What is leadership? Do you know it when you see it? How many great leaders have you worked for? What has made them great?
Great leaders know how to prioritize, communicate, define a path to success, change course as conditions warrant and stay focused on the end game. They know how to drive you to do your best, to challenge you to do more. They can reach into your soul and find what motivates you. And when you win, there is no feeling in the world like it. You take the experience with you. It becomes a part of who you are. It raises your expectations for all other leaders.
Found an awesome visual on blog.readytomanage.com that identifies the 4 key traits of a great leader.
How does your boss stack up? How about you? What are you doing to become a better leader?
Today, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will retire. This is going to happen day after day, month after month, year after year until 2030. That is a lot of Boomers on the Beach! Will there be enough adult beverages with little umbrellas available?
The US is about to go through an unprecedented demographic shift with all these boomers entering retirement age. During the first half of this century, the number of senior citizens in the United States is being projected to more than double. Problem is, most of them are not ready to retire as the economic challenges over the last 10-15 years have compromised their ability to retire gracefully and just relax. Take a look at these statistics:
Today there are about 40 million senior citizens in the United States. By 2050 that number is projected to skyrocket to 89 million
One poll discovered that 26 percent of all Americans in the 46 to 64-year-old age bracket have no personal savings whatsoever.
According to a survey conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, “60 percent of American workers said the total value of their savings and investments is less than $25,000”.
67 percent of all American workers believe that they “are a little or a lot behind schedule on saving for retirement”.
A study conducted by BostonCollege‘s Center for Retirement Research found that American workers are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably
The U.S. government is facing a total of 222 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities during the years ahead. Social Security and Medicare make up the bulk of that.
Ouch. This is not the way the boomers envisioned how their retirement would be. Looks like they may still be working well into their golden years – serving those umbrella drinks to the 1% that can actually afford to be on that beach buying $15 drinks 😦
Given the remarkable changes in technology, why do conference calls still suck? I was on one yesterday and all the classic issues happened:
The leader was late – so the participants were stuck listening to music – The Rolling Stones were singing Time is On My Side. I was OK with that 🙂 A benefit!
It is very difficult to understand people who are speaking, especially if they have even the slightest accent
Background noise is terrible
Folks speaking when they are on mute – We cannot hear you 🙂
Babies crying and dogs barking in the background – Ah the benefits of working from home!
Two people speaking at once, telling the other to go first, and then both speaking at the same time again
This video has been going around but if you have not seen it, take a look. It is just awesome, accurate and laugh out loud funny!
This is the third installment in the series from JetBlue CEO, Joel Peterson. I have once again hit the highlights for you. Thank you to Mr Peterson for a great series!
Our best performances are nearly always spurred on by colleagues and leaders who have empowered us – that is, trusted us with the freedom and resources to excel. Low-trust organizations have trouble giving their teams the latitude to do much. Wary ofeveryone, they often don’t trust even their most trustworthy people. Instead, they rely on thick compliance manuals for even the most trivial matters, and reward tattlers as a way to prevent rule breaking. This suspicious atmosphere kills initiative and creativity, and worst of all, it stifles any potential for trust.
Here are a few things to consider if you’re aiming to build a culture where people are empowered to do great work:
1) Bet on people. Allow people a chance to prove they can take on more responsibility. A leader who trusts others to grow inspires the best in people and can ignite trust. 2) Take action. Try out ideas, don’t just talk about them. Walk that talk. 3) Move On. What worked before is not today’s answer.High-trust organizations don’t rely blindly on old rules. Instead, they trust their teams to figure out the new ones. 4) Expect mistakes. Even the best efforts can, and do, fail. Find out why quickly, learn and move forward with renewed vigor. 5) Don’t be paranoid. Giving up power is a great way to create more power. Get everyone on the same page and make great stuff happen together.
Interviewed a great person a few years ago for a business development position. When I asked her why she had been so successful, she responded, “If it is to be, it is up to me.” Best answer ever!
Seems to be a lot of excuses going around these days. In the workplace, many associates seem to blame circumstances or other people for their failure to get stuff done. In government, does anyone take accountability for anything? Been stuck on a bridge in New Jersey lately? Too many examples of people making commitments that they just do not live up to. Does anyone just stand up and take responsibility anymore? How about some honesty and integrity? Pretty rare these days. What are the drivers of this behavior?
Well, here is some great advice for you to remember and live by everyday:
Accountability starts with you. Grab a glove and get in the game!
Accountability is about being reliable. Do as you say!
Accountability is ownership. Own it. If it fails, fix it.
Accountability creates clarity. No questions required.
Accountability is about trustworthiness. You deliver, maybe others will follow your lead.
Accountability is a partnership. Do you want your partners/teammates letting you down? Did not think so!
Google just announced that it’s buying Nest for $3.2 billion! For a company with two products, that’s a lot of cash 🙂
But Nest is one of the current market leaders in what is being referred to as the “Internet of Things.” What is that you ask? The Internet of Things refers to uniquely identifiable objects, like a room thermostat or smoke detector, that are connected and accessible via the internet. Earlier examples of these “connectors” are RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips, barcodes, QR codes and digital watermarking. According to Gartner there will be nearly 26 billion devices on the Internet of Things by 2020. Now that is a lot of devices.
A bit more about Nest. Nest is best known for its smart thermostat, which learns your habits over time and adjusts your heat settings accordingly. They also recently launched Protect (Smoke + CO Alarm) to rave reviews. Here are pictures of the Nest thermostat and Nest Protect alarm.
The Nest thermostat is the first next generation in-home thermostat. It learns your schedule, programs itself and can be controlled from your phone. The Nest Thermostat can lower your heating and cooling bills up to 20%. That will save you a lot of Benjamins 🙂
Nest Protect not only has an alarm component, but also speaks to you with a human voice. It tells you what the problem is and where it is. And if you have more than one Nest Protect, they connect so they can speak up at the same time even if Wi-Fi is down. No better way to protect the home and family.
For Google, this continues a big new push to apply its machine-learning expertise to physical objects, from self-driving cars to robots and now home appliances. Google continues to broaden its focus to artificial intelligence and machine learning in myriad forms. It is now a machine-learning company.
We are moving into a time where the opportunity to track everything in real time on your phone or other internet connected device will be possible. When will we have the time to actually accomplish anything? 🙂 George Jetson is the man!
A band named The Beatles made a bit of a splash here in the US. Over the next month or so we will all be taken back to that time to relive the hysteria and enthusiasm created by the band that is as relevant today as they were 50 years ago. Amazing!
On Feb. 9, 2014, CBS will mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles‘ first appearance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ in a big way.
Other reports also indicate that the show will include appearances by Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Adele, Bruno Mars, Pink and Katy Perry, who will deliver new performances of the five songs the Beatles played on their ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ debut. Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart are slated to come together and perform once again as the Eurythmics.
Here is a video from the original Ed Sullivan show to get you started. My guess is that you will see this many places over the next few weeks, so let this be the first of many 🙂 The video also eliminates the crowd noise so you can actually hear the performance.
Second installment in the series from Joel Peterson, Chairman of JetBlue Airways. As we did last week, I will summarize and add some thoughts.
Some headlines for you:
Personal integrity is the foundation of trust in any organization. If you say you are going to do something, just do it. Don’t make your team or your manager ask you about it. Tell them it is done before they ask you.
Leadership is critical. Leaders show and encourage respect when they empower team members, celebrate their contributions, and help them learn from missteps. Command and control leadership does not support building trust.
Positive always beat negative. Going negative reveals a general lack of respect and self-control. Your culture will be better served by celebrating what your own team is doing. Be a leader – do not go negative!
Respect is an investment. You want to build a great team based on trust?Nothing gets better results in team coherence, employee satisfaction, and organizational momentum than advancing the best interests of the your people.
Root out disrespect. Vigilant leaders are always looking to nip disrespectful practices in the bud. That means no tolerance for talking behind people’s backs, letting problems fester, or failing to give people the feedback they need to improve. If this is happening, you need to act quickly and put an end to it.
Respect isn’t the same as being nice. Disagreement is key yo great decision making. People in high-trust organizations feel secure in their ability to disagree – because they know how to disagree with respect.
We have all be using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for some time. We started this journey with Garmins, Tom Tom’s and other devices specific to on dash installation. They worked pretty well but you needed to continuously update the street files to get the most out of these devices. Then the car companies started to install in dash navigation systems. I do not know about you, but these interfaces always seemed complex and unusable to me.
Then of course, these capabilities became part of our smartphone applications. We first had Google Maps, MapQuest, AmAze and of course Apple Maps (Much better now) Then we were introduced to social GPS with Waze, but they were purchased fast by Google. All great apps and all free. Are you spending any money on Garmins or Tom Tom’s anymore? Not me 🙂 And of course our phones themselves have Location Based Services, so retailers and the like know where you are and can send you advertising and other content
Now we are moving this indoors with Apple’s iBeacon technology. What is iBeacon? It is an indoor positioning system; a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. Apple has already rolled this technology out to their retail stores. It uses Bluetooth technology, which by the way is of course enabled on all smart phones. Now there is a coincidence 🙂 This technology will provide the retail store with your exact in-store location, enabling them to communicate directly in the moment of your purchase decisions. Yowsa!
On Monday, iBeacons were introduced with supermarkets Safeway and Giant Eagle. inMarket’s (The company providing the solution) iBeacon Mobile to Mortar platform sends out a variety of information to iPhone-owning store visitors, so long as they’ve opted in to use the service via one of its compatible apps, such as CheckPoints. By enabling the service, shoppers can expect to receive notifications to their Apple handset such as discount coupons, loyalty rewards, and reminders about what to pick up. The technology was previously introduced in Macy’s through a relationship with shopping application Shopkick.
We are no longer lost in the supermarket. We know where you are, always.
Focused on expanding my horizons the last couple of week by reading about some topics that I am not familiar with. One I focused on was the concept of being awake, living in the moment. Being awake you say? But I am awake 12+ hours a day you say!
Are you really awake or are you just going through the motions? Do you live in the past, present and future all at the same time? When you are engaged in a discussion, are you thinking about something that has previously happened or other things that you need to do? Or are you truly focused in the moment with all attention on that one idea, thought, person or event?
Initial thoughts:
Focus solely on what you are doing – this will not be easy at first but keep trying
Look people directly in the eye and listen hard to what they are saying – As my friend Brendan says, God gave you two ears and only one mouth, so listen twice as much as you speak
Give the gift of attention – focus on the present/the moment
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