Recent leadership literature (exhibit’s a & b) tells us that “telling a good story” is something all the best leaders do.
According to the Harvard Business Review a good yarn “informs, involves, and inspires” employees.
Good stories also attract customers and build brand identity. We need only look at Steve Jobs’ eagerly anticipated and meticulously studied presentations.
But where’s the proof? We can’t really measure the value of stories, can we?
Would Apple be less popular if Steve …

In the latest issue of Fortune, Adam Lashinsky details Steve Jobs’ hands-on managerial style as well as his meltdown after the rocky and buggy 2008 debut of Apple’s cloud based storage service MobileMe. After a number of horrible reviews of the service, Lashinsky claims that Jobs let the executives responsible for the debacle have it, and have it good. Jobs’ reportedly told the offending team that they “…should hate each other for having let each …

Can you build a better boss? According to the brilliant minds at Google, you can.  It’s odd because I personally  thought that Apple would beat Google to the punch on this one (i.e. iBoss) I am sure as we speak, the big brains/egos down at 1 Infinite Loop are being told by their perfect boss to come up with the perfect boss. But I digress.
The New York Times’ Adam Bryant recently reported on Google’s Project …

Here are seven stories from the past seven days about social media and leadership.
Enjoy!
1. The Wisdom of Booker T. Washington
2. Grading Time Warner CEO Bewkes on Leadership
3. Time for Apple to speak up on future leadership
4. Don Banks from Sports Illustrated on the looming NFL strike
5. It is never too early to learn leadership
6. How 7-Eleven discovered the secret to success is service
7. Yes, Virginia, You Can Get Business with Social Media

The sociologist Max Weber realized long ago that one of the challenges of leadership is the transference of power.  Weber knew that this was especially the case when you are forced to replace a charismatic leader. How does a visionary, an inspirational leader, a person driven by a sense of calling and purpose transfer their charismatic energy to the leadership that follows?
More often than not, the issue of charismatic transference emerges in startup organizations. Organizations …

A few weeks back on my way to work at around 8:30 in the morning, I walked by three or four AT&T stores with long lines filled with eager souls waiting for the doors to open. Each one of these bright eyed and bushy tailed, hope-filled, patrons of tech had their heads buried in an iPhone 3 (or god forbid an original iPhone!). I am assuming once the imaginary gates of heaven opened the teaming …