Happy Holidays!

I want to wish all my readers the very best for the holiday season! Have a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

All the best for 2008!

Leandro

Viral Change will come to the rescue of ‘Enterprise 2.0’ transformations

Dr Leandro Herrero will be a keynote speaker at the eyeforpharma Sales Force Effectiveness Conference in Barcelona (2 - 4 April 2008). He will be focussing on how to go beyond ‘more of the same’ and on how to engage in true business transformation.

Dr Herrero will also be leading a workshop at the event, which will focus on how Viral Change can increase the Sales Force Effectiveness.

eyeforpharma is the market leader in pharmaceutical conferences, bringing pharma strategies to the busy executive. Dr Herrero is a frequent speaker at their events and was voted ‘Best Speaker’ at last year’s Monaco event.

You can register for the event here.

Enter the discount code ‘SPK08’ and receive €550 off any standard priced conference pass! Register now because the event WILL sell out!

It’s time, stupid!

“It is time, stupid!” is how the much-needed campaign slogan would read. Time is man’s last asset. Perception of time is in part personal and in part cultural. Some people’s mind is of the ‘we-have-plenty-of-time-for’ type and others’ is of the ‘there-is-no-time-for’ type. Both may be looking at exactly the same issue, the same timetable, the same facts! These differences are well-rooted in our brains and differentiate us, one from the other. There are also big trans-cultural East-West differences although neo-global-capitalism is homogenising the business world and global executives start to look alike.

Yet, time is elusive. We have been taught that we have to make ‘efficient use of time’ but we are not sure what that means exactly other than being able to do what needs to be done! In the old days, we used to send our managers to time management courses. I have been invited (forced?) to attend several of these in my previous business life and always ended up with a new filofax, daytimer or some other kind of binder.

The fundamental flaw with these courses - both the old ones and the new electronic-world ones - is that they assume there’s a universal best way of managing a supposedly universal time-control-and-efficiency problem. They work for many people, don’t get me wrong. But they do not account for the individualised ‘concept of time’. For example, it is possible to dissect the day into bits and allocate them to, let’s say ‘meetings’. But it would be more difficult to universally distribute the time between let’s say ‘time to do’ and ‘time to think’. The latter is tricky because we all differ in the way we do it.

For many people, the simple dictation “now, stop and think” is a recipe for mental block. For these people, ‘thinking’ (about new ideas, new angles, possibilities of tackling A or B, solving X or Y, my next steps) is something that happens all the time. These people may have peaks of ‘aha!’ driving home, in the middle of the night or whilst attending a conference on a topic miles away from the ‘object of their thoughts’. Other people seem to grab this invitation with both hands adopting the opportunity to have a pre-scheduled afternoon dedicated to non-operational worries. It is part of our own personal and professional development to figure out what works best for us and - once we figured it out - to try to develop mechanisms to do what I have called ‘protect time’.

More on this in my next post...

If you want to read more about leadership or want to continue reading from the above, you can read it all in my book The Leader with Seven Faces: finding your own ways to practice leadership in today’s organization.

You can also read some of the resources on leadership posted on the left or contact us for more information.

A special kind of architect: the leader as builder!

From the multiple tasks, duties and roles expected, ascribed to or desired from the modern business leader, there is one that I would put well above anything else (and I really mean ‘ANYTHING ELSE’!) The ultimate responsibility of any business leader is the protection of time and the creation of ‘spaces’. In short, the leader as an architect. In my opinion, there are 3 dimensions of this leadership architecture:

• Time and space: good leaders build them, bad leaders destroy them. But in reality, these are vital assets for any organisation.

• Homes: leaders should build ‘homes’ for human capital, for relationships (social capital) and for ‘ways of doing’ (organisational capital).

• Legacy: what leaders leave behind DOES matter, because it has a direct impact on all of us. Unfortunately, this is usually explored a posteriori. Good leaders are conscious of their legacy all they time because they imagine and project a future.

And in the next few posts, I’ll be spending some time on those three dimensions. In the next post, I’ll start with ‘time’...

If you want to read more about leadership or want to continue reading from the above, you can read it all in my book The Leader with Seven Faces: finding your own ways to practice leadership in today’s organization.

You can also read some of the resources on leadership posted on the left or contact us for more information.

Leading change through the business-technology interaction in the ‘Enterprise 2.0’ culture.

Dr Leandro Herrero has been invited to speak at the quarterly meeting of CIO Connect in London (29 January 2008). He will show how you can lead change the Viral Change-way in the ‘Enterprise 2.0’ culture through the business-technology interaction.

The title of his presentation is: 'Viral Change: the alternative to traditional management of change processes. Leading change through the business-technology interaction of the 'Enterprise 2.0' culture.'

CIO Connect is the London-based networking organisation to which top CIOs and their core teams below. The quarterly meeting is a top networking event open to all CIO Connect members.

For more information on CIO Connect and to contact them to become a member, please click here.

meetingminds Special Holiday Offer

meetingminds has published several of Dr Herrero's books which are all available from several online retailers (incl. but not limited to Amazon worldwide, Barnes and Noble, WH Smith, Borders, etc.). These books include so far:

Viral Change: the alternative to slow, painful and unsuccesful management of change in organizations

The Leader with Seven Faces: finding your own ways to practice leadership in today's organization

New Leaders Wanted: Now Hiring! 12 kinds of people you must find, seduce, hire and create a job for

meetingminds is now offering a special holiday promotion on all their books for the entire month of December. Order directly through meetingminds by December 31st 2007 and you will receive a 35% discount on the retail price of all Leandro Herrero's books!

(Order by December 10th 2007 and all your books will still be delivered on time for Christmas!)

How to get your discount?
Send an email to sales@meetingminds.com mentioning the title(s) of the book(s) you wish to buy and how many, including your full contact details. On receipt of your email, we will contact you to finalize the sale including your discount. It couldn't be easier!

For large orders, additional discounts may apply. Please contact us for more info.

meetingminds also offers substantial discounts to audiences where Dr Herrero speaks. If you would like to hire Dr Herrero for a speaking engagement, you can find more information here.