I saw Tom Peters speak recently – yes, Tom Peters the uber-guru – and he said that the greatest influence on his thinking about the role of managers in organizations has been Professor Henry Mintzberg, Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University. He is the author of numerous books including Managers not MBAs and most recently Managing, and has won prizes from the Harvard Business Review for the quality of his articles. He’s also the man behind the IMPM: The International Masters in Practicing Management, an alternative take on the MBA, and the founder of CoachingOurselves.com, a company helping managers tap into their own wisdom.
In this interview we discuss:
- How ego trips might be the biggest barrier to Great Work flourishing in organizations
- The difference between networks and communities – and why we need to focus more on the later
- The inescapable conundrums of managing
- And why we should abandon the term ‘leadership’
You can learn more about Henry at his website
Posted on January 27, 2010
In my own small way I’m trying to be a responsible citizen in the world and lessen my impact. I recycle and compost, I rarely drive a car, I think about things like my carbon footprint.
Ron Dembo does too, but he does it in a much bigger and bolder way. He’s the founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, a not for profit organization that combines brilliant financial engineering, brilliant environmental engineering and really snappy business intelligence to create products and services that help organizations and individuals significantly reduce their environmental footprint. Before that Ron was the founder of Algorithmics, one of the largest enterprise risk management software companies in the world,which he started after time worked at Goldman Sacks and as a professor of economics at Yale University.
My favourite part of the interview is when Ron starts talking about the deadening effect of routine – just listen to the moment he knew he had to leave academia – and its inspiring to see how he not just manages but embraces the ambiguity that doing Great Work generates.
- In this interview, we also talk about how TED.com inspired him to start ZeroFootprint
- How the move from cavalry to tanks provides a powerful metaphor for finding Great Work
- And the way to use ‘hedging’ in what Ron calls “a stochastic world”
Listen to my interview with Ron Dembo here
Posted on September 4, 2009
Kevin and Melinda Berg are a formidable pair and their story speaks powerfully to what it means to overcome challenges to do more Great Work. They are parents, college graduates and they run their own small business – so far, nothing out of the ordinary. But they are also the founders of Access Life, a non-profit organization that supports people with mobility impairment. Kevin and Melinda know the importance of that personally, because Kevin has cerebral palsy and has been confined to a wheelchair all his life. He has difficulty speaking, he can’t feed or dress himself and yet in the face of these physical limitations, he has stayed focused on doing Great Work. Access Life finds the funding for people who need high-tech wheelchairs, funding that is routinely denied by government or insurance companies. In this interview we talk about:
- What it means to be “eye-level” and how that changes everything
- The inspiring story of the first fundraiser for Access Life and what a “Kevin Mile” means
- The power and importance of a team to achieve Great Work
Posted on August 14, 2009
Marshall Goldsmith has been acclaimed by many organizations and institutions as one of the great thinkers in business and in HR. His 2007 book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There was a New York Times bestseller and the Wall Street Journal’s number one business book in 2007, and his most recent book Succession looks like it will have the same level of success. I’m constantly struck by his generosity of spirit as well as his wisdom, and he demonstrates both in this interview.
This interview is approximately 20 minutes long.
Posted on March 19, 2009
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