From Wallace Foundation: A case study of a "learning community" set up by The Wallace Foundation for its education leadership work offers insights into these groups and recommendations on how they can aid grantees and advance philanthropic efforts.

From FastCompany: Some highlights from author Brent Schlender’s recently unearthed conversations with Steve Jobs.

From Forum Corporation: Maggie Walsh, Practice Lead for Forum's Leadership Practice, explains the importance of adaptability in today's uncertain world. While some leaders are naturally adaptable, Maggie shares some adaptability tips and tactics for those who aren't.

From Dick Cross at ChangeThis: Just ask someone today this simple question: ‘How do you run a company?’ Invariably, you’ll be met with a blank stare. Because nobody ever asks that question. Because no one expects that there’s an answer. Yet it may be the most important question we need to answer if we want to grow our businesses and fix our economy.

From Robert Quinn: A student in my current class on transformational leadership came to see me.  The class is about how to change the world by changing self.  If we choose to be more purpose-centered, internally directed, other-focused, and externally open, the change in us changes our conversations, the people in the conversations, and then the larger context or organization in which the conversations occur.

While this sounds simple, it defies normal assumptions.  Almost all of us are programmed to try to change others by telling then why they should change.  If that does not work, as it often does not, we try to change them by exercising some kind of leverage.  Since this concept is hard to understand and to teach I am always searching for examples.  When an example shows up, I am most grateful.

From Kristi Hedges at ChangeThis: Lying inside you, untapped, is an inspirational force. Guided by passion and steered by your influence, you can build momentum for yourself, others or a greater cause. Hearts are full, and ideas are many.

You might want to start a business. Land a ‘change everything’ job. Get respect. Break the glass ceiling. Shatter your own ceiling. Own the room. Motivate a team to greatness. Change your entire career. Leave a legacy. Or fight for an issue you lose sleep over. You can do it, no question. But it takes more than heart. It requires the game changing power of leadership presence. And most people have no idea how to get it.

From Mark Miller at ChangeThis: People want to be well led. We all seem to thrive when we are under great leadership. We know it when we see it because our talents are being leveraged, our purpose is clear, our contributions are appreciated, our ideas are welcomed and we’re making progress organizationally and personally.

From ChangeThis: Whether you have a formal leadership title or not, chances are you’re reading this because you’re a natural leader. You’re the kind of person who steps up and steps in when others need you most. Or, you want to. As daunting as leadership can be, what you need to do is straightforward. We’re about to teach you a model that will make you the kind of leader whose team people beg to join; and the kind of person who develops other leaders as a natural part of your every day work and life.

From Dan Hill at ChangeThis: Ever since the Enlightenment, Western civilization has been on the wrong track. Eager to put the superstitions of the Dark Ages behind him, the French philosopher Rene Descartes famously declared, “I think, therefore I am.” But the truth is that over the past 25 years, the breakthroughs in brain science have systematically documented the greater reality that thought and emotion can’t be artificially separated and that, in fact, the capacity for emotion proceeded thought in evolutionary terms and continues to do so with every deliberation and act an employee makes. There is no such thing as objectivity. … Trust is a feeling. Hope is a feeling. Loyalty is a feeling. As companies struggle to emerge from the Great Recession, now is not the time for half-measures like polite (but empty) focus groups, or for the fear that executives may have regarding exposure to the honest feelings of their employees that serves as justification for not pursuing progress. Executives who exhort employees to accept change and sacrifice their own comfort zones must surely be ready to do so themselves.

From Neil Senturia at ChangeThis: I am passionate about great crimes and the criminals who commit them. But, I often wonder if the long arm of our law, the finest justice system in the world, is at times deeply corrupt, especially with regard to the most recent financial meltdown of 2008.

[S]everal fistfuls of corrupt, devious, deceptive, crooked, manipulative titans of the financial industry have somehow completely avoided any liability, responsibility or accountability for the crimes they committed — as have their accomplices in Washington, D.C. It seems that bad behavior has become an acceptable business practice. If you get caught, you only pay a fine. If you get away with it, you win. What kind of system is that?

From ChangeThis: It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, someone, somewhere right now is building a product, process or business model designed to kick your butt. If it’s you, then you define the rules by which others must play the game. If it’s NOT you, then you had better get comfortable playing by someone else’s rules. Someone is going to start a revolution that will change your world. How? By producing change that matters—change that disrupts the competition and amazes your customers.

Why can’t it be you? … In a world where everyone and everything around you is getting better, where technology waits for no one, and where smarter, more sophisticated customers who are “wired and dangerous” demand more, people are constantly in search of the next big thing. Want to find what’s next? Make these 10 rules part of your cultural DNA.

From Michael Bungay Stainer at ChangeThis: Getting anything up and flying is a tricky business. I’m still learning how to catch the wind just right in most of the things I do. This story is about launching a new project, a book. But if it was a kite, right now we'd be seeing it crashed and broken on the ground.

18 months later, and it's all changed. End Malaria launches September 6th, published by Seth Godin's latest venture The Domino Project. 58 smart men and women share their best insights, strategies and tips to stop the overwhelm, focus on the work that matters and make a real impact in the work you do. And we’ve solved the money thing. $20 from every $25 book sold goes to Malaria No More, to further their mission of ending malaria in Africa by 2015.

Here’s why, second time around, my own Great Work Project got off the ground and what I learned (and you can learn to) from traveling at the speed of Seth.

From ChangeThis: Let’s face it -- All too often, life is a succession of hassles. There’s an endless array of frustrations, inconveniences, complications, disappointments, and potential disasters lurking in most of our daily experiences. Even very good products and services (we’ll call them simply “products” for simplicity’s sake) have their weaknesses and drawbacks. My new smartphone sometimes drops my calls; my favorite hotel chain sometimes loses my reservation; those new lightbulbs last longer but produce less light; my new hybrid car gets better mileage but the engine feels less peppy… Managers, marketers, designers, service suppliers, and salespeople for the companies that provide these products don’t focus on their weaknesses. That’s understandable. They devote their lives to making products that are as good as they can possibly be and then to promoting them as enthusiastically as they can. Who wants to concentrate on the negatives? Yet we’ve found that organizations that excel at demand creation do exactly that. They examine the lives of customers through the lens of what we call a Hassle Map -- a detailed study of the problems, large and small, that people experience whenever they use their products.

From Paul Sullivan at ChangeThis: Being great under pressure is hard work. This is part of the reason why we are so impressed by people who seem immune to choking. These people come through in the clutch when others don’t. If they’re business leaders, they become gurus other executives want to emulate. In politics, the person who runs the gauntlet wins the election, but if he can do so in a particularly cunning way, he becomes an example of strategic excellence. In combat, it is the leaders who come under fire and get their men to safety who are recognized as war heroes. If the people are sporting figures, their triumphs become legendary. We are so fascinated by these feats that we have created a nearly mythical aura around clutch performers.

From SmartBlog: Barry Moltz helps small businesses get unstuck. Sometimes, they have hit the sales glass ceiling. Other times, they run out of cash or the business owner becomes utterly exhausted. Through decades of experience running his own companies and consulting hundreds of other, internationally acclaimed business expert and author Barry Moltz has identified the six major areas where almost every business gets stuck: Sales, Cash, People, Social Media, People and Personal Productivity. Get ready … your business is going to grow like never before!

From Knowledge@Wharton: Jerome Chazen, a founder and former chairman of Liz Claiborne, Inc., recently wrote a book titled, My Life at Liz Claiborne: How We Broke the Rules and Built the Largest Fashion Company in the World. Indeed, Liz Claiborne -- now known as Fifth & Pacific Cos. -- grew from revenues of $7 million in 1977 to more than $2 billion in the early 1990s. Knowledge@Wharton asked Chazen, who stepped down as CEO in 1996, to discuss the highs and lows of running a successful fashion business in a highly competitive industry.

From Cris Wildermuth: Listen as Meg Wheatley discusses what happened since she published Leadership and the New Science. The role of "walk outs walk ons" in creating change, the type of leader who is really needed in today's world, the dangers of "hope."

From strategy+business: Ronald Heifetz, coauthor, with Marty Linsky and Alexander Grashow, of "The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World," introduces a lesson in leadership from "Inside Coca-Cola: A CEO's Life Story of Building the World's Most Popular Brand," by Neville Isdell with David Beasley.

From Brian Reich at ChangeThis: I am angry. There are real problems facing the world, and we, as a society, are not doing enough to address them in the right ways, not the ways we know are possible. The old way isn’t working, and we know it.

We continue to reward the same behaviors we have rewarded in the past while expecting different results. We profess interest in really doing things differently but settle into routines that are comfortable and safe, and we are fooling ourselves. There are lots of excuses for not making real, demonstrable changes in the way we live, work, and how we interact as individuals and engage in groups/communities. I have heard them all. I have used many of them myself. But they are bullshit. All excuses are. A person either truly, deeply, genuinely cares about changing things or he doesn’t. You can step up and do what it takes, in whatever way you can, or you need to acknowledge your limits and accept the results.

What might be possible if we were really committed, as individuals and as a society? I’ve thought a lot about this, and instead of remaining angry, I choose to embrace the question and figure out how I can use the anger to make things happen.

From Les McKeown at ChangeThis: What if your leadership role just felt, well... right: demanding, yes, but fun too; challenging but controllable; intense but invigorating? What if with every step on the ladder of leadership you felt more comfortable, more 'in the zone,' less stressed, less pressured? What if each successive leadership role brought out more of what makes you you, rather than asking you to compromise your core values, bury your deepest wishes, hold ransom your dreams?

Having coached and advised hundreds of leaders, I know this isn’t a pipe dream. From frequent observation, I know that it’s not only possible to be relaxed, fulfilled and energized by leadership, it is in fact precisely how the most consistently successful leaders operate.

From Jim Stengel at ChangeThis: It’s time to change the narrative of business. From a winner-take-all tale, no-holds-barred, no matter what the cost to individual firms, investors, the economy, and society, to doing business on the basis of what I call brand ideals, shared ideals of improving people’s lives.

Wider adoption and leveraging of brand ideals would be the best medicine the economy could possibly get. Instead of inflating a bubble that would sooner or later burst with tragic consequences for everyone, it would trigger and sustain unprecedented growth in every sector it touched.

Make no mistake, however. The business case for brand ideals is not altruism. It’s self-interest and mutual interest. In addition to its wider positive impact, a devotion to brand ideals will do more for your own business and career than any other factor. Maximum business growth and high ideals are not incompatible. They’re inseparable.

From Peter Block: This culture holds firmly to the belief that our institutions and our citizens are driven and shaped by those who lead them. When we look at a workplace, we explain its culture by looking at the management style and vision of its leaders. We ignore the possibility that leaders are created, manufactured and molded by their followers. Employees hold important cards that determine what the organization will become. Leaders have their place and we would each rather have a great leader than a small one, but we consistently undervalue the extent to which the leadership we get is exactly the leadership we have created. Joel Henning is an author, consultant and friend of mine. I recently participated in a simulation he designed in which teams are asked to role-play three different styles of leadership.

From FastCompany: Steve Jobs often saw further than his competitors. His vision had four defining features that we can all learn from. A visionary has passion, but vision and passion aren’t the same thing. A passionate leader without a clear vision won’t succeed; likewise, neither will a visionary leader without passion.

From ChangeThis: For those of you not familiar with Zappos, the company is an online retailer who defied the odds and built an Internet empire, initially as a virtual shoe store and now expanding its inventory well beyond shoes alone. Zappos has always charged top dollar for its products and has succeeded primarily because the leadership innovated an experience that consistently exceeds the expectations of customers, vendors, and people who simply encounter the brand.

Unlike other failed online vendors from the "dot gone" bust, Zappos invested in both the delivery infrastructure and the corporate culture necessary to produce customer evangelists. To help you appreciate how Zappos might serve as a provocative benchmark for your customer experience, let me give you a few highlights from the 5 principles outlined in The Zappos Experience.

From Brian Solis at ChangeThis: Social media is not the catalyst for change, but merely one of its agents. We must remember that Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and the like are the networks that facilitate an uprising. However, it is repression, angst, injustice, inequality, vision, aspiration and hope that serve as the true stimulus for insurrection and progress. Technology plays a part in transformation and it is up to you to learn how social, mobile, real-time, and all other emerging trends are affecting your industries, communities, or markets.

What we learn as a result however is that these new tools can bring people together and unite them under a common front or concerted mission. At the center of any revolution is the burning desire to bring about change. But it always comes down to people, shared experiences, and a common ambition. And it is people who need one another for leadership, support, and inspiration. What’s missing from the equation is your vision and leadership.

From 800 CEO Read: Five years ago, Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten chose The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, reviewing each of their selections and giving them context in both the business and publishing worlds. Since then, thousands of new business books have been published, so they've updated and expanded the book with new, informative sidebars, a fresh introduction, and a closing manifesto. It is available now in both paperback and digital editions.

From NY Times: Reviewing Steve Jobs's time at Apple, including his medical leaves, and the effect Mr. Jobs has had on the company. Sam Grobart, The Times's personal technology editor, provides audio commentary.

From strategy+business: An expert on innovative leadership warns that too many companies are reverting to fear-driven management. Instead, executives should hold to their values and build healthy corporate communities.

From Roger Schwarz: Compassion involves noticing others’ suffering, connecting to them cognitively and emotionally, and responding to them with help. It doesn’t mean taking responsibility for solving other people’s problems or pitying them. Here are some steps to take.

From CBS News: Can Cain handle the spotlight? And is he ready to lead the nation? An exploration of these questions goes far beyond politics and gets to the heart of what it takes to lead an organization, especially a large one. So far, Cain is not doing what good leaders do when faced with a crisis.

From Steve Tobak at CBS News: I wracked my brain trying to come up with some lessons for leaders learn from the whole Joe Paterno Penn State scandal but, to be blunt, I couldn't come up with a damn thing. Not to say I couldn't come up with some trite nonsense to attract eyeballs. I just couldn't bring myself to do that because the truth is you can't teach morality to leaders. By the time you reach that point in your career, you either get personal responsibility or you don't.

Rhode Island School of Design president John Maeda has developed 6 principles to help grow artists to become competent business leaders and also assist business leaders in borrowing artistic strategies.

From strategy+business: The decisions made by powerful people in business and other fields have far-reaching effects on their organizations and employees. But this paper finds a link between having a sense of power and having a propensity to give short shrift to a crucial part of the decision-making process: listening to advice. Power increases confidence, the paper’s authors say, which can lead to an excessive belief in one’s own judgment and ultimately to flawed decisions.

From Management Issues: Trying to get people to do what you want has never been easy. Trying to get them to pay attention to what you need when they are on the other side of the globe is even harder —- after all, they don't have to look you in the eye when they want to weasel out of an assignment. So what's a manager to do? One thing that helps is to remember that it's not about you.

From 99%: In a rare interview, GE's SVP and Chief Marketing Officer Beth Comstock talks to Behance's Scott Belsky about what it takes to keep great ideas alive in a big company. Offering essential insights for creative leaders, the conversation touches on the power of passion and storytelling in getting ideas off the ground, why we should make heroes out of failures, and the challenges of driving change amidst bureaucracy.

From Strategy+Business: When faced with important decisions, managers can choose to rule in an autocratic (making unilateral choices) or democratic (inviting employees to have a say) way. Managers are often encouraged to take the democratic approach (generally called participative management) because research has shown that motivation, job performance, and morale increase when employees have the opportunity to contribute their concerns and ideas.

But this study finds that there’s a consequence to giving employees a voice: A company then has to listen. If employees conclude that a manager is just trying to win points by paying lip service to consulting them — and has no intention of acting on their advice — they are likely to stop offering input and, worse, act out their frustration by clashing with their colleagues.

From Strategy+Business: The decisions made by powerful people in business and other fields have far-reaching effects on their organizations and employees. But this paper finds a link between having a sense of power and having a propensity to give short shrift to a crucial part of the decision-making process: listening to advice. Power increases confidence, the paper’s authors say, which can lead to an excessive belief in one’s own judgment and ultimately to flawed decisions.

From FrogDesign: The following is an excerpt from A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business, the book written by frog Founder Hartmut Esslinger in 2008. Hartmut and frog worked with Steve Jobs at Apple in the early 1980s to create the “Snow White” design language for the Apple IIc computer, and again in 1985 when Jobs briefly left Apple and started the computer company NeXT, where Hartmut and frog designed the NeXT Cube. In this passage from the book, Hartmut offers a glimpse into those tumultuous years for Apple and Jobs, and some insights into why the Apple CEO’s creative and strategic vision became so effective.

From Forum: “The future of organizations today is primarily related to their capacity to learn.” — George Siemens. Does L&D in your organization develop the “capacity to learn?” Organizations have always needed to learn, and Learning & Development has traditionally been the owner and provider of learning. But George Siemens is saying more than that: The capacity to learn, not the subjects of learning, will define organizations of the future. So what does this imply for L&D?

From ChangeThis: When you build a team, are you focused on joining links in a chain or weaving together a strong rope of intertwined employees? While I may have started out building a chain – mindful that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link — I came to see that interweaving the threads of a rope came much closer to meeting my goal of a cohesive, interactive team. That way, I eliminate the inevitable spaces between chain links, replacing them with a ‘rope’ team, where every thread is bound together. This is the model I used as I found, trained and deployed my staff — my Army — and I could not be more satisfied and proud of the results we’ve had and the achievements I see on a daily basis.

From ChangeThis: Your job as a leader isn’t to eliminate dissonance – your job is to make conflict productive. Right Fights enable you and your team to stop fighting about everything that doesn’t matter and start fighting, in a high-minded manner, about what really matters.

From Rosabeth Moss Kanter at Harvard Business Review: For many observers of the rancorous partisanship surrounding the budget crisis in Washington, leadership is hardly the first concept that comes to mind, although President Obama's efforts toward a workable framework exemplify CEO responsibility. But sometimes the worst of circumstances can teach the best lessons. After relieving anxiety over the American economy with a few Boston Red Sox games, I see four things leaders in any field can learn from the evolving conflicts and compromises:

Here's a look at some of the best leadership books to be released in August.

From Roger Schwarz: Leaders are only beginning to entertain the idea that there can be leadership from every chair. This kind of team leadership involves shared control that is engaging, fluid, and flexible, and recognizes that any one sitting around the table can provide the insight and ability to move the team forward. At the same time, it provides the formal leader with responsibility for how decisions will ultimately be made.

From John Maxwell: Someone once said, “90% of the art of living consists in getting along with people you cannot understand.” Haven’t you found that to be true? I know that if everyone were just like me, then relationships would sure be a lot simpler. But people ARE different, in wonderfully complex ways. And there IS an art to living together. If you’re a leader, the differences are amplified, because you have to not only get along but also influence the other person. So it’s especially important for a leader to learn how to handle personalities and attitudes that are different from your own.

From ChangeThis: Our world is in trouble. We need leaders who lead for the benefit of others. Jeremie Kubicek believes we need to systematically transform the leadership culture from a dominating system to a liberating system. "I believe it starts one leader at a time. Each leader must play a part in this transformation by thinking differently about the way they lead if we are to ever see true ‘Change in the World.’”

From FastCompany: Seeing is believing. And unless changes you commit to are observable to you and the stakeholders who have a stake in your improving as a leader, they are no more than good intentions

From Bret Simmons: Max DePree, the founder of Herman Miller, wrote some amazing things in his 1989 book, “Leadership is an Art.” Smack-dab in the middle of the book is a powerful chapter entitled “Intimacy.” Here are a few things Max says in that chapter that I just love.

From Bret Simmons: Covenant relationships are forged with purposeful promises. All parties in the covenant are motivated to keep their promises not only because they share passion for a cause, but also because they deeply value and appreciate the interdependent posture of the covenant. When promises are strained, covenant encourages restoration instead of recourse.

From Schon Beechler: We are drawn to the successful men and women in our field. We watch them. We ask them and others the secrets of their success. We analyze and emulate them in the hopes that we, too, can be as good (or better) than they are. What we don’t usually get to see, however, are the failures that helped fuel the successful role models we so admire.

By Jeremie Kubicek: Explains how to become truly influential by overcoming the desire for self-preservation, a tendency that sabotages many leaders today. It’s not that leadership itself is dead, it’s the way in which many choose to lead that is. It’s all about influence. The more you understand it, the better you’ll be able to utilize it and maximize it for success. That’s what this book is about. Teaching you how to expand your influence, be significant and make a greater impact.

From Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen: Good teachers are like sculptors. They subtract to reveal what is already there. Bruce Lee once said: "It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential." This is one of the secrets to mastery, yet much of our work lives or school lives are spent on the unessential. Good teachers and good presenters — indeed, good leaders in general — work hard themselves to "hack away at the unessential" to create environments which foster natural engagement, encourage participation and exploration, and in the end lead to simplicity, clarity, and meaning.

The degree to which people explore, energize, and produce innovative outcomes in their conversations depends much on whether they adopt the role of reader or author.

From Rosabeth Moss Kanter: Apple, Facebook, Twitter, IBM, PepsiCo, P&G, Stonyfield Farm, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and former British politicians provided me with occasions for pointing to business strategy and leadership lessons, good and bad, that shouldn't be forgotten. Here are my top five lessons from last year's blogs that can be carried confidently into the new year.

From Jon Katzenbach at strategy+business: Both big business and big government should shift their management cultures from compromise to integration.

From ALIA Institute: chronicles the principles, people, and practices that have come together to create ALIA’s unique and powerful approach to actualizing authentic leadership and transformational change.

From Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown in Harvard Business Review: Some leaders drain all the intelligence and capability out of their teams. Because they need to be the smartest, most capable person in the room, these managers often shut down the smarts of others, ultimately stifling the flow of ideas. You know these people, because you’ve worked for and with them.

From Geoff Fitch at Pacific Integral: As leaders we often see conflict on the horizon. In fact, leadership is invariably defined in terms of conflict: the tension that arises between present reality – things as they are – and a desired future – things as they might be. It doesn’t stop there. Leadership encounters many other forms of conflict – between the individual and the organization, participation and direction, innovation and continuity, and so on. While on the surface it might seem that the leader’s job is to resolve these seeming contradictions, most conflicts leaders face are surprisingly irresolvable when addressed merely through action to get from point A to point B. While we may seek to bring about a certain change – for example, developing greater collective intelligence – these changes often represent an underlying polarity that will persist over time, and which is simply being rebalanced or integrated through the present action.

From strategy+business: Jon R. Katzenbach, coauthor of Leading Outside the Lines: How to Mobilize the (in)Formal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better Results, introduces a passage on the importance of self-awareness from Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best…and Learn from the Worst by Robert I. Sutton.

by Jim Heskett in Harvard Business Working Knowledge: Do authentic leaders need "masks of command"? Instructors seek case studies posing issues that provoke discussion on both sides of an issue and raise many questions. We seem to have found such an issue this month: Can the "masks of command" coexist with authentic leadership?

Building a community of leaders who lead quietly with focus on community and collaboration, learning, vision, and balance

From ChangeThis: Adrian Savage proposes a return to civilization and humanity in organizations. Does this sound something like your day at the office? You are driving on a rain-soaked freeway. The other cars are speeding past you. You speed up to stay in the flow, but your knuckles are white as you grip the wheel. Familiar? Here's how to find the next exit.

From ChangeThis: "In the last few years, leaders have been encouraged to be bold, confident, authentic and grounded so that they can make decisions that help get things done. In the economic recession, these leaders responded quickly and decisively. We admire leaders who lead. But, we suggest that coming out of the recession, leaders need to shift their approach to lead by becoming meaning makers."

From TED: Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it -- and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.

From Luc Galoppin: How can we un-learn management science and get back to the common-sense of teamwork? Switch-off all the rules, check-lists and scorecards we have been spoon-fed in our management education? A scenario for disaster you may think? Quite the opposite as I witnessed yesterday. Dull libraries on leadership, knowledge management and communication came to action right in front of me. It all happened as the musicians performed their scores at the rehearsal of the prestigious B’rock ensemble.

From Luc Galoppin: Strange things happen when you look at leadership through the lens of music. Basic assumptions flip over and stay like that forever after. You untie knots that you took for granted. Like the idea that a leader is the most important person of a team.

From Luc Galoppin: Luc's visit to the B’Rock rehearsal was another immersion into music as a metaphor of leadership. Like last time he was scouting learning methods in this exclusive and (until now) closed setting. A bizar experience … that’s why it is called BizzArts. The way the B’Rock ensemble is organized is a great source of inspiration for anyone with a knack for management and leadership. B’Rock is a ‘democratic’ orchestra. And this has far reaching consequences on how each of B’Rock’s projects are organized.

From anecdote: Describes why storytelling is an important leadership skills, why stories have impact, provides a couple of tips on becoming a better storyteller, describes what we mean by strategic stories and shows how story work can be much more than merely telling tales.

From Booz&Co.: Every enterprise has an informal as well as a formal organization. The formal is the side with which business people are usually most familiar. It consists of analyses, strategies, structures, processes and programs – all codified in memos, charts and power-point presentations. These tools are designed to align decisions and actions. The informal is generally less familiar. It consists of emerging ideas, social networks, working norms, values, peer relationships and communities of common interest – the elements that often hide beyond the boundaries of the formal. In “Leading Outside the Lines”, authors Jon Katzenbach and Zia Khan make the compelling case that it is in the less familiar informal world where magic happens … yet one without the other is unlikely to sustain peak performance over time.

From Center for Creative Leadership: Too often we lead and live on autopilot: getting through the day, putting out the latest fire at work or home, responding to what's in front of us. There is an alternative, says Clint Sidle, author of This Hungry Spirit: Your Need for Basic Goodness: "Wake up and become fully aware of who you are. When you are self-aware and honest with yourself, you become conscious of your boxes, your habitual patterns," he explains. "Once they loosen their grip, you open the door to fresh perspectives and other possibilities."

From Center for Creative Leadership: "We trust people to be adults in so many areas of their lives," says journalist and author Brian Carney. "But when they walk through the doors at work, we insist they need detailed rules and descriptions for how to do a job." Controlling, top-down leadership creates a culture of "how," according to Carney. At best, it limits growth and innovation. At worse, it solidifies inefficiencies, undermines company goals and creates an environment where employees are unmotivated and disengaged. In his book Freedom, Inc., Carney writes about companies as diverse as a California winery, an insurance company, an advertising agency and a fiber manufacturer that overcame "the hidden cost of how" — by giving up control.

From National Staff Development Council

From TED: Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers -- and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling. "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it."

From Rosabeth Moss Kanter: Coping with the unexpected is a leadership imperative. In every endeavor, the ability to recover quickly separates winners from losers, whether they are reacting to fumbles in a sports match or curve balls thrown by external events. I summarize the challenge of managing volatility in a simple equation: MTBS = or < MTMD. MTBS is the mean time between surprises, which is shrinking. MTMD is the mean time to make a decision, which better be fast.

From Wendy Richmond in Communication Arts: In my teaching, I use the idea of white space as a metaphor. When I develop a syllabus, I also design the activities for which I will not be present. On the first day of class, I tell my students, “By the end of this course, I hope to be the least important person in this room.” I believe that in addition to providing the content, my role is to create an environment that contains an active void. I need to disappear enough for my students to jump in and fill the learning environment with their own excitement and discovery. Again, as in my artwork, it takes confidence to leave that space empty.

In the visual arts, white space is that area that is left blank or perhaps more accurately, open. It should not be thought of as unused space because it is actually an important part of the design itself. It is an “active” void. It adds to or enhances what the artist is trying to communicate. It clears away the clutter and allows the message to be heard. As leaders, we need to be secure enough to create white space in our leadership; to create not emptiness, but an active void. A place where those we lead can jump in and participate. It’s about making room for others to express themselves. Too often, leaders feel the need to be omnipresent; directing everything that happens. This stifles those they lead and stunts their growth.

From Rosabeth Moss Kanter at Harvard Business Review: Back when Apple was first an entrepreneurial wonder and I was a baby consultant often in Cupertino, I used to think of Apple in baseball analogies. Apple was the Boston Red Sox, exciting and colorful but doomed to be second to IBM's New York Yankee-like deep pockets and market domination. Not any longer.

Nitin Nohria and Amanda Pepper of Harvard Business School’s Leadership Initiative collaborated with XPLANE to create this video in order to generate a discussion of the value and importance of leadership to address some of society’s most pressing problems.

From ChangeThis: Given the magnitude of the overall organizational impact, it is surprising how few companies invest in helping their precious leadership assets to succeed during transitions—the most critical junctures in their careers. A few companies (GE, for example) explicitly train their managers how to take charge. More common are “on-boarding” programs that introduce outside hires to the strategy, businesses, and culture of the company. While useful, such programs seldom provide systematic guidance on the process of managing a successful transition. And the vast majority of companies do not provide any support at all. Why do so many companies leave their people to sink or swim?