Gen Y and Customer Service:

Gen Y, the Millennials, Young Un's whatever you want to call them are your youngest employees. The oldest ones turned 30 in 2010 (I wish I turned 30 in 2010!). And some of them just might need a little help in the people skills department. Now, let's not stereotype an entire generation, but let's not ignore what obsessive use of technology can do. If you grow up communicating primarily via text and e-mail, how can you master crazy skills like making eye contact? After all, you haven't looked anybody in the eye since that mean man at the hospital spanked you into existence. It doesn't even occur to you that texting at work is inappropriate you've been doing it at the dinner table for years.

Most of the workforce consists of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, and depending on what business you're in, probably most of your customers as well. These people expect their co-workers and the people who serve them to have some people skills. If you are a manager, it is up to you to make sure your youngest employees have these skills.

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Top CEO Blogs

1. Bill Marriott, Chairman & CEO of Marriott International – well written and connects with customers and employees. I quite like this one.
2. Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters – As per Tom, in his blog he is going to “write about what interests me, which is often my work at Thomson Reuters, as well as wider issues like technology and media - two areas that I am fascinated by.” Seems like a genuine attempt to connect with employees and make the leader in Tom more human.
3. Scott Ragsdale, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, naseba – Very un-CEO type blog, written from the heart, couldn’t care less about what people might think. As per Scott, “the main purpose of this blog is to communicate with my 300+ employees, my future employees and leaders of naseba, my clients, future clients, and investors – at the same time helping me stay focused on my climb — to build naseba into a multi-hundred million euro company.”
4. Jonathan Schwartz, CEO Sun Microsystems Inc. – writes mostly with customers as intended audience. Seems more like the Sun website and less like a blog.
5. Kevin Lynch, Chief Technology Officer, Adobe – software development is Kevin’s passion that has led to great products from him and his team.
6. John Dragoon, Chief Marketing Office for Novell – a nice mix of company specific and generic content. Has good content for marketing folks.
7. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, CEO, Naukri.com – a personal blog, unfortunately not updated frequently
8. David Neeleman, Founder and Chairman of JetBlue Airways – “Each week I fly on JetBlue flights and talk to customers so I can find out how we can improve our airline. This is my flight log”, one post a month, however unfortunately last updated in Oct 2007.

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Will’s Learning Landscape Model

Posted on January 3rd, 2011 by Harold Jarche

Will Thalheimer has developed the Learning Landscape Model and created this 13 minute video to explain it.

Overall I find the model useful, though I would replace “Learning” (at 2:15) with “Instruction”, because that’s really what training departments provide in order to promote on-job-performance.

It is also good to see on-job-learning as part of the model. The various measurement points, beyond Kirkpatrick’s four levels of evaluation, (at 9:50) are really worth noting. There are over a dozen measurements noted that are often ignored in organizations.

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The Best 25 Management & Leadership Blogs 0f 2011

The modern leadership movement is based upon the principle that leaders aren’t born, they’re made. The arts of leadership and management, like all arts and skills, are learned and honed by practice over time. And one only learns how to practice from others who are farther along than oneself. That’s where blogs can be helpful. Hundreds of experienced leadership coaches and management experts publish their thoughts online. While not everyone can afford to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a management seminar, anyone with a computer and an internet connection can access high quality leadership advice for free. To help you get started we’ve compiled a list of what we think are the 25 best blogs on leadership and management of 2011.

Because The Best Colleges is a website that focuses on learning, our list of the 25 best leadership and management blogs puts special emphasis on education: blogs that genuinely help the reader understand leadership concepts and how to be a better manager. Only blogs active in 2011 were considered for our list, which is presented in alphabetical order.

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Consider: Harnessing the Power of Reflective Thinking in Your Organisation

Peter Senge, founder of the Society of Organizational Learning and senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, once observed, “Most managers do not reflect carefully on their actions.” Most managers are too busy “running” to reflect.
While reflection seems to have no place in a competitive business environment, it is where meaning is created, behaviors are regulated, values are refined, assumptions are challenged, intuition is accessed, and where we learn about who we are.

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What Does “CEO Commitment” to Leadership Development Really Mean?

Another Post From Dan McCarthy

To: All CEOs and senior executives

From: Great Leadership

Subject: CEO commitment to leadership development.

You've recently learned that the biggest differentiator of companies that excel in succession planning and senior leadership development ("talent management" is the latest buzzword) is the commitment and ownership of the CEO or top executive.

I heard you candidly say recently: "OK, I'm committed all right, I'm just not sure what to do".

The good news, there IS something you can do. Lot's of things. The bad news is you could waste a lot time and money on low impact things. As you know, activity does not always produce results.

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What Does “CEO Commitment” to Leadership Development Really Mean?

Another Post From Dan McCarthy

To: All CEOs and senior executives

From: Great Leadership

Subject: CEO commitment to leadership development.

You've recently learned that the biggest differentiator of companies that excel in succession planning and senior leadership development ("talent management" is the latest buzzword) is the commitment and ownership of the CEO or top executive.

I heard you candidly say recently: "OK, I'm committed all right, I'm just not sure what to do".

The good news, there IS something you can do. Lot's of things. The bad news is you could waste a lot time and money on low impact things. As you know, activity does not always produce results.

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Top 12 Development Goals for Leaders

Another post by Dan McCarthy

I help a lot of leaders create individual development plans using some variation of this process. This time of year (January) is always especially busy.

Although every leader I work with is unique, it seems like the development goals end up being somewhat common from year to year.

To help you get a head start on your 2010 leadership development plan, here’s a list of development goals that may apply to you too. I’d recommend picking no more than one and really working at it for at least 6 months. Do not attempt to work on all 12, just because there are 12 months in a year. (-:

 I’d like to improve my:

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