The surprising science of motivation by Dan Pink

15 Steps for Successful Strategic Alliances (and Marriages)

Wedding bells fill the Northern Hemisphere air for this season's happy couples. Among the newlyweds armed with pre-nuptial agreements are numerous companies starting strategic alliances, joint ventures, and focused collaboratives.

Unlike full-blown mergers, in which two really do become one because one company disappears, alliances and partnerships resemble modern marriages: separate careers, individual checkbooks, sometimes different names, but the need to work out the operational overlap around household and offspring.
For many years, I've helped major companies and other organizations extract value from their strategic alliances or watch them disappear. I've developed a 15-step guide to ensuring success as every stage of the relationship, from courtship to ongoing success (first reported in my book World Class).
So here is my business marriage counseling advice. Any resemblances to personal marriages or advice for June newlyweds are strictly intentional.
1. Be open to romance, but court carefully. At the beginning of new relationships, selective perceptions reinforce dreams, not dangers. Potential partners see in the other what they want to see, believing what they want to believe. Hopes, dreams, and visions should be balanced by reality checks.
2. Know yourself. Build your strengths. An organization seeking partners should identify assets that have value to partners and strengthen them. Networks of the weak do not survive. The best alliances join strength to strength.

Interesting change management principles by an Ad man.

 Not all problems need an engineering solution as Rory Sutherland states in this great Ted talk.

Leadership is a teamsport (and so is leadership development)

It's Time to Focus Executive Development on Real Business Issues by Trina Soske and Jay A. Conger

Over the last three decades, the resources and energy devoted to leadership development in corporations has skyrocketed. You would be hard pressed to find a major corporation that has not spent millions and millions of dollars on leadership initiatives for its executive and general management ranks. But has the investment in these efforts paid off, however the return is measured? Perhaps more important, if any one of us was a CEO evaluating the various levers to improve organizational performance, would we select leadership development versus the alternatives?

From our vantage point, the return on these investments has fallen seriously short of its potential. We also suspect that many CEOs would not turn to leadership development as the first choice lever to improve their organization's performance.

Moral Leadership as Shaped by Human Evolution by Paul R. Lawrence

All animals survive guided by two innate drives, or ultimate motives. These are the drive to acquire essential resources and offspring, and the drive to defend themselves, and their property. Humans, as a species, have evolved to require two additional drives that are emerging in some other mammals but fully expressed only in humans — the drive to bond in trusting, long-term relationships and the drive to comprehend — that is, to learn and create.

These two uniquely human drives have evolved by the Darwinian mechanisms of sex selection and social group selection, as well as the better-known mechanism of natural selection. (Sex selection occurs when mates are selected that enhance survival at the individual level; and group selection occurs to enhance survival at the group level.)

Little voices in your mind, do you recognise them?

Interesting post by Seth Godin. Makes you think...

Not just my head, but your customer's head and yes... yours.

Everyone has multiple conversations and priorities going on, competing agendas that come into play every time we make a choice about doing, buying, creating or interacting. I think these voices (and a few I missed) determine which career we choose, how good a job we do, where we shop and what we watch. Here are a few:

• The ego--seeks applause and recognition.
• The lizard--seeks safety, wants to fit in and not be rejected or criticized.
• The artist--wants to be generous, creative and make positive change with impact.
• The boxer--wants to poke and be poked, seeks revenge and ultimately victory.
• The zombie--wants to turn off and be entertained.
• The carpenter--seeks to do useful work, and finish it well.
• The philanthropist--wants to help, anonymously.
• The evangelist--wants to spread an idea.
• And the hunter--wants to successfully track and bring down a target.

There's a lot of overlap here, no doubt about it. Who's winning?

Source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/06/is-this-noise-inside-my-head-bothering-you.html 

"THE 8 CAREER LESSONS FROM JOHN TARBELL"

By Adi Ignatius, the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Business Review Group in his blog ‘A Dying Father’s Lessons on Life for His Teenaged Daughter‘. John’s lessons remind one that having a few simple guidelines can help yield a life of worthwhile accomplishments.
 

1. Seek out a mentor — possibly someone who was involved in your hiring process. Learn what to expect two or three years ahead and prepare for it.

2. Assume the behavior and habits of the people at the next level, and you will demonstrate that you can get there.

3. Whatever you do, be sure your involvement and actions’ ethics and results will look honorable and wise if they appear in the right hand column of the Wall Street Journal’s front page. They just might.

4. ”Try to find out what you’re good at, and have a passion for, and get someone to pay you for doing it” — advice I was given early on, and it has always proved to be the path for success and, just as importantly, happiness.

5. The first job is rarely anything but a start. Do the best you can, try to work with people you like and admire, and hope for the best. In your lifetime, you may change jobs, if not your career path, many times.

6. Avoid bosses who promise promotions and advancement but who take credit for your work. They won’t fulfill their promises to you.

7. Save for a rainy day and always be able to support yourself. You can lose everything in a flash, and scenarios of financial adversity do present themselves in life, even to the best prepared.

8. Avoid speculative ventures. If making money were easy, everyone would be wealthy. If someone can’t answer all your questions and ”what ifs,” there’s something wrong.”