Despite founding the company, the reality is I work for each of the members of our team, not the other way around.
This idea, which is called servant leadership, became popular in an essay written by Robert Greenleaf in 1970 titled The Servant Leader. Although Greenleaf brought life to the concept for today’s leaders, the general concept dates back to 4th century BC when Chanakya authored a book titled Arthashastra and stated:
“The king [leader] shall consider as good, not what pleases himself but what pleases his subjects [followers].” “The king [leader] is a paid servant and enjoys the resources of the state together with the people.”
An innovative video discussing the new Leveraged Learning service from the Institute for Management Studies. The service builds on the IMS seminar experience, allowing online access to help transfer the knowledge gained during the day back into the organization and will be available in 2011.
Video produced by IMS sister company, AthenaOnline.
Why wish for more hours in the day when we can make better use of the ones we’ve got?
Wishing there were more hours in the day is just that: a wish. There are two facts we know about time. First, there are exactly 24 hours, or 1,440 minutes, in each day. That amounts to 168 hours in one week and 8,760 hours in one year. Second, we all have the same amount of time. Rich people cannot buy more. Forgetful people cannot lose it. Scientists cannot invent more time. Powerful people cannot yield influence and gain more. When it comes to time, it is the only aspect of life where there is true equality. So, the question is not one of where do you find more time. You cannot do it. The real question we need to be asking is how do we manage the things that we do in the 168 hours that are available in the week?
The following is a typical breakdown of how activities may consume our time in one week:
This blog entry has been adapted from the September issue of The Quest for Workplace Excellence (sign up here)
Last month, Steven Slater, a disgruntled JetBlue flight attendant, became a cult hero to thousands of workers who could relate to feeling overworked and underappreciated. There have been t-shirts made honoring him, facebook pages have popped up, songs have been written and performed, and people have even raised money for his bail. His story sounds like something straight out of the 1999 movie, Office Space. You can even imagine the rap song, “It Feels Good to be a Gangster,” playing over Steven Slater’s August 9th outburst. And it probably did feel good; until he realized that he had no job lined up.
Other than bringing frustrated employee’s fantasies straight out of the movies and into real life, Slater’s situation brings up a secondary, but serious, issue that is bubbling below the surface: employee retention. We can guarantee that Steven Slater will not have many serious job offers in the airline industry after his 15 minutes of fame are over – if he isn’t sent to jail – and his time is just about up.
Thinking ahead to when the job market returns, as leaders should be doing, what will happen to the employers of these fed up huddled masses who fantasize about the day when they can responsibly quit their jobs and work where they feel they would be more appreciated?
This blog entry has been adapted from the August issue of The Quest for Workplace Excellence (sign up here)
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
- Maya Angelou, civil rights activist, U.S. autobiographer and poet
Over the past two years, a great percentage of the questions that our clients have been asking us are about change. “How do I introduce this specific change into my organization/department?” “Why do my employees resist change?” “How do I get everyone on board and successfully implement these changes?” “Should we make change slowly or move quickly?” Change is a difficult, but necessary, challenge for every organization. Imagine if your organization had stayed the same for the past ten years. Yikes! That is a scary thought since customers and industries are constantly changing. Change is not the obstacle, the real obstacle is the attitudes that fight the change.
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Despite founding the company, the reality is I work for each of the members of our team, not the other way around. 
Wishing there were more hours in the day is just that: a wish. There are two facts we know about time. First, there are exactly 24 hours, or 1,440 minutes, in each day. That amounts to 168 hours in one week and 8,760 hours in one year. Second, we all have the same amount of time. Rich people cannot buy more. Forgetful people cannot lose it. Scientists cannot invent more time. Powerful people cannot yield influence and gain more. When it comes to time, it is the only aspect of life where there is true equality. So, the question is not one of where do you find more time. You cannot do it. The real question we need to be asking is how do we manage the things that we do in the 168 hours that are available in the week?