Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Immelt’s GE: Reset’s Poster Child Jeffrey

Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, is fast becoming the poster child for Reset in the US corporate community.

My friend Jon Hoch from Connecticut was the first to point this out to me. He sees Immelt's GE (and Ford Motor Company as well) as looking at the current turmoil and uncertainty as an opportunity for adaptation and Reset, rather than hunkering down and waiting out the storm.

Read More

Posted by Marty Linsky at 2:20 PM | 2 Comments
Tags: courage, reset, risk, uncertainty

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Obama’s Leadership and the CIA memos

My favorite definition of leadership: leadership is about disappointing your own people at a rate they can absorb.

By that measure, President Barack Obama is now facing the toughest leadership test of his 100-day old Presidency. He made an Obama-like decision, looking forward and not backward, to not investigate or prosecute those responsible for carrying out the "enhanced interrogation" methods on al Queda suspects in 2002 and 2003.

Read More

Posted by Marty Linsky at 2:15 PM | 4 Comments
Tags: There are no tags for this entry.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Living Adaptive Leadership

Harder than I expected to stay focused on work while looking out over rolling farmland, gently ascending up to the town of Collevecchio here in the province of Lazio about an hour northeast of Rome. But here I am, following the Red Sox and the Celtics, reading newspapers online, and trying to stay current and make connections, as if the world would stop if I did not know what was going on.

Read More

Posted by Marty Linsky at 2:07 PM | 27 Comments
Tags: There are no tags for this entry.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Reset Lives…and Relives

A short post today before going off to Italy for 11 days of work and relaxation. Meeting there with several Italian companies and senior officials, through the good offices of our friends, clients and partners at Watson Wyatt. I am anxious to see if the Italian private sector is looking at the current reality differently than the US firms we have been doing business with in the past six months.

Read More

Posted by Marty Linsky at 1:52 PM | 4 Comments
Tags: risk, uncertainty

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Reset: What to do when you don’t know what to do

"What do we do to do when we are in important jobs and we really don't know what to do? Many, many people are in exactly that position this evening. Only their spouses know." e-mail from J., a CEO of a large company in the Midwest My friend J. is not alone. People I talk with are sensing that we are in a period of fundamental change, where the assumptions of how the world works, of how our lives work, of how we work, are shifting in ways that we can barely see, never mind comprehend and internalize so we can plan for the future.

Read More

Posted by Marty Linsky at 1:47 PM | 2 Comments
Tags: There are no tags for this entry.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Reset and Reading - Into the Mainstream

Before we start, two news bulletins: Starting Tuesday, April 13, our firm will have a regular weekly feature on the home page of the Washington Post's On Leadership website. It's called Leadership House Call. The idea is that you - and yes, I mean you, will send us a current leadership challenge, and we will comment on it and stimulate a wider conversation on the issue. PLEASE send your dilemmas to: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). We will need a small framing title and a way to identify you. Thanks. And news bulletin number two: my colleague Alexander Grashow and I published a piece on Reset on the Huffington Post last week. Here's the URL if you want to take a look: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-linsky-and-alexander-grashow/obama-is-reset---are-you_b_181467.html

Read More

Posted by Marty Linsky at 3:59 PM | 8 Comments
Tags: There are no tags for this entry.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Reset Partisanship and Anger…..

Lots of anger out there. In the past days, I have received missives from four good friends of different ages, backgrounds, experience and communities (although all US citizens). They are all liberal Democrats and early Obama supporters, and all four of them sent angry, even furious diatribes against right-wing politicians, commentators, and George W. Bush.

Read More

Posted by Marty Linsky at 4:02 PM | 3 Comments
Tags: obama, courage, leadership, politics, emotion, republican, geithner, congress

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Barack and Harvey: Hands on the Thermostat

I just saw "Milk". Pretty good movie, I thought. But also a pretty good leadership lesson.

Read More

Posted by Marty Linsky at 4:03 PM | 7 Comments
Tags: There are no tags for this entry.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Crime and Punishment

Watching Madoff being taken away in handcuffs last week, I was thinking about crime and punishment, and whether those who recklessly led us into the current financial mess ought to share more of the pain, whether or not they committed a crime.

Read More

Posted by Marty Linsky at 11:48 AM | 2 Comments
Tags: courage, leadership, reset, risk, crime

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Reset = Tough Choices

Reset requires figuring out what of all that you say value is really important and must be preserved, and what of all that you value you must leave behind in order to adapt to a fundamental new reality. Doing that work is not a lot of fun. It forces you or your organization to modify your self-identity, change who you are, and take a loss of something that was important to your sense of self.

Read More

Posted by Marty Linsky at 11:55 AM | 5 Comments
Tags: There are no tags for this entry.

 <  1 2 3 4 >  Last »