Career Advice Management and Leadership
"orglearn" was set up as a resource center concerned with management, leadership and the issues we need to consider in both these roles. The regular blog updates are to provide users with 'new' ideas to grow knowledge over time. The site and others linked were aimed to point you to information on management best practice, work issues, careers & succes, job search issues and to help with our best personal management balance sheet, the all important... "resume". The site contains a resume template / resume form with great examples of positive statements that visitors can edit and use.
Wisdom...
According to Peter Drucker... "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things".
From Jack Welch's perspective mangers need to deal with two fundamental issues and he says... 'You can't grow long-term if you can't eat short-term. Anybody can manage short. Anybody can manage long. Balancing those two things is what [effective] management is'.
In our quest to be an outstanding managers, or more importantly perhaps effective leaders, the following Zig Ziglar advice is pertinent... "Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission". I agree however first we need a powerful vision.
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The Cornerstone of Success... Why we need a strong VISION of the future!
Lewis Carroll’s, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland gives insights into why a vision is so important. In the story when Alice asks the Cheshire Cat “Would you tell me please, which way I ought to walk from here”… the Cat’s response is: ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to go (end up)’… ‘I don’t much care where’… ‘then it doesn’t matter which way you walk’… etc. Vision (which she did not possess) sets our direction.
The Little Oxford Dictionary I have defines Vision as “…foresight, good judgement in planning…”
Vision statements help us define why we are here in terms of where we want to be in the future.
A vision is perhaps… “a statement of intent” according to the Drucker Foundation’s book “The Organization of the Future” (page 351)
In the Power of Vision video – futurist Joel Barker offers ‘Visions need to be developed by leaders (you need on a personal level be your own leader) and must be shared with the team (family and friends) & the team must support it’. ‘Sharing leads to agreement on direction’. ‘Writing a vision statement is not enough; it must be taken in and acted upon’. ‘Visions must be positive challenging and worth the effort’ and “Vision is never expressed in financial numbers”.
In the book on vision, “The North Bound Train” by Karl Albrecht on page 150 he advises: good visions need to contain “a focussed concept” or a “value creation premise that people can actually picture as existing”, “a sense of noble purpose” or “something really worth doing” (he means I believe a worthwhile future state of existence) and finally “a plausible chance of success” or “something people can realistically believe to be possible”.
Possibly one of the most famous vision statements from history is that of President Kennedy who in 1960 declared, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth."
I personally like the statement of Thomas Edison (possibly influenced by his friend Henry Ford)… ‘Cheap electric light for everyone’
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One of the biggest communication errors I constantly encounter is the using of industry buzzwords, jargon and acronyms. This practice can and usually does, create annoyance, at best and misunderstandings at its worst. My advice is work hard to get the fuzz out of your communication style. Oh and often the lister will just see you as someone who is trying to show off.
