HBR October: Post #5--Mentors & Proteges

The Relationship You Need to Get Right (Hewlettt and Marshall, p.131).

The authors studied one of the key relationships in creating successful leaders, the sponsor-protégé model. They discovered in the best of these relationships that the sponsor (or mentor) provides coaching, advocates for protégés, call in favors for them, and makes connections for them. On the other hand, protégés should be fiercely loyal, give 110% to any effort, and reciprocate. Further, both sponsor and protégé should subscribe to the “pay it forward” philosophy.

Wisdom of Crowds: Post #3--Diversity

Diversity: Engage a group of Marines, housewives, engineers, and dog catchers to address a public policy and you’ll get a much more robust decision than with a bunch of politicians sitting around a table. Why? Diversity of experience (cognitive diversity) and knowledge when aggregated tend to come up with better decisions. In fact, diversity begins to act like a “market” which makes far better decisions than individuals or homogenous groups. This cognitive diversity means that by adding people to the decision-making team who know less than experts but who bring different skills and perspective actually improves the group’s overall performance. Diversity ensures that alternative perspectives are brought to bear on the issue that might otherwise get lost. And the smaller or more formal an organization, the more important the power of diversity is to the process because it lacks the power and magnitude of a large market. All this is to say that a wise, diverse group will outperform a CEO anytime.

Drive by Dan Pink: FINAL Post

Dan Pink’s attempt at helping hands-on people “get it” is contained in the section of the book called “The Type I Toolkit.” Note: Type I people are those motivated by intrinsic, not extrinsic, carrot-and-stick motivators. I’ll admit that this section seems a bit tacked on—often the requirement of a publisher to make a hardback page length. However, I especially enjoyed some of his examples about how to apply it in daily life as a leader and as a parent—the ultimate leader.

I don’t know that Motivation 3.0: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose will become the 21 Century’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—but it comes very close for me. For one thing, it explains some of the extreme generational differences we’re seeing in the classroom and workplace.

In short, Dan Pink has just helped us understand a powerful emerging theory in a simple, straightforward manner. Kudos, Dan. Keep writing.

How Executives Can Successfully Transition

This is the 3rd of several posts of the coming week based on my book review of The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leader at All Levels by Michael Watkins (Harvard Press). See previous posts.

Executives coming into a company fail at the rate of 40-50% at a cost of $2.7 million to the company.

4. Secure early wins: Grab the low hanging fruit of success to set the tone of a successful tenure with virtuous relationships and not vicious ones (John Kotter—a Harvard Professor and change icon talks about this a lot in hit books on change, including Leading Change).

5. Negotiate success: Your new boss is your critical connection to the organization. Understanding and meeting his or her needs and expectations, style and energy is important if only for survival purposes! Get consensus on your 90 day plan and life will be a better place.

6. Achieve alignment: As a high flyer in an organization, you need to assure alignment with your approach and the corporate strategy (Covey chats about this a lot in his later books).

7. Build your team: Most new executives inherit teams. The key is to keep the right ones and jettison the wrong ones (remember Good to Great—Jim Collins research taught us to get the right people on the bus and the wrong ones off it).