The number of business books published is staggering, and some wind up in my office, filling shelves, desks and every available surface. Many are quite good, and we work to bring those authors and their thought leadership to our executive members for direct interaction and knowledge-sharing. After all, when you're looking for guidance, advice and practical tactics for improving business performance and career advancement, the experts are the go-to resources.
Michael Porter did a Q&A session with Bloomberg TV's Eric Schatzker at the World Innovation Forum where ExecuNet was reporting exclusively for attendees.
The biggest problem on Wall Street? "I think that fundamentally what happened on Wall Street is a disconnect between what they are doing and what we need in a real economy. Wall Street is supposed to serve the real economy. The real economy creates wealth in the long-term -- not in a year or a quarter. Most stock used to be held for a decade, and loans were held to maturity. What's happened in the last 10 or 20 years is a disconnect and shortening of horizons. The average stock is held for less than a year, and the average loan is packaged and sold to someone who doesn't even know why the loan was made. As things got more short-term, we saw more trading, more volatility, more hedging. Wall Street began creating products for itself and not its customers. It created products with little value and lots of destructive possibility."
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the September job numbers and though the total non-farm employment (-95K) disappointed many, unemployment remained steady as a percentage (9.6 %) and there was private sector employment growth (+64K) with some revisions upward for prior months.
The environment remains "wait and see" until the election or beyond in many respects as companies stay on the side lines with plenty of cash and strong balance sheets and income statements to make a move. It remains all about business confidence.
Business leaders create value for organizations either through obedience or risk, and one is at a surplus and no longer needed, said author and marketing expert Seth Godin at the 2010 World Innovation Forum, where ExecuNet exclusively reported for attendees.
Those who generate ideas and "work without a map" are the real high-value leaders, according to Godin, but many companies don't encourage employee innovation nor do they build a culture that fosters creative thinking for fear of failing.
But failure acts as a double-edge sword: "Doing what you're told is a sure way to failure," said Godin of obedience; however, corporate innovation is guaranteed in a culture of failure.
Why have there been advances in virtually every technology invented in the last 100 years, yet management is woefully out of date? At the 2009 World Business Forum, where ExecuNet exclusively reported, strategist and innovator Gary Hamel asked the delegates, "Could technology management change in this century the way it changed in the last century? Almost all organizations are running on 19th century management systems."
Management was created, the author and co-founder of the Management Innovation Lab at the London Business School said, to "get people to show up every day and do the same job over and over again like robots."
"Green" is evolving from a regulatory or moral requirement to a business strategy. But, green will only succeed, said Joel Makower, author of Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business, when green equals better.
Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com and co-founder of Greener World Media, has tracked the greening of corporations over 20 years and seen it evolve from isolation in the environmental function to spread nearly enterprise-wide. At the 2010 World Innovation Forum, where ExecuNet exclusively reported for attendees, Makower talked to executives about how green innovation can fit into their organizations and careers.
"Mojo" is not among the words executives and recruiters use when we survey them about the specific attributes of leadership, yet executive coach and management expert Dr. Marshall Goldmsith claimed it for his latest book, MOJO: How to Get It, How to Keep It and How to Get It Back When You Lose It.
Goldsmith defines Mojo as "that positive spirit — toward what you are doing now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside," and he associates identity, achievement, reputation and acceptance as the four key factors that impact personal and professional Mojo.
We saw a great deal in the media about the threat of a "double dip" in our economy.
Bernanke's remarks before Congress this week, expecting 3 percent growth for the rest of this year into 2011, shows we continue to be in a slow growth environment with lots of "noise" but probably not a "double dip."
Anecdotal evidence we received this week also suggests a positive outlook. A team of ExecuNetters covered the HSM's World Innovation Forum that was held in NYC this week. They reported that the world actually was alive and well and returning to basics. With over 900 attendees, the attendance was at an all-time high — more than doubling the prior year. The vibrancy of the discussions and this increased attendance really speak volumes about how business has refocused on innovation and growth — after a hiatus.
Beignets, Bourbon Street and beads: can you guess where I was? I've just returned from the Career Management Alliance conference in New Orleans, where Dick Bolles, author of the classic job hunting book What Color is Your Parachute?, was among the keynote speakers.
Originally published in 1970, Bolles updates the book annually, and I asked him the biggest change he's seen in career management activity over the last four decades. "The heightened expectations of the job seeker," Bolles replied. "The first thing they do is go to the Internet and they think they'll have a job by Monday. The tools are easier now than they were then, but the search isn't."