In the Fall I will be taking on a new endeavor: teaching a course at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business for juniors and seniors on “Managing Professional Relationships.” As I prepare for the class, I think back to my own senior year in 1968 at the University of Michigan and wonder, “What advice do I wish I had received about managing professional relationships in my own career?” Furthermore, I wonder “what advice do I wish I …
Today we focus on Pattern #5 from The Way Life Works: Life Organizes with Information. Life has taken 4 billion years to reach its present state of activity. This requires a lot of information. Throughout this entire span, life has relied on one code to organize the information necessary to live, reproduce, and diversify. This basic code is DNA, where life stores it’s information. Based on this startling fact, what implications can we draw on how to best lead …
Today we focus on Pattern #4 from The Way Life Works: Life Uses a Few Themes to Generate Many Variations In all the beauty and vast diversity of life, it is important to remember that all of it, from the smallest living organism to the largest mammals on earth, is based on a few simple themes. Be still for a moment and look around. What do you see? Concentric rings (like in a spider web or a tree trunk), …
Today we focus on Pattern #3 from The Way Life Works: Life Needs an Inside, and an Outside. One of life’s most important organizing principles is the difference between an inside and an outside. For example: Baby’s need of a protective barrier-skin A clam needs its shell The earth needs its atmosphere Trees need their bark At a basic level of life, cells need their membranes. So what does this principle mean for leaders in organizations? People show us only …