James Drogan

Sometime in the latter part of my career at IBM I began to understand and become interested in the nature of leadership.  One of my favorite commenters on the subject is Bob Sutton of Stanford.   See his blog, Work Matters.

Another of my favorite sources is the McKinsey Quarterly.

In particular I want to call your attention to How Centered Leaders Achieve Extraordinary Results (Barsh, J., Mogelof, J., & Webb, C. (2010). How Centered Leaders Achieve Extraordinary Results. The McKinsey Quarterly, 2010(4), 78-88).

The thumbnail to the left is the centerpiece of the article.

As I read the article I thought of it more as a diagnostic.  That is, one could view an existing organization through the Barsh, Mogelof, Webb lens and come to a set of hypotheses as to why an organization behaves the way that it does.  These hypotheses, essential to critical thinking, have the possibility of leading to recommendations as to what might be done to improve performance.

I like examining ssues from different points of view which doubtless explains why this has caught my eye.

The last paragrph in the article I find compelling.

Centered leadership is a journey, not a destination, and it starts with a highly personal decision. We’ll leave you with the words of one executive who recently chose to embark on this path: “Our senior team is always talking about changing the organization, changing the mind-sets and behavior of everyone. Now I see that transformation is not about that. It starts with me and my willingness and ability to transform myself. Only then will others transform.”