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GrowingLeadership Adds New Team Members

January 21, 2012 in Leaders in the news, Leadership with 0 Comments

GrowingLeadership is proud to announce the addition of several new members to the GL team.

  • Roger Anderson: Roger brings extensive corporate experience to GrowingLeadership having served as a senior leader with PepsiCo.  He has also served as a turnaround consultant, coach, and on-site executive for several private companies. Read More…
  • Jeremy Mann: Jeremy has served with Teach For America both as a teacher in Los Angeles and now as a staff leader in Chicago. Teach For America recruits outstanding graduates to serve in America’s inner city schools. Read More…
  • Rick Melson: Rick currently serves as executive coach and trainer.  Prior to joining GrowingLeadership, Rick developed learning systems for two large organizations. Read More…

4 Lessons I Learned from Steve Job’s Bio

November 22, 2011 in Book-related, Leaders in the news with 0 Comments

I have to admit, I enjoyed reading Isaacson’s bio on Steve Jobs much more than I thought I would.  Being about his same age and a long-time tech watcher, I thought it was fascinating.  Here are some lessons I learned through the reading.

Good things can happen when design leads and engineering follows
This is a long book (over 600 pages), but certain themes reoccurred every few chapters. One of these themes was Jobs’ relentless commitment to lead with design and follow with engineering.  Most companies do the opposite.  Two years ago, I heard some business leaders say that the new MBA is the MFA (Masters in Fine Arts) meaning that design was overtaking finance as most important.  Granet’s book, The Business of Design: Balancing Creativity with Profitability emphasizes the growing role of design in the business world.  Design brings an emphasis on look and feel that technical engineering can miss. This perspective also represents a move toward feeling and experience (affect) and away from specifications and logic (reason).  This is probably a both/and rather than an either/or.  Jobs’ led and leveraged this shift and Apple has led in this direction at the corporate level better than most.

The value of recruiting talent
While Jobs was notoriously domineering, he did have an eye for talent and in many cases recruited talent tirelessly. Jobs said repeatedly that he wanted and needed A talent on the team and needed to weed out B talent.  In his later years, he also saw the need to seek out leaders who had a passion for product development, could hold their own in an aggressive team environment, and were somewhat revolutionary in their outlook.  In my opinion, Jobs pursued this line of reasoning for at least two reasons: 1) he wanted to win and needed capable people to do so, and 2) he liked working with people who were crazy capable. I realize that these are values I often hold as well.

When people don’t have a passion for their work
Jobs admitted many times his mistake in recruiting John Sculley as Apple’s CEO and people like him.  He saw them as capable, but passion-less, business operatives, solely in it for the money.  Jobs liked to lead with a passion for the products and follow with business execution.  For me, this perspective reinforced my desire to live out my life and calling first with a high sense of vision and then to support that vision with strategic and tactical effectiveness.

I am more like him than I thought
I would never put myself in the same league of talent and accomplishments as Steve Jobs. Many would describe him as one of the most compelling leaders of his generation.  At the same time, I do value the intersection of innovation, technology and design.  I also seek an integrative approach that weaves together learning, character, vision, and strategy. Like Jobs, unfortunately, I realize that I can engage unevenly in a way that can be distracting if not irritating.  My intensity can be taxing on both those I live with and those I work with. While I am growing in my own self-awareness, this book highlighted how the person is sometimes the last to see these qualities.

Steve Jobs: Iconic, but not necessarily exemplary

November 9, 2011 in Leaders in the news with 0 Comments

Rick Mann, PhD
I am currently reading Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs which is one of fastest selling books in recent years. Most of us would agree that Steve Jobs is one of the most amazing business leaders of our generation. His creative abilities are legendary. I am not here to contend that prominence. What I am here to question is whether his infamous secrecy and dictatorial micromanagement is the best pattern for us to follow. I along with many others would vote rather for transparency and collaboration.

As we have watched the accolades for Jobs unfold over the last month, you would think at times that Jobs represents all things good about American ingenuity. The rise of Apple over the last ten years has been nothing short of spectacular. Some would say that this could not have have happened without Jobs’ leadership style. That may be true. Across the span of time, there have been creative efforts that have been spectacular. But is has often come at a cost to those creative leaders and/or those around them. Extreme creative genius is often accompanied by other eccentric features. Lane Wallace addresses this in her Atlantic article (http://ow.ly/7jIBJ), “Can Creative Genius Lead to Madness?”.

In today’s world, I believe we are better served by organizational transparency and collaboration. Our best work occurs when we are committed to doing it together. Or as I like to say, “We are better together than we are alone.” Now some of you are already saying that Apple either did practice this kind of teamwork and/or they would have lost their competitive advantage had they not stayed with their policy of transparency. You may right. At the same time, I have routinely found that my co-workers have done their best work, have been most engaged, and have demonstrated the most buy-in when I have gone the extra mile to share the inner workings of our vision, strategy, and execution. Additionally, I have found that invariably my leadership and work has been improved by listening to others and moving toward the best thoughts even when they were not my own.

I certainly have not done this well, but I am growing as a leader in these areas. I could thank many for their help in this, but I want to mention two co-workers. David Tarrant, the CFO at Crown College and former finance leader at Whirlpool, has been invaluable to me personally and the College in his push for financial and strategic transparency. He has done this skillfully and we have all benefited. I would also like to commend the work of Mike Sohm who has served at Crown College as Executive Vice President. His ability to collaborate effectively with others near and far is remarkable. I continue to learn from these two professionals and growing in my own leadership.