Personal | Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education

Full Disclosure, A Favourited Tweet Does Not Mean I Read It … Yet

Jan 202012

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of Twitter.

Twitter provides the medium for my tailored news source (I find out about world events on Twitter faster than any of the regular news outlets), my 24×7 global support base (see my post The Evolution of My Global Network) and my notetaker (this attempt failed as it was too verbose for a Twitter feed). Finally, Twitter is a deep mine of refined precious metal harvested by the brilliant people I follow. Here are a few examples of posts I wrote because of Twitter:

All of these posts were triggered by a tweet that I read or a tweet to me about a topic that made me think and then share something with all of you. Powerful stuff for me and hopefully for you too!

I have been getting @replies and mentions for favouriting certain tweets. Twitter recently enabled a notification to the original tweeter if someone favourites a tweet they posted.

In the interest of full transparency to those who thank me, I have a confession. Just because I favourited your tweet does not always mean that I have read the link in your tweet.

I have taken to spending 15 minutes each morning scanning my Twitter feed (mostly to see what went on in the world while I was asleep in Vancouver) and look for interesting tweets (usually ones with links to articles). I favourite them (my Twitter bookmarking method) so that I can look at them at a later date. I do most of this scanning on my Blackberry Mobile Twitter app.

One ask I would have is if you have a website, think about huge shift to the mobile world and enable a mobile theme please! I would be more inclined to browse to the link and read it if the content presented was for a mobile experience (especially now that I am getting middle aged eyes!).

So, it is really me who needs to thank all of you for sharing all the great content. Keep tweeting and sharing because I for one, am listening and learning from you! Thank you!

Flexible Leadership – Self Knowledge, Guiding Principles and Flexible Approaches

leadership, management, personal No Responses »

Oct 182011

Leaders, who are self-aware, create personal guiding principles and are flexible in their leadership approaches, will have success navigating any situation. There are a set of leadership traits, behaviors and styles that support flexible leadership. Leaders need to develop self-awareness. Understanding what their strengths and weaknesses are and how they react to different situations is the foundation for a flexible leadership style. Next, the leader needs to create their guiding principles defining who they are and how they work. Finally, leaders need to provide structure and flexibility in their organizations.

Leadership traits are described by Trait Theory. The presumption of this theory is that “effective leaders possess a similar set of traits or characteristics.” (Williams, 2011, p. 236) Peter Drucker discounts Trait Theory by saying; “Nor are there any such things as ‘leadership qualities’ or a ‘leadership personality’.” (Drucker, The Essential Drucker, 2001, p. 269) Other writers disagree with Drucker and show that leaders’ traits make them stand out. Williams lists these traits as “drive, the desire to lead, honesty/integrity, self-confidence, emotional stability, cognitive ability and knowledge of the business.” (Williams, 2011, p. 263) Jim Collins supports this thinking with the concept of Level 5 Leadership. Collins writes that the two sides of Level 5 Leadership are Professional Will and Personal Humility. (Collins, Good to Great, 2001, p. 36)

Drucker wrote “Know your strengths and values” describing the need to be self-aware. Drucker advocates “feedback analysis” as one way to find out one’s strengths and weaknesses. (Drucker, The Essential Drucker, 2001, p. 218) Williams’ list of traits noted above also refer to attributes that are personally focused. Personally, I used the Myers-Briggs Type Indicators (MTBI) analysis to get a clearer understanding of my strengths and weaknesses. There are four dichotomies that describe 16 personality types. (The Myers & Briggs Foundation, 2003) I wrote a blog post about understanding the personality types of Enterprise Architects called “Being a Teacher works for me …” (de Sousa, 2008)

Flexible leaders build on their self-awareness by creating a set of guiding principles. These guiding principles are applied daily by the leader to their work. Peter Drucker writes “Nothing better prepares the ground for such leadership than a spirit of management that confirms in the day-to-day practices of the organization strict principles of conduct, and responsibility, high standards of performance, and respect for the individual and his work.” (Drucker, The Practice of Management, 1954, p. 160) Jim Collins provides a set of principles for Level 5 leaders. “Clock Building not Time Telling” focuses on building a company that is built to last. The “Genius of AND” stresses personal humility and professional will. A “Core Ideology” of ambition for the company over ambition for self. Finally, Level 5 leaders are “relentless in stimulating progress toward tangible results and achievement, even if it means firing their brothers.” (Collins, Good to Great, 2001, p. 198) Read more...

The Email Charter – signup today!

management, personal No Responses »

Aug 132011

I saw a tweet from Bill Owen containing a link to The Email Charter. The charter has 10 rules to “reverse the email spiral”. This is really great stuff and we need to get the word out. I wrote a post titled Focus on Your Commitments – A New Way to Work which explains a way to use your Outlook email client as a productivity tool. By combining the 10 rules from the Email Charter with the techniques I presented in my blog post, I expect to save even more time.

Here are the 10 Rules