I have long admired John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco. In my various readings of Cisco, I have observed how Mr. Chambers has been able to produce a strong culture of customer satisfaction at Cisco. In my personal interactions with those working at Cisco, I have found Cisco’s employees (including executives) to be extremely helpful and willing to spare their… Read more →
The reaction that I often get when I introduce Twitter to my students is that it is something silly. I get to hear remarks such as “you can’t do much in 140 characters” and “I’d rather be doing something instead of simply telling others what I’m up to.” The reaction of my students is not atypical. Anyone who is… Read more →
Previously, Surinder wrote a blog post on his observations about different cultural expectations and implicit communication patterns. He discussed some ways that virtual team leaders could help limit cultural snafus in teams. As more companies are working with partners around the world and multicultural teams occur more and more often, understanding of cultural differences is important for team members and… Read more →
The June 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review contained a brief note by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman titled “10 Fatal Flaws That Derail Leaders“. The authors, who analyzed 360-degree feedback, identified the following 10 most common shortcomings of ineffective leaders. The worst leaders: Lacked energy and enthusiasm; Accepted their own mediocre performance; Lacked clear vision and direction; Had poor… Read more →
I do a majority of my collaborating and individual work remotely, which I couldn’t do without the support of various programs. In this post, I thought I would share some of my favorite tools for working remotely. They may be useful to you in your collaboration work as well. I use most of these as a single user for private… Read more →
Some months back, Betsy had blogged about a New York Times article by Clive Thompson on how technologies such as Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter lead to ambient awareness. She wrote: “These technologies make it convenient to quickly and easily give or get updates with a number of other people. Although each individual message might have little meaning as a stand-alone,… Read more →
Last weekend’s Wall Street Journal carried an article by Safeway’s CEO, Steven A. Burd, addressing the national health-care reform debate. Safeway has been able to hold the per-capita health-care costs flat since 2005, while for most American companies these costs have increased by 38% during the same period. Mr. Burd attributed this to a program that Safeway designed in 2005… Read more →
Surinder is my advisor and mentor in the doctoral program at Binghamton University. We have written several conference papers and collaborated on other projects together with Betsy and Professor Rui Huang at the university. Very often the two of us, or all of us, have worked together while geographically far apart. We have used tools like Google docs, Google… Read more →
Since virtual teams are supported by technology and technology tends to filter out vital nonverbal cues, can a leader be effective in virtual contexts? This is one of the questions that I have tried to answer in my past research. I have found that leadership can indeed make a positive difference in virtual contexts. I have also found that certain… Read more →
The other day I found a link to a book review on Twitter. The book is called Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive. It provides summaries of research about persuasion and how to be successfully persuasive. One study in particular had me thinking about an approach to change and innovation that I am very interested in. The… Read more →