Leadership in Transition

On Friday, the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business conducted their annual Management Conference, and I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Harry Davis speak. His session, titled "Leadership in Transition", discussed the qualities necessary for those undertaking transitions --- be they organizational, career, and/or personal. Here are the key insights.

The three biggest "hurdles" to conducting a successful transition are:

• Rigid Identity - becoming too closely identified with a particular role, expertise, or specialty in a way that inhibits one's ability to evolve beyond it
• Contextual Blindness - the inability to adjust one's management philosophy based upon the transitional culture and/or environment
• Impatience - not being willing to 1) wait for the team or organization to recognize the situation and/or changes necessary or 2) take the time to build the necessary consensus to execute

His recommendations:

1. Take the time to consider and evaluate multiple viewpoints
2. Be suspicious of goal-directed agendas
3. Practice listening skills
4. Reconnect with core values and behaviors that really matter to you
5. Let go of previous identities

Book Review: Richard Florida's Who's Your City

I completed Who's Your City a couple of weeks ago, and wanted to summarize key points from it here. For those of you who are not familiar with Richard, he's the professor and author that originated the idea of the "creative class". He has discussed the role of the "creative economy" --- one which values creativity and new ideas --- and his new book focuses on the role of place. This is a great book, and I wanted to extend my thanks to the publisher for providing an advance copy for this review.

Richard's thoughts center on three key ideas:
1) "...place is actually more important to the global economy than ever before."
2) "Places are now more diverse and specialized -- from their economic makeup and job market to the quality of life they provide and the kinds of people that live in them."
3) "We live in a highly mobile society, giving most of us more say over where we live" -- take advantage of that mobility.


The Importance of Place
Richard's contention is that "...in today's creative economy, the real source of economic growth comes from the clustering and concentration of talented and productive people". In contrast to another great book, Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, Florida indicates that now --- more than ever --- where you live is as important as what you do. Although globalization has levelled the playing field for workers in some respects, an individual's location is critical to their well-being, the quality of their lives, and their ability to capture synergies and economies of scale from those within their industry. Richard:

"The reality is that globalization has two sides. The first and more obvious one isthe geographic spread of routine economic functions such as simple manufacturing or service work....the second, less obvious side....is the tendency for higher-level economic activities such as innovation, design, finance, and media to cluster in a relatively small number of locations."

This is what Michael Porter calls the "location paradox" --- "Location still matters. The more things are mobile, the more decisive location becomes." Finally, as Florida illustrates in the first part of the book, "The key to our new global reality lies in understanding that the world is flat and spiky at the same time."


The Continued Specialization of Place
Here, Florida works from findings of others to illustrate the cities continue to "cluster" into specialities. Schumpeter and Solow, illustrate the importance of "creative destruction" (i.e. innovation and entrepreneurship) to economic growth and wealth, and discovered the startling fact that ... about 4/5ths of the US economy's growth per worker was attributed to technological progress."

Jacobs and Lucas illutrate the importance of cities to this process, and identified the importance of "talent clustering", which lead to a "multiplier effect" that is the "primary determinant of economic growth." Ultimately, they noted that "...a doubling of population resulted in more than two times the creative and economic output." --- synergy. "According to UN predictions, by 2030, more than 2/3rds of the world's population (4.4B people) will be urbanites."

In the end:

"What matters most today isn't where most people settle, but where the greatest number of the most skilled people locate. Because the returns from colocation among the ablest is so high, and because high-end incomes are rising so fast, it make sense for these workers to continue to bid up the price of real estate..."

Using this Knowledge to Your Advantage
The final part of the book helps the reader identify characteristics that are important to them and the cities that they may ultimately choose to reside in. This can serve as an excellent resource for those that want to understand regional dynamics, and the "personality" of their respective city.

Although this probably serves as the most directly useful core of the book, Richard has a wonderful website developed as a supplement, and so I will direct you there for additional information: http://creativeclass.com/whos_your_city/


In summary, this is a great book that does a great job of helping to illustrate the global changes that are taking place, and provide them in a context that allows the reader to make some informed decisions about where and why they make decisions on where they live. Given the critical importance of place to well-being and economic security, a visit to the website would be an enlightening first step.

Are you happy?

While searching for my next role, I've had a lot of time to reflect, and recently came across a great website that has been useful to me: http://www.authentichappiness.org/.

What is truly important to you? Does the way you use your time align with your larger priorities? For those that indicate they are truly happy, there is a high correlation between the two.

Although my score indicates a fairly high degree of happiness, I'm always up for more. Here are some general recommendations (backed by a considerable amount of recent research), that have led many to a happier, more fulfilling life:

1. Count your blessings daily.
2. Practice acts of kindness.
3. Savor life's joys.
4. Thank a mentor.
5. Learn to forgive.
6. Invest time and energy in friends and family.
7. Take care of your body.
8. Develop strategies for coping with stress and hardship.

Another approach, based on the book The Paradox of Choice is essentially to learn when it is ok to "settle". There are essentially "maximizers" and "satisficers", and maximizers are those that always look for the very best option. The problem is that those people spend so much time evaluating options, that although they often make better decisions, they ultimately feel worse. The recommendation - "...only be a maximizer when it truly matters" to do so...

Here's to hoping this will brighten your day!