Leadership futurist Bob Johansen's job is to look 10 years into the future, anticipate where society is headed, and help businesses prepare to meet future needs. As a keynote speaker at one of the Center for Values-Driven Leadership's recent Senior Executive Roundtables, Johansen walked the audience through three forecasts he says will change the landscape of business in the coming 10 years.
Watch the summary video here, then follow the links for more specific comments on each of the forecasts:
Leaders Come Clean: The Hard and Rewarding Work of Transparency in Business Leadership
Dr. Kathryn Scanland is the president of Greystone Global LLC, a consulting firm focusing on strategic planning, leadership development and organizational design. This post is republished with permission from Tuesday Mornings.
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Coming clean, or transparency, is about being open. It’s about being real and genuine. The counterfeit of transparency is illusion: pretending, “seeming” rather than “being,” making things appear different than they really are. ~Stephen M.R. Covey
Not long ago I had a conversation with someone about trust. He believed that because he had not told a flat-out lie, the level of trust between us should not be affected by his hiding things or withholding and failing to disclose information. I disagreed. His lack of transparency caused me to be suspicious and uncertain what I could, or couldn’t, believe; hence, I wasn’t sure when I could really trust him.
You Won't Quit a Leader: Four Points on the Difference Between Being the Boss, and Being a Leader
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Tom Walter is a "serial entrepreneur" who has launched nearly 30 companies. He is the CEO of Tasty Catering, named one of Winning Workplaces best small companies in 2010. This post is republished with permission from Serial Entrepreneur.
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The saying goes that people do not quit a job, they quit a boss. That may be true, especially if that “boss” is a manager, but rarely will anyone quit a leader.
The History of Management:
Management is a rather new business term.
Sustainability: Overcoming Hurdles to Innovation | Short Videos Featuring Sustainability Expert Stu Hart
On October 14, 2011, the Center for Values-Driven Leadership hosted Stu Hart, a business sustainability expert and author of Capitalism at the Crossroads. Hart is an advocate of moving beyond greening to a place where sustainability drives innovation and provides restorative technologies that extend current markets and open new ones.
The following short videos (under three minutes each) feature Hart elaborating on some of his key messages. First, Hart sets the stage for understanding sustainability in its future context: beyond greening initiatives like reducing energy use or carbon footprints:
The following short videos (under three minutes each) feature Hart elaborating on some of his key messages. First, Hart sets the stage for understanding sustainability in its future context: beyond greening initiatives like reducing energy use or carbon footprints:
Shame on Me: How Shame Shapes Leaders and Sabotages Success
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Laura Zumdahl, Ph.D., is the Vice President of Nonprofit Services at Donors Forum and a nonprofit leadership advocate.
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Before
this summer, I would never have thought of myself as someone shaped by shame.
Guilt, yes, but shame? No, not me. I often joke that my feelings of guilt keep
me involved in things long past when I should have exited, wake me up at night
worrying about how what I said in a meeting was received by others, or drive me
to spend hours trying to craft the perfect outfit, email, or dinner party.
But
the past few months I learned a life-changing truth: my world is not shaped by
feelings of guilt, but rather feelings of shame that influence my decisions, self-perception,
and behavior on a daily basis. In short, shame is running my life—and probably
yours too.
On Creating Smaller Problems: Stu Hart on Problems that Begat Bigger Problems, and How Small Scale Solutions Can Change the Game
My colleagues Amory and Hunter Lovins tell a wonderful parable: In the early 1950s, the Dayak people in Borneo experienced an outbreak of malaria. To combat this terrible problem, The World Health Organization sprayed large amounts of DDT to kill the mosquitoes carrying the disease. As expected, the mosquitoes died and the malaria declined. Problem solved.
But wait--there were unexpected side effects: The roofs on peoples' houses began to cave in. It seems that the DDT was killing the parasitic wasp that previously controlled the thatch-eating caterpillars. Even worse, these DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckoes, which were then eaten by cats. The cats died, allowing the rat population to explode, exposing the local people to even more vicious outbreaks of plague and typhus. To cope with these new problems, which were the result of the original solution, the WHO was obliged to parachute 14,000 live cats into Borneo...
The New Green Alchemy - Stu Hart on Disruptive Technology and Reverse Innovation
Stuart L Hart is a leading authority on the implications of environment and poverty for business strategy. He is the founder of Enterprise for a Sustainable World, www.e4sw.org. This blog is shared with permission from Voice of the Planet. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
We often hear that the reason the so-called clean technology revolution has so far only amounted to a genteel protest is because new clean technologies are simply too expensive.
Only rich Germans and Californians can afford such luxuries.
We must wait, so the story goes, for major "breakthroughs" to occur in renewable energy, biofuels, biomaterials, potable water, etc., before they can be cost competitive with conventional technologies and infrastructures. To convince us of this point, we are given graphs showing costs declining and volumes increasing for these emerging clean technologies, but the take-off point is always about a decade away.
Unfortunately, I can still remember seeing such graphs back in the late 1970s!
Well, I'm here to tell you that this story is really a fantasy.
America Needs Jobs
Not those jobs. Steve Jobs. You get the point. He is gone. But what a legacy! Who are our next Steve Jobses?
Who has a dream worth pursuing, at great cost and against all ridicule? Who has the entrepenurial spirit to take great risk in the face of sometimes unthoughtful governmental regulation, to achieve great goals? Who will stop decrying uncertainty and start celebrating the opportunity that accompanies it? Who has the courage to lead without apology? Why not you and me?
This world changer was adopted, raised in modest means, and dropped out of college. Maybe there’s something to that “indomitable spirit” thing.
Revisit his 2005 commencement address to Stanford with me. What three or four nuggets will you take from it. Perhaps “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” or “Stay hungry. Say foolish.” or his humor in the line, “If you live every day as if it will be your last, eventually you will be right….”
What sticks with you? What will you share?
This world changer was adopted, raised in modest means, and dropped out of college. Maybe there’s something to that “indomitable spirit” thing.
Revisit his 2005 commencement address to Stanford with me. What three or four nuggets will you take from it. Perhaps “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” or “Stay hungry. Say foolish.” or his humor in the line, “If you live every day as if it will be your last, eventually you will be right….”
What sticks with you? What will you share?
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Author Lee DeRemer is the Professor of Ethics and Strategic Leadership at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He retired from the Air Force after 26 years of flying, command, and staff assignments and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in values-driven leadership at Benedictine University. This post was republished with permission from www.DangerousU.com.
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Reporting Roundup: What the CommitForum Experts Had to Say about the State of Reporting, the Value of Assurance, When to Disclose What, and Why Leading Indicators are a Better Measure of the Future
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This post provides highlights from a session of The CR CommitForum, held last week in New York City. Find a mistake in the text? Write us here to share the correction.
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Last week's CR CommitForum featured multiple sessions that touched on the topic of reporting of sustainability and corporate responsibility initiatives. The general conclusion - repeated by multiple speakers in various ways - was that transparency fosters sustainability.
Read highlights in the areas of:
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Last week's CR CommitForum featured multiple sessions that touched on the topic of reporting of sustainability and corporate responsibility initiatives. The general conclusion - repeated by multiple speakers in various ways - was that transparency fosters sustainability.
Read highlights in the areas of:
- General Reporting
- Third Party Assurance
- Disclosure
- Leading Indicators
How Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Helped Bring Food Security to their Coffee Growers
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This post provides highlights from a session of The CR CommitForum, held last week in New York City. Find a mistake in the text? Write us here to share the correction.
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Forum Speakers:
Pat Palmiotto, Director of the Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
Rick Peyser, Director of Social Advocacy and Coffee Community Outreach, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
Session Title:
Fighting Hunger in Coffee Supply Chain Communities
Los Meses Flacos, the thin months, is a phrase heard to often in countries like Nicaragua, which are also prime coffee-growing regions. This was a phrase that researchers and staff from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters heard repeated as they interviewed the farmers that provided the company's coffee beans.
When asked, 67% of the nearly 200 farming families interviewed reported extreme hunger for 2 to 8 months of the year.
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Forum Speakers:
Pat Palmiotto, Director of the Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
Rick Peyser, Director of Social Advocacy and Coffee Community Outreach, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
Session Title:
Fighting Hunger in Coffee Supply Chain Communities
Los Meses Flacos, the thin months, is a phrase heard to often in countries like Nicaragua, which are also prime coffee-growing regions. This was a phrase that researchers and staff from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters heard repeated as they interviewed the farmers that provided the company's coffee beans.
When asked, 67% of the nearly 200 farming families interviewed reported extreme hunger for 2 to 8 months of the year.
Leaving a Positive Beer Print Behind
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This post provides highlights from a session of The CR CommitForum, held earlier this week in New York City. Find a mistake in the text? Write us here to share the correction. ---------------------------------------------------------
Forum Speaker:
Bart Alexander, Corporate Responsibility VP, MolsonCoors
If you knocked back a few cold ones this past weekend, you left a series of "beer prints." Beer prints are more than the ring of moisture left on the bar napkin: they're representative of the product's impact (positive and negative) in the community.
In what was one of the more engaging presentations at CommitForum last week, MolsonCoors corporate responsibility VP Bart Alexander shared an overview of the company's "beer print" campaign to help employees and stakeholders connect the beer industry to sustainability and corporate responsibility.
"We can make CSR as simple or as complicated as we want to make it," Alexander told the audience of corporate responsibility champions. "We can tie CSR to our business ambitions like avoiding risk and reducing cost, but employees' eyes gaze over at all this. Our employees get beer."