John Cox

Blogs · @wyome

Tagged leadership · everything

www.nytimes.com

Corner Office - The 5 Habits of Highly Effective C.E.O.’s - NYTimes.com

Based on interviews with over 70 CEOs, this piece identifies five teachable qualities that distinguish high-performing leaders from their peers: passionate curiosity, battle-hardened confidence, team smarts, a simple mind-set, and fearlessness. The author argues these traits are not innate but developed through attitude and discipline, and that CEOs actively seek them in employees they hire and promote because they directly correlate with success across different types of organizations. Rather than proposing novel management theory, the piece draws on concrete examples and anecdotes from executives to illustrate how each quality manifests in practice—from asking unconventional questions to handling adversity to cutting through complexity to embracing productive discomfort.

Permalink leadershipadvicebusinesscareers

Freakonomics

Freakonomics » Ten Things You Need to Do if You Were Hired Today

Altucher draws lessons from his early career at HBO to offer ten rules for succeeding at a new job: love your company's product and watch/study it obsessively, learn the company's history and executive origins, arrive early to support your boss and give them full credit for your work, cultivate relationships with secretaries and HR staff who control information flow, regularly test your market value by interviewing elsewhere, study marketing campaigns and industry dynamics, adopt an ownership mentality by saying "we" instead of "I," and plan your exit from day one by identifying gaps you can fill as an entrepreneur. Woven through personal anecdotes about witnessing a fatal accident on his first day and struggling with imposter syndrome, he argues that mastery of corporate culture combined with entrepreneurial thinking transforms a junior employee into someone who can eventually leave to start their own competing or complementary business.

Permalink productivityleadershipadvicebusiness

www.jarche.com

Harold Jarche » The Evolving Social Organization

As organizations grow beyond roughly 150 people, they become "complicated" rather than simple, developing hierarchical layers that push decision-making and innovation to the periphery and fragment knowledge into silos. The piece argues that today's complex business environments demand a shift from traditional hierarchical structures toward "wirearchy"—networks based on knowledge, trust, and credibility—enabled by social learning practices where employees continuously learn through peer conversations, collaborative problem-solving, and informal knowledge sharing rather than formal training. Companies like SFR, Ford, and SunGard demonstrate that implementing social learning platforms generates measurable business benefits while helping organizations navigate complexity, generational diversity, and the need for constant innovation.

Permalink leadershipbusinesslearning

Tim Kastelle

Using Networks to Find Knowledge « Innovation Leadership Network

Organizations struggle to access dispersed expertise when making decisions under uncertainty, particularly in large companies where employees don't know whom to ask about emerging problems. A simulation study suggests that searching through formal departmental channels and subject-matter experts may be more efficient than relying on the most highly connected people in an organization. By systematically mapping and linking subject-matter experts to critical decision points, organizations could reduce the "I don't know who to ask" gap and better leverage their internal knowledge networks.

Permalink leadershipknowledge

www.mattdempsey.com

Matt Dempsey - Web and Print Designer

A panel discussion examined how AI is actually being deployed in regulated industries, finding that organizational culture and willingness to experiment matter more than the technology itself—the real bottleneck isn't capability but absorption. The conversation surfaced a genuine challenge around junior roles: if AI eliminates the repetitive "grunt work" that traditionally teaches newcomers through osmosis, companies need to deliberately redesign entry-level positions to develop talent differently. The panelists also cautioned against designing systems around current AI limitations like hallucination and context windows, since these constraints are being solved rapidly enough that overly conservative architectural choices will quickly become unnecessarily restrictive.

Permalink designaileadershipbusiness

jabaldaia

Valuing cultures and absorbing knowledge « jabaldaia

Organizations must develop absorptive capacity—the ability to assimilate and apply innovative knowledge from external sources—to remain competitive as information flows increasingly across borders. Success requires employees to cultivate cross-cultural skills including valuing diverse perspectives, building authentic relationships, careful observation, comfort with ambiguity, language mastery, crisis management, and conflict resolution. Beyond individual capabilities, organizations must support knowledge absorption through explicit values, training programs, structured initiatives, and communication networks that enable the translation and integration of external ideas into internal practice.

Permalink cultureleadershipbusinessknowledge

Opensource.com

Does your organization need a "no policy" policy? | opensource.com

Daniel Pink's Telegraph piece examines Netflix's unlimited vacation policy, where salaried employees can take time off whenever they want without tracking days, arguing that removing such policies actually increases accountability rather than creating chaos. The article contends that excessive corporate rules stifle innovation and that freedom and responsibility work together effectively, a principle the author witnessed firsthand during ten years at Red Hat, where greater employee freedom consistently correlated with stronger personal accountability. The author's company, New Kind, has adopted a similar no-vacation-policy approach and is considering extending this philosophy to other areas of operations.

Permalink cultureleadershipstrategybusiness

Innovation, New Ideas and How The World is Changing

Innovation begins when the system is stuck - Game Changer

Innovation emerges when someone recognizes that a system—company, industry, or market—has become rigid and frozen, unable to adapt to new opportunities or threats. The rigidity typically stems from mental constraints rather than physical limitations: systems get trapped in unquestioned beliefs that make change seem impossible, or in narratives that promote inaction. The article uses examples like BankSimple challenging traditional banking's outdated technology infrastructure and Apple challenging music industry assumptions to show how innovators succeed by questioning what competitors and customers have accepted as inevitable, and offering a fundamentally different approach.

Permalink leadershipadviceapplebusiness

jabaldaia

No age for Creativity! Quality changes on Ideas « jabaldaia

Contrary to the assumption that creativity peaks in youth, this piece argues that creativity is a universal capacity undiminished by age, instead evolving into "late creativity" characterized by synthesis, reflection, and wisdom as people accumulate experience and expertise. Organizations can foster creative thinking across all ages by providing time and resources, encouraging experimentation and risk-taking in a psychologically safe environment, and rewarding intrinsic motivation rather than controlling behavior—while avoiding traditional education approaches and surveillance practices that instill fear of failure. The author emphasizes that work need not be joyless to be serious and responsible, and that participating in creative activities provides both professional benefits and therapeutic value regardless of age.

Permalink leadershipcreativitybusiness

jabaldaia

Crossing spaces and ideas « jabaldaia

The piece argues that innovation emerges from cross-pollination—connecting ideas across diverse disciplines, cultures, and backgrounds rather than developing them in isolation. It uses the metaphor of bees and gardeners to describe how organizations can become "idea pollinators" by hiring diverse talent, hosting interdisciplinary meetings, inviting external speakers, and working across varied projects, as exemplified by IDEO's systematic approach to sharing and combining knowledge from different fields.

Permalink leadershipcreativityadvicebusiness

Forbes

How To Rise Fast At Work: A True Story - Forbes.com

Mark succeeded by becoming indispensable to his organization as a whole rather than by competing with peers or self-promoting to management. He started by systematically learning how every part of the company operated—what people did, how they worked together, and where inefficiencies existed—then made unglamorous improvements like ordering lunches and organizing supplies that genuinely helped everyone do their jobs better. His colleague Ted, by contrast, worked frantically to outpace his peers and impressed senior managers with his speed and ambition, but because he never moved beyond excelling at his assigned tasks or understood how the broader organization functioned, he remained stuck as a top performer rather than advancing into management and leadership roles. The article argues that Mark's approach of building institutional knowledge and facilitating others' success is more effective for career advancement than the traditional school-tested formula of individual performance and self-promotion.

Permalink productivityleadershipadvicebusiness

www.agilean.com

davidmaister.com

David Maister > Articles > Why (Most) Training is Useless

Most business training fails because companies use it as a standalone event disconnected from organizational systems, management alignment, and reward structures—when it should be the final step in a carefully sequenced change program that first addresses why people should care, what behavior will be measured and rewarded, and what systems support the new practices. Training is fundamentally a skill-building exercise requiring hands-on practice and emotional development, not merely intellectual understanding, yet it's typically delivered as educational content by academics disconnected from real workplace application. Effective training demands that senior leaders visibly commit, operating groups train together with their managers present, participants prepare rigorously beforehand, and the organization immediately applies and monitors the skills in their regular work.

Permalink trainingleadershipadvicebusiness

www.escapefromcubiclenation.com

Escape from Cubicle Nation: Open letter to CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs across the corporate world

J. Timothy King argues that the optimal company size is between 20-30 employees, beyond which management becomes burdensome and less rewarding than smaller operations. He contrasts this positive experience with his subsequent move to a larger, more stable corporate employer, suggesting that the trade-offs of corporate employment may not be worth the security they promise.

Permalink leadershipadvicebusinessentrepreneurship

www.fastcompany.com

The Five Most Common Lies in Business

Paul LaFontaine, who left a major music company to consult on business honesty, identifies five pervasive lies in corporate culture: claiming people are a company's most important asset (when financial assets actually are), presenting decisions as rational when they're really personal preferences, judging performance objectively when favoritism determines outcomes, separating business from personal stakes (when everything in business is personal), and prioritizing customers over self-interest (when people actually prioritize themselves). He argues that these lies persist because executives avoid honest conversations about what's really motivating their decisions, and that genuine candor—even anger—handled directly would be more truthful than the euphemisms that typically cloak business dealings.

Permalink culturecommunicationleadershipadvice

LUNA99

One Hundred Rules for NASA Project Managers

LUNA99 is a digital entertainment platform that markets itself as highly affordable, requiring only minimal startup funds while promising equal winning opportunities for all players regardless of initial investment size. The platform emphasizes fast deposit processing and smooth withdrawal procedures designed to minimize friction in financial transactions. The article includes testimonials from users across Indonesia claiming rapid fund transfers, fair gameplay mechanics, and responsive customer service.

Permalink leadershipbusiness