9/8/09: Leadership Reading to Start Your Week
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Here are five choice articles from the business press to start off your workweek. I'm pointing you to articles about how a tough economy can be tough on your health, corporate governance, best places to launch a career, talent management, and the management style of Alan Mulally.
From the Dallas Morning News: Tough economy can take its toll on your health
"The longest recession since World War II has wreaked havoc on consumers' personal finances and thrown millions out of work. The emotional upheaval from the sick economy also has resulted in physical ailments, such as headaches, backaches, neck aches and insomnia. In other words, the economy can be bad for your health."
Wally's Comments: A good review of what happens and what you can do to stay in control.
From the Economist: Corporate governance
"The debate over how companies are best governed is at least as old as companies themselves."
Wally's Comments: There is no one best way to govern corporations. That's why it's vital to spend time thinking about options, values, and possible outcomes.
From Business Week: Best Places to Launch a Career
"Graduates lucky enough to land a job may find the prospect of responsibility and rapid advancement surprisingly strong. But don't count on bigger salaries."
Wally's Comments: If you're looking to good places to get a fast start, Business Week's annual list of the best places to launch a career will give you ideas. If you're thinking about how to attract great people to your company, you'll get ideas here, too.
Whichever side you're on, remember this: there is no one best choice you're seeking the best choice for you.
From Strategy + Business: The Talent Management Imperative
"Any company that competes on the global stage must, in light of today’s changing workforce, rethink the way it manages people."
Wally's Comments: What's most important is identifying and testing those unchallenged assumptions. This article will help you.
From the New York Times: Planes, Cars and Cathedrals
"Interview with Alan R. Mulally, president and chief executive of Ford Motor."
Wally's Comments: Alan Mulally is very good at management. He's also very good at explaining his perspective.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Wally,
I enjoyed the "Best Places to Launch a Career" article. It is interesting that half of the 223 millennials surveyed acknowledged their careers were in limbo, yet 93% of those said it was unlikely they would seek more responsibility. As a millennial working an entry level position, I have observed firsthand the present times require harder work and more responsibility for less compensation.
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Thanks for sharing those insight, Kevin. I think you're right about the current workplace and its demands. If history is any guide, the demands that today's young people meet entering the workforce will be the dominant force in shaping their ideas of what the workplace should/could be.
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I found the business week article, "Best Places to Launch a Career" very interesting. As a business student still looking to begin my career, I was wondering what are some aspects you find important in a starting career company?
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Wow, what a great question. This is one of those questions that doesn't have a single right answer, so take what I say and what you hear and read from others and mix up your own answer.
Let me start by sharing my bias. I don't think that most young people really know what they like and where to find it coming out of school. Instead, I think most of us wind up using our first job as a laboratory and then moving on.
OK. Here's the advice checklist.
Pick a company that matches your values and that you'll be proud to work for. Don't settle on this one.
You will learn most of the important lessons of business life on the job.Pick a company that will give you the opportunity to try things. That may be different kinds of work or different career paths. One of my favorite companies, Semco, has a "Lost in Space" program that lets people hired direct from school wander around the company trying to learn things and be useful. At the end of the year, anyone in the company can offer then a job.
One more thing. Don't worry about getting it wrong. You can't If you make unwise or uninformed choices you can learn from them. And everything you learn goes with you to the next adventure. Consider my father's advice that "Life is the art of new and better mistakes."
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