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Here are five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about GE's leadership development, deliberate practice, experimentation in business, big retailers you may not know, and women in high tech.

From Business Week: Can GE Still Manage?
"To see GE openly scrutinize its leadership approach is a bit like watching Oprah take talk-show lessons. Despite questions about GE's ho-hum results (earnings from continuing operations sank 38% in 2009 and are expected to stay flat this year) and the familiar calls to break up the conglomerate, creating leaders is one area where GE's reputation remains unparalleled. "

Wally's Comment: GE has been known for leadership development and cutting edge management techniques for almost as long as there has been a GE. Jack Welch and the legendary HR chief, Bill Conaty cast the mold for the current leadership development program. But Jeff Immelt wonders if it's time to re-think things. So do many others, inside and outside GE.

For extra reading, click on "To invent future leaders, General Electric redefines tough love" from SMU.

From DDI: How Tying Your Shoes is the Key to Your Long Term Talent Strategy
"The other day around lunch time I was getting ready to go for quick run on the treadmill and I started to really tune into how I was tying my shoes. It sounds odd, but when was the last time you really focused on tying your shoes (Now that I’ve mentioned it, you will)?  As I watched my fingers dance around the snake-like laces I became keenly aware of how fast and automatically I was doing it.  This made me think of a recent blog post from Mike Hoban on the buildup of research on of the idea of deliberate practice. Books like Outliers, Talent is Overrated, and Talent Code hold up some pretty compelling research pointing to the importance of lots of practice over innate abilities as the critical ingredient for truly talented people. Another key insight from this research seems to be that practice on its own is not enough—you need feedback on your performance which you should improve the next time you practice. I think all of this surfaces some interesting opportunities to consider for talent management strategy."

Wally's Comment: Ryan Heinl from DDI thinks the key to developing leaders is getting the much-discussed 10,000 hours of practice. So he suggests that future leaders commit to a ten year program. Good luck with that. But there are some discussion-starting ideas here. You can also check out my post, "Leaders decide, let them learn how."

From Predictably Irrational: Why Businesses Don’t Experiment
"Companies pay amazing amounts of money to get answers from consultants with overdeveloped confidence in their own intuition. Managers rely on focus groups—a dozen people riffing on something they know little about—to set strategies. And yet, companies won’t experiment to find evidence of the right way forward."

Wally's Comment: Another form of doing is experimenting. We don't do much experimenting in the business world. Dan Ariely thinks he knows why.

For extra reading, there's Rita McGrath's "Lab Work for Your Business Model" and Art Petty's "7 Ideas to Stimulate Experimentation in Your Organization."

From Forbes: The Biggest Retailers You've Never Heard Of
"The list of largest retailers in America includes plenty of chains that aren't household names, at least not everywhere. Yet some of these non-household names--from regional grocery chains to kings of the nation's rest stops--pull in as much revenue as Kohl's, Gap and Starbucks."

Wally's Comment: These lists are always fun, but don't neglect to check out the complete list of retailers.

Note to Forbes: It ticks me off that you put a forward arrow below the slide show that's designed to move the ads along, while the real forward arrow is up above the slide show and to the right.

From the New York Times: Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley
"Tech communities in Silicon Valley and in other hubs — like New York, Austin, Tex., and Boston, where Ms. Fleming lives — pride themselves on operating as raw meritocracies ready to embrace anyone with a good idea, regardless of education, age or station in life. For women, though, that narrative often unfolds differently."

Wally's Comment: Claire Cain Miller tries valiantly to answer the question of why women are so underrepresented in high tech industries. I wish she had been able to interview Dr. Anita Borg, who died in 2003. She founded Systers in Computing which morphed into The Institute for Women in Technology. It is now, appropriately, The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology .

For extra reading, you may enjoy my post, "What Women Want (at Work)." 

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.