1: The year was 1878. Thomas Edison was a man on a mission.
Day and night, he experimented with more than six thousand different filaments in his quest to discover the incandescent light bulb.
After spending a year in Thomas’ lab, Nikola Tesla commented: “If Edison needed to find a needle in a haystack, he would ‘proceed at once’ to simply ‘examine straw after straw until he found the object … continue reading
1: The technology team at IMVU agreed to a hard deadline: Six months—180 days—to launch the startup’s product and attract its first paying customers.
“It was a grueling schedule, but we were determined to launch on time,” writes Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup. As the company’s Chief Technology Officer, he was responsible for meeting the deadline and delivering the app, which would allow users to create … continue reading
The year is 2004. A seventeen-year-old girl is sitting in the office in front of a computer. A group of anxious entrepreneurs is standing behind her. They work for IMVU, a start-up technology company that allows people to create avatars when Instant Messaging.
The girl chooses her avatar and customizes it, deciding how she will look. She says, “Oh, this is really fun,” IMVU’s Chief Technology Officer Eric Ries… continue reading
It isn’t possible, Robert E. Quinn writes in The Deep Change Field Guide.
We cannot “teach” someone how to be a leader. Except by being what we wish to inspire in others.
We can only develop leaders by being a leader. Which requires authenticity and risk. Great leadership is great teaching which gives rise to great relationships.
This week we’ve been exploring Robert’s concept of the “fundamental state of … continue reading
Is organizational conflict a good thing?
It depends, Robert E. Quinn tells us in his brilliant book on leadership, The Deep Change Field Guide.
It starts with our assumptions. Many organizations are places of conflict. For example, at GM’s Freemont Plant executives introduced new techniques only to see the union immediately discredit them. The union’s response confirmed the executive’s beliefs that they lived in a world of conflict. … continue reading
Luis’ career had been a series of triumphs. After completing a five-year engineering program in four years, he experienced immediate success in his new company. Technically strong, innovative, and action-oriented, he was promoted several times, Robert E. Quinn writes in his terrific book, The Deep Change Field Guide.
But now as a supervisor, for the first time, he was receiving negative feedback from his leaders. His hard-edged strategies and … continue reading
Yesterday we looked at the role failure plays in bringing about deep change. Failure drops us into a world of personal chaos. Yet it also serves as a catalyst for dramatic learning and growth, writes Robert E. Quinn in The Deep Change Field Guide.
“I had never experienced this kind of sorrow before,” reflects Doug Anderson, the Dean of the Business School at Utah State, about his experience … continue reading
“I could no longer say that I was my job, because I had none. I couldn’t rely on my wealth to create a sense of worth and identity, for I had no money and loads of debt,” commented an entrepreneur whose company had gone bankrupt.
He continues: “I could not look to social standing, for a failed entrepreneur has no social standing. And the failure of my love relationship a … continue reading
Business schools have a problem, say two business school professors.
“Detached, third person leadership, no matter how well it follows the sage advice of those who teach how to lead, does not produce the results we want and need,” says TCU Business School Professor Larry Peter. “It’s not the mechanics. It’s the person! Change me first! The message is so simple, so powerful.”
“Most professional schools claim to teach … continue reading
Yesterday, we looked at how deep change starts with self-change. To be a leader is to accept we must continually adapt and evolve.
The spirit of which is captured by this quote from R. Buckminster Fuller which I love: “I am not a thing, a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.
Meaningful change happens when we awake to the … continue reading
