What have Octopuses got to do with Leadership?
Well, you gotta think outside the box occasionally right? I got the idea from the Economist that recently published an article on how octopuses think. Apparently they don’t really have a central brain like we humans. Instead their neurons are dispersed around their body, especially in their tentacles. So actually they think with their tentacles not with […]
Gluten-Free Diets Kill! A Toxic Leadership Insight
Yep, it’s true. If you don’t believe me read the January 2015 issue of Consumer Reports here. Before we get to the killing part, Consumer Reports points out that their research shows that gluten-free foods usually have a lot more fat, sugar and calories than gluten-ful foods. And of course, they are way more expensive. But […]
Protocol versus Passion – EBOLA and the Doctors Without Borders Leadership Model
The EBOLA crisis is giving us a pointed lesson about leadership. On the one hand there’s a rules-based approach to addressing the crisis adopted by government and the US medical bureaucracy. On the other there’s the passion-based approach championed by the NGOs and particularly Doctors without Borders (donate to this great organization here). The protocol […]
The Rosetta Probe and the New Era of Spacefarer Leadership
I guess you’ve been seeing all the news about the Rosetta probe that has now just rendezvoused with the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. To do that it had to travel 4 billion miles over a period of 10 years, and make several gravity-assisted flybys of several planets in an incredibly convoluted series of space maneuvers. What’s the odds […]
The Heartbleed Bug: Does Malware Provide a New Backdoor to Measuring Leadership Effectiveness?
I’ve got a personal interest in this post. My son will start at university in August and will study cybersecurity (Stevens Institute of Technology, glad you asked). So that’s getting a lot of my attention right now. Heartbleed just added yet more. Seems like you can’t read the news these days without reading about yet […]
Did You Inherit Your Management Style From Your Parents? The Epigenetics of Leadership
Ok so is this a trick question? How you inherit things was fully worked out by Darwin right? It’s all about natural selection and that takes many generations. And we all know that Lamarck, who said that you could inherit characteristics acquired by your parents only in their own lifetimes (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_of_acquired_characteristics) was absolutely wrong, right […]
Are You Addicted to Leadership?
Is it possible that many, even most leaders, are addicted to leadership? That leadership is, or can be, a pathology for many of us? No, I am not talking about leadership as in power; that people become addicted to the power of leadership, although that can be a (small) part of the issue. I am […]
Unlock your Inner Neanderthal to Become a More Caring Leader
Did you see the latest news about Neanderthals? The bit about at least 20% of human DNA is from Neanderthals? It seems to me that this raises a lot of questions. Like what this tells us about “modern” humans. Maybe there is something really insightful we can glean from this. You know about the Neanderthals right? […]
How do Exoplanet Leaders Create Highly Sustainable Worlds? The 9 Leadership Principles of Really Prescient Aliens
So scientists are now finding a staggering number of exoplanets. My guess is that, eventually, we are going to find out that they harbor, or have harbored, an uncountable number of alien civilizations. I am also guessing that, of this huge number of alien civilizations, the vast majority will have, like us, destroyed or are […]
Does Your Leader Have Substance – or Just Style?
How do you distinguish between leadership style and substance? First-time leaders usually don’t understand how closely they are being watched and that even the smallest signals count. That means insubstantial styles and actions also. See my article in Warren Bennis’ Leadership Excellence