Celebrity vs. Hero
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
As the Academy Awards drew to a close last night I felt compelled to post the following message on Twitter: “I’d prefer a TV awards extravaganza to honor our real heroes instead of those who imitate them.” At the risk of drawing fire from the media and rabid movie fans, I’m beginning to grow weary of propping-up social climbers as heroes. While there were certain notable exceptions, for the most part it was yet another display of the self-indulgent, narcissistic view of the world through the very skewed lens of Hollywood. My question is simply this: besides make movies, what did these celebrities do to reach hero status? When our culture holds celebrity status in higher esteem than those who place service above self, we all need to take a long look in the mirror. Our nation’s senses have been dulled by an addiction to celebrity worship to the point that those who tend to live the most bizarre, reckless, and self-centered existence seem to be glorified above all others.
I have read some interesting articles and blog posts of late on the subject of CEO term limits, and felt this topic worthy of discussion. You should know from the outset that I fundamentally disagree with the concept of CEO term limits, and quite frankly I cannot really come up with a valid reason for supporting such a regressive concept. Any such argument in my opinion is rooted either in flawed business logic or politically correct rhetoric. I would encourage you to read my arguments in opposition to CEO term limits, as well as to think through the ramifications on the corporate landscape if such a policy were ever to be put into place…
I had a long conversation today with a client discussing creativity, ideas, innovation, branding and the like. As a result of our conversation, I decided to dust-off an old post, give it a few updates, and pass along my thoughts, which can be best summarized as “Ideas Don’t Equal Innovation.“ It is my hope to help dispel the myth that ideas are inherently good things. Let me state right from the outset that I place little value on ideas. Not only do raw ideas have little intrinsic value, but they are often very costly. While I stipulate to the fact that ideas can sometimes lead to great things, I also submit that it is more frequently the case that ideas lead to disappointment, and even outright disaster. Those of you familiar with my work are probably wondering if it is really me authoring this text…if you’re baffled at how a champion of innovation can simultaneously be an idea-basher, I urge you to read on, and I promise the congruity will become apparent.
There is no shortage of information circulating of late espousing the benefits of making yourself indispensable to your employer. While this mantra has clearly gained some traction, if not actually becoming quite popular, popular thinking does not necessarily equate to sound thinking. Let me be as clear as I can – nobody, and I mean nobody is indispensable. I don’t care who you are, what role you play, or what your title is…if you perceive yourself to be indispensable, you are setting yourself up for a very rude awakening. Furthermore, anyone who by design sets out to orchestrate a situation to make themselves indispensable is not operating in good faith. In today’s post I’m going to share my thoughts as to why the myth of becoming indispensable is very dangerous thinking to say the least… 
Really? Identifying leaders? Have we really degenerated to this point? News Flash – If you have to look for leadership it doesn’t exist…Today’s post is not going to sit well with many in the leadership profession, but then many of my posts seem to have that effect. That said, I’ve never been a fan of what I refer to as “make-work” disciplines. By that I mean practice areas that serve no real purpose other than to generate a revenue stream for a coach or consultant, or justify headcount within a department. In my opinion the practice of leadership identification is simply based upon flawed business logic, and it is make-work in the purest form.
In recent months I have observed a decent amount of politically correct discourse on the topic of team building and equality. The gist of the argument seems to be that for teams to be productive, employees have to feel “empowered” by having an equal voice. I can sum-up my feeling on this in one word…ridiculous. To be blunt, the concept of equality in the workplace has only made team building more difficult as employees seem to have a sense of undeserved entitlement with regard to their roles and responsibilities. And as odd as it may sound, one of the greatest impediments to building productive teams is practicing management by consensus. In today’s post I’ll share my thoughts on team building and equality…
I’ve written in the past about how important it is for the CEO not to sequester him or herself away in the corner office. Operating in a vacuum, and being out of touch is never a good position to find yourself in as the CEO. I have consistently espoused the value of walking the floor, dropping in on meetings on an impromptu basis, taking employees of all ranks to lunch, and any number of other items that focus on raising your internal awareness. In today’s post I’ll focus my comments on the value for CEOs of raising their external awareness…
Are you easy to help? Think about it…do you make it easy for others to want to help you, or is your demeanor such that most people won’t lift a finger to assist you in a time of need? How many times during the course of your career have you witnessed executives and entrepreneurs who desperately need help, but either don’t recognize it, or worse yet, make it virtually impossible for someone to help them? In today’s post I’ll address the importance of positioning yourself to be helped…
It seems nothing short of ridiculous to me that the practice of leadership as a discipline needs defending. That said, the term “leadership” clearly has a bulls-eye painted on it. The very mention of the word leadership seems to draw fire from increasingly large numbers these days. The term has been inappropriately hi-jacked by the politically correct who mock it, the avant-garde who belittle it, the naive who discount it, and the public at large seems to be growing tired of hearing about it. I’m befuddled by this dismissive attitude, and am left wondering how we could have arrived at such a place – how could something so valuable be trivialized by so many? In today’s post I attempt to answer these questions as well as make my case for the defense of leadership as discipline….