Category: Recommended Reading | Page 11

Surprises Are the New Normal: Resilience is the New Skill"

We share this article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter because in business, as in life, change is a constant. An unlikely competitor disrupts your market share, a new promising product fails to get traction, key talent resigns. What makes the difference between winning and losing in those situations is how you bounce back.

In the Harvard Business Review article, Surprises are the New Normal: Resilience is the New Skill, we learn about resilience, what it is – and is not. Elizabeth Moss Kanter offers sage thoughts for us all.

Read it.

How resilient is your organization? What do you do as a leader to help your team move forward after a setback?

Comment below! Or pose a question via Ask Mariposa.

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July 29th, 2013|Categories: Articles We Like, Recommended Reading|Tags: executive leadership coaching, global business, HBR, leadership, new normal, resilience, uncertain times, workplace culture|

July 2, 2013 / Book Reviews

Book Reviews: Employee Engagement 2.0: How to Motivate Your Team for High Performance and Employee Engagement for Everyone: 4 Keys to Happiness and Fulfillment at Work

Head: (4 out of 5)
Heart: (4 out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (5 out of 5)

A disengaged workforce can wreak havoc on the best business strategies. Low productivity, decreased customer service, high turnover, low sales and margins are a handful of symptoms a business might experience as a result. The good news is creating engaged teams doesn’t take a lot of time or money, according to author Kevin Kruse, a former Best Place to Work winner, serial entrepreneur and Top 100 Business Thought Leader. Combining research and real-world experience, he explains how to quickly create engaged teams.

Employee Engagement 2.0 is an easy-to-read and practical guide targeted at managers and leaders. The author draws on simple yet timeless principles that form the crux of employee engagement: managers are the key influencers of engagement and communication, growth, recognition and trust are the key engagement drivers. This book outlines the process he used to build and sell several, multimillion dollar technology companies, winning both Inc 500 and Best Place to Work awards along the way.

In this busy leader’s guide, you will learn:

The definition of true employee engagement (not just happy or satisfied)
How engagement directly drives business metrics like sales and profits
A recipe for making anyone feel engaged
How to quantify engagement
7 questions to identify your engagement weakness
How to facilitate a team meeting on engagement
Communication that ensures a rapid, two-way flow of information
How to make your strategic vision “sticky”
How to implement a complete engagement plan in only 8 weeks

While managers are key influencers of engagement, individual employees also assume responsibility for fostering a fully engaged environment. Managers and employees need to work together to build a thriving culture. His new book, Employee Engagement for Everyone is a guide targeted for individual employees, to help them understand what employee engagement is, why it’s important and how a thriving company benefits them personally. The four key engagement drivers – communication, growth, recognition and trust – are reviewed from the perspective of the individual. The book is rich with tips to increase individual employee knowledge and understanding of how to drive engagement on their own in these areas.

The content in these books is actionable, without theories or long-winded language, and includes additional resources for more information. Leaders with business growth strategies will definitely want to read Employee Engagement 2.0, and perhaps give their employees a copy of Employee Engagement for Everyone.

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July 2nd, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: effective communication, employee engagement, employee recognition, growth, influence, kevin kruse, strategic vision, Strategy, team motivation, trust|

June 5, 2013 / Articles We Like / Recommended Reading

On “5 Ways Big Companies Can Pivot Like Lean Startups”

We share this article by Brian Millar because we really like the concepts of pivoting and repurposing – they make innovation more accessible to anyone – not just start-ups and creative geniuses.

Considering the failure rate of new products (about 70%), innovation makes or breaks companies, big and small. Drawing on Twitter, Groupon and Paypal’s road to success, the Fast Company article 5 Ways Big Companies Can Pivot Like Lean Startups offers pivoting as a concept for stimulating innovation in big companies.

Pivoting means repurposing ideas, prototypes, products or technology to meet an unmet need. And, to be successful at it, five concepts are introduced:

Force innovations to evolve rather than die
Gain insight into what consumers want
Play with technology – don’t test it – to uncover its purpose
Tell the right stories
Your company is also a prototype

Read it.

Think about it – what’s tripping up your organization? Stage gates? Too much of the wrong research? Not enough playing, prototyping, looking wide?

Comment below! Or pose a questions via Ask Mariposa.

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June 5th, 2013|Categories: Articles We Like, Recommended Reading|Tags: FastCompany, innovation, pivoting, prototype|

June 3, 2013 / Articles We Like / Recommended Reading

On “Clearing Hurdles to Employee Engagement”

We share this article by Razor Suleman because a disengaged workforce is detrimental to business success. Recognition is a timeless, cost-effective leadership tactic, which leads to employee success therefore engagement, and yet organizations face hurdles when implementing a recognition program. The article featured on TalentCulture, Clearing Hurdles to Employee Engagement, identifies six common hurdles:

Employee participation
Making time
Securing executive buy-in
Engaging managers
Budget
Measuring Success

Tips for clearing these hurdles can be found in the article’s Infographic towards the bottom of the article.

Consider this: How does your organization recognize employees? What challenges do you face in clearing the hurdles in your organization?

Comment below! Or send us your questions via Ask Mariposa.

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June 3rd, 2013|Categories: Articles We Like, Recommended Reading|Tags: effective leadership, employee engagement, employee recognition, Razor Suleman, TalentCulture|

June 1, 2013 / Book Reviews

Book Review: The End of Competitive Advantage

The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business
By Rita Gunther McGrath

Head: (5 out of 5)
Heart: (3 out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (5 out of 5)

The gap between traditional approaches to strategy and the real world has grown. The markets in which companies compete today are dynamic, which have made traditional models for strategy outdated. Those models reflect a different era in business with a single strategy goal: to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. However, the author contends high-growth business opportunities are transient now, making competitive advantage transient as well. New tools and strategies for seizing these waves of opportunities quickly and decisively are needed.

Rita McGrath, a professor at Columbia Business School in New York and a globally recognized expert on strategy in uncertain and volatile environments, has written the new playbook for strategy, based on the notion of establishing a transient competitive advantage. Her approach is fresh, offering tools and practical advice based on extensive research to help companies compete and win in an uncertain business environment. Rich with company examples culled through extensive research, readers will understand the organizational shifts necessary to successfully seize transient business opportunities and thrive:

Continuous Reconfiguration: How companies can build the capability to move from arena to arena, rather than defending existing competitive advantages
Healthy Disengagement: How to move out of an exhausted opportunity to free up and repurpose resources.
Using Resource Allocation to Promote Deftness: How to manage assets and organize for a transient advantage.
Building an Innovation Proficiency: How to establish the right processes for continuous, well-managed innovation.
Leadership and Mindset: In a transient advantage world, prediction and being ‘right’ will be less important than reacting quickly and taking corrective action.
Personal Meaning of Transient Advantage. How to think about your personal career strategy in light of transient advantages.

Leaders who want a new perspective on strategy to quickly exploit and move in and out of advantages for a competitive edge will want to add this book to their reading list. Buy the book

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June 1st, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|

May 2, 2013 / Book Reviews / Strategy

Article Review: Strategic Thinking – Exercises and Tools for Creative Thinking and Strategy

Strategic Thinking – Exercises and Tools for Creative Thinking and Strategy
By Mike Brown, The Brainzooming Group

Strategic thinking is not a one-time event. It is an ongoing process, involving critical thinking skills, creativity and an overall perspective all organizations must cultivate and apply daily to successfully innovate and compete in business. Defining and implementing a successful organizational strategy relies on a solid strategic thinking approach, and the online resource, Strategic Thinking – Exercises and Tools for Creative Thinking and Strategy, outlines the characteristics of strategic thinking and contains tips, tools and tactics to help readers think strategically and creatively on an ongoing basis.

The content of Strategic Thinking – Exercises and Tools for Creative Thinking and Strategy includes:

The 4 Characteristics of Solid Strategic Thinking

Strategic Thinkers Seek Perspectives from Multiple Sources
Strategic Thinking Goes Beyond Today’s Reality
Strategic Thinkers Question Both the Familiar and the New
Strategic Thinkers Display Both Patience and Impatience

Applying Strategic Thinking Daily

Using Rich Strategic Questions
Anticipating Future Issues
Finding Ideas with Intriguing Connections
Generating Many Ideas Quickly
Innovating Amid Constraints
New Thinking with Old Ideas
Addressing Unknowns
Focusing on Efficiency and Results
Envisioning Possibilities
Telling a Strategic Story
Working Across and Up an Organization
Managing Challenging People

The Brainzooming Group is a catalyst for business people needing to successfully identify and implement strategic, innovative ideas. Mike Brown is the author of the extensive Brainzooming daily blog, including the Strategic Thinking article and the free eBook, Taking the NO Out of Innovation.

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May 2nd, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews, Strategy|Tags: Brainzooming, creative thinking, creativity, creativity in business, innovation, leadership, Mariposa Leadership, Mike Brown, strategic thinking|

April 1, 2013 / Book Reviews / Strategy

Book Review: Reinventing You

Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future
By: Dorie Clark

Head: (4.5 out of 5)
Heart: (3.5 out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (5 out of 5)

Professional branding is not just for the job seeker. At some point, executives at all stages of their careers face the need to reinvent themselves to keep up with the pace of corporate change. In Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, author and marketing expert Dorie Clark offers a strategic road map and do-it-yourself exercises for professional branding.

Both insightful and practical, this step-by-step guide is rich with advice anchored by case studies and anecdotal tips. The exercises and reflection points help readers define their unique value and ultimately cultivate and communicate that value to others. Readers will learn how to:

Understand the starting point
Research the destination
Test-drive the path to determine fit
Develop and refine skills for reinvention
Identify and engage a mentor
Leverage points of difference to stand out
Create a narrative that makes sense
Reintroduce the new brand
Concretely demonstrate expertise and prove worth
Monitor perception of the new brand

As the author notes, professional branding is taking control of life and living strategically, by defining career goals and taking steps to reach them. The applicability of professional branding goes beyond simply landing a new job. It can aid in breaking through misconceptions about capabilities which are preventing a promotion, transitioning to a different area of a company and building a compelling case for an unusual background as an asset in a career change.

In an age in which competition for jobs is fierce and one cannot simply rely on being noticed because of hard work, staying relevant and competitive through reinvention is important to fit into the new context of work. Buy the book.

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April 1st, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews, Strategy|Tags: business, Dorie Clark, marketing, personal branding, personal strategy, professional branding, reinvention, Strategy|

March 4, 2013 / Book Reviews / Strategy / Wise Talk

Book Review: Playing to Win

Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works
By A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin

Head: (4 out of 5)
Heart: (3.5 out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (4.5 out of 5)

In Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, authors A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin draw from their years of experience working at Proctor & Gamble and the Rotman School of Management to explain the strategy behind one of the most successful corporate turnarounds of the century. They address how leaders of companies, big and small, can use simple techniques in their own organizations. The authors set out to right the wrong thinking about strategy.

Strategy is not about having a vision, and it’s not about having a plan. For the authors it is about winning. Winning requires a strategy that is managed and joined by a set of five questions. Playing to Win provides a provocative definition of strategy as the answer to these five questions – the same five questions no matter what your industry, size or situation:

What is our winning aspiration?
Where will we play?
How will we win?
What capabilities must we have in place to win?
What management systems are required to support our choices?

Strategy is boiled down to two key factors: 1) Where to play? and 2) How to win? “These two choices,” write Martin and Lafley, “are tightly bound up with one another, form the very heart of strategy and are the two most critical questions in strategy formulation.” Playing To Win answers these questions in a winning way through a simple framework that’s both easy to understand, use, and makes it accessible to all.

Strategy begins with making choices and tough decisions. If this does not happen, you will never have a genuine strategy. But as the book points out, developing a strategy is not difficult, provided that those involved are prepared to address key questions and welcome a diversity of views to identify the best direction for the business. Buy it

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March 4th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews, Strategy, Wise Talk|Tags: leadership, Mariposa Leadership, playing to win, Roger Martin, Strategy, wise talk|

February 21, 2013 / Articles We Like / Coaching Skills / HR / Talent Management / Strategy

How to Create a Memorable Employee Recognition Program

Good business practice involves appreciating and recognizing your employees. Although appreciation should be a natural activity for anyone, the truth is we all have different ways of giving and receiving gifts and appreciation. Some like verbal appreciation, while others like having an extra vacation day. Either way, employes want personal recognition, instead of a standard gift for all. So if you’re not careful, a thoughtless gift may actually backfire on you.

OC Tanner recently commissioned a study conducted by The Cicero Group entitled Optimizing Employee Recognition Programs. This study aimed to discover if awards are a viable form of employee recognition, and if so, whether cash works better than award items.

If your organization is looking to implement an effective employee reward system, I highly recommend reading this entire study as the six pages highlight some interesting findings. The statistics can come in handy when rationalizing employee reward programs to upper management.

The key takeaways for employee recognition programs are:

Award items are better than cash bonuses at contributing to the recognition experience.
Award items should be geared toward desire versus need. If cash is given, it will likely be spent on “need” items, such as bills. Therefore employees will likely forget about the recognition much faster than a more personalized award.
Though you may be rewarding employees with a tangible reward, verbal expressions of appreciation further augment and reinforce recognition and can “increase the degree of effectiveness by roughly 50 percent”.
Create a “tailored selection” of reward items that are unique and personal. This tells the employee that you took the time to offer something of value.

About the author:

Anne Loehr is the President of Anne Loehr and Associates, co-founder of Safaris for the Soul, and an Executive Leadership Coach for Mariposa Leadership, Inc. For more good reads, visit Anne Loehr’s personal blog at: www.anneloehr.com/blog/.

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February 21st, 2013|Categories: Articles We Like, Coaching Skills, HR / Talent Management, Strategy|Tags: Anne Loehr, employee recognition, HR Leade, leadership, Mariposa Leadership|

February 15, 2013 / Book Reviews

Book Review: Build, Borrow, or Buy

Build, Borrow, or Buy:
Solving the Growth Dilemma
By: Laurence Capron and Will Mitchell

Head: (4 of 5)
Heart: (3.5 of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (4.5 of 5)

Build, Borrow, or Buy draws from two decades of research into how some companies succeed in developing powerful new business capability, while many others fail. Authors Laurence Capron and Will Mitchell provide us with powerful and essential tools to help leaders decide whether to innovate within (build), work with joint ventures (borrow), or expand (buy) when they need to acquire new resources for growth.

The book provides examples from large corporations, such as HP, Coca Cola, Johnson & Johnson, and Cisco, as well as smaller companies (from all over the world), which have created sustainable growth strategies reflected in the pathway framework:

Build – When should you develop internally?
Borrow – The untapped potential of strategic partners and joint ventures
Buy – Mergers and acquisitions strategy

The authors argue that there is no one sure fire way of growing, and that firms at different times, and for different reasons, should pursue whatever is most suitable, using their framework to help make the right decisions. Nevertheless, many firms rely on only one model for growing, and suffer accordingly.

Build, Borrow or Buy provides valuable insights for all decision makers. They all have a vital leadership role to ensure that the resource pathways framework will deliver powerful benefits to the success of the business.

Click here to learn more or join our February Wise Talk with author Laurence Capron and submit your questions.

We welcome your thoughts in the comments section below.

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February 15th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: laurence capron, Mariposa Leadership, Strategy, wise talk|