participation

Driving Dramatic Progress through Touchstone Events

Seth Kahan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:56:12 -0500

The original touchstone was basanite. It is a smooth, black stone used to test the quality of gold and silver. It was rubbed across the precious metal and the authenticity could be determined by the color of the streak produced. The word touchstone now means anything that tests genuineness or excellence.

6 Steps to a Breakthrough

Seth Kahan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:59:41 -0500

Get your scope right.
Identify the area you will address. This will determine what is relevant and what is not as you move forward, untangling inter-dependent relationships.
Identify your Most Valuable Players
read more

The Change Leader's MVPs

Seth Kahan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:59:57 -0400

The Change Leadership Team

Seth Kahan — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:11:04 -0400

Hamel: Time for Management 2.0

Seth Kahan — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:16:19 -0400

Gary Hamel's message at the World Business Forum today is that your organization is not fit for the future unless it is fit for human beings. Hamel is a globally recognized expert in business strategy and performer extraordinaire on stage, delivering his message with verve and compelling stories.

"There is No Such Thing as a Lost Cause... Unless You Give Up"

Seth Kahan — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:41:16 -0400

George Lucas, the filmwriter, producer, and director known best for his Star Wars and Indiana Jones series, was interviewed at the World Business Forum in Radio City Music Hall yesterday.

Most striking was the number of inventions he generated to support his films, including multitudes of breakthroughs in technology.

Lencioni Teaches Team Engagement

Seth Kahan — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:30:38 -0400

Patrick Lencioni is an expert in team performance. He is the author of eight best-selling books with over 2.5 million copies sold. After six years in print, his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team continues to be on national best-seller lists.

We’re Saving Big Business. We Need to Focus on Small Business.

Seth Kahan — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:05:36 -0400

Bill George’s core competency is his deep experience, in-depth understanding of America’s major players and the intricacies of business economics. He led Medtronics, joining as CEO in ’91. He grew Medtronic’s market capitalization from $1.1 billion to $60 billion, averaging 35% a year, from 1996 to 2002. Today he delivered the opening keynote at the World Business Forum in NYC, where I saw him live.

A Growing Wave of Hospital Excellence

Seth Kahan — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:27:46 -0400

8 Conversations that Create the Future

Seth Kahan — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:02:17 -0400

I will post to this blog, covering the World Business Forum in New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, live as it happens, Oct 6 & 7, 2009.

WorkLIfeSuccess: 5 Keys to Sustained High Performance

Seth Kahan — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:41:27 -0400

High-performers are experts at sustaining a constructive frame of mind, a clear vision, and a continuous supply of personal energy. It's a tall order. Here's how it's done:

The Power of a Park

Seth Kahan — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:59:17 -0400

Profile of a Change Leader: Barbara Tulipane

5 Ways to Create a Shared Stake in Success

Seth Kahan — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:24:37 -0400

Success at leading change – dramatic, sustained improvement – is largely determined by a leader’s capacity to engage others in a mutually supported vision of the future. Engagement means getting people’s whole-hearted support and participation. When this is realized, change is held in place by myriad hands, heads, and hearts.

Change Management in 4 Steps

Seth Kahan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:02:12 -0400

When you are kicking off a new change initiative, the highest leverage activity bar none is face-to-face engagement with your key opinion leaders. Don't make the mistake of writing emails, designing brochures, putting together PowerPoints and sending them out into the change-o-sphere unescorted. Change is interactive. Here are the four steps to master:

WorkLifeSuccess: the Secret to Doing More with Less

Seth Kahan — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:07:05 -0400

When it comes to personal performance the secret to doing more with less is rhythm. If you have ever tapped your toes to a beat you have experienced what every good drummer relies on: the power of the groove.

Find the Time to Save Your Life

Seth Kahan — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:06:04 -0400

I was working with a change leader who was nearing exhaustion because his work was demanding so much. I told him he needed to get some rest. He told me he didn’t have time. He’ll get his job done. But, it might cost him his life.

He could pay the ultimate price, but I wasn’t referring to that. If he gives up his most important needs – health, spirituality, family, friends – he may find his life isn’t worth living. If you’re a workaholic, think of time off as the unique component that makes your effort sustainable.

7 Ways to Delight Clients

Seth Kahan — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:55:08 -0400

I recently caught up with leadership guru, Steve Denning, author of award-winning books like The Secret Language of Leadership, and asked him about his new ideas on delighting clients.

Seth: So Steve, what’s all this about delighting clients? Why is this important?

Scouting, Reconnaisance, and the Avant-garde

Seth Kahan — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:24:29 -0400

Maps are a good thing. They help you avoid difficult areas, or prepare for them. They make it possible to weigh the advantages of the long route vs the short one. And when you are faced with unplanned interruptions, they can get you where you need to go in short order.

Mapping the territory of change is easier said than done. An adequate representation must take into account varieties of intelligence: individual and collective, logistical and political, cultural and technical.

8 Ways to Juice Your Meetings

Seth Kahan — Sat, 30 May 2009 08:27:07 -0400

Meetings are a core ritual in today's work world. Everyone is trying to figure out how to do them better. There is this temptation to think, 'if only I follow this easy-to-understand guide, my meetings will once again become useful, under control, relevant, well-organized.'

7 Lessons for Getting Change Right

Seth Kahan — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:31:39 -0400

Between 1995 and 1997 I participated in two distinctly different change initiatives at the World Bank, both called Knowledge Management. The first one never took off. The second one changed the organization, and the world, in two short years, demonstrating how a bureaucratic, geographically distributed, multi-national, public sector organization can reinvent itself faster than anyone could have planned.

In Pursuit of Elegance

Seth Kahan — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:24:11 -0400

Do you ever get the feeling something is missing? In the best instances, it often is.

"Grand elegance comes not out of control, but from chaos," said Matthew May when I spoke to him about his amazing new book, In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing.

Creating a Post-Crisis Economy: How to Design a Participatory System

Tim Brown — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:48:01 -0400

Those who have stuck with me all week, know that I believe that participation is key to the next big wave of innovation in business and society. Whether it is in the fundamentals of how we think about wealth or the economy, how we parse the minutiae of individual transactions, or how we evolve our most important social systems such as health care, I believe that the interconnectedness of our information society makes this shift inevitable and highly desirable.

The question that I inevitably ask as a designer is how we design these kinds of participatory systems?

Creating a Post-Crisis Economy: Control Your Own Health Care

Tim Brown — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:37:00 -0400

In the U.K. in the 1940s, Sir William Beveridge designed what became known as the welfare state. In an ambitious program, the post-war Labor government attempted to put in place a series of services designed to ensure that the population of Britain could reliably receive high-quality public education, health care and other public services. Beveridge envisioned a system in which citizens participated directly in their own well-being. Instead, he helped create what he later described as a "culture of consumption" of public services.

Creating a Post-Crisis Economy: Learning to Measure Participation

Tim Brown — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:18:08 -0400

When I consider bidding for something on e-Bay, the first thing I do is check the reliability rating of the seller. When I want to meet a hard-to-reach executive, I try to establish a link through my network. When I consider which conference I will pay to attend, I choose TED because I know it will give me the most new ideas to feed off for the year.