Thinking About Dress Codes and Stuff

Posted on 28. Sep, 2007 by Wayne in General

Just as I completed my latest article for Management Issues, on how I am going back to wearing a tie at work, I hear from this guy Greg at Mad Gringo in one of his posts.

Seriously anti-necktie is our boy. In fact, he’s making a living out of helping us all “go tropo” as they called it in the days of the Raj. Check out his site and blog here.

He sent me these two links about global warming and fuel costs affecting dress codes. As usual my timing sucks.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/04/business/greencol05.php

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/20/news/japan.php

What do you all think?

If You Can’t Download, Don’t Panic!

Posted on 26. Sep, 2007 by Wayne in General

The servers at TPN have been under a DOS attack (I have no idea what that is but it’s not good) for the last couple of days. First it wouldn’t let iTunes know about the new show, now it won’t let you download it but the good folks at The Podcast Network on at least three continents are plugging away at it.

Stick with us. The conversation with Jim Kouzes is well worth the wait and thanks to all of you sending me messages. Not to get all soppy or nothing, but I’m flattered you care enough to reach out.

Thanks….

WWT

The Cranky Middle Manager 112 Leadership Around the World- Jim Kouzes

Posted on 23. Sep, 2007 by Wayne in Podcast

The Cranky Middle Manager Show #112 (MP3 14.2MB 31:09 Min)

To Listen in Your Browser, Double Click the Icon Below

[audio:http://cmm.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_cmm_2007923_112.mp3]

To Download For Later, Right Click Here

Welcome to the Cranky Middle Manager. In preparation for my first trip to Asia in October (Anyone in Singapore?) we are having a second conversation with Jim Kouzes, co-author of The Leadership Challenge, a real classic in its fourth edition. This one focuses more on the world at large. We talk what they’ve found that varies from country to country and why China is such a huge mystery to us in the West.

Show Notes

0:00 Welcome to the show. Today we’re going to cover a lot of ground, especially about china. Now. we’ve talked about it before but never with an insider. If you are Chinese or do a lot of business in China and aren’t Western by birth, we’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line at wayne@crankymiddlemanager.com or post to the blog here. While you’re at it, subscribe to the newsletter, just email me and put Subscribe in the subject line.

This show is dedicated to Joseph Bonaparte, or Joey Bottles as he was known. A classic example of how NOT to be a leader, especially from one country to another. How do you screw up so badly they miss the Spanish Inquisition???

2:25 The quote of the week is from Pythagoras… relax it’s not math homework, it’s more disturbing. Three questions to ask yourself every night before you go to sleep…

4:23 Welcome back Jim Kouzes (you can hear his first chat with us here) to talk about the new version of the Leadership Challenge. Besides having to pay for college tuition, there’s a good reason for this new research- we’re living in a global economy. We start by looking at what characteristics of leaders all the developed countries value. Honesty seems to be the most important, but inspiring and forward looking seems to be growing in value.

10:10 Preliminary research says that cultural values in China make it unique among world economies. It’s a combination of politics, history, culture and lord knows what all. Fairminded and cooperative are rated higher than honesty or forward looking. hmmmmm.

Don’t believe they’re that different? Can you imagine an American leader killing himself over a business scandal? The Enron weasels would laugh.

16:12 Can people with different definitions of leadership teach us anything? Are they really doomed to follow us or are we whistling past the economic graveyard? Let’s face it there are places like Asia where they value education far more than we do….

19:30 What’s the connection between leadership and innovation? Leaders are always changing something. A great example is the story of Nancy Zimpher at the University of Cincinnati that Jim talks about in the book.

24:30 China is going to school on all of us and we’ll hear more from them before they’re done. The Lenovo deal is just the beginning, but what are the implications for its leadership, corporate and political. Cars and refrigerators are next. We don’t see it because we’re not in Africa. That’s right, Africa matters.

Jim’s Resources

The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Art of Learning, a Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence by Josh Waitzkin

Don’t let the weasels get you down.

Call Out For International Guests

Posted on 19. Sep, 2007 by Wayne in General

I’ve been looking over  the stats for this show, and it turns out we have vistors from over 30 countries each  month. So why do we always hear from the same folks. This is an official call out for guests- bloggers, management experts and just plain managers who are getting it done day in and day out from places other than the US and UK.

In particular, I’d love to speak to folks from

• The Arab World
• China (from a native, not a visitor)
• Japan
• Africa
• Latin America
• Eastern Europe/Russia

You should all know I may be ignorant (a combination of not traveling overseas til I was 40, living in America and too much Kipling as a child) but i’m dying to learn. Come teach us!

Do you know someone we should speak to? Drop me an email or post to the blog!

Don’t forget, if you’re in Singapore you can educate me in person. I’ll be there October 13-20.