a distinctive leadership culture

Reposting Carol S. Dweck: Mindset - The new Psychology of Success

(I had to repost my review from 2007, because I still love the philosophy behind it.)

In this world, where nobody makes any mistakes, because he who makes them is a loser, where nobody has deficiencies, nobody is wrong - ever -, everybody is rich and good looking and intelligent and famous and a role model for the masses and the media, there are unfortunately millions who pretend to be like that and just a few who are really like that. The latter works and sweats a lot for that, the former thinks he has the talent to be like that, just like that.

Carol describes in her book that those two differ by mindset. The former has a so-called fixed mindset, meaning he is convinced, talent is a given and his qualities are carved in stone, the latter believes, her basic qualities are things she can cultivate through her efforts, and that everybody can change through application and experience, ie. she inhibits the growth mindset.

The fixed mindset is about making no mistakes at all, being perfect on the spot, dreaming of "effortless perfection".
For the growth-mindset it is not about immediate perfection. "It's about learning something over time: confronting a challenge and making progress."

These two mindsets have a very high impact on your life: you stay as you are, in your fixed mindset, or you grow and change and develop through your growth-mindset.
Carol shows the fundamental consequences for your own life and for the life of your (direct) environment, in sports, in education, in leadership and management.
Try to imagine your direct work/life environment, the people you meet everyday, and your own thoughts, attitudes and actions, of course, while reading the next lines.

@thethirdclub: Eine Lanze für die Wollust

(Crosspost meiner Leadership Kolumne bei The Third Club)

 

Wir brauchen Wollust, Emotionen, Leidenschaft, Vielfalt als Basis der Kreativität - wo sonst sollte sie ihren Ursprung haben?

Wer meinen aktuellen Text Marketers neue 7 Todsünden unserer Wirtschaftswoche-Online-Kolumne genau liest, bemerkt, dass ich Wollust nicht so recht als Sünde sehen konnte - ganz im Gegenteil.

"Vielleicht würde uns ein wenig Begehren sogar wieder guttun. Ein wenig Freude, Emotion, Leidenschaft, Leben."

Längst haben wir verlernt, was es heißt, zu geniessen. Verlernt, zu träumen. Verlernt, mit all unseren Sinnen zu fühlen, zu riechen, zu schmecken, mit unseren Händen zu erfahren. Zu schauen voller Lust auf ästhetisch Belohnendes, Herausragendes, Grenzen-Hinausschiebendes.

Nein, wir sind - egal ob in Marketing, Agentur, Unternehmen, Handel oder als ganze Gesellschaft - abgestumpft. Innerlich tot. Unerreichbar und unerregbar für all das Schöne, das uns blühen könnte. 

Wir können die Erdbeere nicht mehr von ihrem bloßen Aroma unterscheiden. Das Gute nicht mehr vom Schlechten, geschweige vom Bösen. Die Zukunft nicht mehr von der Vergangenheit, weil nichts mehr passiert. Alles wird nur optimiert, kosten-minimiert, effizienz-maximiert.

To Save the Financial System We have to Break it

1. Banks
The following offers a quite interesting perspective, and such simple (in a way).

“Over the past three decades, the global financial system has become more dynamic and interconnected, more concentrated and complicated than ever before. Financial engineering seems to know no limits to creating new instruments that link institutions in new ways.

Is that a good thing? Or could the resulting financial network be too complex? Or, perhaps, complex in the wrong way?

A look at biology - which has been tinkering with network designs for billions of years - suggests that the answer to the last question is most likely yes.

...

Hierarchy, in other words, is a way of limiting complexity in the interest of both stability and evolvability. Simon argued that systems structured in this way possess a basic, competitive simplicity.

...

Take ordinary bone, for example, which is remarkably tough, yet lightweight, with properties that our technology still cannot match. The secret is hierarchy. Within bone, small molecules bind together into proteins, which then link into filaments, which in turn organize into larger structures. When a bone suffers a blow, the hierarchy provides a variety of mechanisms by which it can pass along the excess energy it absorbs, without creating lasting damage. Bone, like most other structures in biology, is not just complex, but complex in a highly organized way. What about structures in economics and finance?

The growth of modern finance seems to have violated the principle of hierarchical structures, and with gusto. Two trends in the past 30 years - the merging of banks into huge institutions and the explosion of derivatives that link them around the globe - have made the network much less modular. We have created a vast web of interconnections with extreme complexity but little organization. And this does appear to have made the system less resilient.

...

Specifically, huge banks that account for a disproportionate share of all links act as potential epicenters for trouble. This is a way of describing “too big to fail,” although it would be more accurate to say “too central to fail.”

...

Unlike organisms, of course, financial systems haven’t undergone evolutionary competition from which only the fit have emerged. We have little reason to expect that what exists would be anything like optimal, or even reasonable.

...

Both high concentration and high interconnectedness contribute to an “everything is linked to everything” outcome that is the very opposite of modularity, and a likely recipe for instability. Financial engineering should learn to avoid this architecture, just as surely as biology has.”

- Mark Buchanan, a theoretical physicist, Living Cells Show How to Fix the Financial System, Bloomberg, July 11, 2012.

(Highlighting by me.) - Via aminotes.

2. Businesses
Please reflect the above findings in due respect to your own corporation. There might be a clue for change not just at the financial system but at business systems and structures, too - eg. replace 'financial system' by 'many businesses':

Unlike organisms, of course, financial systems haven’t undergone evolutionary competition from which only the fit have emerged. We have little reason to expect that what exists would be anything like optimal, or even reasonable.

@thethirdclub: Freunde, "Average is Officially Over"

(Crosspost der Leadership Kolumne bei The Third Club)

Friedman: "In a hyperconnected world Average is Officially Over!". Er beschreibt die 3 notwendigen Erfolgsfaktoren:

1. Work Harder than Everybody Else!
2. Do only Things where You would Carve Your Initials in!
3. Bring something Extra to this Hyperconnected World! 

Hier das Video mit seinen Gedanken:

Dear Leader, How Do You Educate Yourself!?

Just a few questions to reflect on for a start:

Via explore.

What are your answers? What are your thoughts?

Want more? Here is another one from totally 344 illustrated flowcharts. Enjoy them all!

Via brainpickings.

Stay curious!

Never grow old. Always be curious.
Approach things like a beginner - 
as seeing things for the first time.

Making magic.
With respect. With passion.

Imagine.
Invent.
Innovate.
Even if it's just perspective.

Enjoy!
Inspire! 

“At the San Francisco Museum of Art, an abstract gets close scrutiny.” - Via sfmoma.

Addendum

July, 11th
The More You Know, the More Successful You Will Be/come.

"Curiosity, creativity, discovery, and wonder aren’t traits of youth, they’re traits of learning."

Via creativemornings.

Thomas Friedman: "In this Hyperconnected World Average is officially over"

Via Jim Hays.

@thethirdclub > NGO/Start-Up: Kultur schlägt Strategie

Im Follow-Up zu unserer Wirtschaftswoche-Kolumne habe ich mal @thethirdclub etwas zu NGOs und Start-Ups, genauer zu Kultur schlägt Strategie geschrieben. Viel Vergnügen.

Sit Down (or better: Stand Up!): Your Job Makes You Fat & Sick (Infographic)

Via mashable. Click for larger view.

"Become the Company You Want to Do Business with."

Via hitenshah.

Why do we stop Living at the Age of 5?

Via apostrophe9.

Now this is what I try to explain to everybody. All our childhood dreams, our curiosity, our happyness are lost while growing up.

We just grow quantitatively, but not qualitatively any longer. All kindergarden, all schools, universities, and businesses steal from the small personalities we once have been before we arrived at them.

You may understand that in the end nothing is left of us.

Most wo/men do not live a real life, they just produce stuff for others, produce excel-cells, tables, and calculations, produce market shares and market leaders, produce consumption, produce waste.

Most people just accelerate the rat race they are in.

But just accelerating the rat race does not do any good, does not build wealth, mentally or materially, does not build a future worth living, but just prolongues our existence - and by having a look outside it does not even prolongue but shorten our existence.

All those great minds out there stopped dreaming, stopped imagining, stopped innovating or inventing at the age of 5 or 7.

And even we ourselves can't remember, or? Or why do we find that exact conception as ridiculous as we do right now?

Addendum

Thinking about that - we might all end up there: Never Trade Innovation for Transformation.

November, 26th: Just found that quote:

"Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc.

Being suddenly hit years later with the ‘creative bug’ is just a wee voice telling you, ‘I’d like my crayons back, please.’" - Hugh MacLeod

Qed.

The Downsides of Single-Brained Corporations and Governments

Image courtesy of INSERM (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale)

"To be able to focus (above red areas) on the world, we need to turn a part of ourselves off (above blue) for a short while, and this is precisely what our brain does." - Via

And now imagine a government, or a top-management team within a big corporation, having just one brain to focus the millions and billions different aspects of our world worth being addressed!?

This will never work. A corporation with just one brain at the top trying to rule the corporation just by herself will not succeed. A government with just one politician trying to rule the world just by herself will not succeed.

And if they tried - and they do/did(!) every day in Italy, Greece, France, Germany, the US, Syria, etc. pp. - they just could batch-process their many problems - and they just could batch-process the many facets of every single problem. 

And that is exactly what we encounter outside, in our media, in the daily news: single-brained governments and managements, focussing on one problem at the time. Solving no problem in the best way, but clinging to symptoms, calming the crowds, leading (in both senses) the corporation, the society into deeper and deeper swamps every day.

Monopolies disguised as leadership - in business and in politics - will not be a cure to our malaise. They are the cause.

We desperately need governments and managements adding their brains' power, even multiplying them - not subtracting, or even neglecting, them by order of the highest paid member.

We don't need Single-Brained Corporations and Governments!

We desperately need governments and managements flat and broad, every member being listened to, every member being an expert in her field, every member being able and wise enough to transcend her own areas of expertise, every member being such experienced in general issues that s/he developes a true intuition for solutions and the world to come.

We desperately need governments and managements establishing an empathic, intuitive culture & structure empowering and combining all the brain power we can voluntarily get to solve our problems, plan und build our future, plan and build our mental and material wealth - as individuals, corporations, and society.

Addendum:

Who else but Deutsche Telekom could deliver a better example: "Technologie-Vorstand der Deutschen Telekom Edward Kozel will ... Bonner Konzern verlassen. ... Einen Nachfolger werde es zunächst nicht geben. Konzernchef René Obermann übernehme das Thema Innovationen und Technologie künftig selbst in die Hand".

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Cecil Beaton: "Be Daring. Be Different"

Via inbetweendreams.

Iain McGilchrist: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World [Video]

 
Via RSA. 

"Ich studiere BWL, weil ich mich nicht traue, zu studieren, was ich liebe"

Im Artikel Where Are All the Women Scientists? sagt Michelle Obama: “Me? I'm a lawyer because I was bad at math and science. It's what you opt out for."

Das erinnert mich eindrucksvoll an eine Vorlesung, die ich 2005 vor jungen Studenten der BWL hielt - 4-6. Semester.

Mein Kurs hieß 'Leadership Excellence', dauerte 3 Tage und sie waren alle freiwillig anwesend.

Noch nie hatte ihnen dort jemand die Frage gestellt, die ich ihnen als meine allererste stellte: Warum studiert Ihr BWL?

Ich blickte ihn konsternierte Gesichter. Erst ganz allmählich tröpfelten Antworten in das Plenum. Ich war so überrascht damals, daß ich später immer wieder die gleiche Frage - mit immer den gleichen Antworten - stellte.

90% der Anwesenden hätten lieber etwas anderes studiert, gelernt, verfolgt. Sie waren von ihrem Wege, ihren Träumen und Zielen abgebracht worden durch das System Karriere, durch die Eltern, durch die Schule und Gesellschaft. Ein bedauernswerter Haufen Jugend, der auf dem Altar der Stromlinienförmigkeit geopfert wurde.

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." RIP Steve.

 

 

 

 

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Steve Jobs
1955-2011 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The people
who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
are the ones who do."

Think Different, via CTurlington.

 

Change Your "Toxic Thinking Patterns"

"Your thoughts create inner standards or rules that spark neurochemical dynamic processes, which selectively govern your choices and actions with precision.

It takes a thought to spark an emotion, or drive a decision to take an action or to take no action at all. And emotions give meaning to thoughts; they are the spark. In the words of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, are “a telltale sign of consciousness.”

Toxic thinking is self-perpetuating. It not only stimulates the body’s reward or learning centers with pseudo feel-good feelings, it also activates the body’s fear response, which further increases the likelihood that the defensive behaviors it triggers will be repeated.

Unless you set an intention to make conscious changes, more often, change that occurs at subconscious levels tends to be self-perpetuating.

In other words, if you do not have the life and relationships that you want, you likely do not have the thinking patterns you need to create the optimal emotional states, and thus actions, that would sustain your momentum in the overall direction of your aspirations."

Read the full article at Psych Central: The Neuroscience of Changing Toxic Thinking Patterns (1 of 2).

Around the World CEOs and Managers Breathe a Sigh of Relief on Steve Jobs' Resignation

CEOs and managers may respire. Their hardship is finally over. After Steve's resignation nobody - they hope - will compare them to Steve again.

They all hated to be compared to a phenomenon. They all hated to be confronted with expectations only a Steve Jobs could live up to.

And they had a great excuse: he was the only one, there was no other coming near to his achievements. Yes, he was a phenomenon, and they themselves were great managers. They could live with that.

I must disenthrall them all, it's even worse: they all could become a Steve Jobs, they all could innovate, they all could transcend markets, they all could build Informal Markets (as I call them), they all could introduce revolutionary business models, and realize them successfully. No excuses apply.

Winnie-the-Pooh or The Relevance of Questioning the Status Quo

Nearly 6 years ago I held a lecture in Leadership Excellence at the University of Furtwangen. One of my most relevant issues was the non-existence of 'Questioning the Status Quo in Management and Leadership'.

I illustrated that with the following excerpt from a famous children's book we all know - but never understood as a kind of philosophical paragraph: