Blog History {Who'd a thunk?}

Since I just released a new version of my website, I was poking around making sure all the links worked which led me to my Blog - this one - and a shock.
 
I've made 60 posts since the first one in 2008!

Some I think aren't too bad and some are just horrible. Either way it was fun to scan through them, and that made me wonder if there was an easy way to compile a summary list.

I haven't found an easy way to do that, but I did find that Google can report the ones that were most popular - at least the top ten. They are in order below.

The astute observer will note that interest in 2011 is no guarantee of readership in 2012 and 2013. As for the desert from 2008 on - the less said the better.

The blog layout options don't make it easy to pick out interesting titles either because you actually have to select the month in the Archive list on the right to see them - not so user friendly.

That's why I've added the opening paragraphs in the list so you at least get that.
If you have some improvement thoughts, or any requests, let me know. The good news from my passion for improvement and reading is that it is great fun to post ideas in the big cyberspace library in the sky.

Here's the top ten:

Effort vs. Results on a Great Team from April, 2011

There's another interesting and important exchange underway in the Core Protocols Group forum (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/TheCoreProtocols). This one is about the relative merits of effort versus results. [Note: this forum is now the Facebook Group "The Booted"]

Agile vs. ITIL from March, 2011

A little while ago an associate in the Agile Coaching community, Yves Hanoulle, asked me about the contention often raised that Agile software development practices don't mesh with the ITIL Framework.

Team Tips – 12 {Lean, mean, machine} from January, 2013

One part of my consulting and training life deals with IT Service Management. Those are the principles and practices associated with the view that an IT department is a provider of services to its business counterparts which improve the value and potential of business outcomes. Usually good IT Service Management is achieved by adopting best practices from a framework such as CobiT or the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

Team Tips – 16 {An abundance ofAngels} from April, 2013

When I was a District Manager of Customer Service at Xerox Canada one of my managers told me she had seen an Angel. The spiritual kind, the God's Helper kind.

Team Tips – 10 {A word with you ...} from October, 2012

There's a wonderful push across the world to translate the Core Protocols, from McCarthy Technologies, into a variety of languages by people who want to use this information locally with teams for whom English is not their first language.

Team Tips – 13 {What's in a name?} from February, 2013

On April 21st. Vickie Gray and I will conduct another Great Teams BootCamp. The details are here.
You'll notice right away we are calling this one a “Creating Time BootCamp”. Over the years since 2003 that we've attended, helped at, or held a Camp ourselves we've always debated with ourselves what we should call each session.

Team Tips - 7 {I, Robot} from March, 2012

Here's a challenge from some who have heard about, but not fully experienced, the Core Protocols in action: Using protocols of behaviour turns us into robots.

Software for Your Head #4 from March, 2011

Finishing the project team kickoff meeting story from Software for Your Head by Jim & Michele McCarthy.

Team Tips - 4 {Is this for me?} from November, 2011

Another challenge for teams comes from Jose R.:
“Can everybody work in teams?”

Team Tips - 5 {Trust me!} from November, 2011

We're having a snow day; first of the season.
So it's a good time to tackle this challenge for teams from Jose R.:
"How can you recover trust inside a team that has lost it?"

Leadership 11

A comment from last week's blog “Leadership 10” from Pixie Stevenson, www.enigmawellness.com:

“Are you saying you wish the paradigm of formal leadership would change to authentic leadership?

What I meant in my last comment is that leadership is also a part of the organic, evolutionary, and every expanding process of life.

Have there been cycles in leadership? Is the current formal leadership a relic from the past that is now suffering the labor pains and transition of birth into authentic leadership? Are you midwifing a new era of leaders?”

Pixie; thanks again for your comment – let's continue the discussion. :)

“Are you saying you wish the paradigm of formal leadership would change to authentic leadership?”

I believe we need both, and realistically it is unlikely that those in formal leadership positions would simply fade away. Nor should they. What I am advocating is that formal leaders recognize, and take advantage of, is the phenomenon of emergent and spontaneous leadership. That can occur

• by recognizing their own passion and responsibility that might be part of their formal assignment – why they are in their current leadership assignment – or might be in addition to their formal assignment, and / or
• by relinquishing their presumed need or task of maintaining control and being charge and letting someone else's passion and responsibility for action take over

The key is to allow both to operate as required to get the job done; i.e. move toward the shared vision.

“Have there been cycles in leadership? Is the current formal leadership a relic from the past that is now suffering the labor pains and transition of birth into authentic leadership? Are you midwifing a new era of leaders?”

I'm not qualified to speak to historical cycles; however, others have written, for example, about forms of “tribal” behaviour, and self organizing systems where leadership occurs outside of our commonly held model of organizational strata. The message here again is that while a hierarchical structure continually evolves to determine the “pecking order” - the formal leader being the one currently most dominant – that structure co-exists with spontaneous leadership emerging from any member. And the hierarchical structure is also fluid over time as the dominance of any individual ascends and wanes.

It may be that our current dependence upon the formal leader model is a carry over from the World Wars. To mobilize and direct armies, materials production, and countries, formal leaders were needed to provide clarity of purpose, consistency of message, a rallying point for focused effort. We sought out those who would carry us forward up the hill, or over the cliff, in a very directive, black and white, manner.

Similarly today, we look for those who offer to lead us out of the quagmire of difficult, unsolved problems. That makes it easier for us: follow the strong formal leader and sidestep our responsibility. If their solution works, we win by tagging along, and if not then push them aside and look for the next hopeful candidate.

So, in my view, today's focus and dependence upon the formal leader is a carry over from the recent past. Or more precisely, we have experienced success and comfort with that model and so continue to endorse it. And because we gravitate to the simple answer, the short version of the story, the sound-bite, we ignore the authentic leadership that was happening simultaneously through that history. The formal leaders – Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin – were the rallying points, but they engaged others who emerged according to their passions and desire to exercise their responsibilities.

It seems to me that both models were operational then, and continue to be today. The challenge for us is the mind shift from an exclusive “either / or” perspective to an “inclusive” perspective where both models are necessary and co-exist. And instead of the “hero worship” of the formal leader as saviour, we recognize that the norm, the natural or default model has been, and should continue to be, authentic leadership through passion and responsibility.

But, darn it! - that requires work and engagement on our part. We can't just simply leave leadership to others to do it for us. We can't just hide in our cubbyholes, and daily routines.

We have to think, expend energy, act.

We have to determine our passion and take responsibility.