Bootstrap Leadership Blog

Each morning, I receive a few automatic emails that give my brain a jump start and provide me with some provocative thinking that I can use to stimulate discussion with others.  I profiled one of these last fall:  Smart Briefings on Leadership, which provides a synopsis of some of the best leadership thinking being published today.  The other two come from Harvard Business Publishing: Management’s Tip of the Day and the Daily Stat. 

Management Tip of the Day is generally a few paragraphs long, and highlights the essential advice from a recent Harvard Business Review article, business book or blog.  After reading a short summary, a link takes you to the HBR site for further reading, where additional links are provided if you want to buy the full article or book, etc.  I typically find that the essence of the idea (what I can read with just one click) is enough to get me thinking… but sometimes the offering is so compelling that I do explore it further.

The Daily Stat is just what it sounds like… literally, a quick paragraph (self-contained in the email) about a key business fact that is gleaned from the pages of HBR or collected from blogs found on the HBR website. The Daily Stat covers a broad spectrum from leadership facts to consumer trends, so sometimes it’s merely interesting rather than useful, but it’s quick and easy to digest – generally, you can read it in about 10 seconds. 

Check out these two sources for a week and see if they work for you… if so, you can subscribe to have these land in your mailbox 5 days a week.   Thankfully, you’re already subscribing to one of these auto email thought-starters (this one!)… perhaps you’ve time to read a couple more… all in the name of leadership self-development!

Here’s another resource for those of you who are bookmarking and collecting these sites.  You know Fast Company, the king of the 2000-2001 internet media explosion (and just about the last magazine standing from that era).  From time to time, I check out their online site for a quick read to see who they’re profiling, and came across their 30 Second MBA feature.  It’s a cool idea – each week, Fast Company poses a question to a panel of five “faculty” members, who record separate video clips that air Monday through Friday.  The videos are, you guessed it, 30 seconds in length, which means the faculty have to be crisp with their points.

The “professors” on the 30 Second MBA site include CEOs and other senior executives from some of the world’s largest companies, and their advice is pretty darn good, actually.  Recent topics include:

• How do you deliver difficult news to your staff, customers or the public?
• In a highly networked, global world, has the meaning of leadership changed?
• How can teams make better decisions?

Check out the 30 Second MBA at Fast Company.com.  I think you’ll like it – it certainly won’t take long to absorb the daily lessons!