Bootstrap Leadership Blog

Put Together Your Own Board of Directors

Steve Arneson - Thursday, July 29, 2010

Here’s a tip as you put together a leadership development plan – find a few people to sit on your own personal Board of Directors. What is this group going to do? They’re going to help you plan, execute, and assess your development as a leader. You’re going to brief them on your plans, and ask for their advice and suggestions. You’re going to ask them to track your progress, give you feedback on how you’re doing, and evaluate your results. In other words, you’re going to set up a structure that assures you absolutely, positively can’t miss in terms of hitting your development objectives.

Start by choosing a PBD from among your peers, direct reports, extended team members, and matrix managers. Pick people who are familiar with your work, see you regularly throughout the year, and who will give you a diverse set of opinions and suggestions. Don’t choose your current boss (you get enough advice and feedback from her). The ideal composition is probably two peers, two direct reports, and one matrix manager. Since you want to meet with them in person, choose all of your Board members from within your current organization (while it’s tempting to “hire” your best friends or former colleagues for this assignment – don’t do it. This is a job for people who see you every day). Obviously, once you’ve thought about who should serve on your PBD, you need to ask them if they’d be interested, and gain their commitment.

Tell your Board members that you’d like to meet with them as a group three times a year (each meeting should last about 30-45 minutes). Schedule the first meeting right after your performance appraisal (if your company doesn’t do performance appraisals, schedule the meeting when you’re about to set your annual development objectives). The second meeting should be six months after that – to check in on your progress. The third and final meeting should be just prior to the next performance appraisal cycle, to collect final feedback on how you accomplished your learning goals this year. Start the first meeting by thanking them for helping you focus on your development goals, and express your appreciation for signing on as your personal set of advisors.
Share your development plan, and ask for their feedback and recommendations. Ask them to observe your behavior throughout the year in these areas, and invite them to provide constructive criticism and suggestions as they notice results or a lack of progress. Solicit recommendations in the very first meeting – find out what they think will work or not work as you pursue your goals. The second meeting is all about their feedback – what are they noticing? What are you doing well? What could you be doing even better? Finally, in the third meeting, gather even more input, and ask for suggestions on what you should tackle next in terms of personal improvement.

Use your Personal Board of Directors to evaluate your development as a leader. Try it – you’ll find that there’s nothing more motivating than publicly declaring your intentions to improve as a leader.

Going to School with iTunes U

Steve Arneson - Thursday, July 15, 2010

I’m going to guess that just about everyone reading this column has an iPod, iTouch, or iPhone (that’s a safe bet, yes?).  By now, you’ve built up a great library of music, maybe downloaded a few videos, movies or TV shows, and have dozens of apps that you can’t live without.  But have you checked out iTunes U, available on the iTunes Store? 

 

iTunes U brings you the power of mobile education, making it simple and easy to access lectures, videos and presentations from hundreds of colleges & universities, all over the world. With an iTunes U site, colleges are able to create a single home for all of their digital content, which can then be easily downloaded and viewed on any Mac, PC, iPod, or iPhone. 

 


iTunes U is big and getting bigger each week. There are over 600 universities with active iTunes U sites. About half of these institutions — including Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, and UC Berkeley — distribute their content publicly on the iTunes Store.  In addition, on the Beyond Campus section of iTunes U, students and faculty can access a wealth of content from distinguished entities such as MoMA, The New York Public Library, Public Radio International, and PBS stations.

 


While iTunes U is ideal for accessing and replaying lectures, many other forms of content can also be distributed — including slideshows, PDFs, films, exhibit tours, and audio books (I just watched a video of biologist David Robinson taking students to the Galapagos Islands, for example).  iTunes U can also be used to distribute schedules, syllabi, notes, maps, and other information, making it a value-added learning tool that can do more than just deliver content.

 


The corporate uses for iTunes U are obvious.  In fact, while I was at Capital One, we were the first major corporation to partner with Apple to pioneer audio learning (this was before video iPods).  We had hundreds of Capital One employees listening to “books via MP3” in those days; today, it seems the sky is the limit for mobile learning with Apple’s ubiquitous product line. 

 

Next time you’re surfing the iTunes Store for new tunes, click on iTunes U and check out the offerings.  Have you always wanted to sit through a lecture at Stanford, Georgetown or Oxford?  Here’s your chance… be warned, however; you might burn an hour just surfing through all of the interesting content!   

Leading Clever People

Steve Arneson - Thursday, July 08, 2010

My friend Dave sent me a book last week, so I thought it was a good time for another book review.  The book is called Clever (2009) and it’s by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones (authors of Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?).  It’s a quick and interesting read about those special people who make a disproportionate contribution to an organization.  Every company has them; those vital few employees or leaders that really make the company go – the ones who combine skill & talent and are at the top of the employee value chain.  There’s just one little problem – turns out clever people tend to be difficult to manage.

 

In describing “clevers”, the authors cite nine defining characteristics, as follows:

 

  1. Their cleverness is central to their identity
  2. Their skills are not easily replicated
  3. They know their worth
  4. They ask difficult questions
  5. The are organizationally savvy
  6. The are not impressed by corporate hierarchy (and don’t want to be led)
  7. They expect instant access
  8. They want to be connected to other clever people
  9. They won’t thank you

That’s quite a list!  Know anyone like that at work?  Does this describe you, perhaps?  
 

I won’t give away the rest of the book (I’m sure the authors would prefer you buy a copy), but it contains some very good advice about how to manage these individuals.  Needless to say, it involves being rather clever yourself – keeping an open mind and using nontraditional managerial methods. 


Are they worth it?  In most cases, yes.  The products, sales or ideas they build and generate can take your company places it couldn’t go otherwise…so you definitely don’t want to be the narrow-minded manager who causes clevers to leave and join your competition.  But they will challenge you (and maybe drive you crazy in the process).  In the end, managing clever people requires you to look at leadership a little differently.  Which is probably a good thing, don’t you think?

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