Blog about Leadership

Does it make you feel old or young to know that the Walkman is 30 years old?

At any rate, the story of Sony’s Walkman is a valuable business lesson and I like the way Peter Drucker put it:
“Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.”

Wharton’s Knowledge Today has a good post about this: When the Walkman Roamed.

Change is a constant!

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I was reading Thomas Friedman’s latest Op-Ed in the New York Times (here); he is one of the few columnists that I follow regularly and I greatly enjoyed his book, The World Is Flat. He wrote about the biggest leverage that America can use in regards to Iran is the transition from an oil consumption economy to a truly green (environment) revolution.

My only critique of the strategy is that it overstates the impact of American oil consumption on Iran and disregards the consumption of other modern economies in Europe and particularly growth economies in India and China. I do agree that a green revolution in America could make significant strides in opening up freedom and reform in the Middle East and that America is still well positioned to lead this green revolution, but a critical requirement is that European and Asian countries must follow suit with their own green revolutions to produce the effect that Thomas Friedman writes about.

Other than this critique, I want to highlight a great quote that is used in this article. The quote is from Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy specialist at John Hopkins University:
“People do not change when you tell them they should; they change when they tell themselves they must.”

This is a great quote for leaders. Significant emphasis in leadership studies is the influence that leaders must have to drive change in their organization. This change also involves people. While a leader may seek to influence change, the best tool available is influence; coercion produces negative effects in attitude and motivation that hinder the positive effects of the change. Leaders need to practice the art of leadership to motivate people to change themselves.

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About a decade ago, I started to become a news junky. I’ve always read newspapers, magazines, watched TV news programs, etc. Then the Internet started making it easier, faster, more accessible, more diverse, etc, and my “Internet News” days started. I was addicted. I loved to know things, everything. I craved more and more information. I liked to get news as directly from the source as possible, so I followed the White House press secretaries, DOD press releases, etc. I aggregated news myself from AP, Reuters, BBC, CNN, and others. When I learned about RSS, I included bloggers to the list.

Now, this recession – credit crunch, financial crisis, and global meltdown – has cured my addiction. I went on a vacation for two weeks, overseas (I love to travel and visit different countries). And for the first time in my life, within the last decade, I spent the entire time NOT connecting to the Internet and NOT hearing, reading, or watching any news! I loved it and highly recommend it.

There is nothing inherently wrong with staying informed, but sometimes a break is healthy for the mind and the soul.

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