developmental level and skills but they have group shadow material that is holding them back. Let’s revisit what is shadow material? How should the team work to address it?

S4-Ep37: The Camino Way: Lessons in Leadership from a Walk Across Spain

Guest: Victor Prince
The best way to become a better leader is to better yourself. Sometimes taking on a big adventure on your vacation is a great way to do that. Pilgrims from all over the world have walked the Camino de Santiago trails across Europe for centuries, making their way to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, North-West of Spain. Today, more than a pilgrimage, the Camino is an unforgettable experience and unique journey. The pilgrimage to Santiago has never ceased from the time of the discovery of St. James's remains in 812 AD, though there have been years of fewer pilgrims, particularly during European wars. Victor shares his adventure in hiking the 500 mile trek along the Camino in Spain which resulted in his best selling book: The Camino Way: Lessons in Leadership from a Walk Across Spain. He shares how he personally applied the Camino Values to his journey and how he integrated them into his life and business practice as a leader upon his return.

S4-Ep35: Leadership Happy Hour: Aspirations - Fuel for Results

Guests: Greg Moran & Teri Bettinger
This is the kick-off of our leadership happy hour series. During this conversation, Greg, Terri and Maureen discuss the topic of aspirations over the courses of their leadership careers. Aspiration has the power to expand our limits and potential by motivating us to test our capabilities and competencies further and in new ways. It has a completely different effect on us than its evil twin – desperation. Not that aspiration is inherently good or desperation is inherently bad, but when people believe, the paths they follow look very different than when they do not. The conversation will touch on the following among many others topics: 1. The power of aspiration as a means of creating opportunity where it is desired 2. Aspiration is necessary filtered through our values and priorities - and that’s okay! How do we remove the limits of aspiration when they have been indoctrinated into leaders for reasons that have nothing to do with their potential (i.e. race, gender, etc.).