Author Archives: Ken Carroll

Leadership is for rejects

Leadership evolved out of the things that management rejected. 50 years ago, there were no ‘leaders’ in business. There were ‘administrators’ in gray suits (as in Masters in Business Administration) who spent their time on paperwork and what we would now identify as management.  But the … Continue reading

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Leadership as mining

 As a manager, your job is to manage the material resources of your organization – inventory, cash, facilities. As a leader, your job is to manage its psychological resources, aka, the people. But as Ken Robinson pointed out (somewhere), inner … Continue reading

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Why we need new leadership

 I don’t know of a single institution that isn’t under the threat of massive trauma or even annihilation. From the Catholic church to the US economic order, from the welfare state to the corporation, it’s all rattling. The old centers … Continue reading

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Huffington’s leadership challenge

This article on on the recent AOL/HuffPo merger describes the leadership challenge facing Huffington and her team. If the author is correct she’s not up to it. First, it seems she has recklessly agreed to take on AOL tasks and responsibilities … Continue reading

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Gary Hamel, New Humanism, and management 2.0

Gary Hamel is the leading thinker on management 2.0 and someone who gets the new humanism. In fact, this video introduction to his excellent The Future of Management, is probably the best 90 seconds you will see on the topic anywhere. … Continue reading

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The New Humanism

Here’s David Brooks talking about a ‘new humanism’. He sees it as the result primarily of insights from neuroscience. I agree that neuroscience will change everything we know about management, leadership, and whole lot else in the coming years (though … Continue reading

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Self-direction and the New Leadership Skills

We need a new conception of leadership and I believe self-direction describes an alternative model. So, what can the capacity for self-direction do for you? Well, a lot. However, its main objective is not material gain (though it often follows) but rather on … Continue reading

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Self-direction goes beyond learning

Here is the presentation I mentioned in the last post (with some revisions). The bigger argument goes beyond learning and it is this one: We’ve been concerned exclusively in the West with externally driven freedoms i.e., those that come from … Continue reading

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Self-direction can be learned

This morning I addressed Dr Curt Bonk‘s class at the School of Education at Indiana University. Last year Curt published an important book on how web technologies are changing education and learning – The World is Open - in which he included reference … Continue reading

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Leadership porn

There’s a difference between looking at something and doing it. B-school professors pride themselves on scientific methods and empirical research. Their expertise is in objectively observing business, rather than subjectively doing business. The approach is therefore vicarious, detached, data-driven, and … Continue reading

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