Leadership, competitiveness and best practices on business management
Workplace Survey, Findings 1.Workers are struggling to work effectively. When focus is compromised in pursuit of Collaboration, neither works well. 2. Effective workplaces balance focus and collaboration. Workplaces designed to enable collaboration without sacrificing employees’ ability to focus are more successful. 3. Choice drives performance and innovation. Employers who provide a spectrum of choices for when and where to work are seen as more innovative and have higher-performing employees.
“When we assume we are separate, we build systems that reinforce that separateness. When we assume we are interconnected and interdependent, we build systems that reinforce those connections.”
Hildy Gottlieb’s new book "The Pollyanna Principles" is a handbook for starting a revolution in social benefit organization design and practice, but it isn’t the revolution. What’s the catch? Well, it is going to take everyone, whether you are part of an organization or receive services from one, whether you are a philanthropist or a volunteer, whether you work for a for-profit business or are a community member. For social benefit organizations to truly “work” we all need to be part of the design, the process, the success. There are six core statements that represent The Pollyanna Principles and they include:
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Mindset is everything. When it comes to how we approach challenges and opportunities, mindset determines the world we encounter and possibilities we apprehend.
In her 2006 book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Stanford Professor Carol Decck distinguishes two extremes of the mindsets people tend to have about their basic qualities: In a fixed mindset, "your qualities are carved in stone." Whatever skills, talents, and capabilities you have are predetermined and finite. Whatever you lack, you will continue to lack.
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A proactive brain uses details from past experiences to make analogies with your current surroundings. It then helps you determine where you are and envision future possibilities.
Studies have shown that a good memory helps you better navigate the future. And in business, anticipating and negotiating future demands is an asset. A proactive brain uses details from past experiences to make analogies with your current surroundings. It then helps you determine where you are and envision future possibilities.
We tend to think of memory as a way to revisit past experiences: a vacation in the tropics, a bad business decision, or where you might have put those elusive car keys. Neuroscientists have long believed that the brain's so-called episodic memory circuits are largely involved in remembering past events or occurrences. Recent studies have found a striking overlap between these areas and brain regions that are activated when you think about the future.
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It's easier to come up with ideas and tell others to make them so, but you also need to roll up your sleeves and understand what it takes to make those ideas a reality.
The distinction between leading and managing is a subject of ongoing debate. Leading is often characterized as the more glamorous job: leaders guide, influence, and inspire their people while managers implement ideas and get things done. But leaders who focus exclusively on coming up with big, vague ideas for others to implement can become disconnected from their team or organization. Avoid being a "big-picture only" leader.
Make decisions and develop strategies that take into account the real-world constraints of cost and time. Stay involved with the details of implementation. Sure it's easier to come up with ideas and tell others to make them so, but you also need to roll up your sleeves and understand what it takes to make those ideas a reality.
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Failure is inevitable, so the key to success is to be good at learning from it. The ability to capitalize on hard-won experience is a hallmark of the greatest organizations, the ones that are most adept at turning knowledge into action
Failure sucks but instructs. In fact, there is no learning without failure — and this includes failing at dangerous things like surgery and flying planes. Discovery of the moves that work well is always accompanied by discovery of moves that don't.
This is why failure is so endemic to innovation. We've all seen reports of the huge percentages of new products, companies, and ideas that fail. Professor Dean Keith Simonton has conducted extensive quantitative research on creative geniuses. Looking for the differences between geniuses and their more ordinary counterparts, he found that "Creativity is a consequence of sheer productivity. If a creator wants to increase the production of hits, he or she must do by risking a parallel increase in the production of misses. ... The most successful creators tend to be those with the most failures!"
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