Stop Waiting for Life to Happen | Peter Sage | TED Talks

Jack Welche's Career Pitfalls

1) Misfiring on performance or values - Overcommitting and under-delivering

2) Resistance to change - Failing to embrace new ideas

3) Being a Problem Identifier vs a Problem Solver

4) Winning over your boss but not your business peer group

5) Always worrying about your next career move versus focusing on the present

6) Running for office - it’s totally transparent to everyone but you!

7) Self-importance - exhibiting a humorless, rigid attitude

8) Lacking the courage and conviction to push back on the system

9) Forgetting to develop your own succession plan for when you get promoted

10) Complacency - you’ve stopped growing.

Keys to Strategic Success

1. Strategic model to set direction
2. Limit on diversity and complexity level of strategy to stay focused
3. Assessment of competitive advantages
4. Drive to development of new ideas and innovative designs
5. The plan for implementation of innovation

You Think More Than You Think

• Broad Options Thinking
• Contrary Thinking
• Critical Indicators Thinking
• Fact-based Thinking
• Group Synergy Thinking
• Innovative Thinking
• Insightful Thinking
• Overview Thinking
• Single Subject Thinking
• Strategic or Tactical thinking

Leading Innovation

• Lead from within, not from without assigning tasks
• Provide vision, not detailed plan
• Change processes standards, and opposing views rather than seeking comfort in the familiar.
• Take interests in details to motivate rather than to prescribe
• Promote equality among team members regardless of their expertise
• Continually ask for advice, insights, and opinions.
• Assemble groups of diverse independent thinkers, not teams of risk-avoiding managers.

How to Implement Creative Collaboration within Teams

1.   Set possible but hard goals that require innovation.

2.   Select diverse but relevant individuals who can collectively turn the goal into a successful implementation.

3.   Detail a vision of turning the hard goal into reality.

4.   Determine the current state to gauge the gap with what you want to achieve. See what works really well now and what can be improved.

5.   From gap analysis, detail what is missing and what do you need to do, and where you need innovative ideas that are missing now.

Machiavelli speaks to leaders today

• A leader is justified when preventing chaos or disorder.
• If you cause slight injury, you will suffer consequences, if you praise then you will neutralize
• In a new responsibility, get the hard decisions implemented first, then support and facilitate gradually over time.
• Luck plays the biggest role and fortune favors the bold.
• Never compromise with or submit to unethical acts.
• Remember that no policy is without risk.  Thus, all policies carry risks.
• The leader’s main job is to protect turf from other leaders.

How great leaders inspire action