Please Sir - Can I Have Some More (Telecommuting)?

Happy Holidays! I watched "Julie and Julia" this weekend, so I'm inspired to get back to relatively more frequent blogs. You can expect more of them to be a question soliciting your comments. This should help to get both more frequent posts and more of your thoughts rather than mine.

This year I completed my epic quest to finish "The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century". It didn't take me a long time because the book is dull. Quite the opposite - it's a large book AND filled with many thought provoking concepts (leading to frequent mind-wandering while reading).

Among many topics, the book referenced a trend for more virtual work. This leads me to the question of what is missing when people don't work in the same physical locations? How important is social interaction, and how closely replicated can it be via facebook, google wave, etc?

Would love to hear your thoughts, including whether you think telecommuting and virtual work are a good idea.

Over to you...

Are you a drummer or a singer in the band?

Great leaders are drummers, not soloists.

Given the responses to my last analogy (to sports) I figured I'd try another one...

Listening to one of my favorite jazz tunes (Ole by John Coltrane) led me to ask - what role in a band most closely resembles that of a leader?

I propose that it's the drummer - what do you think?

Drummers enable success for the soloist, The best solos always have a great drummer behind them.

The drummer establishes the rhythm and cadence of the band.

The drummer carefully monitors the soloists and adds fire to the rhythm when needed and gives space when it makes sense to.

Have a listen to Ole and focus on the drums. There's a lot complexity there. Never resting, but never dominating the soloists.

One more thought - if any of the above is true why aren't more band leaders drummers?

Before it's no longer relevant - how to motivate people when you have little or no cash to motivate with?

Firstly, thanks to Phil for his suggestion for this posting. It's a timely one for just about everyone I've talked to in recent days - except maybe not for Australians for much longer?

Let's start with your own suggestions. Before you read any more of this blog, please stop, hit the comments link at the bottom of the post (next to the time), and type your top 3 ideas for motivating people in non-monetary ways. When you do it, make sure to hit the "subscribe by email" link on the bottom of your comment box. That will make sure you get to see what everyone else suggests (including me).

With that, I'll be back in less than a week with my content on this thread. I promise. First I want to see your ideas. I promise to steal them shamelessly!

Casting Call - my favorite leadership podcast

In this post I want to share a podcast with you that has been an enormous source of actionable advice and inspiration to me as a leader.

The podcast is Manager Tools, and can be found at http://www.manager-tools.com/.

I was first introduced to the podcast early in it's life (around 2005). At the time I had been in leadership roles for 10 years, had done an MBA, a number of leadership training courses, and had worked with some outstanding mentors. Despite this there has been much for me to learn from this weekly cast, which continues to deliver new and useful content.

Much of the inspiration for this blog came from the manager tools podcast, and I can say that they were a major contributor to my third critical element of leadership (communication).

Along the lines of communication, a great insight provided by Mike and Mark (who deliver the cast) is that moving from individual contributor roles to leadership positions is about moving from being task focused to people focused. That is, making sure your people are taken care of before your own tasks. It's great advice for task-focused engineers (like me). While it seems obvious, it really isn't (see my comment on the post on the best advice you've ever received and how much the meaning of a single sentence can change over time).

I hope you enjoy the podcast and would love to see some comments back on this post regarding your thoughts on this great resource. Also, let us know if there are other podcasts you listen to which you'd recommend.

This is NOT a metaphor - play team sports

Stay with me on this one. At the end of this posting there's a controversial statement which I'd love to get your comments on.

In the first posting on this blog Scott made the comment that "leaders create and foster a team environment in which all team members feel that they are valuable and respected members of the team". It reminded me of something else he said to me once, that "great [sports] teams 'get around each other' when they need to come back from behind".

Going down this path made me think of something which I often come back to. Team sports are a WEALTH of leadership guidance. How to motivate. Coaching and feedback. The power of goal alignment. The impact of the weakest link. Making sure people are in roles (positions) they're best suited to and able to succeed. And the list goes on...

There's so much to learn from team sports that I'd suggest that anyone who wants to learn leadership study or (preferably) play team sports.

Additionally, I'd suggest that observing people playing team sports tells you how they'll perform in a workplace team. Will they naturally lead? Will they "get around" the team? Will they motivate? Will they make "all team members feel that they are valuable and respected"?
Bringing this together I'd suggest the following: ONLY hire people into leadership positions if they've played team sports, and ideally go play a team sport with them as part of the job interview.

That's the controversial statement. Comments???

Let's get this party started! A question - what is THE single most important thing anyone's said to you regarding leadership?

It's hard to believe it's been 2.5 weeks since my last posting! Thanks to all for comments on many of the threads - I'm really learning from your input and I hope that this community is also starting to learn from each other. After all - that's the goal of the blog.

To emphasize this (and to ensure I don't go a full three weeks between posts) I'm going to start this one off with input from YOU! I'll add my input at the end so that you can all contribute and collaborate in keeping with where I hope this blog will go - a true community discussing leadership philosophy.

The question is: "What is THE single most important thing anyone's said to you regarding leadership (in one sentence)?".

Looking forward to all of your replies. See you at the end of this one!

If you're a slow reader (like me)...

I read too slowly. I start a paragraph and then half way through I'm off thinking of something else. The better the book the more thoughts it triggers for me outside of the content of the book itself. Does that mean I only read bad books quickly???

Having said that, there's a few books that have radically changed me as a leader, and so I've shared them in this post. As always, this blog is valuable because of your contributions, so let me know which books (if any) have changed your leadership approach. I'll put them on my reading list.

All the books listed below include links to buy them from Amazon. Any purchases via these links will result in a credit for some percentage of the sale in my amazon.com account. My plan is to devote ALL of these credits back to this blog. This will pay for all sorts of blog-funding, from leadership books for regular contributors to bandwidth for the site if it ever goes independent.


So many leadership books are anecdotal, however, Good to Great is one that started with fact. Taking companies that radically outperformed their peers and then painstakingly researching them to find out why. Guidance that shines through here for me was humility of great leaders, followed by a relentless focus on people and getting the best talent on the bus.


7 Habits stands out for me because of the importance it places on figuring out why you want to bother to do anything. I read it back in 1998 when Sharon and I spent a month in Italy. I'd recommend the same for anyone else reading this. Not necessarily that you go to Italy (although I do recommend that), but that you read it when you have plenty of time to reflect away from your daily grind. That was key to me - thinking deeply about what's important and using those drivers as motivation over the 11 years since then (I still read and refine the personal mission statement I created back then on a periodic basis - this is the topic of a future post...).


Straight from the Gut is another one for focusing on talent. That's the secret to Jack's success and so many other successful leaders I've seen. Also just fun to read - a great account of his career and the thinking behind so much of what he did at GE.


Discover your Strengths stands out as a book that (again) is rooted in research and fact, and then introduces and justifies the concept that you should channel your strengths rather than trying to improve your areas of weakness. Know your weaknesses, but overcome them by collaborating with people who have strength in those areas.

In addition to the books above, there's a bunch that were great reads for me because they summarized, consolidated, or reinforced learnings. However, none of them were game changers as a result of new insights. Still, they may be for you depending on where you've been and what you've already read. These include:

The Effective Executive is one that would DEFINITELY be on my list if I'd read it 10 years ago. So much of what I've learnt/read/suffered through is in here. Expect a post devoted to this book alone in the future.

I've used the First 90 Days framework for my last few roles and recommend it to anyone taking on a new role/responsibilities.

And finally, here's a few that I've enjoyed reading, however, which I wouldn't consider to be true leadership books. Still, if you're short of books to put on your reading list...


I hope all of these are either game changers for you in the future or already have been. Please let me and the rest of the blog readers know what's made an impact on you - I need all the help I can get! Don't we all?

It Takes a Village to Raise a Leader

EVERYTHING I know about management/leadership comes from others, and this blog is no different. Throughout the blog I'm going to ask for comments and expect that the value will come more from your contributions than anything I might put on here.

So, what is it that you think makes a good leader? To start it off, here's what I think are the key factors that make a great leader:

1. Relentless focus on hiring and developing world-class people
2. Humility
3. Constant communications and feedback

I'll write a separate posting on each of these, however, that's enough from me for now - the floor is yours...

Leadership Philosophy - Best Saved for Conversations Over Beers or Long Car Rides

This is the first of what I hope are many blogs on the topic of leadership. I'm expecting it will be philosophy more than specific actions, although hopefully you can derive actions from what's in here (for actionable advice visit some of the links shown with this blog, especially Manager Tools).

The topic of this blog comes from a wise leader who once said "Save the philosophy for discussions over beers or long car rides, in the meantime we need to focus on specific actions". That's very much in line with my own thinking, however, it also doesn't deny the fact that I like conversations in the pub, as well as long car rides - so here goes...