Emotional Intelligence and Human Capital

It’s easy for leaders to fall into the trap of thinking they need to have the answer to every problem or situation that arises. After all, that’s in a leader’s job description, right? 

Most entrepreneurs don't realize the art of storytelling can help you succeed in the start-up world.
Storytelling is a timeless human tradition. Before the written word, people would memorize elaborate stories full of morals that shaped cultures for generations. 

At the South by Southwest Interactive conference earlier this month, I went to a fun panel called “Moms vs. Management: Parents Make Awesome Managers,” featuring top managers/parents from Google, Pixar, SAP and Hot Studio, a design firm.

 
Plenty of leaders seek to boost their performance by becoming stronger, more agile, more forceful. Matthew E. May has a whole different strategy.

Most leaders seek to boost their performance by becoming more: more decisive, more communicative, more masterful of complexity. Matthew E. May prefers the opposite approach. A former consultant for Toyota, May sums up much of what he learned there about the art of simplification in the word elegance, which he applied to products, processes, and problem solving in his 2009 book, In Pursuit of Elegance. (A new book, The Laws of Subtraction, will be published this fall.) In a recent conversation with editor-at-large Leigh Buchanan, May discussed how elegance applies to leadership.

This interview with Susan Credle, chief creative officer of Leo Burnett USA, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

 
Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.
Marshall McLuhan
In the spirit of Marshall McLuhan, I took a look at this year’s Oscar nominees for any education that we might glean from the entertainment. (Spoiler alert: some of the comments below may shed light on the event outcome of the narrative of the films being discussed. If you prefer to see the film first, read this article later.)

Anyone? Anyone? A new survey suggests the allure of C-suite positions has washed away. What's cool in 2012? You guessed it: entrepreneurship.

Survey a decent number of people and at least a few of them will probably say most anything—even the utterly outrageous. After all, nearly 20 percent of Americans tell pollsters that the sun revolves around the earth and about an equal percentage admit to  believing in witches. So to call up thousands of people and find not a single one willing to agree to a proposition is pretty unusual. But one poll recently managed it.

BlackBerry Maker Seeks to Regain Footing in U.S.; Shares Down 7%

• Research In Motion Ltd.'s new chief executive said Monday he won't divide the company into parts and is confident in its strategic path, but will be open to licensing partnership offers as they come along.

Daniel Lewis*, an investor at a Venezuelan equity firm, was in charge of acquiring two textile mills in South America. One was in Maracay, Venezuela and the other in Colonia, Uruguay. The Uruguayan mill's higher productivity persuaded Daniel to invite 40 Uruguayan workers to move with their families to Maracay, to improve output there. The initiative did not work out as expected. The Uruguayans resented the cold shoulder received from the Venezuelans, bickering was rampant, and productivity remained low. Before sending the Uruguayans back to Colonia, Daniel made a last ditch effort: he asked that the Uruguayans be fully entrusted with the denim unit at Maracay. This worked wonders. Left to themselves, the Uruguayan team increased productivity, and this awoke healthy competitiveness from the Venezuelans, whose productivity rose as well.

 
Organizations invest billions annually on a success curriculum known as "leadership development," which ends up leaving so much on the table. Training and development programs almost universally focus factory-like on inputs and outputs — absorb curriculum, check a box; learn a skill, advance a rung; submit to assessment, fix a problem. Likewise, they leave too many people behind with an elite selection process that fast-tracks "hi-pos" and essentially discards the rest. And they leave most people cold with flavor of the month remedies, off sites, immersions, and excursions — which produce little more than a grim legacy of fat binders gathering dust on shelves.
What if, instead of stuffing people with curricula, models, and competencies, we focused on deepening their sense of purpose, expanding their capability to navigate difficulty and complexity, and enriching their emotional resilience?

 
A new VP rides into town for the holidays!
This past week in New York, as in other cities, there were Christmas parties all over town.
In this case, the department got together with drinks, food and holiday festivities. It was a festive occasion with everyone engaged and having a heck of a time. The new VP walks into the room and works it masterfully. He had conversation for everyone; not just fake small talk, but actual conversation with each person about their work and who they were.

 
What you don’t do can hurt you. Missed opportunities lead to later regrets. Nokia could have innovated its way to dominance in smartphones. The SEC could have acted on early whistle-blower tips about Bernard Madoff’s scam. Yahoo could have sold to Microsoft. But they didn’t.
Doing nothing seems easy. It’s often an invisible mistake—a sin of omission rather than commission. To act requires courage. To innovate requires even more courage. Today, courage seems in short supply. What are leaders waiting for? Without bold action and innovation, how can troubled economies escape decline?
Courage makes change possible.