DISQUS

Great list. Say hello to 6th Street for me.

Thanks for spreading the word, David. Love the blog.

Kudos and congrats to the Top 10 Blogs for Writers!

Congrats on your blogiversary!

Now that you have brought it to my attention, the inconsistency between the advertised author count and that of your list will haunt me until it is reconciled!

Doug, kudos and congrats! And thanks for the mention. I'm looking forward to it... Troy

Simplicity is beauty.

Mark me up for (1) Incentive Systems On and Offline, (2) Improve is Like Design, (3) Going from Play-Doh to Website, and (4) Why I Did Buy an iPhone Afterall...

Kudos and congrats on BravoNation. In the event that you have not yet spent your invite allocation, I would love one!

Ditto. Happy blog-birthday, Thom! And thanks for gracing our orbit at ON! I'm looking forward to checking out your other blogs.

very cool tool. didn't realize how much i didn't know about visualization.

It's hard to argue with Hogan, for all the reasons mentioned above, but I like E. Church, as well.

Joey! When are you going to organize a meetup?

It sounds like we have something in common.

Great advice. Thanks.

30 minute or 30 second elevator speech?

Curious.

I guess this answers my question...

So, is Jungle Runners gone from downtown for good? Or for now? Or is this something yet to be determined? And what about the Lisa that said she wanted to lend a hand? Did anything become of that?

I love the new masthead. Very cool.

Thanks for the notice, Chris. April 27 is now marked on my calendar. My daughter, who is also seven, was just asking me when she would be able to come to work with me, again. It's been a couple of years since her last visit. She still talks about having a picnic on my desk and drawing on the windows with dry erase markers. Thanks again!

Chris! I love the new look. It is Fantabulous! The fusion of WorkPlay and Alchemy is brilliant. Well done, Sir.

"...so I think I am about as close to a Boomer (in age) as one can get, save those born in November and December of '65..." Obviously, I need help with my numbers. Perhaps, I should have run this by one of my interns prior to posting it.

I turned 40 in October, so I think I am about as close to a Boomer (in age) as one can get, save those born in November and December of '65, but I never thought of myself as a Boomer, or the thought of being so close to being a boomer never entered my mind, until I read this post. I have always taken in for granted that I am a Gen X-er.

More about me: I chair my organization's diversity council, represent my company to the city of Jacksonville's Study Circles program on race relations, bla, bla, bla... and have four interns under the age of 30 working for me. In 15 years of working for Fortune 500 corporations from the mailroom to the corner office, I have been fortunate to have been exposed to a broad cross-section of workers from the four corners of diversity.

In my opinion, and I tell this to my interns, is if you want to make an impact, you have to know the business. And business is complicated. Good ideas and passion are cool, but you have to understand the impact to the bottom line. Good ideas and passion are great, but if your not generating revenue, reducing expenses, or building competitive advantage, it's not a good idea and your passion is misplaced. Paying dues is not about grunt work. Paying dues is about learning the business, the industry, the customers, the cost structure, the margins, the operations.

In the interest of brevity, I am going to bastardize something I read in 7 habits. Stephen Covey, a very very wise man, wrote, "Good management without good leadership is like organizing the chairs on the deck of the Titanic." The disparity between the skill required to captain the Titanic (or some less tragic vessel) and that required to organize the chairs on its deck is huge. And there are many jobs of varying degree of skill between the two. But these are not always apparent to the manager standing on the deck. He sees the captain at the helm and thinks, "I can do that," but he has no understanding of the responsibility required. This is whyall captains of big ships are bald or gray. And why there are no women captains. Women are much too sensible.

The Corporate Shrink? I love Fast Company. I am a huge Fast Company fan, but FC is in the business of selling advertisements. They do this in large part by publishing witty quips and pop-management articles. Fast Company is not the Harvard Business Review. In November, FC published an article on the top 10 up and coming hubs for creative workers. They could have published the article as an opinion piece, but instead, they opted to spell out their psuedo-scientific formula. Check out Steve Sherlock's Steve's 2 Cents blog on November 21 for the debunk.

My intent is not to be an apologetic for corporations, corporate structure, the status quo, autocratic leadership, or anything else that looks, smells, or tastes like the Bush administration, but if examples of good leadership and good organizations is what you are seeking, you need look no further than the shelves of Borders or Barnes and Noble or Books a Million. In fact, you don't even have to turn away from your computer. Simply, dial 1-800-CEO-READ. There you will find many more examples of good leadership than bad.

This said, freedom of expression and freedom to question, diversity, empowerment and collaboration are paramount to innovation and to the continued evolution of the workplace.

I think our personal philosphies about leadership, management, organizational structure, and probably politics, as well, are much more alike than different.

Keep on bloggin' brother.

Obviously, we are both painting with very broad brushes. I agree that challenging the underpinnings that govern our workplaces and lives is important, but some of these underpinnings are in place for a very good reason. They work. Others are terribly broken. Which are the former or latter, I think, is circumstantial.

Certainly, there is a fine line to be walked here. While I am not a fan of the dependency leadership model, I think the demise of our education system in the U.S., in part at least, can be attributed to the deterioration of our educators as authority figures.

In the workplace, collaboration and empowerment are important, but ultimately, someone must provide direction. In the absence of a strong leader, others will move to fill the void.

This is not to say that a leader must be an authoritarian. Certainly, I am not. But a leader must be able to build shared vision and facilitate consensus or all empowerment and collaboration is for not.

...

Very cool. I wish I had seen this sooner!

Chris! I visited 37 days and I love it. Thanks for the link.

Congratulations, my friend. Your integrity and consistency of purpose is an inspiration.