leadership - Page number 2

Listen to our discussion with Charlene Li, author of New York Times best seller Open Leadership, for the latest in our Open Your World webcast series. » Read more

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Two years ago I posted a short post that picked up from an HBR article on leadership flaws. I posed the question if Enterprise 2.0 initiatives can thrive in environments where toxic leadership reigns. My first reaction was no, and then I thought about ways to get to yes.

One of the flaws of flawed leadership is the lack of » Read more

Leadership in most organizations is top-down. The CEO tells the VP, who tells the director, who tells the manager, who instructs his employee to do work. Culturally most people are conditioned to think that's expected. But open source communities rarely work that way, and that's one of the oddities people discover upon getting involved in open source--and often they need a period of acclimation to get used to it. It’s also certainly one of the strengths of open source communities, as well as one of the least understood functions, even among those in communities of practice. » Read more

When I hear people in the technology industry talk about the benefits of open source software, one of things they mention often is their belief that open source software “gets better faster” than traditional software (David Wheeler has done a nice job collecting many of the proof points around the benefits of open source software here). » Read more

20th century companies defined success by their hard assets. In contrast, 21st century businesses are based around information and ideas. In this video, Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO of Red Hat, explores how we add value in today's contemporary business, and, by extension, as a society.

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My experience as a manager – and in particular, as the leader of a company – has been shaped by two quotes that have helped frame my thinking about that role. One is from Harold Geneen, who oversaw the growth of ITT into the first modern conglomerate:

"The skill of management is achieving your objectives through the efforts of others."

This view of management suggests the classic manager, somebody who figures out » Read more

Over the years, I’ve picked up an unhealthy understanding of the language of business. Years of sitting in big corporate meetings will do that to you, unfortunately.

Here at New Kind, my business partners will still call me out for talking about “action items,” saying something is in our “wheelhouse,” or jumping straight to the “net-net.” » Read more

In the years ahead, any leader who hopes to have followers will need to carefully examine the foundations of their own authority. Why? Because we live in a world where the effectiveness of positional power is rapidly diminishing—at least outside of prisons and elementary schools.

Thanks to Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, FEMA, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae, et al, the generation now joining the workforce has » Read more

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