Due to the changed paradigm post the COVID- 19 induced lockdowns, there is an urgent need for courage to be demonstrated by the business leaders. Collective thinking has to be one way of navigating past this grave crisis. To borrow a term form the military, “unity of effort”, can be most effective at times like these. Likewise, one needs to stay calm and courageous. Leaders need to remain calm, so that they may take decisive action. But, the talent management policies need to be ramped up as well, so that the employees do not feel left out. Stakeholders’ involvement will now be key. Assumptions and misinformation need to be removed in favour of facts, as that will help in informed decision making.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Leadership-courage-and-the-power-of-collective-thinking?gko=c48a1

Uploaded Date:25 May 2020

John Hennessey, who is a former president of the Stanford University, has penned down a book where he shares his key leadership experiences. The book has been titled as Inside the Mind of the CEO. Hennessey currently also sits on the chair at Alphabet. In this book, he confirms that his educational leadership position, was more by accident. He instead loved being a professor. What truly changed his career, was when he took up the position of Provost. One of the anomalies about the entire area of education leadership, is that unfortunately there is little formal management training for this field. This is in spite of some universities having massive budgets. Stanford alone has a budget of around five billion US dollars. Hennessey also recalls some of his earlier writings, such as about the dichotomy between age and experience, that is key at universities and on which he had written earlier in Leading Matters. One key difference highlighted between academia and the corporate world is on the ‘carrot and stick’ culture. It is a little more of the stick in the corporates in comparison to how it is in academia. Hennessey also speaks about how humility needs to be an essential trait for leadership, as he has experienced at both Google and at Stanford.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/article/John-Hennessys-higher-learning?gko=1d2fd

Uploaded Date:25 May 2020

A new business book has been published titled What it Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence. It has been authored by Steve Schwarzman, who is the CEO of the Blackstone Group. He founded the company with his fellow Lehman Brothers outcaste- Pete Peterson. Bucking the trend of several Wall Street giants crumbling, Blackstone has kep growing stronger. In this book, Schwarzman explains how culture is the key to any organization’s success. This culture in turn has to be anchored from the very top. As any company grows bigger, the challenges to maintaining that conducive culture, increase many fold. That is why it is advisable to include the same, as a key component within the corporate strategy itself. Schwarzman also believes that for several team leaders, a challenge arrives when they need to delegate or share credit with their team members. This needs to go. Some of the great lessons Schwarzman learnt early on in life at Wall Street, turned out to be the negative ones. They reinforced his understanding on things to avoid.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Blackstones-builder?gko=d2c08

Uploaded Date:25 May 2020

Communication is often described as the life- blood for quality leadership. Communicating the reasons for any act undertaken is often what sets aside truly proactive leadership and equally good talent management. In order to seek the right question, one may introspect with some “what” questions as this will help one understand the process. One this is done, the questioner might as well, follow up with some reason for the same. This may be termed as a “because”. Alternate perspectives could then be offered up as further explanation. A mistake communicators are often guilty of is that they attach greater importance to the “what” and the “how” rather than the “why”. The latter is often mistakenly considered self- evident.

Source:https://hbr.org/2020/05/good-leadership-is-about-communicating-why?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert_not_activesubs&referral=00563&deliveryName=DM79287

Uploaded Date:20 May 2020