Cool photos from London eye at night

Taken on Wednesday 10 December 2008 on Sony P120 (at 3mp)

Connecting the dots... Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, CEO and Founder of Apple and Pixar, delivering a speech to 2005 graduates at Stanford University.

This speech is only 15 minutes long - if you do anything today, please watch this - makes your think. For me, Steve articulated how I'm feeling right now.

In particular, he talks about connecting the dots...

• You can't connect the dots as you go along looking forward. It is only very clear looking back.
• So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in the future.
• You have to trust in something.. gut, karma, God, destiny.
• Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path, and that will make all the difference.

Also, he speaks about finding what you love to do. To ask yourself everyday, "if this was the last day of my life, would I do what I'm about to do?" - knowing that if you answer 'no' too many days in a row, you need to change what you're doing. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition and everything else will become secondary.

You've got to find what you love. Your work fills a large part of your life, so you've got to love what you do. You've got to keep looking for what you love doing.

Keep looking. Don't settle.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?

Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?

Co-Authors Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones

PwC Asian Business Forum was host to Vijay Patel of Waymade Healthcare plc and Professor Gareth Jones, visiting professor at INSEAD and Fellow of the Centre of Management Development at London Business School.

I found Prof Gareth Jones talk particularly interesting and thought it would be useful to share my learning's. I first came across Gareth's work when I was studying at Economics at the London School of Economics and a friend of mine had a copy of an article from the Harvard Business Review entitled "Why should anyone be led by you?" (pdf). I took a photocopy of this and managed to learn the key points, using it to my advantage in many interviews. Hence, it was an absolute pleasure to meet the man who came up with this thinking. What follows is a collection of notes I jotted down during the talk.

• First born children have a monopoly in the world of CEO's – they seem to develop natural leadership due to having so much attention as a children (guess what – I'm first born!)


• Important questions: What do followers want? What do the people you aspire to lead want? From the survey conducted, this is what followers wanted:


• COMMUNITY – they want to feel part of something greater, some type of clan. E.g. PwC laptop bags can be seen all over London and you know they belong to a certain group.


• SIGNIFICANCE – a leader will recognise you, he will participate at all levels including the lowest (e.g. janitors) and make you feel special. E.g. when Bill Clinton meets people, he shakes hands for an extra second and has a way to make you feel like the only person in the room.


• EXCITEMENT – followers want to be excited. Leaders can often excite others through their passionate commitment to clearly articulated personal values and to a vision.


• AUTHENTICITY – followers want at leader who is a real person, doing real things – someone who brings their 'real self' to work, rather than saving for evenings and weekends.
• You spend most of your adult waking life at work – it had therefore better be meaningful!
• Definition of Leadership – "effective leadership excites people to exceptional performance"
• Leadership is:
• Contextual
• Relational
• Non-hierarchal


• What do Authentic Leaders do?
• Sensory to people – "smell the gravy" – know what's going on before someone has to tell them. This is a skill you can get better at.
• Sense situations – know and show enough. (e.g. walk around more)
• social distance – appropriate levels of intimacy
• Compelling communication – e.g. Barack Obama – capacity to energise a room with compelling communication is electric.
• Uses emotions (need to know them first) to energise and liberate others


• Authentic Leadership has the power to transform organisations and enrich lives.
• Important to have honest leadership discussions – someone to feedback to you, be it a life long partner, friend or trusted advisors.
• Vijay Patel said one comment that had impact on me – "always live outside of your comfort zone".

Visit the website for useful articles and more background.

Other links:

Management / Leadership Articles available to download

C.K. Prahalad, Indian Management Guru

If you wish to refer to one of the greatest Indian business thinkers, C.K. Prahalad should be on the top of your list. He needs no introduction; every management student in India and internationally knows the name C.K. Prahalad. He is known not only for his prolific works also for his management perceptions and strategies.

CK Prahalad is a professor, researcher, speaker, author and prominent consultant. Business Week has called him "a brilliant teacher at the University of Michigan and also described him as "maybe the most influential thinker on business strategy today.

In addition to serving as the Harvey C. Freuhauf Professor of Business Administration at the University Of Michigan Business School, Prahalad specializes in corporate strategy and the role of top management in large, diversified, multinational corporations.

In 1994 he co-authored the bestseller, Competing for the Future, with Gary Hamel. Translated into 14 languages, it was named the Best Selling Business Book of the Year in 1994. Prahalad is particularly well known for the work he has conducted with fellow strategy expert Gary Hamel. This includes the articles The Core Competence of the Corporation (Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1990), Competing in the New Economy: Managing Out of Bounds (Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 17, No. 3, March, 1996) as well as the bestselling book Competing for the Future: Breakthrough Strategies for Seizing Control of Your Industry and Creating the Markets of Tomorrow (1994).

He has won numerous awards. The most recent include the McKinsey Prize three times, the SMR-PWC award, and the ANBAR Electronic Citation of Excellence.

A prominent world-class guru, Professor Prahalad has consulted with the world's foremost companies, such as Ahlstrom, AT&T, Cargill, Citicorp, Eastman Chemical, Kodak, Oracle, Philips, Quantum, Revlon, Steelcase, and Unilever. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of NCR Corporation, Hindustan Lever Limited and the World Resources Institute and services on the Board of Directors of NCR Corporation, Hindustan Lever Limited and the World Resources Institute.

His latest book, 'The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits', proves that the future will develop from serving the poor, because the innovations that are developed are superior– top quality, low price, high volume and world-scale. Only the best innovations will work for both sides of the equation, those in poverty and those in the "developed" countries.

Books by C.K. Prahalad

• The fortune at the bottom of the Pyramid (August 25, 2004)
  
• Competing for the future (Co-authored with Gary Hamel)
  
• The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers (2004 - co-authored with Venkat Ramaswamy)
  
• In search of excellence
  
• Multinational Mission: Balancing Local Demands and Global Vision (1987)

C.K. Prahalad is also the author of numerous award-winning articles. Harvard Business Review awarded the McKinsey Prize to him three times for the following articles:-

• "The End of Corporate Imperialism", co-authored with Kenneth Lieberthal (1998)
  
• "The Core Competence of the Corporation", co-authored with Gary Hamel (1990)
  
• "Strategic Intent", also co-authored with Gary Hamel (1989)
  
• "The New Frontier of Experience Innovation" published in Sloan Management Review won the SMR-PWC award for the best paper published in 2003
  
• "Weak Signals vs. Strong Paradigms", published in the Journal of Marketing Research (1995) was awarded the 1997 ANBAR Electronic Citation of Excellence
  
• "The Dominant Logic: A New Linkage between Diversity and Performance" (1986), co-authored with Richard Bettis, was selected the Best Article published in the Strategic Management Journal for the period 1980-88
  
• "The Role of Core Competencies in the Corporation" (1993) received the 1994 Maurice Holland Award as the Best Paper published in Research Technology Management in 1993
  
• "A Strategy for Growth: The Role of Core Competence in the Corporation" won the European Foundation for Management Award in 1993
  

Source: www.ckprahalad.com/

Links:
http://www.12manage.com/methods_prahalad_bottom_of_the_pyramid.html
Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fortune-Bottom-Pyramid-Eradicating-Poverty/dp/0131467506

Top thinker!: http://www.thinkers50.com/?page=biography&ranking=1