innovation

Speaking Truth To Power – Why Leaders Keep Fools Nearby

In researching Speaking Truth to Power to help people use their own deep wisdom to advance their careers, I stumbled on this great article by James O'Toole on Harvard Business Review called A Culture of Candor. O'Toole gave several examples of corporate cultures that encourage people to challenge...

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Innovative Leadership 101: Develop a Perspective Protocol

Sometimes we have to accept the reality that innovation can’t always be planned,  but when we find a pattern to help us increase the likelihood of spontaneity – why not try to learn it and bake it into the corporate culture? In their new book “Great by Choice,” Jim Collins and Morten Hansen have...

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Why Is Leading Innovation So Hard?

Innovation so often happens in the unplanned places. This is something of a conundrum for many leaders whose manufacturing B-School heritage tells them that everything should be planned out, documented and accounted for. Innovation – like its sister creativity – cannot be planned, budgeted, shoved into a “retreat” or predicted. It happens in the shower and in the in-between spaces of life and work.

Leading innovation is difficult because you have to risk looking like a fool. But when the great leader looks beneath the surface of the failures innovative playtime produces, they often discover that in those failures are seeds of success. Sometimes it’s a specific idea that results, sometimes it’s just reenergized employees, which can pay back in employee creativity, retention and improved customer service.

Innovation is a personal skill too. Here are three things you can do to create space for innovation in your life.

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Communicating Powerfully

Have you ever noticed how many leadership development resources emphasize effective communication? How many bosses will mark you down (or up!) for your communication skills? Have you ever thought about why it's so important for your career success to be a good communicator? In ancient times, some...

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Research Summary: Women in High-Tech

Title: Women in Technology - High Performance Entrepreneurs Study: High Performance Entrepreneurs: Women in High-Tech (Illuminate Researchers, Illuminate Ventures, 2011) Finding: In the last decade women in technology have played a bigger part in tech startups than ever before, and their...

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Female Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Business Success

By: Lee Washington Being an entrepreneur is all about empowering yourself to create a 
business that's right for you. It's about facing up and rising to
 different challenges, overcoming the day-to-day demands, learning and
 planning for the future. In a new campaign e-commerce specialists Alibaba...

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Breaking the Pattern of Management

Gary Hamel is awesome. I remember doing strategic planning in the 90’s and reading Hamel’s guru stuff. Here he is 20 years later still blowing our minds and giving us new change management insights to play with. Gary Hamel: Reinventing the Technology of Human Accomplishment In the video above...

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5 Things You Can Do to Advance Your Career – Right Now

I’ve written a lot about how we’re leaving plentiful resources untapped by failing to adjust our business culture to invite more women into leadership roles and how we need to transform The System to take advantage of our talents. In recognition of the fact that a company with women in roughly 30%...

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