Servant Leadership - A Better Org Chart

Servant Leadership: Breakthrough Ideas on Customer Service

The traditional org chart is all wrong. It puts the people that work directly with your customer at the lowest position on the pyramid. This makes the customer the least important person in the picture. Servant Leadership will flip that pyramid. What if your leaders saw their primary mission as support for those closest to the customer? What kind of difference would that have on customer loyalty and satisfaction?
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“Remember, Scrooge, Time is Short …

... and suddenly you're not there any more." - The Ghost of Christmas Present, enjoying a memento mori moment A repeating theme in my feed reader has been the drive to "work different"; clunky grammar aside, we need to change the way we communicate and collaborate, increase our focus on innovation, and spend less time in pointless meetings. On that latter point, I read this article on my latest flight; Mankins talks about the galling amount of time spent in…

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‘Three Types’ Revisited – Shades of Grey that Matter

There is a flaw in my simplistic story of the Three IT Archetypes - if/when someone points it out, I will openly admit it, but would also insist on a follow-up conversation. Strictly peer-to-peer [regardless of title], one part technique and one part philosophy - and preferably over a suitable beverage. The problem is the oversimplification - although the diagram hints at it, you typically need to point out that there will always be some overlap. eCommerce is a classic…

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Managing IT: Three Archetypes

I'll tell you about this visualization from a recent internal conversation, but I may end up aggravating some career IT people out there. Yes, I have massively oversimplified things - but I'm trying to develop a broader understanding, and I think it's a good first step. The original question was "How do I manage IT?", but it quickly morphed into "how can I drive / derive value from IT?" (note the powerful difference that a single letter makes - derive sounds sustainable).…

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