DCO Weekend Reader - 8/29/08
The web is a vast repository of opinions, commentary and occasionally, wisdom. Here’s a selection of the best articles I read over the past week.
If you would like to recommend an article, blog or book, please leave a comment with your suggestion. Weekend Reader is a regular feature here at DCO, and you can read past Weekend Readers here.
For you E-mail readers of DCO, I changed the timing of when updates get sent out. You may have noticed you only get one E-Mail and it gets sent early afternoon-ish (EST). I changed this to be earlier in the day, so you should receive it late morning now. This was mainly to get the “weekend” reader into your hands early enough so you could actually have it for the weekend.
It’s hard to believe Labor Day is upon us already, but Monday is the holiday. Summer sure went quick this year. Is it getting older that makes the years go by so quickly, or do we just get busier as adults and let things pass us by easier?
Regardless, have a great holiday weekend. Do a favor for me and let someone special know how much they mean to you.
Personal Excellence & Leadership
- Is creating your own personal mission statement on your agenda? Not sure how to get started. Following the link to a summary of three separate articles addressing the topic.
- Creating a sense of urgency is an important skill for many of us. However, that doesn’t mean you want your organization running around frantically in unorchestrated chaos. Here’s a good introduction to something called “urgent patience”.
- In my opinion the best leadership blog I’ve come across yet, George Ambler’s The Practice of Leadership never disappoints. It seems like every post is a candidate for the Weekend Reader. His most recent is no exception, writing about the 4 key components of a personal leadership vision.
Thought-Provokers
- Looking for a universal metric by which to measure yourself, your life or your work?
For Fun
- If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time online, both for work and for play. This quick post outlines 14 simple ways to boost your online productivity. All the tips are very simple, but make a lot of sense. There should be something for just about everyone in there.
- SlideShare is an online site that allows you to upload presentations and share them via a blog, website, or allow them to be downloaded. I tested this out with a recent post embedding a presentation on Positive Attitude. If you’re looking for a simple way to share and/or embed presentations in your site, check out this SlideShare demo.
Books
- The book Leading with Kindness covers the topic of respect and it’s relationship to honesty. With an overview that links dishonesty to disrespect and ultimately to hatred of self, what would appear at first as a rather pollyanna topic, ends up with the potential to greatly impact your organization, and yourself.
Tips & Tricks
- Why is an online presence important to your career? Here’s a short article with some answers to that question and some suggestions for getting started if you haven’t already.
Related posts
DCO Weekend Reader - 8/22/08
The web is a vast repository of opinions, commentary and occasionally, wisdom. Here’s a selection of the best articles I read over the past week.
If you would like to recommend an article, blog or book, please leave a comment with your suggestion. Weekend Reader is a regular feature here at DCO, and you can read past Weekend Readers here.
Last week I promised to try to limit the number of links this week, and sadly I just wasn’t able to live up to that promise. Whereas I initially thought this feature might not even be weekly, it now appears not only will it stay weekly, but it will be chock-full of great posts and links. To help you decide which links are most appropriate for you, I’ll expand my descriptions of posts that might not be self-explanatory, to help guide your weekend reading.
This week I’m also adding a new section to the Weekend Reader: Tips & Tricks. I read a post that simply had to be mentioned and it really didn’t fit any of the four categories, so I just created a new one.
I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but the weather here couldn’t be more pleasant. Late Summer / Early Fall weather gives us sunny days in the low 80’s and cool clear nights perfect for opening the windows. Have a great weekend - take a hike!
Personal Excellence & Leadership
- Courage has been discussed on this blog as a possible “essential” quality of entrepreneurship. This post examines what happens when you have to little or too much of it.
- Are your corporate (or for that matter personal) metrics not in line with your goals? If you hit your metrics can you still miss your goals?
- Some insightful comments on why leadership development might be such a popular topic these days in business.
- Positive Leadership (also a book).
- On staying committed… Warning #1 - some “salty” language. Warning #2 - may be extremely motivating.
- Are you the leader of an organization that needs a better sense of urgency? Could you use more urgency around your personal goals. Here is a good article outlining the difference between true urgency and false urgency, along with four tactics to create a true sense of urgency.
Thought-Provokers
- What beliefs support your Leadership philosophy? I’d love to see some thoughts from all of you in comments.
- Sitck with this one. It ends better than it starts.
For Fun
- This is fun and might even be useful! Screen2 lets you share your web browser with a friend or colleague. Nothing to install, safe and secure.
Books
- How to be useful: A beginner’s guid to not hating work. I’m glad to see themes like being nice and using common sense so prevalent in today’s leadership commentaries. This new book shows “how to restore courtesy in your work and your organization, and move up in the world while doing so.” It may sound a bit trite, but based on the extended overview of the book, this one may get added to my reading list.
Tips & Tricks
- The concept of one’s “personal brand” is one that I’m seeing more and more articles about. If this is an issue that is important to you, then you may be interested in this article on tracking your online brand. It’s not just as simple as “googling” your name once a month, and the author offers some tips on monitoring not only news, but blogs, forums, discussion boards and twitter.
