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

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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.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.