Annual Management Improvement Carnival: Edition 2

Here’s part-2 of the Management Improvement Carnival featuring the other two blogs that I love reading. The lot of people liked the first edition where I reviewed blogs of two masters – Seth Godin and Bob Sutton.

Great Leadership by Dan McCarthy

I (and blogosphere) knows Dan McCarthy as the host of “Carnival of Leadership Development” at his award winning blog “Great Leadership”. Dan McCarthy is an influential voice in social media has done a great service to the leadership community by sharing his experiences, guest posts, stories and lessons on Great Leadership. Here are a few posts to give you an idea about Dan’s writing:

1. Without Integrity and Trust, Rewards and Recognition are Meaningless: “At the end of the day, no perfect system of measurement, tracking, or scoring can overcome a culture that lacks integrity and trust. People can always figure out a way to beat a system. However, in a culture that’s built on a rock-solid foundation integrity and trust, the reaction when the winner is announced will always be “Well deserved, no surprise there, they really deserve it”.
2. The Meaning of Respect: “I once heard of an organization that actually handed out small rewards when they saw a value being demonstrated and tickets if they saw a values “violation”. Corny? Maybe, but at least it’s a visible demonstration that values are part of an organizations operating rules, not just part of a recruiting brochure.”
3. 10 Mistakes Every Leader Should Make (and learn from) before They Die: One of them, “Not asking for help. Driving around lost for hours because you’ve got too much pride to ask for directions might make a funny beer commercial, but as a leader, it can have disastrous consequences. At a minimum, it’s incredibly annoying when a leader just can’t admit when they don’t know how to do something.”

Peter Bregman’s Harvard Business Review Blog

I started reading Peter’s blog early this year and I love Peter’s way of extending lessons through everyday stories. Peter Bregman is a strategic advisor to CEOs and their leadership teams and author of several books including “18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done”. The following posts provide a good sample of what you will find on his blog:

1. A Simple Communication Mistake to Avoid: “The solution is simple: When you have a strong reaction to something, take a deep breath and ask yourself a single question: what’s going on for the other person? Then, based on your answer, ask yourself one more question: What can I do or say that will help them?
2. The Right Way to Respond to Failure: “Thankfully, the expression of empathy is fairly simple. When someone has made a mistake or slipped up in some way, just listen to them. Don’t interrupt, don’t offer advice, don’t say that it will be all right. And don’t be afraid of silence. Just listen.”
3. Solving Your Organization’s Open-Faced Sandwich: “It helps if leadership is explicit about the cross-silo outcomes that are most important in the organization. It helps if everyone who works at the restaurant is clear that satisfying customers is their number one priority and that everyone is collectively responsible for that outcome. It helps if each person is committed to a whole that is larger than their part and if leaders communicate, prioritize, and reward for that outcome.”