Resource Library

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We will be providing regular executive updates on these pages, focusing on synopses of the latest management research, reviews of business books and executive seminars and programs. A new feature is "What We're Watching", below. Let us know what you'd like to see. We welcome contributions from all those who share our Executive Community philosophy.

Executive Community Book-of-the-Month Recommendation

Values of the Game, by Bill Bradley, Artisan Press, 1998.

Whether you work primarily with individuals or with organizations, Bill Bradley's new book can be a great source of inspiration and enlightenment. Ostensibly this book is merely a set of ten essays on the values the former US Senator and Rhodes Scholar lived by when he was a star professional basketball player for the New York Knicks. However, Values of the Game can be read on another level: as an allegory on how one can balance ethics and the desire for achievement.

Bradley's ten values are the following: Passion, Discipline, Selflessness, Respect, Perspective, Courage, Leadership, Responsibility, Resilience, and Imagination. Each of these is presented through a series of personal anecdotes from Bradley's career on the court, surrounded by terrific photos of the sport's many legendary super-stars, both male and female.

One of the most moving photos is in the "Courage" essay, in which Michael Jordan is pictured at the end of the fifth game of the 1997 NBA Finals, when he led his team to victory despite playing with a high fever. Bradley weaves his text around this theme by telling stories of how players--including himself--learned perseverance and inner calm in the face of tremendous pressure and challenge.

Just having completed a year of study and reflection at Stanford's prestigious think tank, the Hoover Institute, Bradley's comments on leadership are eloquent and quotable: "Leadership means getting people to think, believe, see, and do what they might not have without you. It means possessing the vision to set the right goal and the decisiveness to pursue it single-mindedly. It means being aware of the fears and anxieties felt by those you lead even as you urge them to overcome those fears. It can appear in a speech before hundreds of people or in a dialogue with one other person--or simply by example."

Although Bradley has been mentioned as a potential presidential candidate in the 2000 election, he steers clear of partisanship and political grandstanding. Instead, we find a book that delivers a calm, consistent message on values through the lenses of an assertive, convincing and sensitive man. As such it can be valuable tool for one's self-development as well as for coaching others. Positive but not overly idealistic, packaged in a beautiful format, Values of the Game provides practical tools for right living.

Gerard & Associates is an Associate of Amazon.Com, the world's largest on-line bookseller. To order this book, click here . Be sure to bookmark this page so you can come back to visit us again.

Fusion Leadership: Unlocking the Subtle Forces that Change People and Organizations, by Richard L. Daft and Robert H. Lengel, Berrett-Koehler, 1998.

If you like what you see on Executivecommunity.com, then you will love this book by Daft and Lengel. They are two consultants/professors who have crafted a fine blend of theory, anecdotes and practical advice on how to build greater collaboration on both an individual and organizational level in your organization.

"Vision. Heart. Courage. Integrity." These are some of their chapter titles, and the authors interweave their observations of actual organizations with the lessons they have learned in a very compelling and straight-forward way.

There are also some detailed descriptions of technologies such as dialogue, future search and leadership enactment that can spark the development of a sense of community in organizations. Especially of interest to our site visitors will be their outline of the process use by Nortel in 1993 to develop "fusion leadership" in their North American headquarters in 1993.

This book is an extension of Margaret Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science, in that the authors also use a physics-based model to understand organizational behavior, but it is a much more "practical" book; in some ways it can be used as a personal handbook in coaching individuals and teams toward greater collaboration, for each chapter closes with a series of exercises and review questions.Co-author Dick Daft is the author of two best-selling organizational development textbooks, Organization Theory and Design and Management, and his teacher's concern for his students' learning is evident throughout.

There is much wisdom in this charmingly atypical "business book". It's enjoyable, entertaining and educational.

Gerard & Associates is an Associate of Amazon.Com, the world's largest on-line bookseller. To order this book, click here . Be sure to bookmark this page so you can come back to visit us again.

Click on this link to check out Management Books Previously Reviewed

What We're Reading Now

Executive Community in Action: The "Right Stuff" (11/9/98)

Mark Storey at csi.com passes on this story via the OD-NET:

I was quite impressed by the "right stuff" a Canadian executive displayed recently. According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch on 7 November, Norbert Reinhart, owner of Terramundo Drilling, convinced rebels in Colombia to accept him as a replacement hostage for his drill foreman, Ed Leonard. Leonard was captured 24 June by ransom-seeking leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

I loved this quote. Norbert, who had never met Leonard until the trade, said to him, "Your shift is done, you can go home."

I can't help but wonder what it must be like to work for someone who openly displays those types of values. Just think how other companies could benefit from this type of legendary leadership.

Kind regards,

Mark A. Storey, MBA RODP

The entire story as transmitted by Mark follows. We appreciate his contribution to executivecommunity.com!:

The Canadian executive put himself in the hands of Colombian rebels.

TORONTO (AP)----In a remarkable display of employer responsibility, a Canadian min-drilling executive has willingly become a guerrilla hostage in Colombia after trading places with an employee he had never met.

The swap took place at a remote mountain pass in Colombia on Oct. 6, but Canadian authorities did not release details until reports appeared in several Canadian newspapers yesterday.

The executive, Norbert Reinhart, 49, exchanged himself for drill foreman Ed Leonard, who was captured June 24 by ransom-seeking leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Reinhart's wife, Casey, said the two Canadians met for the first time during the trade.

"(Norbert) said to him, 'Your shift is done, you can go home,'" Mrs. Reinhart told reporters.

Leonard is now back home in British Columbia, while Mrs. Reinhart is trying to explain her husband's absence to their two small daughters.

"My first reaction was, 'Don't do it,'" Mrs. Reinhart said. "But you can't help but admire his nobility in doing it."

Canadian authorities aren't quite so admiring.

Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy said yesterday that he advised Reinhart against making the swap.

"We had met very actively with the family. We had frankly recommended that that particular deal not be done," Axworthy said in Ottawa. "These kind of private deals should not be struck and really should have been done through the Colombian government."

Axworthy said negotiations are now in the hands of Colombian authorities.

"The new Colombian government wants to actively pursue this question," Axworthy said. "We gave our advice, that's all we can do. We'll continue to work with the family and work with the Colombian government to seek his release."

Reinhart, who lives in Alberta, is owner of Terramundo Drilling, which had been hired by a Vancouver-based exploration firm to conduct drilling in a part of Colombia where rebels are active.

Leonard was abducted at the site a week after reporting for work there.

The rebels, who also have abducted other foreigners, reportedly sought a ransom of up to $2 million from the Vancouver company, Grey Star Resources.

Leonard, 60, said he was not mistreated during his 106-day ordeal.

The Meaning of Community: Papua New Guinea (10/12/98)

The San Jose Friends Meeting passed on the following article written by Robert Soderstrom in the "Worldview", a magazine for returned Peace Corps volunteers. It helped me to think more deeply about what community can mean if we take it seriously:

After settling into our bamboo-thatched hut on stilts, built for us by the village council, we sat one day with our neighbors for story-telling. When my turn came, I showed our new friends a collection of photographs from Chicago. I was planning to wow them with the enormous buildings of an American city. Shortly into my presentation, however, I was stopped by Moia, one of the village leaders, who had spotted two homeless men on the Michigan Avenue sidewalk with crude signs propped between their legs.

"Tupela man wokem wanem?" Moia asked me. What are these two men doing?

I tried to explain the concept of homelessness to the group, and the desire of these two men to get some food. Crowding around the photograph for a good stare, the villagers could not understand how the men became homeless, or why the passersby in the photo were so indifferent. I tried to answer all of their questions about the two ragged beggars in the midst of such glittering skyscrapers.

Moia sat and held the photo in out-stretched arms, as if he were far-sighted. Villagers crowded behind and peered at the photo as if they had just paid a buck to see an alien freak show. Their brows were furrowed in disbelief, they quietly talked among themselves, and they gestured at the two men in the picture. I read from their questions and solemn mood that they had made an imnportant observation -- that these two men not only lacked food and shelter, but also a general sense of affection and purpose in their community.

That night, the 21-person village cuncil held a big meeting, and with Moia in the lead, came to our house early the next day with a proposal.

"Please contact these two men as well as your government," Moia said. "Ask the government if it will fly these two men to Maimafu, just like it did for you. We have earmarked two spots of land where we will build houses for these two men, just like we did for you. Our men will build them houses, and our women will plant the gardens to feed them."

I was stunned and overwhelmed. Their offer was bold, innocent, and genuine. And like the twist of a kaleidoscope, my world view was completely changed. We stumbled over explanations of difficult logistics, scarce money and government bureaucarcies, but the council members wouldn't take no for an answer. They wanted action.

We wrote a few letters to America, and had long conversations with the village council. We toured the home sites and the women planned gardens with a few coffee trees for sustainability. They continued to ask about homelessness. All the while, the photograph was being passed throughout the village.

We tried to temper their enthusiasm by explaining the impossibilities of the project. The plan could not work, we finally told them. Their hearts sank.

Villagers clicked their tongues and shook their heads in disappointment. "Sori tru, sori tru we no inap wokem dispala samting," Moia said. We are very sorry this can't happen.

I could see in their eyes that this dream would not easily die. Over the coming months, they worked with us on other projects, and their wish to import the homeless men slowly disappeared like a fading rainbow.

CEO's Advice on Managing "Twenty-Somethings": Crash Course in Development

The September issue of Fast Company includes an article on ways in which older and younger workers can collaborate and communicate. One quote about Candice Carpenter, CEO of iVillage, particularly caught our eye. "Carpenter suggests that senior leaders ask themselves this question: Who are 10 young leaders that I can grow quickly, and what's a crash course that's right for them? 'Then you form a contract with those people: 'I would like to help you move along faster. Are you willing to buckle your seat belt and go?' ", reports Pamela Kruger and Katharine Mieszkowski in this important piece in Fast Company.

CEOs Under Scrutiny: SJ Mercury News Reports

The August 2, 1998 edition of the San Jose Mercury News has a front-page story on the turnover of Silicon Valley CEOs soon after earnings reports are down. The article, written by staff writer Scott Herhold, traces three primary causes for CEO removal by Boards of Directors: the increasing role of employee stock options, rising independence by corporate boards, and market pressure for short-term gain.

There is a reference to a study by Rakesh Khurana of MIT, who examined CEO longevity at 850 U.S. corporations. His study indicated that CEOs at firms with poor financial results are three times more likely to be fired in the 1990s than in the first half of the 1980s. Khurana reported that this trend was “especially pronounced” at high-tech firms.

This article includes information on CEO turnover at Seagate, Iomega, Apple, Tandem, Informix, Silicon Graphics. Bay Networks and Adaptec.

Community. I found a new source of information and opinion about community in the Spring, 1998 issue of The Long-Term View, a publication of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. This edition features ten articles on the topic of "Community and Isolation". As the title implies, this writing is an exploration on whether Americans have lost their sense of community, and one consequence of that is the parallel question of to what degree have we also lost trust in leadership. One of the most interesting articles is by James Fallows, the celebrated author and journalist who argues that the media shapes our idea about the possibilities for developing community by the way it reports the news. He argues, "The view of public life that comes through today's press is less like the ...Olympics than another sporting enterprise: pro wrestling. To judge by the coverage, everything is a sham. Conflicts are built up and then they blow over, and no one is sincere. As onlookers we can laugh or look down at the participants, because everyone knows it's all done for effect." That is just one example among many in this fine publication, which I recommend to you. The Long Term View can be found in Barnes & Noble as well as on the web at http://www.longterm.mslaw.edu.

New Business Magazine. There is a new business magazine out that our visitors might want to check out, called Business 2.0. Frankly, the  premiere issue is uneven in some spots. In particular, it puts an awful slant on how to run a company by quoting ETrade's CEO Christo Cotsakos totally out of context on its cover: "We want to have the paranoia of Grove and the ruthlessness of Gates." Uh, excuse me, but isn't that the Theory X management style re-invented for the late nineties?

Nevertheless, there is an interesting article within about the troubles that brought Web company PowerAgent down from stratospheric pre-IPO land to a humbling, disastrous landing. Under "Lessons Learned", author David Diamond points out the following "no-no's" that PowerAgent committed: "...being too ambitious...underestimating customers, not listening to your managers and communicating poorly..". The article quotes an anonymous insider as saying, "This was fundamentally a company that didn't listen to anyone."

The issue also lists its "10 Driving Principles of the New Economy", which ranks "People" as number four, commenting as follows: "People. They're the crown jewels and they know it. Brain power can't be tallied on a ledger sheet, but it's the prime factor driving the New Economy. More than ever in history, huge value is being leveraged from smart ideas...the people who can deliver them are becoming invaluable and methods of employing and managing them are being transformed."

What We're Watching: Inspiring Films

A new regular feature of Executivecommunity.com starts this month, with recommendations of films that can inspire and educate our site's visitors.

We thought kindred spirits might enjoy a new film by Native American producer Chris Eyre called Smoke Signals, winner of the 1998 Sundance Film Festival's Filmmaker's Trophy and its Audence Award. The film poignantly traces a young man's quest for reconciliation with the father who left home never to return. Along the way, we get insights on what it's like to live in a genuine community such as the one depicted here on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation. The film ends with a very moving poem by Dick Lourie, "Forgiving Our Fathers". Go see it!

Links to Other Executive Resources

For those Executivecommunity.com visitors who have a special interest in the thoughts and views of CEOs in IPO (Initial Public Offering) companies, take a look at IPO Maven. There, you can view one to two full-length interviews with CEOs of these young emerging firms every month. Ipomaven.com also tracks the earnings performance of these young, emerging firms. It's a great way to quickly update yourself with up-to-the-minute information on the future technology leaders in a wide range of industries.

Interested in cognitive sciences? The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences (MITECS), an electronic publication of the MIT Press, is a new comprehensive reference work that encompasses the diverse theories and methodologies of the cognitive and brain sciences. The encyclopedia contains 471 specialized articles by preeminent researchers and scholars; articles include extensive bibliographies and provide multiple cross-references. MITECS spans six major topics: Philosophy; Psychology; Neuroscience; Computational Intelligence; Linguistics and Language; and Culture, Cognition, and Evolution. The introductory essays that precede each major section discuss topics within the larger framework of the cognitive sciences. The encyclopedia may be browsed by an author or a topic index, and the entire work is searchable by keyword. Please note that first-time users of the encyclopedia are required to register at the site; necessary registration information includes email address, full name, and research interests.

A Business Researcher's Interests  (@BRINT) is a searchable knowledge map of Contemporary Business, Management and Information Technology issues. It provides access to hundreds of full-text articles & papers, magazines & journals, case studies and tools, and thousands of other resources on some of the hottest issues of interest to Business, Technology & Information professionals.

Business & Technology Research: