Wise words - Peter Drucker

"Leadership is not magnetic personality—that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not 'making friends and influencing people'—that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations." - Peter Drucker

Keeping your team passionate

This is a great post that speaks to questions that leaders should ask their teams to keep them engaged and passionate. The point is that you have to get to know your team as people rather then just cogs that get a particular job done.

The questions to ask and then really listen to are:
Where do you want to go in your career or work experience?
What do you do in your free time?
How can I help you succeed and get the job done?


Read the full article here

Link from alltop

Scared

As I was running through my day, I happened to check Twitter and saw the following:

Carlos Whittaker (@loswhit) Remember,Every1 else is secretly scared they're gonna get found out that they dnt know wht the crap they're doing either.

This really struck me in that this has often been a fear of mine. That at some point I would come back to my office and find a cardboard box and be asked to put my stuff in it because they had discovered that I was in way over my head. 

Now I love my job, I love the stuff that our teams build together, and most importantly I love the people that I get to create things with. But at the same time a lot of my job involves finding solutions for some big messy problems. The reason that it is still a problem that gets to us is often because it is a giant hair-ball that others haven't been able to or want to solve. And that creates a lot of moments of having to think on my feet and in some cases am in spots where as Carlos says 'don't know what the crap I am doing'. 

There are several ways to react in this position. One is to become paralyzed and not be able to make any decisions until finally a decision gets made by default. I have seen this happen with many projects and it just points to someone who should be taking responsibility and just doesn't want to take any potential blame or is just too scared. Another way to react is to just go knee-jerk and make decisions on the fly without any thought to the 'ripple' effect that it will probably have down the road, to other projects, or for some poor sap who is going to have to come behind you and clean up the mess. Now the right way is to try and be somewhere down the middle and work together to find the best solutions, but in the end - someone has to make the call. 

Being a Product Manager means that for my projects and products that person is me. 

I can look back on projects and see that I have been the person on both ends of the spectrum, so scared to make a call that I just don't, and also one who gets scared that my authority is being questioned or that a decision has to be made in a split second when it really doesn't and making a knee-jerk decision that probably isn't the best choice. In attempting to become a better leader with the teams that I work with, I own those mistakes. I have to take the blame. But in those many other cases where something had to be done and even though we didn't have all the information (you never will) the decision was made and it was a great success - then as a team we share that victory. 

I think this tweet also speaks to why certain people that you run into or maybe work with are all bound up and touchy. It is because they are also scared that someone someday is going to pull back the curtain and let the world know that they really don't know what the crap they are doing.

Leadership principles can be found....

Almost everywhere. This is an interesting look at UFC president Dana White and the leadership principles that he has used to set up UFC to the powerhouse that it is.


Check it out, something we can learn from.

The history of the Mac

This is a really cool post that shows some video from when Mac launched. The glee and excitement from the team that created this computer is visible - and to think where this computer has move to.

The same basic things hold true. You have to try it and you won't want to let it go.

Find success by starting off knowing what you are not

This is a great post that contains thoughts on the movie 'It might get loud' in which each of the guitar players in this movie - Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White - each got started by knowing what they were not going to be and therefore were able to focus on what they became.

So who or what is your enemy? What are you not?

Wise words - Andy Stanley

"When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near." -
Andy Stanley

Going to see Rob Bell

Rob is one of those guys who says things that really make you examine what you believe and why. While I know that some really don't care for him or his ideas - I have devoured his books and podcast.

He is coming to the Cites and I was able to snag some tickets for that. Check out if he is coming to see you in your area.

Definition of success

What makes a good leader

From an article by John Maxwell: The basis of the best leader is someone who:

Give Their Best to Their People by...

1. Growing

2. Serving

3. Modeling

Get the Best From Their People by...

1. Listening

2. Relating

3. Teaching

4. Developing

5. Motivating

Who has been the best leader in your life?

Who do you wish you had been lead by?

Read the full article here

Leadership from Mandela

This is a great article from Time about Nelson Mandela and his lessons of leadership.

They are:
Courage is not the absence of fear — it's inspiring others to move beyond it
Lead from the front — but don't leave your base behind
Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front
Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport
Keep your friends close — and your rivals even closer
Appearances matter — and remember to smile
Nothing is black or white
Quitting is leading too

The full article is well worth the read.

Wise words - Soren Kierkegaard

"Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward." ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Thought leaders - Tom Peters

At Tom's site they have been uploading short video talks about various topics. I linked to one last week about leadership. This time around it is passion and why you should hire and look for passionate people rather then experienced.

Great stuff!


Tom Peters on Passion! from Tom Peters on Vimeo.

What is leadership - Tom Peters

Tom Peters on the Definition of Leadership from Tom Peters on Vimeo.

TED - Clifford Stoll

This guy is a bundle of energy like I have never seen. But talk about genius. He does remind me a bit of the professor from Back to the Future a little though....

Powerful statement - Lubbock

“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” - John Lubbock

Extra special

Image from Thought quotient

There are times when you just start to feel really special. Today was one of those days.... I found out I am on Shaun Groves' blogroll! Shaun is a great thinking mind who also happens to be an awesome song writer and musician. So happy day!

Going all the way by Craig Groeschel – A Review

I typically don’t do great book reviews, more of this rules, this sucks kind of things without really diving into the ‘meat of the matter’ too hard. But when the chance came to get a free book if I would read it and blog about it. How could I say no? There is something about getting free stuff that just rocks!

Now, I have a great marriage. That has everything to do with the fact that I somehow won the lottery of a lifetime or something and was blessed enough to find the most amazing woman to think that it might be an acceptable idea to hang out and spend the rest of life with a bum like me. But there are always things that I can learn and improve on.

I thought this is going to be easy, I will get the book buzz through it real quick and then give it a ‘this sucks’ or ‘this rules’ type of a review and that would be it. But when Going All The Way came, this weight of responsibility really dropped heavy. I really felt like I had been handed a really important document and I had better take good care of it and give it it’s due or I would be short changing everything American or something. And I started to think about the fact that marriage is just like everything else that is important in life, you are only going to get out of it what you put in, and you can always improve and get better. At least I can.

When I first started this book I thought, big font size and it seems pretty easy reading, this is going to be a piece of cake. The fact of the matter is, this book is easy reading and flows nicely but it isn’t cotton candy.

This book has ‘jump out’ points that really grabbed me, for example in the introduction Craig states that this path is going to be different and it is going to be hard. The reason for that is: Minor adjustments produce marginal result. If that isn’t a ton of bricks statement! I often will feel like I might be slipping a little bit and getting lazy in our relationship and think I will just tweak this a little over here, and then wonder why the results are only minor. Hmmmm…….

The first chapter takes a good hard swing at the myth of “The One” person. I have to admit that this whole thing that really stuck in my gizzard as well. There are billions of people in the world and if there is that one perfect person for me what are the odds that they will actually be anywhere near me? But yet there is this feeling that there should be someone out there that will be that perfect match. Craig makes the case that this isn’t a person but instead a God shaped hole that we all have in our lives – single or married. And we have to get that figured out before we can then pursue ‘Number two’ – future mate.

Craig then dives into laying a really strict moral baseline for dating. When I first read it, I was like, ‘right – there is no way’. But if you think about it we tend to spend most of our time trying to see how far to the edge we can get, which can be quite traumatic when it is done in relationships so it would make sense to create a large buffer zone so that something stupid doesn’t happen that you will regret later in life.

For a book on marriage and relationships, Craig spends a good deal of time talking about breaking up. At first it would seem to go contrary to relationships – but just look around you, there are tons of people in really crappy relationships all over the place. It makes me wonder why people put up with such junk from others? Is it that we are scared that this is the only person that will ever show any attention to us or is it something else? There is a lot of truth to the point that if you are in a bad relationship you will be distracted so much that if someone did come by you wouldn’t even notice – so kick that bum to the curb and move on.

Another topic that Craig spends a good chunk of time on is guilt and regrets. I think everyone deals with these feelings about our lives and they are only intensified when they are connected to our relationships with others. There are some real helpful steps and tips to work through that stuff in here.

Then we move on to intimacy. What it means and how to cultivate it in a relationship. The statement that knocked me over the head was the thought that intimacy should be said “into me see”. That it is only when we drop the charades, the masks, the misdirection plays and really allow another to see into us that intimacy can happen. While that is easy to say, it is sure a bugger to try and pull off. My masks are so easy to put on and to remove them it is kind of like Jim Carry in the movie The Mask – they like to stay on. You really have to pry to get them off.

There is also some great advice about watching out for common lies and emotional potholes that seem to fill relationships. For a more in depth information I would read the For Men Only or For Women Only books by Shaunti Feldhahn.

If you have stayed with me thus far the overall conclusion is this: This is a really good book about relationships and I highly recommend it! I am also going to go through this book with my kids when they get a little older.

Music Legends: Andrae Crouch

My dad was a huge fan of gospel music. The main album that I grew up listening to was Andrae Crouch: Live at Carnegie Hall. There is something about that album that is magic. You can listen to it and be transported right there.

While I have listened to some of his other stuff over the last few years, it was cool to see a little bio be highlighted on Apple.com about Andrae and some of the stuff that he is doing now. In reading that it made me go and search that great repository of everything ever done or broadcast - yes, Youtube.com. And that site did not let me down. So here are a couple of videos from 'back in the day' of Andrae and the Disciples.

Great thought leaders: Erwin McManus

There are some people that I read or listen to in order to be inspired. There are some people that I follow in order to learn more. And then there is the person that I listen to in order to be challenged.


Erwin McManus is not just a great speaker and writer but is someone that if you listen will challenge you to be more then you thought you could.



I highly recommend the Mosaic podcast and also his book Uprising. I haven't read Soul Cravings yet, but am looking forward to it.