So much of leadership is a balancing act…  In the HBR article entitled “Stop Overdoing Your Strengths” authors Robert Kaplan and Robert Kaiser do a great job outlining the two areas that most need balance.

What What of Leadership (what needs to be done)

The How of Leadership (the implementation of the what)

The key to success is to have balance in each area.  You can be of value if you’re purely strategic or operational; forceful or enabling.  Yet a great majority of people are out of balance (at least my personal experience makes me think so.)

I think the best use of the authors chart is as a self-evaluation tool.  Highlight the cell in each row that you think you might favor.  Then ask those you serve, lead, work with to evaluate you using the same boxes.

Man, I’m enjoying my first issue of The Harvard Business Review.  It’s got the best thought to word ratio, T2WR (just made that up) of any magazine I’ve read.  So hears one interesting tidbit (more to come)…

Studies show that as we meet people we try to classify them on two axis, warmth and competence.  Summarized as:

• Are you nice or a jerk…
• Are you smart or dump…

These studies also find that if you determine that someone is warm (nice) you will assume that their competency is low (dumb).  The reverse is also true.  This helps to explain why managers sometimes trust untrustworthy people (hummm…) 

So what’s the lesson…

1. When having to make personnel decisions make sure you understand these biases and how they affect you (no denial… we’re all affected)
2. Realize it’s not a zero sum game… smart people can be nice (just look at me… or maybe not…) and dumb people can be mean (just look at… oh never mind…)

Have you every seen these biases at work?

How many times do you read an article or blog post and wish you could refer back to it in the future?  Do you have a collection system to organize and retrieve these types of items for the future?  Here’s two ways that I collected ideas and information for the future.

There are two types of information that I collect: 1.) Thoughts and quotes 2.) Articles / Images / Products / Code Clips.  Let’s look at each.

Thoughts / Quotes

I read a lot of books and like to keep the major points organized so that I can refer back to them on occasion.  As I read I highlight those ideas I feel are worthy to reflect back on sometime in the future, I also dog ear those pages to make it easier to refer back to.  Once I finish the book I add the ideas (usually just a phrase or sentence) into my collection system if I feel they still are worthy of merit.

I also use this system to collect quotes and thoughts from blogs or other sources.  Again these are usually in the form of a single sentence or two.

The collection system I use for this is a Google Notebook.  I like Google Notebooks for this as it’s very fast, available anywhere, and the tagging system is very efficient.  I keep a link in my browser’s toolbar so it’s always just a click away.

Articles / Images / Products / Code Clips

For larger information items I use Evernote.  Here I store:

• information on products I think are interesting
• new feature ideas for Arena
• images of websites that inspire me
• CSS / HTML / Flash tips that I think are useful
• .Net code / components I think I could be useful in the future
• articles that I’d like to keep close
• random ideas

One thing that I find I need to do with this collection system is to clean it out from time to time.  Often when I look back I see that something may not be useful anymore.  Perhaps we’ve already implemented it, perhaps technology has made it obsolete, or maybe after stewing on it for a while it’s just not a good idea anymore.

Both of these collection systems are free (perhaps the best part!).  What systems do you use?  I’d like to know…

The hardest person to lead is yourself.  In that vain I spent some time working up a weekly evaluation form to help me stay on course for 2009.  I’m sharing it here in case anyone is interested.  On it I track those items that are really important to me, especially those that I need to improve.  You can download the form here.

The basics review items are:

• # of days I accomplish quite time for Bible reading and journaling
• Hours of exercise a week (hey 2 hours is a start…!)
• Hours of me work… that’s time for me to spend working on what I want to work on.  Whether it’s a small side project or some web application I dream up… (all after hours of course…)
• Number of blog posts…that’s pretty self explanatory…  not sure if the right answer is 2 posts or 3 posts a week.
• GTD grade… that’s a subjective grade at how well I’ve followed my version of the Getting Things Done process, and also a measure of how clean my 2 desks are (home and work)
• Grade of last week’s goals… Again a subjective grade of how well I accomplished my goals from the prior week.

I also want to keep better track of what I’ve read over the year.  Partly as a reward system, partly because I want to be more conscious in the decisions of what I spend time in reading.  I read a lot but want to make sure that I’m reading the best books possible.  I once heard someone say that ‘Each book that you read is at the expense of every other book printed.’  Kinda hit home that you only get to read so many books in a lifetime.  Better make sure they’re the right ones.

Next a quick review of what I could have done differently last week.

Then on to goals for the current week.  I also want to be more intentional about helping and thanking others.  Next some areas for prayer for the week.

The final area is just a list of names.  The names are those that I’m in contact most during the week.  I wanted to list them as a reminder to pray for them and just to reflect on my friendships with each of them.

I still need to pretty the form up.  A good look’n form is more likely to be used.

My goal is to set aside 15 mins to complete this form every Monday morning.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

I was walking through the bookstore the other day and ran across this book.  I found the summary intriguing.

“Tulgan, author and expert on Generation X workers (born between 1965 and 1977), considers what he calls the epidemic of “undermanagement” in corporate America–or, the failure of managers to take daily charge of the work environment and tell employees what to do and how to do it. He identifies seven big management myths, including there not being enough time to manage people; that to be fair, everyone should be treated the same; and the desire of managers to be “nice guys.”

I think in many ways “management” and “managing” have become bad words in the workplace.  While “leadership” has been lifted up on a pedestal.  The fact is that both are required for and organization to be successful.  I sometimes think we have too much leadership (as an attribute of how we spend time not necessarily a specific person) and not enough management (again as a measure of how we spend time).  Therefore we lack discipline and accountability.

What say you?

Checkout this dynamic information graphic detailing Manny Ramirez’s homeruns.  Spend some time on it. Click the circles to see the distance.  Click the ballpark names to filter hits for each park.  As you do notice how the stats change as does the timeline.

A sports fan could get lost in this type of graphic.  Analyzing various combinations of time, ballparks, pitchers, etc.  That’s the sign of a good information graphic.  The enjoyment produced by the discovery of information mirrors that of playing a game.

So if one was to apply this to the church office what would it be like?  Attendance from week to week?  Small group participation over time / curriculum?