A few weeks ago, I had the honor of having diner with Harry Kraemer, a former CEO for Baxter international, a 40,000-employee company and currently professor of management at the Kellogg business school. Harry Kraemer shared a little secret: his annual 3-day "retreat" that helps him free his mind and take time off to think about his career or life in general.
Interestingly enough, a few weeks earlier, I had come across a study showing that great leaders share a common pattern that help them be more successful; they set a daily-ritual that helps them step back from the daily frenzy and reflect on how they can be more effective.
Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard University, and one of the most quoted leadership experts, wrote in his book “Leading minds: an anatomy of leadership” that one of the factors crucial to the practice of effective leadership is the control of a certain rhythm of life: “it is important that the leader find the time and the means for reflecting, for assuming distance from the battle or the mission. I term this tendency “going to the mountaintop”, with the understanding that such a retreat can occur literally or metaphorically, as in the case of De Gaulle and his daily walks.”
Relaxing, taking vacations and making time for fun actually makes you more successful. Mireille Guiliano, the former CEO of Veuve Clicquot Champagne, said it well: “We have to take ‘beach time,’ a space for ourselves every day, because we live in a world of burnout. Even if you take 20 or 30 minutes for yourself, you’ll be a better worker, a better colleague, a better person. It benefits the people around you as much as it benefits you.”
Copyright Nicolas Mottet.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
A secret from great leaders: learn fast, and plan for excellence
Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, stresses that "whether you are a CEO or just starting out--each and every day provides the opportunity to learn and get better at what you do”. Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, adds “You've got to keep learning, keep changing … and reinvent yourself”. Stressing the importance of education on your career, he added “you know where you want to go, and you know that you can learn to get there. That’s power, absolute power”.
All top executives like Jamie Dimon or Jeff Immelt will agree on the power of learning, but how to maximize learning takes a dedicated effort. Executive education, books and magazines are a start, but is education enough to achieve excellence? Education yields the best results only when coupled with a deliberate will and a competitive desire to get better and increase your performance at work. As a matter of facts, great leaders often have an insatiable appetite for feedback and a strong desire to get better. At the core of performance is indeed the desire to improve everyday and deliver results measurably better today than yesterday. Education is merely a weapon to achieve excellence, and not the end-all, be-all of great performance. Think about the leader as an athlete running a 100-meter: he works with a personal coach to get better, he is focused on the task at hand, fast, and obsessed by improving his time to get to the finish line.
How you are going to build your career is also a critical determinant of how much you will learn. Most employees eye with envy the next job up in the career ladder, and their only goal is to eventually take their boss’ job, but horizontal career progression will help maximize your learning experiences. Moving sideways, from one function to another or one company to another, will help you broaden your perspective and maximize your learning experience, ultimately giving you the right tools for career progression.
All top executives like Jamie Dimon or Jeff Immelt will agree on the power of learning, but how to maximize learning takes a dedicated effort. Executive education, books and magazines are a start, but is education enough to achieve excellence? Education yields the best results only when coupled with a deliberate will and a competitive desire to get better and increase your performance at work. As a matter of facts, great leaders often have an insatiable appetite for feedback and a strong desire to get better. At the core of performance is indeed the desire to improve everyday and deliver results measurably better today than yesterday. Education is merely a weapon to achieve excellence, and not the end-all, be-all of great performance. Think about the leader as an athlete running a 100-meter: he works with a personal coach to get better, he is focused on the task at hand, fast, and obsessed by improving his time to get to the finish line.
How you are going to build your career is also a critical determinant of how much you will learn. Most employees eye with envy the next job up in the career ladder, and their only goal is to eventually take their boss’ job, but horizontal career progression will help maximize your learning experiences. Moving sideways, from one function to another or one company to another, will help you broaden your perspective and maximize your learning experience, ultimately giving you the right tools for career progression.
Monday, September 1, 2008
What Neuroscience can teach us about business excellence
The Monday Effect.
In her fascinating book "How the Brain Changes Itself", Norman Doidge talks about a study from Harvard's Neurological department. In an experiment with blind subjects learning braille, Pascual-Leon studied their neurological activities over the course of a 10-month training. He monitored their brain activities each Monday and Friday and noticed that on Fridays, subjects' neurological motor maps increased in size and showed very rapid and dramatic expansion, but by monday the maps had returned to their baseline sizes. Monday maps showed an opposite pattern. They didn't begin to change until six months into the training: they increased very gradually and plateaued at ten months. The speed at which subjects could read braille correlated much better with the Monday maps.
At the end of the ten months, the braille students took two months off. When they returned, they were remapped and researchers noticed that their maps were unchanged from the last Monday mapping two months before. The daily training led to dramatic short-term changes during the week, with peaks on Fridays. But over the months, more permanent changes were seen on Mondays. Fast Friday changes strengthen EXISTING neuronal connectionals. The slower, more permanent Monday changes suggest the formation of BRAND-NEW structures, probably the sprouting of new neuronal connections and synapses.
Understanding this effect can help us understand what we must do to truly master new skills. As Doidge writes "after a brief period of practise, as when we cram for a test, it is relatively easy to improve because we are likely strenghtening existing synaptic connections. But we quickly forget what we've crammed - because these are easy-come, easy-go neuronal connections and are rapidly reversed. Maintaining improvement and MAKING A SKILL PERMANENT require the slow steady work that probably forms new connections."
Most business training are short: typically 1-5 days. It is important to keep in mind that significant permanent improvements in performance are only the result of dedicated, long-term commitments.
In her fascinating book "How the Brain Changes Itself", Norman Doidge talks about a study from Harvard's Neurological department. In an experiment with blind subjects learning braille, Pascual-Leon studied their neurological activities over the course of a 10-month training. He monitored their brain activities each Monday and Friday and noticed that on Fridays, subjects' neurological motor maps increased in size and showed very rapid and dramatic expansion, but by monday the maps had returned to their baseline sizes. Monday maps showed an opposite pattern. They didn't begin to change until six months into the training: they increased very gradually and plateaued at ten months. The speed at which subjects could read braille correlated much better with the Monday maps.
At the end of the ten months, the braille students took two months off. When they returned, they were remapped and researchers noticed that their maps were unchanged from the last Monday mapping two months before. The daily training led to dramatic short-term changes during the week, with peaks on Fridays. But over the months, more permanent changes were seen on Mondays. Fast Friday changes strengthen EXISTING neuronal connectionals. The slower, more permanent Monday changes suggest the formation of BRAND-NEW structures, probably the sprouting of new neuronal connections and synapses.
Understanding this effect can help us understand what we must do to truly master new skills. As Doidge writes "after a brief period of practise, as when we cram for a test, it is relatively easy to improve because we are likely strenghtening existing synaptic connections. But we quickly forget what we've crammed - because these are easy-come, easy-go neuronal connections and are rapidly reversed. Maintaining improvement and MAKING A SKILL PERMANENT require the slow steady work that probably forms new connections."
Most business training are short: typically 1-5 days. It is important to keep in mind that significant permanent improvements in performance are only the result of dedicated, long-term commitments.
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