Multi-tasking, brain chemicals or rudeness?

I was watching Janet Napolitano,Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, on CSPAN testify on immigration reform and could not miss all the people on the senate panel and in the audience that were viewing their smart phones as she spoke. Many will tell you this is the great efficiency of multi-tasking.

The same day a Steve emailed me his thoughts on the new book by Nicholas Carr titled “The Shallows: What the Internet is doing toour Brains.”  Nicholas presents a hypothesis that “our brains have chemically changed over time to adapt to an age of instant information in short snippets which allow us to gain large amounts of information in a short period of time, without delving too far into the topic.” So maybe there is something to the “crackberry” theory!

But then again, perhaps many of us and our leaders have simply lost the basic skill of being polite and listening.

Which side of this argument do you reside? Do you understand the generational differences of this debate and how you bridge them?

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Innovate or evaporate

I recently weaned off years of corporate a provided Blackberry to a personal smart phone.  What a fantastic product and a true lesson of innovation.  The smart phone does so much and is so user friendly.  The geeks get the credit.

Products seem to get all the focus when it comes to innovation.  Sure, leaders must have the insight to provide the funding and vision to allow the geeks to take off with their ideas, but what about leadership innovation at its basic level.  What should leaders be looking for in assessing their team’s innovation?  There are a plenty!  Leadership innovation includes process improvements, recruiting successes, team maturity accomplishments, virtual skill development, and business model overhauls.  Innovation should be assessed in all we do and of those around us.  In fact, leaders need to be careful to not set a tone of technical innovation being more important than business innovation.  They work hand-in-hand.

What have you done lately to encourage business model innovation? 

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