Tag: Explore vs Exploit

Leadership

Leading in Two Time Zones

Premise: One of the biggest struggles that we, as leaders, need to deal with is the need to balance activities that lead to high performance today, while getting the team ready to deliver high performance in the future or, in other words, display contextual ambidexterity, as defined by Gibson and Birkinshaw in their MIT Sloan Management Review article in 2004. This creates tension. In a fast-changing context, what drives high performance today, usually is not what drives high performance in the future. And it is easy to fall into the trap of focusing too much in delivering current performance while […]

Leadership

Becoming Leaders Worth Following – Learning How to Pay Attention

As a leader, we need to learn how to pay attention. WE could either pay attention like a laser beam (hyper – focused) or like a torch (Exploratory). How we spend our attention determines what we see and therefore how we react. Neither is the right or wrong approach. In order to become leaders worth following, we need to learn when to pay attention like a laser beam and when to do it as a torch. There is only appropriate level of focus for a given situation in a given context towards a given goal. This ability to be able […]