Results tagged “leadership development” from KM Edge: Where the best in Knowledge Management come together

Processes are useful mechanisms for focusing attention on important and complex situations involving chains of activity:

• They help leaders and teams manage attention by offering a deliberate sequence of key steps in an appropriate order to reduce failure.
• They embody key lessons from the past in an accessible format.
• They reduce the need to reinvent the obvious with new groups and new situations.

While we probably believe that we understand what processes do for us, do we understand the necessary psychology of leadership required to make this happen?

"Process leadership" is the ability that great leaders have to manage the day-to-day tactics of getting things done while putting those tactics and tasks within larger, strategic processes that ensure that the right stuff gets done in the right way, at the right time, through adherence to an overarching, logical approach.

The first wave of baby boomers is beginning to retire, leaving a leadership void that many organizations are not prepared for. In addition, the next large demographic groups ready to assume leadership positions (particularly Generation Y, or the Millennials) are vastly different from their predecessors. It is vital that companies prepare future leaders with this changing generational paradigm in mind.

If these issues are something your organization is concerned about, join us this Thursday, April 16, at 10:30 a.m. central time for APQC's next knowledge management community call. During the one-hour call, guest facilitator Wendy Johnson will discuss the characteristics of Generation Y, strategies to help current leaders communicate with this unique group, and the best ways to prepare younger workers for their transition to the leadership ranks. Wendy is the CEO of Center for Courageous Enterprise, a nonprofit organization that provides leadership development coaching and consulting for individuals and organizations.

I subscribe to Harvard Business Review (no, I don't have time to read all the articles). I have found some articles particularly useful and insightful, recommending them to protégés repeatedly, thus this list. The articles are available from the HBR Web site for about $7 each. I find it particularly useful to recommend these articles to protégés who do not have as much time to read as I do or cannot read as fast. I have organized the articles on this list along five broad themes.

1. Learning organizations
2. Leadership-specific skills
3. Challenges of being a chief executive officer
4. Decision making
5. Organizational insight

The link to my Amazon listmainia version of this is here.  (I will do a future post on the really cool tool I used to create the link, Tiny url). I have given very short descriptions of the articles in the list below. Longer descriptions are provided on the amazon.com version of the list.

I recently provided a list of books that have had a big impact on my development and performance for one of my protégés.  I have many other books that I recommend on Amazon.com, but I am often asked for a list fewer than 50, so here it is.  These fall into the category of "if you are only going to read one book in a specific category, read this one"--although I recommend reading more than one on topics like leadership and high reliability.