Brief Moments

Transformational Servant Leadership Innovation Cycle (Wallace)      I was asked this week to post some thoughts on transformational leadership relating to community development and innovation in a forum on Facebook.  That format is a little more limiting and doesn't quite give the opportunity for graphics.  Thus this morning's thoughts for your review and feedback here.      The graphic on the left is a model of my own making describing one path to individual and organizational change. Although they follow slightly different tracks for academics and consultants/practitioners, Transformational Leadership and Servant Leadership are closely intertwined with similar meanings. One must certainly say that Servant Leadership is transformational in scope and outcomes.   Both theories and practices are discussed in detail and endorsed (if you will) by such organizational and individual change experts as the late Stephen Covey , P...

     My Organizational Behavior class yesterday morning covered the final chapter where the authors discussed both organizational change and stress.  The pace of global change is only increasing.  Where human knowledge used to double in, say 50 years, in some fields it doubles in less than a year.  For those of us who grew up without cell phones, downloadable music, 300+ television channels (most with nothing productive or of real value), computers or tablets, and instant communication, it is a far different world.      That doesn't bother me, in part because I'm fairly adept (not competent, just adept) at technology and have learned to embrace and lead change as opposed to fighting it.  Which doesn't mean we need to change without purpose or plans.  I'm a firm believer in Howard Gardner's Changing Minds (Reason, Research, Resonance, Rediscriptions, Resources/Rewards, Real World Events, and Resistances) and Five Minds...

     One of my graduate school professors in discussions emphasized asking "why" around five times for every question in an effort to get well below the surface level of the topic.   I rather like the concept.  Peter Drucker has volumes of quotes but in particular (paraphrased): "We don't fail from making bad decisions, we fail because we asked the wrong questions."      It's hard for me to avoid Daniel Pink because his work has so much potential impact on our organizations, or at least it should, but in the Flip-Manifesto rule number 11 is establishing a Department of Why ?  We become so entwined in the habits of both ourselves and our organizations that rarely do we make time to step away and ask "Why are we doing this?". Margaret Wheatley in a 2006 presentation in Halifax called " A Call to Fearlessness for Gentle Leaders ," asked these key questions: How do you call yourself? How do you identify yourself? And ha...

    Wow did I get overwhelmed and behind in the daily A-Z blog.   It's good to have work to do though.  With the letter C, several things came to mind; compassion, college; and clarity all came to mind, but I feel a tug towards change .   Maybe in part because I teach Organizational Design, Development and Change in the graduate program for Siena Heights University.  Maybe because there has been so much change in my life over the past eight years in particular. Certainly because guiding organizational and individual change is so much of my life's work to date.      I love Peter Drucker and a couple of his thoughts in particular.  " One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it ." And " The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different ."       Howard Gardner in Five Minds for the Future talks about how we must not only develop expertise in one specific area of ...