The Smart-Talk Trap
^ADJ: My takeouts:
- Only some companies are adept at translating ideas into action - why?
- The insidious nature of "smart talk" or in my words - say a lot and action nothing
- Reward plain language and those that make the complex translatable and simpler
Investing in Growth Through Uncertainty
Smart leaders embrace opportunities even as they reduce spending.
^ADJ: Key line: "resilient leaders .... they continue toward their goals but pivot quickly as more information becomes available."
Using neuroscience to make feedback work and feel better
Research shows that using feedback is how organisms — and organizations — stay alive. Here’s how leaders can make the most of the anxiety-producing process.
^ADJ: Key takeout "Research is suggesting that by switching from giving feedback to asking for it, organizations can tilt their culture toward continuous improvement."
How People Create and Destroy Value with Generative AI
Key Takeaways: A first-of-its-kind scientific experiment finds that people mistrust generative AI in areas where it can contribute tremendous value and trust it too much where the technology isn’t competent.
Around 90% of participants improved their performance when using GenAI for creative ideation. People did best when they did not attempt to edit GPT-4’s output.
When working on business problem solving, a task outside the tool’s current competence, many participants took GPT-4's misleading output at face value. Their performance was 23% worse than those who didn’t use the tool at all.
Adopting generative AI is a massive change management effort. The job of the leader is to help people use the new technology in the right way, for the right tasks and to continually adjust and adapt in the face of GenAI’s ever-expanding frontier.
^ADJ: Why this is important: awareness of what AI can do, secondly awareness of where AI can assist for best results
Storytelling That Drives Bold Change
When tackling urgent organizational problems, leaders usually work hard to identify underlying causes, tap a wide range of knowledge, and experiment with solutions. But once they’ve mapped out a plan, there’s one more crucial step they must take: crafting a story so compelling that it will harness their organizations’ energy and direct it toward change. Drawing on decades of experience helping senior executives lead large-scale transformations, Harvard professor Frei and leadership coach Morriss present an effective way to approach that challenge. They outline four key steps: (1) Understand your story so well that you can describe it in simple terms, (2) honor the past, (3) articulate a persuasive mandate for change, and (4) lay out a rigorous and optimistic path forward.
^ADJ: Why this is important - we need to communicate more widely to get the message across and to engage at a deeper level.
The world’s best performance coach explains how he transforms teams
^ADJ: Key takeout: "Eastwood’s approach is consistent. By zooming out and pointing our fleeting contribution to legacy he urges teams to think about their ‘Us’ story. For me this suggests that what he’s actually doing is emphasising a powerful shared identity. In my mind I would see this as activating a visceral bond of community, he chooses to label it as ‘belonging’. That distinction ends up feeling semantic when presented with what his approach achieves."