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TEAMWORK: Reflecting Off Each Other

Posted on December 27, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to strengthen your focus on teamwork. Reading time: 3:23

Look closely at a single feather of a peacock’s tail and you’ll see a dull brown color. But, collectively, those dull colored individual feathers display a spectacular array of colors. a peacock extraOut of many individually lifeless feathers comes collectively one brilliant blast of beauty.

Physicists call this phenomenon “Diffraction.” The colorful plume blossoms like a bouquet of flowers from the way light is diffracted from and through each of the other dull brown feathers.

Leaders call this phenomenon – the power of teamwork- where the power of many strengthens the scope and significance of an individual entity. Out of many, one. E pluribus Unum.

No wonder the most effective leaders know how to fan the peacock’s plume—COLLECTIVELY- rather than simply focus on managing each feather individually. After all, an ant weighs one ten-thousandth of an ounce yet collectively all ants on earth weigh more than all the humans on earth. Continue reading →

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Filling Up Your Fool Tank

Posted on December 23, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to clarify your decision-making skill. Reading time: 2:58.

The chief executive officer (CEO) nodded approvingly as her strategic policy team reviewed the highlights of their careful research.

Their decision-making process —— imbued in detailed documentation and sprinkled with broad expertise and experience —- was right on target, especially after six months of very detailed review and a meaningful consensus on the situation that seemed to counter all objections. All agreed including the CEO: this was the direction to go.

But then the CEO surprised everyone. She abruptly adjourned the meeting “to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain even more understanding of what this decision is all about.”

Indeed, the CEO reaffirmed that the most effective leaders regularly pump high performance “fool” into their decision-making tanks: The CEO understood her responsibility to guard against the overwhelming power of group-think, citing the notion that:

” When everyone thinks alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”

And that CEO saw first hand what psychologist William James once said, “What the whole community comes to believe grasps the individual as in a vise.”

No wonder the most effective leaders break out of that vise-like grip. They realize the significance in first filling up their Fool Tank, lest their new path of decision-making run out of gas.

Continue reading →

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Evaluating your OPERA-tions Part II

Posted on December 20, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help broaden your problem-solving perspective. Reading time: 3:56.

Are you a special agent –an operative-in your organization? The most effective business leaders think of themselves as operatives –a.k.a. Opera-tives- with a well-honed affinity for the power of the opera. With their operative power, they more productively confront adversaries and solve problems. Sometimes against overwhelming odds.

Madam Butterfly

Consider these business lessons from the world of the opera:

Is conformity undermining your business success? Then think like Richard Wagner who gave his customers something different. He opened his opera Tannhauser with a ballet that surprised the audience that had become accustomed to a ballet in Act II.

  • Are you pigeon-holing some talented people in your company just because they’re not from the “right background”? Then think of Italian-born Jean Baptiste Lully and German-born Giacomo Meyerbeer. They were not from what people said was “the right French background” yet they became two of France’s most important opera composers. Continue reading →

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Evaluating Your OPERA-tions : Part I

Posted on December 18, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you strengthen your decision-making. Reading time: 2:48.

The newly-appointed division president came prepared for his first formal meeting with his boss, the chairman of the multi-billion company.

Scene from Phantom of the Opera

But the chairman seemed more interested in talking about the opera. Whoa there!

What does an appreciation of the opera have to do with leading a multi-billion company ? Everything.

After all , the word “opera” means work in Italian.

And the production of an opera requires all the facets of corporate work including, people, planning and production.

As Fred Plitkin writes in his book Opera 101: “Opera-going at its best is about the rekindling of the soul, about having an open window into what makes us human.”

Husbanding that humanity — or at least harboring that humanity with a greater sense of feeling — is a key leadership skill. Continue reading →

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CYA : Check Your Assumptions

Posted on December 14, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you gain a new perspective problem-solving. Reading time: 2:17.

You’ll know you successfully crossed the threshold from manager to leader when you rely more on your insight than on what’s in sight. Effective leaders check their assumptions. They practice CYA.

Modern day exterior elevator at Lloyds in London.

That’s what happened when hotel guests complained about the lack of elevators. But the hotel owner balked at the prospect of shutting down the only elevator in the building for at least a week to bore the additional elevator shaft in the building.

The hotel owner is concerned: in solving the problem of too few elevators he will have to make the crowding problem even worse for a short time. The owner had seen this movie before.

Then he flashed his CYA. He checked his assumptions when a janitor offered a different perspective.

The janitor, sweeping near the elevator banks, overhears the architect and the hotel owner planning to add the elevator shaft inside the building.

Continue reading →

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Leading With The Most Powerful Drug

Posted on December 11, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to enhance your ability to communicate effectively. Reading time: 3:04

What if you had a powerful drug that you could dispense virtually at will that could stimulate productivity and increase profitability in your company or organization? And what if this powerful drug was free, legal and available over the counter?

You do. And it is.

The spoken word is the “the most powerful drug used by mankind,” observes author and poet Rudyard Kipling.

Indeed the most effective leaders carefully prescribe, dose and deliver their drugs (words) of choice knowing how quickly they can react in a human body to either sedate or educate; inflame or inform; frighten or enlighten.

But sometimes –words like drugs- can have egregious side effects, especially if not administered with the precise emphasis and timing.

Consider the routine conversation over lunch, when the French lady was asked by her English speaking friends what she was looking forward to in the years ahead. The French woman responded without any hesitation: “A penis” After everyone blushed, a friend said, “Oh you mean happiness.” ” Yes,” she nodded “A penis.”

Continue reading →

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All Machines Come With a MANual

Posted on December 6, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to focus on the the operator rather than simply on the operation. Reading time: 2:09.

Consider the fictional chief executive officer who purchased a machine that could virtually run every job in his factory. Thousands of jobs were eliminated in a salute to efficiency where “two machines can replace 114 workers.”

Finally, when the chief engineer loses his job to the machine, he confronts the CEO:

“They should have stopped you a year ago.

“Somebody should have held you down and put a bit in your head and poured in some reminders that men have to eat and work!

“And you can’t put them out to pasture. I’m a man—and that makes me better than that hunk of metal. Betttterrrr!!!!!”

That Twilight Zone episode on television in the 1960s still hits a nerve of every entrepreneur trying to balance people issues and bottom-line realities.

Continue reading →

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