KBSally

Success is getting what you want and finding happiness on a superficial level. Success is achieving goals--without having much purpose behind those goals. Success is creating the life you want--but leaving no legacy and making no difference in the grand scheme of things.

What I'm calling significance is a higher state of happiness and fulfillment beyond the merely successful. Attaining significance means becoming aware of your purpose and working hard to bring that out in the world. Taken from: The Art of Significance: Achieving the Level Beyond Success by Dan Clark, Portfolio/Penguin, 2013

My advice: be excellent occasionally. I doubt these words have been uttered by many head football coaches or four star generals. But study leaders who accomplish great things and you discover they seem to have a sixth sense that gives them permission to produce second-rate work on the way to doing a first-rate job. Sometimes excellence is the right choice, but sometimes it creates a paralyzing perfectionism that blocks progress and innovation. Taken from: "It's Okay to Suck (Sometimes)", a ChangeThis manifesto by Jack Breeden, author of Tipping Sacred Cows, Jossey-Bass, 2013

Takers tend to worry that revealing weaknesses will compromise their dominance and authority. Givers are much more comfortable expressing vulnerability: they're interested in helping others, not gaining power over them, so they're not afraid of exposing chinks in their armor. By making themselves vulnerable, givers can actually build prestige.

But there's a twist: expressing vulnerability is only effective if the audience receives other signals establishing the speaker's competence.

Taken from: Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success by Adam Grant, Viking Books, 2013

If you find yourself going over the top of your stress curve more than occasionally, you must discipline yourself to know when to quit. This is easy to say and hard to do, of course, especially when you're up against a deadline and think one more hour might make all the difference. It may, in the short term, but the long-term cost could be steep. Work hard at recognizing when you're at the point of diminishing returns, and take a break of whatever sort refreshes you. Taken from: The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, Updated & Expanded by Michael D. Watkins, Harvard Business Review Press, 2013

With all this talk about rebranding yourself and crafting a narrative to explain your transition, there might be a temptation to go all out. If you're in rebranding mode, why not become the person you've always wanted to be? Why not become the perfect person? I'm a fan of self-improvement...{b}ut it's important to caution that there are limits to reinvention. You can't simply concoct a new personality, and in our society, there's nothing worse than a phony. Your friends and colleagues will notice (and be appalled), and in our increasingly connected world, it's safe to say that others will hear about it, as well. Taken from: Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future by Dorie Clark, Harvard Business Review Press, 2013

So when we start thinking of our biggest fans as our friends, we're able to step back and look at them completely differently. And fandom isn't a one-way street. Just because you have fans doesn't mean you shouldn't be fans of theirs. Love, after all, is a circular transaction, and the cool thing about it is that love always makes its way back to those who give it. It works in relationships, and it works in business. Wait a minute. Strike that. It works in relationships. Period. Business would not be business without relationships. So the quickest path to growth is to shower the people--the customers--you love with love. It's really the only way to meaningful growth and success. You love them. They love you. They spread the love. The love comes back. And the whole thing just keeps going and going. Taken from: Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements by Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell, Geno Church, Spike Jones, John Wiley & Sons, 2009

It's unfortunate that the term "social networking" has been virtually appropriated (pun intended) by online social networking applications, because these tools are most powerful when they reveal existing or latent social structures that originate in the real world. The word "friend" is a noun, not a verb: our friends are the people we live and work with, not the strangers who offer to "friend" us online. Among those real-world friends, there are some who sit near the center of a complex social system, and due to their positions and personalities, they play a bigger role than average in how we choose to live our real-world lives. These are valuable people, both to their friends and to the marketers of brands. And, as we've shown, their unique value can be measured and used to the benefit of a company or a cause. Taken from: The Face-To-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace by Ed Keller and Brad Fay, Free Press, 2012

In the future, every company will be a connected company. Although they may be able to survive for some time, eventually every company must give customers what they want--or they will die. And connected customers are already demanding more than divided, industrial-age companies can deliver. This future is inevitable and it's only a matter of time.

Some leaders are rising to the challenge. They are organizing for adaptiveness by distributing control and building platforms to support autonomous teams. They are creating open environments of trust and connection with employees, partners, and customers. They are managing their companies as complex adaptive systems where continual learning and experimentation are part of the game. Taken from: The Connected Company by Dave Gray, O'Reilly, 2012

If you ever find yourself in the a tight, unanimous group, you must speak your mind, even if your team does not like it. Question tacit assumptions, even if you risk expulsion from the warm nest. And, if you lead a group, appoint someone as devil's advocate. She will not be the most popular member of the team, but she might be the most important. Taken from: The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli, HarperCollins, 2013

An important step in creating passionate, loyal customers is not just to focus on the features and benefits of your product or service but to make sure customers know that your business is about something bigger. By bigger, I mean something emotional that people can believe in. Features and benefits speak to the analytical side of what you are selling. Your values, what your company believes in, and how you are changing customers' lives for the better communicates the emotional side of what you are selling. Customers can be interested in what products do, but they can only bond with companies emotionally over what they believe in. Taken from: Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers Into Fanatics by Jackie Huba, Portfolio, 2013

After years of off-site meetings filled with ropes courses and trust-falling exercises, even the most open-minded executives have come to be suspicious of anything that looks or sounds touchy-feely. Combine that with the notion that corporate culture has been reduced to surface-level artifacts like funky office furniture, employee yoga classes, and bring-your-dog-to-work policies, and it's no wonder that so many leaders have become cynical, even condescending, toward most things related to organizational development.

This is a shame because organizational health is different. It's not at all touchy-feely, and it's far bigger and more important than mere culture. More than a side dish or a flavor enhancer for the real meat and potatoes of business, it is the very plate on which the meat and potatoes sit.

Taken from: The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni, Jossey-Bass, 2012

Leaders generally derail not because of a character flaw but rather because they respond immaturely to mounting stress and change. Leaders who are immature in their thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and habits, however, are capable of recovering from their unleaderlike behavior.... Taken from: Intelligent Leadership: What You Need To Know To Unlock Your Full Potential by John Mattone, AMACOM, 2013

Leaders would be better served to talk about what gets them up in the morning instead of what keeps them awake at night. Opportunity attracts and excites employees more than problems do. People want to follow leaders who have confidence in them and the opportunities that the future holds. People want to follow leaders who sleep soundly at night. Taken from: Leaders Open Doors: A Radically Simple Leadership Approach to Lift People, Profits, and Performance by Bill Treasurer, iUniverse Publishing, 2013

Empathetic managers tend to be adept at creating a more thorough understanding of situations and of individuals and groups who work for them. For the empathetic manager, this focus on understanding situations and others supersedes an interest in being understood, or in having the manager's own views understood by others. Listening skills are at the core of empathy. Effective managers listen, and they prioritize listening. They remove the clutter in their mind and provide their staff with the emotional presence and "psychological air" to show that they value what they are hearing.... Taken from: 9 Powerful Practices of Really Great Bosses by Stephen E. Kohn and Vincent D. O'Connell, CareerPress, 2013

The very best time in your work life is when you will be getting along the best with your boss. The very worst time in your work life is when you are having difficulties or problems with your boss. Your job as a manager is to make sure that you are getting along well with all of your employees and they are all getting along well with you. Taken from: Motivation by Brian Tracy, Amacom, 2013

The Winner's ability to adapt to changing circumstances is a defining feature of the brain itself. Your brain is always changing. Winners are strategic in taking advantage of this fact, fine-tuning their brain for continued success.

The brain has an amazing power to reshape itself, even well into old age. Winners take control over their brain's Adaptability. Certain techniques such as meditation, yoga, and cognitive behavior psychology are proven to have positive effects on how the brain adapts.

Taken from: The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success by Jeff Brown and Mark Fenske, Da Capo Press, 2010

Most tactics, even messaging, degrade over time. This erosion is the result of environmental changes. Customers need change. Competitors develop new products and services that better solve the problem you're trying to solve. And effective tactics are copied by your competitors. Just ask the leaders at Wal-Mart. Their innovations in logistics, turnover ratios, and vendor negotiations have been copied and over time have made them less effective. Target now does that stuff, too. Wal-Mart has to continue to develop new tactics, new ways of lowering its cost structure, in order to effectively solve its low-price positioning problem. It never ends. Evolution is a fluid concept, not a static one. Taken from: Plan B: How to Hatch a Second Plan That's Always Better Than Your First by David Kord Murray, Free Press, 2011

Sometimes a setback provides an organization with the kick in the pants that it needs to move from complacency to action. The key is to figure out the right actions to take and incorporate them into your plans going forward. Your job as brand steward is to make sure that your organization does not follow its natural temptation to simply respond, fix, and move on. Taken from: Brand Resilience: Managing Risk and Recovery in a High-Speed World by Jonathan R. Copulsky, Palgrave Macmillian, 2011

An athlete with the staying power and stamina to run a hundred-mile race and an entrepreneur who spends a decade navigating the up-and-down journey of business-building have a lot in common.

A key here is the ability to see that a larger goal makes the short-term sacrifice worth it. Guts to Endure has less to do with eliminating fear than it does with maintaining perspective on expectations.

Taken from: Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck: What It Takes to Be an Entrepreneur and Build a Great Business by Anthony K. Tjan, Richard J. Harrington, Tsun-Yan Hsieh, Harvard Business Review Press, 2012

To improve your resilience is to enhance your ability to resist being pushed from your preferred valley, while expanding the range of alternatives that you can embrace if you need to. This is what resilience researchers call preserving adaptive capacity—the ability to adapt to changed circumstances while fulfilling one’s core purpose—and it’s an essential skill in an age of unforeseeable disruption and volatility. Taken from: Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back by Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy, Free Press, 2012

Simply stated, women have become the emerging market. And that brings some new players to the table. As recently as 2005, if someone had asked me what I thought would be the fastest, most effective way to advance women and girls globally, I would have said it was for governments to turn their rhetoric on these issues into measurable action. Of course, government action is still sorely needed, yet I've come to understand that the private sector can be just as powerful. When corporations enter the ring, aligning their philanthropic endeavors with their core business strategies, they can change the game for women in the communities where they operate. Companies have the incentive and the reach to inspire a culture shift that positively impacts the lives and livelihoods of women and their families, and that sends a powerful message to governments and citizens about the value of women. Taken from: Vital Voices: The Power of Women Leading Change Around the World by Alyse Nelson, 2012, Jossey-Bass

Men (TEND TO) approach & deal with the world in a fundamentally Linear way. Few twists. Few turns. Little reflection. (Get the facts. Act. Move on. Let the chips fall where they may.)

Women (TEND TO) see bends and twists and reversals in every path that involves the interplay of humans. Women appreciate & live for those bends and switchbacks; such convolutions are the essence of the human experience on earth--men are appalled by, or at least dismissive of, the very same things, assessing them as "soft."
Taken from: The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE by Tom Peters, HarperBusiness, 2010

Men and women often have different styles of noticing; not always, but often enough to make a distinction. For example, researchers find that men tend to focus deeply and narrowly on a single perception or task, while women’s attention is simultaneously engaged by different things. As a result, women’s style of noticing can be described as broad-spectrum. Taken from: "The Female Vision: Defining Women's Strategic Strengths," a ChangeThis manifesto by Sally Helgesen and Julie Johnson, based on their book, The Female Vision: Women's Real Power at Work, Berrett-Kohler, 2010

At the same time, I was also motivated by my involvement in the women's movement to seek understanding of the fate of women as well as men in organizations. I was disappointed by a reductionist thrust in one intellectual wing of the movement which often fell back on "women are different" arguments. In one version, it was deemed important that women reach more organizational and political leadership posts because society would thereby be humanized. This concerned me, because my evolving theory held that as long as organizations remained the same, merely replacing men with women would not alone make a difference. Taken from: _Men and Women of the Corporation: New Edition by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Basic Books, 1993

This shift toward the feminine does not portend ‘the end of men.’ But it does suggest a natural balancing that vastly increases the capacity of both men and women to solve problems and create a good life. Taken from: The Athena Doctrine: How Women (And the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future by John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio, Jossey-Bass, 2013