Living in More Than One World

I was a bit surprised to see Glenn Close’s byline on BusinessWeek.com. But I found her essay, Glenn Close on Warren Bennis, to be a fascinating read.  It’s an excerpt from a new collection of and about Bennis’ writing, The Essential Bennis. Like most people, I am mainly aware of her as a highly experienced and accomplished actor, not as a writer. Yet what she has written here is compelling. Close explores the similarities and differences between the role of the leader and the actor. Both must be based on truth, authenticity and connection; she observes, yet the actor plays many roles and is usually much different in real life from the person he or she portrays in the theater or onscreen. A leader must be genuine and worthy of trust 24/7; there can be no split between the person who inspires followers and the private self. An audience must care about the character an actor portrays, similar to the way people should care about what a leader believes in and deems important. “An actor has no other agenda,” Close writes, “but to be truthful and that truth is all about finding a point of nonjudgmental common humanity with the character to be portrayed—a common humanity between an imagined character and a very real actor.” Similarly, she writes that a leader “must be authentic in his integrity—in his understanding of, his connection to, and his empathy with the people he leads.” Bennis wrote a back cover endorsement for my new book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. Charles Handy, who wrote the foreword to The Essential Bennis, also wrote a guest essay, The Odyssey Experience, for my book, about the class he and his wife Elizabeth taught at the Drucker School in 2007.

Managementtoday.com’s  If I had to start again… feature on September 1 spotlights Sir Alan Jones, Chairman Emeritus of Toyota UK. He says if he were starting out in business today, he would “still choose the science and engineering route,” and he believes that more young people in the UK need to consider a similar career path, if the country is to remain competitive globally. A big reason is that so many people who work in these fields are over the age of 45, and there may not be enough high quality people to replace them in the future. I can’t get enough of these brief, first-person, what-I’ve-learned features written by people who have been successful and want to share their knowledge and experience. A similar, bite-sized Q&A ran almost exactly two years ago on independent.co.uk, My way: Sir Alan Jones, Toyota UK’s Chairman Emeritus, on opportunity. In the Management Today essay, Sir Alan says that it’s important to look for opportunities, make your own decisions, and if there are problems, learn from them and try not to worry about what’s happened in the past. “When I joined Toyota,” Sir Alan writes, “there was almost a farming culture there and a real belief in continuous improvement (kaizen).” He believes that people need to be inspired to believe they can change the world; others have done it and there is no reason that each of us as individuals can’t do the same, in our own way. Beyond the executive lessons represented by these essays, If I had to start again… should give food for thought to everyone. Suppose Managementtoday.com asked you to write your thoughts. What would you say? And if it looks like a good idea, what is stopping you from starting again?

A very short post today, as I get ready to take a few days off. I’ll resume blogging on September 1. In the meantime, whether or not you are a CIO (Chief Information Officer), and whether or not you own a Kindle, have a look at CIO INSIGHT for the Books Slideshow: 10 Kindle Books for CIOs. There are thumbnail descriptions and covers for books aimed at busy technology executives. Many of these titles seem like they would have broader applicability for people who want to understand more about how technology is applied in organizations. The #1 book is CIO Best Practices: Enabling Strategic Value with Information Technology, by Joe Stenzel, Gary Cokins, et al; a 2007 title described as “the bible of technology leadership.” #2, CIO Survival Guide: The Roles and Responsibilities of the Chief Information Officer by Karl D. Schubert (2004), is described as “another IT leadership classic.” Some books are broader than just IT: #6  is Alignment: Using the Balanced Scorecard to Create Corporate Synergies, a 2006 title by Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton, the creators of the balanced scoreboard concept. Given that IT exists so an organization can do its work most successfully, #10 is The Business-Oriented CIO: A Guide to Market-Driven Management, by George Tillmann (2008), which “gives the straight dope on delivering business value through IT.” See you in September!

Rich Karlgaard, Forbes publisher and columnist, points out in his August 17 commentary Drucker’s Final Words On Leadership: Manage yourself before you take on responsibility for others, that people who aspire to become leaders must get their own life in order. It’s a brief and to-the-point column; mostly drawing attention to and setting the context for a link to the full text of Peter Drucker’s 1999 Harvard Business Review article Managing Oneself. The latter is an excerpt from Drucker’s important book from the same year, Management Challenges for the 21st Century. I was pleased to see Karlgaard’s column, since the subject matter dovetails perfectly with the self-development theme of my new book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. Also read the insightful interview Peter Drucker On Leadership, conducted by Karlgaard for Forbes.com and published on Nov. 19, 2004, Drucker’s 95th birthday and almost exactly a year before he died. Excerpts from that interview are included in a book I reviewed in 2006 for USA TODAY, The Effective Executive in Action: A Journal for Getting the Right Things Done, a workbook by Drucker and Joseph A. Maciariello, based on Drucker’s classic 1967 book The Effective Executive. (Excerpts from the HBR article are also included.) Reading both the Drucker article/chapter and the Forbes.com interview shows how timeless Drucker’s ideas on self-management are, and why we need to learn about and apply them in today’s world of uncertainty. “Successful careers are not planned,” he writes in the HBR piece. “They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values.” In the interview, he said: “I’ve seen a great many people who are exceedingly good at execution, but exceedingly poor at picking the important things. They are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done.”

Another brief entry today, to note a follow-up to yesterday’s blog about my guest post on the Leader to Leader Institute blog. My new book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life, is now featured as the recommended reading on Leader to Leader’s July online newsletter, Leading Today. The newsletter has lots of interesting material, including Susan Phillips Bari’s President’s Letter about the July 13th inaugural event of the Hesselbein Global Leadership Academy at the University of Pittsburgh. The Academy is named for Leader to Leader Institute Chairman and Founding President Frances Hesselbein, who wrote the foreword to my book. The keynote address was delivered by Jim Collins. The newsletter also has an account of a June conference in Seoul, South Korea (attended by Hesselbein, Bari and Leader to Leader Board Secretary Geneva Johnson) The Key to Responsible High-Performing Society, “the first of a series of events being held around the world to honor Peter Drucker’s life and work on the centennial of his birth.” My book was also the subject of a great July 23rd post by Stephen Abram, on his widely-followed Stephen’s Lighthouse blog.  Stephen is Vice President of Innovation for SirsiDynix. He references Drucker’s keynote address at the SLA annual conference in Los Angeles in 2002, and that “Drucker would have been 100 this year, just like SLA.”

I’ve been a big sports fan since childhood, and I watched many times on TV during high school and college as John Wooden coached UCLA to college basketball glory. He is one of the most successful coaches in any sport, of all time. And at age 98, he has done quite well writing books, and in public speaking. Michel Hiltzik’s column, John Wooden’s still Coach, even in the investment game, in the Los Angeles Times is a highly interesting interview with Wooden about his investing principles. Hiltzik points out that Wooden coached in an era (the 1940s through the mid-1970s) when coaches weren’t paid particularly well. A big takeaway from this column, besides Wooden’s thoughts on investing, is how he dealt with uncertainty in life after retiring from UCLA at 65. Besides seeking prudent professional advice for getting his finances and estate in order, he transitioned into what became a lucrative career writing and speaking about not only his coaching principles, but more importantly, his principles for leadership and living a successful, meaningful life. In 1975, it was much less prevalent for people to reinvent themselves after retirement. Wooden is still going strong, 34 years later. And he didn’t dwell on how he possibly could have had more money when he retired from coaching (partly because of a decision revealed in the lead of the column). “But if you always think things will be better with more money,” he tells Hiltzik, “your life’s not going to be that good.” Regarding the concept of initiative, one of the 15 building blocks of his “Pyramid of Success,” Wooden gives a great quote that can be applied well beyond the world of investing: “Don’t be afraid to fail. We’re all imperfect. We’re going to fail at times. If you’re worried about temporary reversals, you’ll be afraid to make a decision.”

One of the best ways to start your week is to read Bill Taylor’s concise leadership advice on HarvardBusiness.org, The 10 Questions Every Change Agent Must Answer. I first found this on BusinessWeek.com as Change-Agent Checklist. Taylor, author of Mavericks at Work and co-founder of Fast Company magazine, provides a neat conceptualization of how leaders should be thinking about their companies, and their personal self-development, in these still-scary times. He points out that we can’t control markets or current events, but we can think about our situations in new ways and figure out how companies can differentiate themselves. The questions are deceptively simple and speak to how we can find new opportunities, new ideas, new contributions from employees and crucially, new customers.  Leaders, in his view, should ponder whether or not customers care about you and your company, and what would happen to those customers if your company disappeared. He also comes down on the side of focusing on your most important customers, even if it means ignoring others. Finally, he reminds leaders to never stop learning. “How do you push yourself as an individual,” Taylor asks, “to keep growing and evolving — so that your company can do the same?” The list of questions is not from original research, but it is a handy synthesis and analysis referencing such disparate sources as the psychologist Jerome Bruner, Albert Einstein, Marcel Proust, Gary Hamel and Jim Collins. A big takeaway for me is that the future belongs to eclectic, reflective thinkers who can translate the most relevant thoughts into meaningful actions.

If your current personal or professional situation is making you discouraged, read the Warren Bennis May 18 essay in BusinessWeek, Only the Optimists Survive. Bennis is one of the world’s top leadership experts; a successful author, consultant and professor. Although he writes here for a business-oriented audience, his message of tough-minded optimism, of seeing beyond your current situation and doing what’s necessary for a better future, is applicable to anyone. And his examples go beyond the business world. Franklin Roosevelt had to deal with the terrible shape the country was in when he was elected President, as well as his own paralysis. Pete Carroll was dismissed twice as an NFL football coach, yet adapted and developed his abilities to become a highly successful college coach at USC. Bennis provides other examples, as well as the following “blueprint for survival” at the conclusion: “Good organizations and good leaders, especially in our tense and uncertain moment in history, have the capacity to bounce back; to adapt as necessary; to persevere with an expectation of success; and to engage others in a shared sense of purpose; and to win a reputation for integrity through these other qualities.” A final note: Bennis was a longtime friend of (and perceptive writer about) Peter Drucker, and is one of the endorsers of my forthcoming book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life.