Mike Bell's Leadership Wisdom

Getting Unstuck

“We have a tendency to make assumptions about what might happen based on imperfect information and our natural ‘confirmation bias’. That is we look for data that confirms our beliefs, unconsciously dismissing anything that counters them.

We also tend to fall into the ‘narrative fallacy’ trap - building up a model or theory in our minds based on past events (which are static) and applying it ad infinitum to a dynamic process we call life.  We help people access more information through structure, conversation and visualization, providing greater clarity, not only of what the individuals and teams want but also of how they think about what they want. We help them think more clearly and design a better future.” - Group Partners with a nod to Nassim Taleb.

16 Leadership Lessons from the Jazz Greats

Make It Groovy

JAZZ IMPROV
“You can play all the "right" notes and not sound good. Or, you can play "wrong" notes and sound great. It isn't about the notes. It is about making whatever notes you play groovy. What makes your playing groovy. I can't tell you. You have to find it for yourself because it is whatever works for you. To quote a popular cliche, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it". Experiment till you find your grooviness.“

LEADERSHIP
We all respond well to sincerity and to passion. We have amazingly powerful ‘sincerity monitors’. You can say all the right words but people know if you are being sincere or not. If you are sincere and passionate about what you are saying, it does not matter if you are ‘word perfect’. Take the risk of
making mistakes. Let people see you are human.

“As it enters the ear, does it come in like broken glass, or does it come in like honey?”
Eddie Condon

From my new FREE e-book - get it here

The Creative Edge

Here’s another great piece linking, in its way, jazz, improvisation, creativity and leadership - of the self and others.

“Truly creative people are always pushing the edge. If you see very talented musicians lost in spontaneous improvisation, they’ll often tell you that in that state something comes over them. There’s a certain place they describe out of which all authentic creativity springs—a mysterious point between the present and future, where a deeper current is flowing. This place is alive with the thrill of the unknown, full of risk and insecurity. It’s the very point where something comes from nothing.

“In order to create something new, a risk has to be taken, a leap beyond the known. And the thrill of that creative leap is a very impersonal human experience. Great artists, writers, musicians, scientists, engineers, athletes and many others all experience this same thrill. We find that we feel most alive, most liberated, when we’re expressing our own creativity, pushing the edge in the right way for the right reasons. This potential for creativity seems to be an inherent part of the human capacity. The creative process is an evolutionary process. When you experience the creative impulse awakening in your self, it’s no different than the original impulse that became the whole universe. It’s nothing less that the Big Bang itself, work ing in you and through you. That’s why it is always so thrilling.

The Intelligence Trap

According to Edward de Bono, many people with a high intelligence actually turn out to be poor thinkers. They get caught in the ‘intelligence trap’, of which there are many aspects. For example, a highly intelligent person may take up a view on a subject and then defend that view (through choice of premises and perception) very ably. The better someone is able to defend a view, the less inclined is that person actually to explore the subject. So the highly intelligent person can get trapped by intelligence, together with our usual sense of logic that you cannot be more right than right, into one point of view. The less intelligent person is less sure of his or her rightness and therefore more free to explore the subject and other points of view.

Study shows benefits of meditation in business

Recent research lead by INSEAD concluded that while a standard executive education approach failed to increase the likelihood of managers making socially responsible business decisions, meditation based coaching programs showed a significant impact on the probability to act in a socially responsible way.

Read: INSEAD study shows benefits of meditation in business

Why Decisions Fail

After 25 years of research on nearly 400 companies, Paul C. Nutt, Professor of Management Sciences, Ohio State University found that tough decisions by organisational leaders failed half the time.

This is amazing. They might well have flipped a coin.

He identified 10 blunders and traps that decision makers fall prey to:

The Blunders
• Premature commitments.
• Misused resources.
• Failure-prone decision-making practices.

Einstein and Creation Intelligence

Einstein is perhaps the creative genius of the 20th century and as well as his ground breaking work on relativity, he is also known today through his many quotes. Two in particular have a special relevance for leaders and business success today.

The first – “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. If I translate this to modern businesses, what I think he is saying is that whilst knowledge is important, it is the leaders who can use knowledge as a source of fuel for their creative expression, and that of their people, that is more important.

Most organisations now have heard of knowledge management and some even have a Knowledge Manager. Maybe what organisations need as well is a Director for Releasing Creativity!

New Studies Highlight Real Leadership Challenges

I’m a bit of a magpie. I collect interesting jigsaw pieces of information about leadership and performance and store them away until I get two or three pieces that seem to fit together and shed a little more light or provide more insight. So, here’s the latest:

Research by the Engineering Employers Federation says that more than half of Britain’s manufacturing companies have failed to implement any of the 12 most widely recognized modern production methods. The result is that our manufacturing productivity lags behind our international competitors; for example the gap between the UK and USA is estimated at 45%.

Does this gap apply just to manufacturing I wonder?



The study goes on to say “Coming fresh to the role, many were tempted or persuaded to do things in which they did not believe. They learned that this did not work, primarily because the people (who were) expected to follow could detect their lack of sincerity. The greatest mistake was trying to be something one was not: to claim to know more, do more, be more that one actually was.”

I think we need to ask what would make these Chief Executives behave in this way? And we only need to take an honest look at ourselves to find some of the answers!

Cyril Levicki of Reading University has come up with a researched answer. Based on a study among scores of directors of blue chip companies, Levicki concludes that Britain’s boardrooms are occupied by mummy’s boys, brimming with repressed anger and driven by an unconscious craving for affection. He goes on to say that many children who become chief executives are reared by dominant mothers who lavish them with tenderness when they are good and withdraw their love at the first sign of failure. This leaves them with a powerful need to achieve and a hunger for others approval.

The result is a leadership elite with high levels of resentment and anxiety, low levels of self esteem and an inability to motivate subordinates.

Does anyone recognize any of this in their bosses? In themselves?

If this is even partly true then we need to be seriously looking at our whole approach to leadership development.

At The Wisdom Meme we focus on the internal and the external, the being and the doing. For all of us, our behaviour in the world is structured by myriad beliefs, opinions, attitudes and images we have picked up during our life. Only when we take the time out and begin to examine this structuring, heal and discard that which robs us of our power to be a balanced leader and develop that which strengthens us, can we really begin to contribute to developing the potential and contribution of those we lead.

Lack of vision in failing £6.2bn IT scheme

A lack of vision and poor understanding of the sheer size of the task means that a £6.2bn IT scheme for the National Health Service in the UK "isn't working and isn't going to work" according to Andrew Rollerson, an executive with Fujitisu, on of the systems providers, Computer Weekly reported 13/02/07.

When I first read this I thought what a wonderful quantification of a lack of vision. I’m sure the leaders and managers involved in this project will find any other reason but lack of vision to excuse the failure.

Leaders Legacy

As our world changes at an unimaginable speed, organizational leaders are challenged by increasing complexity and formidable paradoxes.

Challenges such as engaging the whole person, meeting the needs for community, and existing in balance with their environment are already pushing leaders and organizations to the limit their capability to respond.

What is needed is for leaders to transform their leadership to be a powerful expression of who they are. As knowledge gives way to the wisdom leaders evoke in their organizations, so transformational change will flow as a natural outcome.

Only leaders who evoke the wisdom of their people will create thriving organizations in the midst of increasing complexity and challenging paradoxes.

Courageous leaders who thrive in this environment are powerful change masters capable of transforming themselves and their organizations. They recognize their role in a self organizing system to encourage independence and interdependence of their members. Their legacy is a sustainable, balanced performance in harmony with all of life.