Leadership

The Surprisingly Simple Reason Teams Fail

In this TEDx talk Tessa West shares the story of the disaster that played out during NASA’s Mars Mission in 1999 and one of the main reason (among others) for the failure – A simple yet fatal communication gap. The teams working across continents were using different metrics to measure pressure, each assuming that the other would use the same as well. The question we need to ask ourselves is the following – What are the most basic assumptions we are making when interacting with our colleagues, specially, if they are from a different culture from our own? Breakdown in […]

Leadership

What Swarm Intelligence Teaches About Leading Complex Adaptive Systems

Premise: The traditional organizational paradigm, defined by rigid hierarchies and linear command-and-control loops is at a breaking point and no longer an effective form of leadership. What we need now is the ability to respond quickly and effectively, which means that the role of leaders needs to evolve from being the decision maker to the conductor of teams making the right decisions. In such a scenario, the primary constraint is no longer a lack of data, but an abundance of data and the inability to process them at the speed at which they are created. In a world which changes […]

Leadership

The Speed of Trust – Built Slowly, Lost in a Hurry!

I read this blog post by Gapingvoid yesterday about Trust. In the post they share the story of Robert Goodman and Jesse Jackson and how Jesse freed Robert from Syria by changing the game – from one government against another, to one human fighting for the freedom of another. Jackson had built his reputation as a humanitarian. One decision, one action at a time. The same is true for all of us. Trust and reputation are created slowly – one decision, one action at a time, drip by drip. It is depleted in a hurry – one decision and one […]

Leadership

A Simple Hack to Help You Communicate More Effectively

I read this blog by Matt Abrahams and it reminded me of the hack that I have found useful for leaders who want to become leaders worth following. Moving from Complexity to Clarity: First, the framework that Matt refers to is fairly straightforward and helps us communicate with impact. Sense-making: While this hack is from the perspective of the leader communicating to the team, here is the hack that it reminded me, which is from the perspective of the leader being communicated to. I learned this from Matt Church. This has 4 questions: In order to know what to communicate, […]

Leadership

Adaptive Listening – How to be a Great Listener

I stumbled onto this TED Talk by Maegan Stephens & Nicole Lowenbraun on listening and loved it. I highly recommend that you take the 11 odd minutes to watch the entire talk. It is interesting, entertaining and highly insightful. The key insight they share is that there is more than one way to listen at work. The speakers share that every conversation at work has an underlying goal that requires us to show up and listen differently. Developing the ability to listen well is key if we want to build a high performing team and if we want to become […]