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"In a sense, the new media environment feels like the Wild West. On television, many of today's highest rated programs are reality-based and feature families who do things like procreate excessively or become famous when their patriarch represents OJ Simpson in court. Twitter helped Paris Hilton become a household name after a sex tape first put her in the public eye. And what about the concept of going viral? Few of us can forget the moment in 2015 when frenzy erupted over whether a particular dress was blue and black or white and gold, a "story" that temporarily pushed aside substantive news. It's easy to be cynical, we get it.
On the flip side, this new environment has given us access we wouldn't otherwise have to many of the world's most influential minds. From Reddit's 'Ask Me Anything' to the TED talks featured on YouTube, new media tools have helped create and given us access to an unprecedented number of experts. Further, they have whetted our collective appetite for more.
Not only is there opportunity to create content and display it on the virtual billboard that exists online, but there is a chance to create a strategy for capturing even more value from your messages."
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"I know way too many senior people who think they're great leaders because they read lots of leadership books, or who think they're staying abreast of the changes in their industry because they're reading about those changes.
Real learning is almost always at least somewhat uncomfortable. It's challenging. It's figuring out how to operate in new ways; questioning your assumptions; putting new ideas into practice. Real learning takes you out of the tried-and-true, and into that murky, disturbing land of I'm-not-very-good-at-this.
And, I submit to you, that kind of learning is central to our success today."
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"Do you know how your pay compares to your peers?
Probably not.
You probably don't talk about it much. Most Americans are more comfortable talking about their sex lives than their salary lives. And most employers are happy to keep that secrecy going. According to a 2011 report from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, about half of American workers said that discussing salary information is either discouraged or outright prohibited. The assumed reason behind these prohibitions is that if everybody knew what everybody got paid, then all hell would break loose. There would be complaints. There would be arguments. There might even be a few people who quit.
But what if secrecy is actually the reason for the strife, and what would happen if we removed that secrecy?"
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"One of the virtues of DQ is that it allows us to know if we've made a good decision at the time we are making it. If we've correctly followed the process, we can confidently state that 'We made the best possible choice given our alternatives, the available information, future uncertainties, and the things we can control.' That's contrary to conventional thinking, which confuses a good decision with a good outcome. Most will say, 'We cannot know how good a decision is until we've seen the results." That makes no sense in a world of uncertainty and unforeseeable events that decision makers cannot control. A good decision, for example, might be undermined by poor implementation. Or events on the far side of the world may foil a decision maker's best-made plans. The reverse is also true: a poor-quality decision may have a good outcome thanks to good luck. Imagine someone driving home after too many drinks. Does the fact that he arrived home without causing an accident make his decision to get behind the wheel a good one? Of course not!
All decisions are about the future, but decision makers must act in the present, which is why it's so important to know if we are making a good decision when we are making it. And that is possible when we fulfill the requirements of decision quality."
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"We humans love some words because we don't really know what they mean. Therefore, we can throw them around and project whatever we feel is important onto them. Two such ambiguous words that possess an aura of gravitas and perceived importance are authentic and leadership. I am hard-pressed to say one is thrown around more frequently or with more fervor than the other.
Put the two words together and you have the term authentic leadership, which is then vague to the second power. If you listen carefully to the election chatter and everyday conversations, the only thing we know for sure about authentic leadership is that it is a good thing. This presidential election cycle we even have a new vague diagnosis: he or she has an authenticity problem.
This lack of clarity does not serve aspiring authentic leaders. We need a pragmatic definition of authentic leadership that we can work with. That is my goal with this manifesto."
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