There are hundreds of Insights to explore that we hope raise people’s consciousness and elevate the conversation by exploring today’s world through the lens of The HOW philosophy.
Lessons on how to be a better boss from corporate-leadership guru Dov Seidman.
Alan Murray writes about Dov's views on the Moral Imperative of Leadership.
Having spent decades in the military serving for a series of terrific leaders, I would offer the simple thought that reading books can make people better leaders.Having spent decades in the military serving for a series of terrific leaders, I would offer the simple thought that reading books can make people better leaders.
The rise of AI will have a huge impact on your career. Will creativity keep you robot-proof? The answer may surprise you
In the face of rampant technology and automation (including warnings about jobs being lost to robots), Seidman points out that we must cultivate trust, truth, values, passion, and other human-related qualities. He notes that numerous companies tout the word human in their slogans. In many cases, these companies do exemplify human-centered values. However, “though these efforts are likely earnest attempts to embody human values, companies get into trouble when they don't fully and completely instill these values in their organizations.” Citing the example of Nelson Mandela, Seidman writes: “When you demonstrate moral authority, people follow you not because they have to, but because they want to.”
Dov was recently asked by Fortune Magazine to contribute his picks for its 2017 World’s Greatest Leaders list. While he offered many suggestions, Fortune rightfully featured one of his strongest recommendations: the National Co-Chairs of the Women’s March—Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, Bob Bland, and Carmen Perez. As Dov shared with the magazine, the march stands…
Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and current Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, recommended President Trump five books in the earnest spirit that “reading can make people better leaders.” Each offers insights into the human condition and metaphors for navigating the vicissitudes of life, and when taken together,…
A new president will be inaugurated this week. In the aftermath of a divisive election season, how can the United States be reunited?
Are the world views, frameworks, and tools that leaders use to chart their course sufficient to compete today and tomorrow? We believe the answer is “No.” Our conclusion is supported by the results from one of the most ambitious, long-term research projects in the fields of organizational effectiveness, behavior, and leadership. The HOW Report suggest a clear roadmap for how organizations can simultaneously build resilience and deliver growth in today’s global economy.
I recently shared a meal with Dov Seidman, the CEO of LRN, which advises companies on how to build ethical cultures. He reminded me that the philosopher David Hume said that “the moral imagination diminishes with distance.”
College of Business shares unique partnership with Dov Seidman - its Thought Leader of the Year - putting HOW at the center of innovative new leadership curriculum
People see that many of the companies where they have put their time, money, and faith are not actually working for them. Many employees and customers have adopted mistrust as a way of life, assuming that every big mainstream business will sooner or later fail to live up to their expectations.
We expect a lot from our higher education system: It should turn young people into young adults. It should promote a diverse, open-minded, and informed citizenry. And it should train our workforce to meet the needs of the future economy. Oh, and it should do all of this without burdening students with a mountain of debt to pay off…
Editor’s Note: At How Is The Answer, we value and embrace ethical thinking, using the writings of moral philosophers—from Heraclitus and Aristotle, to Mohandas Gandhi and Elie Wiesel—as a guide to reconsider how we think about the working world. In this ongoing series, we offer practical leadership lessons from history’s most important thinkers. Today, we focus on David Hume. David…
“The vast majority of business leaders are looking for innovation in all the wrong places. In the 20th century, a CEO could command his employees to, ‘produce 10 times as many widgets as you did last month,’ in the same way that a general might have told a soldier to, ‘Take that hill.’ You could…
The working world offers plenty of opportunities for fear and trepidation. But few experiences in that world inspire more anxiety than the job interview. And for good reason. Candidates offer themselves up for judgment, most often by a person or group of people they are meeting for the first time. Today’s job interview process is perhaps more arduous…
As the Summer Olympics in Rio reaches its midpoint, we have already witnessed several competitive milestones. From Michael Phelps winning a record-setting 26 medals, to Serena Williams’ stunning defeat, to the USA Men’s Basketball Team decision to stay on a yacht instead of the Olympic Village due to concerns related to Zika, Rio 2016 has had its fair share of intrigue. But…
The world has seen many failed alliances, from the League of Nations to the Warsaw Pact. We should all hope that NATO does not become one of them.
The vast majority of business leaders are looking for innovation in all the wrong places. In the 20th century, a CEO could command his employees to, ‘produce 10 times as many widgets as you did last month,’ in the same way that a general might have told a soldier to, ‘Take that hill.’ You could measure such progress easily.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, boundaries don’t restrict team members; they empower them.
A few weeks ago Hillary Clinton said that we should “Make America Whole.” She may have said it as an aside, just as a contrast to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” but it actually encapsulates an ethos of leadership both deeply rooted in the American political tradition and central to the future of both our country and the corporate world.
“What behaviors do you want to see more of from your employees? What would help you win more customers and grow your business?”
What, exactly, is “greatness”? This is a question very much worth asking. After all, if we’re going to aspire to greatness together, we should have a common understanding of what we’re talking about.
One of the enduring ironies of the World Economic Forum in Davos is that the world’s élites congregate in this Alpine village each year to contemplate a backlash against the world’s élites.
Marking the UN Global Compact’s 15th anniversary, Global Compact +15 brought business and civil society to the United Nations to show how the private sector is taking action and partnering to advance societal priorities, with an emphasis on the United Nations global agenda for sustainable development (i.e. the Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs). The General Assembly Session was a unique gathering of all participants and special guests in the UN General Assembly Hall. Together participants aimed to demonstrate to Governments the private sector’s critical role in solving our world’s greatest challenges and show how the Global Compact’s work is at the heart of the United Nations agenda.
Several years ago, Dov Seidman published a business book called How. His primary argument was that process — the “how” — matters as much, if not more, than the substance — the “what.” Seidman focused his argument on how companies deliver products and services, but the Bowe Bergdahl case shows that political leaders who ignore the “how” in decision-making do so at their peril.
Today marks the fourth year of an inspiring new celebration, one that reacts to this trend by putting value over price and values over value and one that, I believe, deserves to become an enduring part of our global culture: #GivingTuesday.
It’s fashionable to push for education reform these days, but the results of our various programs and initiatives are often harder to pinpoint exactly. American students’ achievement remains stagnant compared with their international peers, and just this year U.S. students received the lowest overall scores in a decade on the SAT. Despite the movements to create better math and science-based STEM programs, and to limit the number of vocabulary words students need to know for standardized tests, it seems our focus for what our children need to know is narrowing even further when it should be doing the opposite: expanding.
Dov Seidman, an ethics and compliance expert, urges banks and other companies to do the "next right thing," not the "next thing right," citing the example of Chipotle, which earlier this year stopped serving pork at one-third of its restaurants when it found a supplier fell short of its animal welfare standards.
With the 2016 Election season underway, the swirl of candidates and campaigns is drawing us into a discussion. Behind the talking points and slogans, what’s on display is not just leaders or leadership styles, but underlying worldviews.
Fifteen years ago, when 40 companies formed the Global Compact at the United Nations, they laid out the principles for a more inclusive and sustainable world. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called for a “global compact of shared values and principles, which will give a human face to the global market.”
Dov Seidman keynotes the 2015 ASU GSV Summit.
Fortune’s annual “100 Best Companies to Work For” list provides useful insights into how we collectively view corporate culture. Most of us flip through the pages or click through the screens hovering over pictures and blurbs highlighting gourmet chefs, nap rooms, yoga instructors and other signifiers of “great” workplaces.
Most of us seem to associate the word "leader" with stereotypical personality traits such as charisma, dynamism, self-motivation and forcefulness. There’s nothing wrong with any of these characteristics in and of themselves. Most successful leaders I have met exemplify some if not all of them. But just because these are the commonly thought of features, does that make them the best or definitive ones?
The world hasn’t just changed, it has been dramatically reshaped. When we can do business across continents in a matter of seconds and the Dow can lose and recover $136 billion in minutes because of a Twitter hoax, it’s clear that technology does more than just connect the world.
The monthly jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reads like a national marriage scorecard. There are tallies of courtships (“job openings”), marital unions (“hires”) and a variety of divorces (“total separations,” “quits,” “layoffs” and “discharges”). Our recent scorecards contain some positive how-much news: Employment marriages have outpaced employment divorces for more than a year, and the national unemployment rate is now south of 6 percent.
Join us for the first in a series of conversations on HOW individuals, nations and business must urgently change how they behave, lead and operate in a world that is more interconnected and interdependent. This first evening will examine the challenges in the global arena at this pivotal time and the fundamental shifts needed to solve our most pressing problems.
This is the fourth apology in our Apology Metrics series in which we present apologies for readers to assess. Our goal is not to evaluate apologies as theatrical performances but to evaluate the apologizer’s behavior over time to see whether there has been genuine change. The survey for this apology will be predictive rather than retrospective. We will follow up with a retrospective evaluation after at least a year.
Over the course of the 20th century, the mature economies of the world evolved from being industrial economies to knowledge economies. Now we are at another watershed moment, transitioning to human economies—and the shift has profound implications for management.
Over the course of the 20thcentury, the mature economies of the world evolved from being industrial economies to knowledgeeconomies. Now we are at another watershed moment, transitioning to human economies—and the shift has profound implications for management. What do I mean by the human economy? Economies get labeled according to the work people predominately do in them. The industrial economy…
People, we have a grande problem. And it goes much farther than your local Starbucks. Here’s how to take a stand. (How, indeed!)
It’s always a good time to ask what kind of leadership we need because the world is constantly changing. But the world is not only changing. It’s being dramatically reshaped, making us ask the question not just with more urgency but through a different lens.
Is your organization like GM? Your reaction to that question is probably similar to my own reflexive response–and to the reactions of the vast majority of business leaders and managers: “Of course not! Nor was our company like Enron or BP, for that matter. Our products didn’t kill customers, sap retirement accounts or damage the environment.” Of course, you may wonder why you should care enough to even ask yourself the question. Fair enough, but I strongly believe we all should ask this question.
I want to congratulate LeBron James, Germany and the San Antonio Spurs on their recent wins -- before they fade from our minds -- and for demonstrating to the world, and each other, how inspirational leadership works and what it takes to build a winning organization – any organization. This lesson goes far beyond sports; it is, in fact, directly analogous to the journey on which all leaders need to take their organizations to truly compete in today’s hyperconnected world as it reshapes our collective operating environment.
This is the third apology in our Apology Metrics series in which we present apologies for readers to assess. Our goal is not to evaluate apologies as theatrical performances but to evaluate the apologizer’s behavior over time to see whether there has been genuine change. This time, we will look at the apology of Kevin Rudd, the former prime minister of Australia, to Australia’s indigenous community in 2008. With the benefit of six years of hindsight, we are in a much better position to judge the apology’s authenticity.
This is the second apology in our Apology Metrics series in which we present apologies for readers to assess. Our goal is not to evaluate apologies as theatrical performances but to evaluate the apologizer’s behavior over time to see whether there has been genuine change.
Doctors don’t traditionally apologize for medical errors; in fact, they usually don’t even disclose them. That is why I have long been interested in how the University of Michigan Health Systems has bucked tradition with its Michigan Model, a collaborative and transparent approach to patient safety and medical mistakes.
When Andrew Ross Sorkin and I came together to start “Apology Watch,” our goal was to elevate the conversation about authentic apologies. In that vein, we are introducing an “Apology Metric” survey to give readers an opportunity to share their insight.
“I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your senior drill instructor. From now on you will speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be ‘Sir.’ Do you maggots understand that?” With that line from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket actor R. Lee Ermey introduced his new recruits – and a whole generation of Americans – to the fundamentals of basic training, where drill sergeants demand respect, order, and, most importantly, obedience. Ermey, who wrote much of his own dialogue, acted out the reality he experienced when he was a Parris Island drill sergeant.
The freedom train has left the station, my friends. If you’re a business leader, you better track that train down, leap aboard and learn how to conduct the right type of freedom throughout your business ecosystem. If you don’t, your company and your career may soon hurtle off the rails.