Dr. Al Vicere had an outstanding webinar last week. And the dialogue with Howard Morgan was fascinating. (We’re planning to post some of those questions and answers in weeks to come.)
If you missed this valuable event, or would like to listen to it again, you can still register for a streaming feed of the recording.
Al’s presentation began with a discussion of the incredible amount of societal change and economic pressure we’re encountering today. Socially, we’ve entered an era of frugality. Households, governments, and organizations are spending less. The US share of GDP is going to fall in the future. All of this has tremendous implications for business.
At most organizations, leaders are tightening the belts, focusing on efficiency, trying to stabilize during terrible conditions, and also, preparing for the upswing to come.
For leaders, it can be incredibly difficult to straddle those two directions at once. A theme emerged, one that would be emphasized over the next 90 minutes.
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Dr. Albert Vicere
In advance of Al Vicere’s webinar, Align Your Leadership, Strategy and Culture: Critical Skills in an Economic Environment of Dramatic Change, we have several resources to make available.
First, is the pdf of the event slides he wants you to have. Al encourages you to preview the presentation slides and think about your own organization in light of the categories listed on slides numbered 28, 32, and 36. In order to participate fully, please bring those comments and observations to the discussion. Please note that the actual event sides he intends to use will differ slightly from these as Al has a few ideas he does not want attendees to know of in advance.
Second, is the promised white paper entitled The Real Legacy of Leadership: Aligning Rhetoric to Reality.
Third, is another white paper; this one entitled Surviving the Terrible Two(thousand)s: A Participant’s Guide.
Remember, you may forward this message to anyone who intends to join you for the event and make as many copies of the documents as will be of use to you.
As a housekeeping matter, you’ll want to connect your computer and phone line 15 minutes in advance. Please refer to your previously circulated instructions or call 800-228-6430 or 715-832-8143 to connect.
Finally, be sure to check back here after the event for any follow up resources or other messages from Al. You may use the comment section below to pose questions before the live event or to follow up after the event. We’ll invite Al to respond to any comments going forward.
With regards,
Unbound Ideas
A few years back, I wrote about leadership and the networked economy. The changes of the past year are accelerating the emergence of the networked economy, and increasing the urgency for the leadership competencies I described in that article.
Two major inflection points have driven the emergence of the networked economy: globalization and the information technology explosion. Together these forces have served as catalysts for the ongoing reconfiguration and restructuring of both industries and organizations worldwide.
As we rethink the essence of leadership going forward, here are seven imperatives to consider:
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Jim Collins has had an incredible track-record for timely books. Actually, “Built to Last,” published in 1997, built its popularity relatively slowly, but it reflected a growing desire in business leaders to understand the ingredients of long-term organizational success. The comparisons of visionary and more stagnant or failed enterprises became a hallmark study method. It also opened Collins up for criticism, since it’s easy to look back at “visionary” companies that failed years down the line and suspect the methodology Collins ascribed to their success.
“Good to Great” published in 2001 was an “instant classic” and captured a desire to understand “leadership” in the context of visionary organizations. Collins’ research pointed him to traits like humility, focus, and authenticity — ideas that weren’t earth-shattering but were heard very clearly in the wake of 9/11 and the recession.
Since it takes Collins a long time to produce each book no one can accuse him of hopping on the hot topic. But his latest, “How the Mighty Fall” is brutally timely in examining how organizations fall off the rails and fail.
Our timing isn’t bad either. Dr. Al Vicere’s webinar on June 17 will discuss this very topic in detail. His in-depth research into leadership rhetoric vs. the reality of organizational strategy, culture and operations deconstructs what’s wrong with many organizations. Particularly now, Dr. Vicere finds that leaders are extolling the need for innovation and customer service while understandably cutting costs, slashing workforce, and implicitly encouraging people to keep their head’s down and their eye on the immediate ball. Not exactly a recipe for innovation and breakthrough change.
Employees understand this, according to Vicere’s extensive surveys. Most see their organizations as follower-perfectors, not leading innovators, and they see the purpose of their job as doing more with less.
We’re not in a cyclical downturn but a phase of real institutional change that will see many mighty organizations disappear. But in this kind of environment there is also tremendous opportunity – at large organizations and start-ups.
Apple is about to sell its one billionth “app“, an amazing pace of development for a marketplace that just got established 8 or 9 months ago. In contrast, it took a couple years to sell a million songs on iTunes. A lot of entrepreneurs are toiling in basements and coffee shops to make those kinds of numbers happen.
Ning has now generated 1 million social networking sites, evidence that virtual 
networking is becoming a way-of-life. When social networking becomes a way-of-work we’ll see projects, teams, and organizations run differently.
Now expert advice service is becoming increasingly virtual, too. The question will become – how do you determine quality and how will those services be delivered in ways that solve our work and life frustrations?
