What We Learned

Lessons from 2010

There’s a great piece in the Harvard Business Review by Rosabeth Moss Kanter pointing out some positive lessons we learned from surviving a difficult 2010.

If you don’t have time to read it, here’s the main points:

  • Surprises are the new normal. Resilience is the new skill. Optimistic, energizing leaders have never been more valuable. Lead. Inspire. We need it.
  • Innovation takes courage and the willingness to be out in front rather than following the herd. Anyone like this in your company?
  • Straight line careers are over-rated. Look to hire those who haven’t stayed on the established path in your industry. Outsider perspectives can shake up orthodoxies that need shaken. Change, real change, almost always comes from outside. Bob Pittman’s return is a great sign.
  • Openness and inclusion should be the new standard. Radio is as guilty of this as any industry. Elite circles within companies reinforce their own, sometimes bad, decisions and perspective narrows, not widens. Excluded individuals and groups might bring perspective and ideas not thought of by the inner circle.

If you do nothing else this year, bring in at least one outsider who will ask questions, who will challenge beliefs, who will look at your problems with a totally new eye.

What’ve you got to lose, except a sacred cow or two, and a bit of over-inflated ego…