I enjoyed Fast Company's Greatest Hits: a fascinating collection of some pivotal ideas from a collection of thought leaders. Many-such as Tom Peters: The Brand Called You-have caused a fundamental shift in the way we think. With others-such as Wide Awake on the Night Shift-it is frightening to think they were ever given any credibility.
Jim Collins-of Good to Great fame of course, does a balanced, thoughtful introduction and expresses five main premises which I would like to repeat here (bold=his words; italic=my comments):
Premise 1: Work is not a means to an end; it is an end in itself.
Absolutely. If you are not doing work you care about, you will find it non-sustainable. But do remember, not only can you look for work about which you are passionate, you can create work about which you are passionate and you can look for the intrinsic worth in any task.
Premise 2: If your competition scorecard is money, you will always lose.
I will leave this one to Jim Collins: there are two ways to be wealthy. One is to have a huge amount of money. The other is to have simple needs. What is your answer to 'How much is enough?'.
Premise 3: Business is a mechanism for social change: for good and ill.
Increasingly we will see the desire from ordinary workers in ordinary organisations to make that social change a positive one-whether it is reducing poverty, or making environmental changes. This is very good news for the New Year.
Premise 4: Entrepreneurship is a life concept, not just a business concept.
I teach on several MBA programmes. This idea is fundamental to much of my teaching: we are intended to be entrepreneurs. Create something. And you can create that within an organisation, too.
Premise 5: Performance is the fundamental requirement.
Ultimately no re-positioning or other 'weasel talk' will hide the fact we must deliver.
Which brings me to a little manifasto from Execupundit.com entitled 'Nobody Cares'. Read it in full on his site (find it in prevous posts). Here are some excellent thoughts from him:
1. Unless you are working in a coal mine, an emergency ward, or their equivalent, spare us the sad stories about your tough job. The biggest risk most of us face in the course of a day is a paper cut.
4. Although your job title may be the same, the job that you were hired to do three years ago is probably not the job you have now. When you are just coasting and not thinking several steps ahead of your responsibilities you are in Dinosaur territory and a meteor is coming.
10. If you plan on showing them what you are capable of only after you get promoted, you need to reverse your thinking.
JfDI!
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