When Faced with a Blank Page

Topics to help you?Make?A?Difference this week: #CreativeCollaboration, #AmbidextrousOrganization, #AdamGrant and #ChallengeNetworks, #JimCollins on #GreatestCEOs and more.

In this Issue:

1. What Is Your Creative Type?
2. The?Ambidextrous?Organization
3. A Friend?Will Tell You
4. The Highway to (sales)?Mediocrity
5. The?10 Greatest CEOs
6. Econ Recon

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What Is Your Creative Type?

Each of us approaches creativity in a certain way. Gina Fong and Vin Reed, discuss two different approaches:? the editor and inventor.

While there isn’t an exact science to identifying your type, understanding where your strengths lie and giving them a name can be powerful.

One easy way to figure out which direction you lean is to confront of a blank page. If you quickly fill the page with ideas, you’re likely an inventor. If you struggle to start, or get stuck making revisions in your head, you just might be an editor.? You can also pay attention to your behavior during brainstorming sessions.

Fong and Reed point out that the inventor and the editor have a symbiotic relationship that is important to creativity and problem solving. Read their HBR article, What Is Your Creative Type?, to improve your and your team’s creative collaborations at work.

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The Ambidextrous Organization

Businesses can grow by looking for new things or doing the old things in new ways. In other words,?we can “explore” or “exploit.”

Strategy and leadership consultant Jeroen Kraaijenbrink compares and contrasts these concepts and suggests that Effective organizations are ambidextrous and consciously pursue a thoughtful balance of?both.

A Friend Will Tell You

A wise person once said, “Only a true friend will tell you to your face what others are saying behind your back.” With that as a definition, how many real friends do you have???

There may be many who like you but won’t risk the loss of your affection to make you better.

Support groups and networks are useful, but do you have people in your personal and business life who will challenge your thinking and actions to make you better? Do you have a challenge network?

Vistage members do have a challenge network and the power of these networks was recently explored in an hour-long interview with Wharton Business School Professor and bestselling author Adam Grant. In that interview with Vistage VP of Research Anne Petrik, Grant explains why “support networks” aren’t the same as “challenge networks.”

The hour long interview is for members only, but this link will take you to an brief excerpt available to all which shares Grant’s thoughts on the need for executives to have challenge networks and how they can help you overcome your own biases.

After watching these two short videos, ask yourself do you have friends who will “tell you?” If you want to explore joining a Challenge network, let's talk.

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The 10 Greatest CEOs of All Time according to Jim Collins

What makes Jim Collins one of the best management writers of all time is not just the profundity of his findings about how great companies are run, but the rigorous research supporting them.

His deeply researched books on what makes a business successful necessarily includes its leaders. Several years ago, Collins selected 10 CEOs who had led companies in the last half of the 20th century and wrote a brief summary of what each had done to lead their companies to greatness. Perhaps he’ll do the same for the leaders of more recent vintage when sufficient time has passed for history to render its final verdict.

Until then, check out his take on the The 10 Greatest CEOs of All Time. I think you’ll be surprised at how many of them, as accomplished as they were, will be new to you. Today’s CEOs should take note.

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The Highway to (Sales) Mediocrity

Speaking of Jim Collins, his book, How the Mighty Fall, outlined the five phases of decline that mark once successful organizations.?

This phenomenon applies not only to entire businesses, but to elements within the business, most importantly sales teams.

In a one-minute video, Vistage Speaker and Sales Leadership, Inc. President? Colleen Stanley applies Dr. Collins’ framework to revenue generating activities and warns that those that don’t are well on their to The Slow Creep of Sales Mediocrity.

Bonus:?If you haven’t read How the Mighty Fall, check this interview with Jim Collins for his summary of the book.

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Econ Recon

That 70’s Show (Again):? Boomers will remember the?defining economic reality of the 1970s was “stagflation”…a declining economy coupled with inflation (something that isn’t supposed to happen). Economist Brian Wesbury says history may be repeating itself. Check out his musings on Our Stagflationary Future.

All that Glitters is not Good:? In this week’s Fed Watch, ITR’s Brian Beaulieu unpacks some economic indicators; some are better than they look….and others are not.? Spend five minutes with him to find out what that means.

Please share the?MAD (Make A Difference)?newsletter with your friends, other leaders, or colleagues who might be interested. I encourage forwarding or reposting the newsletter.

Wishing you a productive week!

Sue Tinnish, PhD,?Vistage Chair, Facilitator, & Executive Coach

Find me easily at: 847.404.7325,?[email protected], Twitter:?@STinnish, LinkedIn:??www.dhirubhai.net/in/suetinnish, Website:??https://vistage.com/chairs/sue.tinnish?