Don't Follow Passion, Follow Effort

Every week, we publish an exciting summary of the best articles, videos, events, and posts that relate to innovative management. This week, check out these 9 articles that inspire better management. Enjoy! 

Listening to Shame 

TED 
Shame is an unspoken epidemic, the secret behind many forms of broken behavior. Brené Brown, whose earlier talk on vulnerability became a viral hit, explores what can happen when people confront their shame head-on. Her own humor, humanity and vulnerability shine through every word.

James Cameron Now at Ocean's Deepest Point

National Geographic
As of 5:52 p.m. ET Sunday (7:52 a.m. Monday, local time), James Cameron has arrived at the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep, members of the National Geographic expedition have confirmed.

His depth on arrival: 35,756 feet (10,898 meters)—a figure unattainable anywhere else in the ocean.

Reaching bottom, the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker typed out welcome words for the cheering support crew waiting at the surface: "All systems OK." Folded into a sub cockpit as cramped as any Apollo capsule, the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker is now investigating a seascape more alien to humans than the moon. Cameron is only the third person to reach this Pacific Ocean valley southwest of Guam (map)—and the only one to do so solo.

Hubris and the Data Scientist 

Cloud of Data
ReadWriteWeb‘s Joe Brockmeier captures a recurring issue from last week’s O’Reilly Strata conference, asking “Can Big Data replace domain expertise?” According to Brockmeier, the audience (of data scientists) apparently narrowly agreed that their arsenal of tools and algorithms trumped the knowledge and experience of the meteorologists, financiers, and retailers to whose domains data scientists are increasingly turning.

Is Kindness a Strategy? 

HBR 
Here’s how it works. When a problem occurs, swift and effective resolution can elevate repurchase intent to a level that’s actually greater than if the problem had never occurred at all. Every problem, if managed well, is thus an “opportunity” to boost overall loyalty among a company’s already loyal customers. Spill soup on a guest in the hotel dining room? Solution: offer on the spot to dry clean the suit or, if the damage is severe, offer to replace it entirely. The customer is delighted; the employee has done the right thing; the hotel raises that customer’s lifetime value.

The Origins of Positive-Constructive Daydreaming 

The important difference between mind wandering and daydreaming

Psychology Today 
Once accused of being absent-minded, the founder of American Psychology, William James, quipped that he was really just present-minded to his own thoughts. William James didn’t just live in his own head, but he also studied the phenomenon, coining the term “stream of thought” in 1890. In his famous textbook Principles of Psychology, he opened an early chapter with the following: “We now begin our study of the mind from within”. He clearly saw the internal stream of consciousness as an important topic within psychology.

Daydreaming may be regarded as a feature of William James’ stream of thought. It is characterized by a shift of attention away from focusing on a physical or mental task to a series of thoughts derived from long-term memory (often taking a narrative form). Daydreaming may be regarded as falling within the general phenomenon of mind-wandering except that much of mind-wandering may be characterized by shifts of attention from an already ongoing task towards new sensory reactions in the individual’s physical, social, or bodily environment rather than towards one’s thoughts derived ultimately from long term memory.

Don’t Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort 

BlogMaverick
"Follow Your Passion' is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get. Why ? Because everyone is passionate about something. We are born with it. There are always going to be things we love to do. That we dream about doing. That we really really want to do with our lives.

Think about all the things you have been passionate about in your life. If you really want to know where you destiny lies, look at where you apply your time.

Time is the most valuable asset you don’t own. You may or may not realize it yet, but how you use or don’t use your time is going to be the best indication of where your future is going to take you:

1. When you work hard at something you become good at it. 
2. When you become good at doing something, you will enjoy it more. 
3. When you enjoy doing something, there is a very good chance you will become passionate or more passionate about it 
4. When you are good at something, passionate and work even harder to excel and be the best at it, good things happen. 

The Godfather of Punk on Creativity and Innovation 

InnovationExcellence
Richard Strange is ‘punk rock’s illegitimate Godfather’, having preceded the Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Ramones and The Clash with his highly influential pop art band ‘The Doctors of Madness’. Richard’s career has spanned pop art, punk, writing and acting, most famously for his film roles in Batman, alongside Jack Nicholson and in Robin Hood and Harry Potter. Kiss Hello Tomorrow – Strange but wise advice for innovators.

Richard concluded by offering 3 pieces of advice to the aspiring artist trying to carve out an innovative niche for themselves.

If you want to be more productive, do less work 

Thought Leaders
Want to be more productive? Just do less work.

I know you’re probably scratching your head right now wondering how to not get fired by taking this recommendation. The truth is you’ll probably be on your way to a promotion if you pull this off correctly.

Step 1: Eliminate the Extremely Stupid Crap.
Step 2: Stop the Moderately Stupid Crap.
Step 3: Make the Remaining Stupid Crap Simpler.
Step 4: Take all that newly-found time and spend it on crap that matters. You’ve freed up time, bandwidth, and energy. Reinvest those into the projects you know will make a difference. Or simply spend a few hours less at the office to get your life back in balance. See? Do less work. Be more productive.

Gamification

TopTrends Now And Next 
Gamification is the application of online gaming techniques, like gaining points or status, to engage the attention or alter the behaviour of individuals or communities. Wearable devices linked to game-like systems, for instance, could induce overweight people to take more exercise or eat healthy foods.

Gamification works on three principles:

First, people can be competitive (with themselves and with others).
Second, people will share certain kinds of information.
Third, people like to be rewarded. 

That’s why if you regularly buy a coffee at your local coffee shop you might end up with a nice badge courtesy of a company like Foursquare. And perhaps why, if you drink enough coffee at the same place, you might be crowned the coffee shop king – for a day. Or there’s Chore Wars, where people battle the washing up in return for virtual points or avatar energy boosts.

Lead Differently

Every week, we publish an exciting summary of the best articles, videos, events, and posts that relate to innovative management. This week, check out these 7 articles that inspire better management. Enjoy! 

Lead Differently 

Change This 
"Leaders and leadership are often thought of in a poor light. Leadership is often viewed as a necessary evil. There is even a growing voice to the idea of leaderless organizations. I’m not sure where that is headed, but I do know I don’t want to be a part of a leaderless organization.

People and organizations are much more likely to thrive if the leader subscribes to what Robert Greenleaf called Servant Leadership. It is not a new idea—Greenleaf didn’t invent it nor did I. However, it is an idea whose time has come… It is time to Lead Differently!”
Blog

IT Management should not begin and end with a spreadsheet 

Enterprise CIO Forum
 …every person in each room was measuring and managing the old fashion way—after the fact by manual manipulation of Excel spreadsheets. This is problematic at multiple levels.

According to Derek Abell, “control is different than ‘reporting’ in that it implies the possibility for management intervention if things go out of control. Control implies feedback in which management is actively involved. Reporting, on the contrary, is passive. For control to be effective, therefore, data must be timely and provided at intervals that are effective for intervention.” (Derek Abell, Managing with Dual Strategies, pg. 275). At the very least, this means the IT companies participating in the roundtables are not controlling their IT environments the way they should. And apparently this is true across industries as participants came from commercial banking, healthcare insurance, entertainment, property and casualty insurance, and local government and public sector.

The Hard Science of Teamwork 

HBR 
Like many people, I've encountered teams that are "clicking." I've experienced the "buzz" of a group that's blazing away with new ideas in a way that makes it seem they can read each others' minds. We think of building teams that operate on this plane as an art, or even magic. It's not something you can plan; it's lightning-in-a-bottle stuff that you just embrace when you're lucky enough to come across it.

My feature article in HBR's April Spotlight on teams describes in detail the new science of building great teams. We can summarize those points here. Our data show that great teams:

Communicate frequently. In a typical project team a dozen or so communication exchanges per working hour may turn out to be optimum; but more or less than that and team performance can decline.  

Talk and listen in equal measure, equally among members. Lower performing teams have dominant members, teams within teams, and members who talk or listen but don't do both.  

Engage in frequent informal communication. The best teams spend about half their time communicating outside of formal meetings or as "asides" during team meetings, and increasing opportunities for informal communication tends to increase team performance. 

Explore for ideas and information outside the group. The best teams periodically connect with many different outside sources and bring what they learn back to the team. 

6 Warning Signs That You Are Not Ready to Lead 

Harvest Performance
Here are some warning signs that you are just not ready (though you will be on the right path once you read this post!):

1. You have never heard of Servant Leadership 
2. Focusing on people seems too soft for your work environment 
3. The thought of providing authentic feedback makes you hide in fear 
4. Empowerment is an individual sport 
5. You don’t have time to reflect and work on yourself 
6. Your “Trust Dial” is set to mistrust 

Listening to Shame 

TED
Shame is an unspoken epidemic, the secret behind many forms of broken behavior. Brené Brown, whose earlier talk on vulnerability became a viral hit, explores what can happen when people confront their shame head-on. Her own humor, humanity and vulnerability shine through every word.

How Convergent and Divergent Thinking Foster Creativity

Psychology Today
The relationship between intelligence and creativity has long been debated and studied.

One of the hallmark tests of "general intelligence" is the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test. This test gives you a matrix of figures and you have to figure out the missing piece that completes the pattern.

Here's an example...

6 ways to get shy employees to speak up 

CBS 
Some people are born introverts and some, extroverts. Neither personality type makes someone inherently good or bad at their job, but shy employees may have trouble expressing their ideas in a group setting. Younger worker may be particularly reticent.

A good manager knows how to draw these employees out, making them feel comfortable enough to contribute. Here are 6 tips if you suspect someone on your team has something to say, but is hesitant to say it:

Finding a New Sense of Wonder and Other Keys to Better Management

Every week, we publish an exciting summary of the best articles, videos, events, and posts that relate to innovative management. This week, check out these 10 articles that inspire better management. Enjoy!

How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries

TED

Adam Savage walks through two spectacular examples of profound scientific discoveries that came from simple, creative methods anyone could have followed -- Eratosthenes' calculation of the Earth's circumference around 200 BC and Hippolyte Fizeau's measurement of the speed of light in 1849.

It’s time for a new definition of big data

InfoDrivenBusiness

Two words seemingly on every technologist’s lips are “big data”. The Wikipedia definition for big data is: “In information technology, big data consists of datasets that grow so large that they become awkward to work with using on-hand database management tools”. This approach to describing the term constrains the discussion of big data to scale and fails to realise the key difference between regular data and big data. The blog posts and books which cover the topic seem to converge on the same approach to defining big data and describe the challenges with extracting value from this resource in terms of its size.

Big data can really be very small and not all large datasets are big! It’s time to find a new definition for big data.

Finding a Sense of Wonder

Kevin Eikenberry

Often we look at kids and wish we could recapture some of that magic of childhood. One of the many things that make children magical is that complete willingness to have a sense of wonder.

“We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic.”
- E. Merrill Root, educator and poet

Kelli Anderson: Design to Challenge Reality

TED

Kelli Anderson shatters our expectations about reality by injecting humor and surprise into everyday objects. At TEDxPhoenix she shares her disruptive and clever designs.

3 Steps To Pursuing Your Ideal Career

Fast Company

There's often a gap between identifying what you naturally gravitate toward and gain energy from and how that translates into your full-time work. Take a deep breath and dive in with these three steps that'll start closing it.

Here are three steps that will help you gain internal clarity so you can plan toward your ideal future.

1. Gain clarity around what to focus on. 
2. Define the world you imagine. 
3. Replace old thoughts with new ones. 

IDEO: Big Innovation Lives Right on the Edge of Ridiculous Ideas

The 99 Percent

Imagine for a second if you could somehow wrap up the creative chaos of a kindergartner's life and apply it at work. You'd go on field trips, make stuff, hatch crazy ideas, and be awed by the world on a daily basis. Sound ridiculous? At the renowned international design consultancy IDEO, it's how work gets done every day.Psychologists tell us that as we age, we become self-conscious in classroom and other public settings, and quietly begin to suppress our playful tendencies for fear of being childish or breaking with social norms. Creativity requires that we fight against this trajectory.

At IDEO, being playful is almost an obsession. The company believes that great, innovative work cannot happen without trial-and-error, experimentation, and maybe even a little tomfoolery. Few know this better than Brendan Boyle and Joe Wilcox of IDEO's Toy Lab.

Building Babel: Lost in Machine Translation

BBC

Automatic language translation is a long way off, given the overwhelming complexity of language. University of Edinburgh's Philipp Koehn says there are so many possible language rules that they cannot all be written down, and there also are too many exceptions to those rules. The statistical approach to translation currently is the chief focus of most machine translation research. "Essentially, we are translating using probabilities to find the best solution," says University of Oxford's Phil Blunsom. "The computer doesn't understand the languages or know any grammar, but might use statistics to determine that 'dog the' is not as likely as 'the dog.'" 


Vast numbers of source texts are required to improve computers' ability to make such decisions, with Blunsom noting that at least 30 million words or 1 million sentences are typically needed. Automatic spoken language translation is even more challenging than text translation because of a multitude of factors that include false starts, references to things that were said earlier, or the lack of a written form.

Software Translates Your Voice Into Another Language

Technology Review

Microsoft researchers have developed speech recognition software that can learn the sound of a user's voice and translate it into a new language. The researchers say the system that could be used to make language learning more personal or make traveling easier. "For a monolingual speaker traveling in a foreign country, we'll do speech recognition followed by translation, followed by the final text to speech output [in] a different language, but still in his own voice," says Microsoft's Frank Soong. The researchers also note that providing sample foreign phrases in a person's own voice can make learning a new language easier for users. 


The system requires about an hour of training to develop a model able to read out any text in a user's own voice. The model is converted into one that can read text in another language by comparing it with a stock text-to-speech model for the desired language. The software can convert between any pair of 26 supported languages, including Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Italian. University of Southern California professor Shrikanth Narayanan says using a person's own voice for speech translations could make interactions that rely on translations more reassuring for users, particularly in situations such as doctor-patient consultations.

12-Year-Old Speaks The Truth About Plain Doughnuts

BuzzFeed

A bit random - but I suspect you’ll get this from somewhere else too :)

Visualization Technologies for Human-Environment Interactions

CCC Blog

The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), a national fusion center funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, has invited computational and domain scientists to participate in a workshop on visualization technologies that support research on human-environment interactions. The workshop will focus on the visualization and use of spatial datasets from the social and environmental sciences. Domain scientists will have an opportunity to learn about visualization tools and resources available for their work, and computational scientists will get a chance to learn about the as-yet unmet visualization needs in the domain sciences. The workshop will address some of the visualization challenges in using spatio-temporal datasets, recommend possible collaborative information technology efforts that could be supported by SESYNC's programs or through other funding mechanisms, and establish a network of researchers to share information and exchange ideas on a regular basis. SESYNC will accept abstracts related to the main topics of the workshop until April 20. The workshop is scheduled for July 23-24 in Annapolis, Maryland.

12 Ways Leaders Can Use Twitter, and Other Innovate Management Techniques

Every week, we publish an exciting summary of the best articles, videos, events, and posts that relate to innovative management. This week, check out these 6 articles that inspire better management. Enjoy! 

12 Ways Leaders Can Use Twitter

Leadership & Learning

How can leaders best use Twitter?

1. Share thoughts 
2. Share reflections 
3. Share an inspirational quotation 
4. Share a lesson 
5. Help people focus on their goals 
6. Ask a great reflective question 
7. Help build community 
8. Stay connected with your team
9. Ask for and receive feedback 
10. Watch competition and be aware of environment 
11. Practice concise thinking and communication 
12. Stimulate creativity – by trying new things

All of the things on this list are the stuff of great leadership! Perhaps the biggest aha from this list for me comes not the items themselves; but that thought these suggestions, Twitter can become a leadership development tool, or a part of a leadership development program.

Diego Rodriguez: This is What Leadership Should Look Like at IDEO

BobSutton

Diego's IDEO colleague, Tatyana Mamut, stopped by Stanford last week to serve as judge for the final project in our course on scaling-up excellence. Somehow, we got to talking about leadership and she told me about a video that Diego had shown people and told them "This is what leadership should look like at IDEO." Watch it here. You have to see it, I won't tell you anything else.

P.S. As a bonus, if you click on the link for Tatyana, you get a great short talk on how tools, rules, and norms and how they explain the spread of deodorant use in Russia. It reminds of when my dissertation adviser -- Bob Kahn, half jokingly -- defined organizations as "rules, tools, and fools."

Climbing the Great Wall of Trust

HBR

In recent conversations with US executives doing business in China, Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Roy Y.J. Chua heard about a new trend. In an East Asian version of cutting deals on the golf course, Chinese executives often take partners to teahouses to discuss business and negotiate deals. The problem, according to these executives, is that foreigners are rarely invited.

Building on past research, Chua and his colleagues investigate two types of trust: cognitive trust, which is based on confidence in a partner's technical competency, and affective trust, which is based on a shared concern for a partner's welfare and personal interests. "Cognitive trust is trust from the head; it's a very rational way of assessing ability and reliability," says Chua. "Affective trust is trust that comes from the 'heart.' This type of trust involves considerable emotional investments."

Finding a Sense of Wonder

Kevin Eikenberry

Often we look at kids and wish we could recapture some of that magic of childhood. One of the many things that make children magical is that complete willingness to have a sense of wonder.

“We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic.”

- E. Merrill Root, educator and poet

3 Steps To Pursuing Your Ideal Career

Fast Company

There's often a gap between identifying what you naturally gravitate toward and gain energy from and how that translates into your full-time work. Take a deep breath and dive in with these three steps that'll start closing it.

Here are three steps that will help you gain internal clarity so you can plan toward your ideal future.

1.     Gain clarity around what to focus on.

2.     Define the world you imagine.

3.     Replace old thoughts with new ones.

How to completely, utterly destroy an employee’s work life

Washington Post

Recall your worst day at work, when events of the day left you frustrated, unmotivated by the job, and brimming with disdain for your boss and your organization. That day is probably unforgettable. But do you know exactly how your boss was able to make it so horrible for you? Our research provides insight into the precise levers you can use to re-create that sort of memorable experience for your own underlings.

Over the past 15 years, we have studied what makes people happy and engaged at work. In discovering the answer, we also learned a lot about misery at work. Our research method was pretty straightforward. We collected confidential electronic diaries from 238 professionals in seven companies, each day for several months. All told, those diaries described nearly 12,000 days – how people felt, and the events that stood out in their minds. Systematically analyzing those diaries, we compared the events occurring on the best days with those on the worst.

Leaders Must Grow Faster Than The Led

To have an innovative team, you must be an innovative leader. This post shares 4 tips to help you grow to be even more innovative and effective. According to the Harvard Business Review:

As we go through different phases in our personal and professional lives, we're called upon to adapt, to marshal skills different than those we've used in the past. And in the modern world — where the pace of technological and social change is as fast as at any time in human history, those demands on our adaptability are greater. An exceptional grocery store cashier, for example, will need a different set of skills to be a store manager as her career evolves. And those in computer repair have had to learn and unlearn a myriad skills over the past 30 years to keep pace with the changes happening around them. 

The top 4 skills to help you grow are actually quite simple:

1. Stop seeking answers; start asking questions.
2. Focus on people, not problems.
3. Stop working as a generalist.
4. Stay hungry.

Want to read more? Here is the full article from the Harvard Business Review titled To Grow, Leave What You Know Behind by John Coleman.

Last year, I was fortunate to moderate a fascinating panel discussion with Harvard's Center for Public Leadership on the topic of "Next Generation Leadership." One of the panelists, Rosalinde Torres, encouraged us to ask the following question: "What has made you successful in the past that you need to change to move forward as a leader?"
As we go through different phases in our personal and professional lives, we're called upon to adapt, to marshal skills different than those we've used in the past. And in the modern world — where the pace of technological and social change is as fast as at any time in human history, those demands on our adaptability are greater. An exceptional grocery store cashier, for example, will need a different set of skills to be a store manager as her career evolves. And those in computer repair have had to learn and unlearn a myriad skills over the past 30 years to keep pace with the changes happening around them.
So what skills do you need to modify or leave behind to grow? For me, a few suggestions come to mind.
Stop seeking answers; start asking questions. In our 20+ years of education, we have been trained to get ahead by having the right answers — to tests, to class questions, to business problems. But the most difficult challenges require leaders who can identify and ask the right questions.
The world needs great problem-solvers, but it also needs people who can make sure their organizations focus on the right problems and miss nothing in the process. One of the more intellectually impressive senior executives I've worked with asked questions twice as often as he offered answers. As a result, the people who worked for him always took full responsibility for their work — because they knew they'd have to answer a stream of deep and thoughtful questions as soon as they entered the boardroom. This leader's questions not only showed his thoughtfulness and helped drive deeper solutions, but they created ownership among the people who worked for him.
Focus on people, not problems. Junior businesspeople often work on heavily analytic, stand-alone problems. They're asked to build models and plans — to find the "right" solution. But the most difficult problems can't be solved and implemented by individuals alone. Good leaders can't just get the right answer. They have to involve people — those who will ultimately implement their programs and those teammates who can help them solve the problem faster and better than they could on their own.
When an individual becomes too rigid about his or her "own" solution at the expense of working collaboratively with others, that individual often loses the momentum to generate change and misses the valuable insights of his or her peers in the process. A famous example of collaboration in the face of a difficult problem — no matter your thoughts on the project itself — is the Manhattan Project. The project, which ultimately led to the construction of the first atomic bomb, was led by General Leslie Groves. Knowing he couldn't handle the project by himself (and neither could anyone else), he called upon as many great minds and competing perspectives as possible to come to the right solutions collaboratively and created an environment in which they could implement against that plan.
Stop working as a generalist. Many of us have lived life so far as generalists — "Jacks of all trades," so to speak — focused broadly on a variety of skills, functions, or industries. Sure, we may have picked some topics on which to become knowledgeable, we've chosen professions, and we've completed "majors" or built specific skills. But by-and-large, we've cast our nets wide, learning broadly to gain context about the world around us. At some point, however, most of us will need to generate proficiency in a very specific topic, both because it makes us valuable sources of expert knowledge and teaches us the habits of mind to generate deep insight.
Take, for example, Steve Jobs's early obsession with calligraphy. After dropping out of Reed College in 1972, Steve spent months immersed in calligraphy, which, at Reed, was an incredibly strong program. In his words, "I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture." That experience not only helped Steve build the practical toolkit to create beautiful text and designs, but also improved and sharpened his mind, attention to detail, and his fascination with design.
You may be at a different stage in life — a great "people" manager who needs to work on her problem-solving or a specialist who needs to broaden his experience — but I've found that as my professional career evolves to include more collaboration, management, and implementation, the skills I've depended on, while helpful in their time, need to evolve for successful growth. These adjustments provide new areas of focus that may be common to a number of young leaders who are making the transition from individual contributor to manager as they advance in their careers.