Jossey-Bass on Leadership

Bill George: "Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis"

This Wednesday, December 2, 2009, Bill George, author of Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis will be speaking at the Commonwealth club in San Francisco.  Bill will offer concrete, field tested-advice on handling the effects of the economic crisis. To register for this event, click here. 

BusinessWeek reviews Behind the Cloud

Steve Hamn from BusinessWeek reviews Behind the Cloud by Marc Benioff:

The King of the Cloud

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff's book is a fun, user-friendly guide for entrepreneurs and spectators

The Good: A user-friendly how-we-did-it account, as well as a how-to guide for entrepreneurs.

The Bad: Silicon Valley cognoscenti may find much that's familiar.

The Bottom Line: Peppered with ideas and well worth reading. 

Read the entire review here.

Social Media at Work Event

The authors of Social Media at Work is hosting a webinar: Technologies for Communicating, Collaborating, and Correcting on December 4, 2009.

"The session will present applied insights and practical advice that can help OD professionals leverage the power of social technologies to improve business results, and assist leaders to build high performance organizations that harness the energy and passion of employees. Attendees will engage in interactive reflective learning that collectively yields new insights about the value of social networking within OD, and solutions that can inform current and future practice."

To register for this event, click here.

Awesomely Simple video

Awesomely Simple Overview from John Spence on Vimeo.

Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff sees cloudy future

 

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a review on Marc Benioff's new book, Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized the Industry.

The piece also includes an interview with Marc in which he talks about how marketing was the key to Salesforce.com's success and what MC Hammer, Neil Young, and Billy Graham has taught him about business.

Check out the article here. 

What are the Most Important Leadership Skills? By John Spence

From John Spence's blog:

This morning I was reading a fantastic article on The Practice of Leadership website which highlighted  some new research from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), one of the most respected leadership development organizations in the world. The folks at CCL surveyed 2,200 leaders from 15 organizations, in three countries between 2006 and 2008 produced some extremely interesting findings. The research project was designed to answer the following three questions: 

   1. What leadership skills and perspectives are critical for success now and in the future?
   2. How strong are current leaders in these critical skills and perspectives?
   3. How aligned is today’s leadership strength with what will be the most important skills and perspectives in the future?
 
The findings from this research project identified the following seven competencies as most critical for success, now and in the future:

Leading people: directing and motivating people.

Strategic planning: translating vision into realistic business strategies, including long-term objectives.

Managing change: using effective strategies to facilitate organizational change.

Inspiring commitment: recognizing and rewarding employees’ achievements.

Resourcefulness: working effectively with top management.

Doing whatever it takes: persevering under adverse conditions.

Being a quick learner: quickly learning new technical or business knowledge.

The interesting thing to note from the CCL research is that when these seven competencies were compared with a list of the current top ten leadership skills present in most companies today… “resourcefulness” was the only skill that appeared on both lists! All the other leadership skills rated as important for success in the new CCL study are not skills that leaders have effectively mastered today.

Read the rest of the entry here.

John Spence is a highly sought after executive educator, business consultant, and professional speaker, having presented workshops, speeches, consulting, and executive coaching to more than 300 organizations worldwide. He is the author of Awesomely Simple and he has been a guest lecturer at over 90 colleges and universities across the United States.

Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry

Congratulations to Marc Benioff! His new book, Behind the Cloud, made it to  #5 on the Wall Street Journal's Best-selling Business Book list.

In this book, Marc Benioff, the visionary founder, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, tells how he and his team created and used new business, technology, and philanthropic models tailored to this time of extraordinary change. Showing how salesforce.com not only survived the dotcom implosion of 2001, but went on to define itself as the leader of the cloud computing revolution and spark a $46-billion dollar industry, Marc's story will help business leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, innovate better, and grow faster in any economic climate.

Marc shares the strategies that have inspired employees, turned customers into evangelists, leveraged an ecosystem of partners, and allowed innovation to flourish.

The 10,226.94-Point Dow Doesn't Matter, Either by Bill George

Here's an interesting piece from Bill George's blog:

Last month the Dow hit 10,000 for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis.  That same day I wrote a blog cautioning those who celebrated the number as a sign of post-recession resurgence.

Last Friday the Department of Labor released its latest report.  The news is decidedly grim.  Despite a climbing Dow and increased investor confidence, unemployment currently hovers at 10.2% (17.5%+ if you consider underemployed workers).

Last night the Dow rallied again to close at 10,226.94, its highest finish since Oct. 3, 2008.  Meanwhile, the predicament of the American worker remains the same.  By year’s end, 9.36 million men and women will be out of a job.  The Dow’s showing, though encouraging, doesn’t reflect the struggle to survive on Main Street.  In fact, there is an unfortunate inverse relationship emerging: as the Dow increases, the number of jobs decreases.  As financial markets improve, the real economy’s condition worsens.

It is not that the Dow increase doesn’t reflect any improvement – it’s a positive sign that investor confidence is on the rise.  But to tout it as the first charge of an 18-year bull market (as pundits are doing in likening our situation to the 1983 market upswing) is irresponsible and misleading.