Living in More Than One World

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.”

What drew me to the brief profile in the Des Moines Register about Michelle Hankins Cook, a manager for Norandex Building Materials Distribution, was her response to Words to Live By: the Peter Drucker quote “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” But what I found even more interesting was how this and other themes of the bio represented areas of living in more than one world covered in my book, including varied and fulfilling outside interests, family, volunteerism, mentorship, leadership, meaningful achievements and challenging work. Her background includes  being both an airplane pilot and lead singer in a rock band.