Collaborative Senior Quotes

We get smarter and more creative as we age, research shows. Our brain's anatomy, neural networks, and cognitive abilities can actually improve with age and increased life experiences. Contrary to the mythology of Silicon Valley, older employees may be even more productive, innovative, and collaborative than younger ones... Most people, in fact, have multiple cognitive peaks throughout their lives.

The collaboration between secretaries of state, election officials and the voting system manufacturers on the matter of enforcing this black box proprietary code secrecy with election systems, is nothing less than the commoditization and monetization of American Democracy

responds to and develops recent currents of critical and scholarly thought which see Shakespeare not as a lone eminence but as a fully paid-up member of the theatrical community of his time, a working playwright with professional obligations to the theatre personnel without whose collaboration his art would have been ineffectual, and one who, like most other playwrights of the age, actively collaborated with other writers, not necessarily always as a senior partner.

The council is a remarkably flat organization, with everyone working collaboratively regardless of title or seniority.

Identifying Cultural Norms The following domains are areas in which cultural norms may vary significantly from company to company. Transitioning leaders should use this checklist to help them figure out how things really work in the organizations they’re joining. Influence. How do people get support for critical initiatives? Is it more important to have the support of a patron within the senior team, or affirmation from your peers and direct reports that your idea is a good one? Meetings. Are meetings filled with dialogue on hard issues, or are they simply forums for publicly ratifying agreements that have been reached in private? Execution. When it comes time to get things done, which matters more—a deep understanding of processes or knowing the right people? Conflict. Can people talk openly about difficult issues without fear of retribution? Or do they avoid conflict—or, even worse, push it to lower levels, where it can wreak havoc? Recognition. Does the company promote stars, rewarding those who visibly and vocally drive business initiatives? Or does it encourage team players, rewarding those who lead authoritatively but quietly and collaboratively? Ends versus means. Are there any restrictions on how you achieve results? Does the organization have a well-defined, well-communicated set of values that is reinforced through positive and negative incentives?

The July 1934 Putsch and Dollfuss's assassination could have been prevented. Since 29 May of that year clear evidence of the planned Nazi conspiracy was available to the Austrian authorities. It came from a number of highly reliable sources. The warnings were passed to the senior security officials who were charged with the protection of the state, the government and the Chancellor. Without doubt some of them collaborated with the Nazi conspirators. Also without doubt some of the others acted with typical Austrian Schlamperei. They did not take the warnings seriously.

Influence. How do people get support for critical initiatives? Is it more important to have the support of a patron within the senior team, or affirmation from your peers and direct reports that your idea is a good one? Meetings. Are meetings filled with dialogue on hard issues, or are they simply forums for publicly ratifying agreements that have been reached in private? Execution. When it comes time to get things done, which matters more—a deep understanding of processes or knowing the right people? Conflict. Can people talk openly about difficult issues without fear of retribution? Or do they avoid conflict—or, even worse, push it to lower levels, where it can wreak havoc? Recognition. Does the company promote stars, rewarding those who visibly and vocally drive business initiatives? Or does it encourage team players, rewarding those who lead authoritatively but quietly and collaboratively? Ends versus means. Are there any restrictions on how you achieve results? Does the organization have a well-defined, well-communicated set of values that is reinforced through positive and negative incentives?

The exact extent of collaboration between Israel and Iran’s feared secret police, the Savak, is unclear. What the documents show are senior Iranian officials requesting that the Israeli Defense Forces [IDF] train bodyguards for their use. The Shah wanted to purchase Israeli planes and tanks and the Israelis were amenable to his request. From the late 1960s there is communication between Iranian and Israelis officials that outlines the negotiations. Between 1968 and 1972, Iran had purchased Israeli mortars, radio equipment, and other defense equipment. Israel trained Iranian police officers on its own territory. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir met the Shah in 1972 and said that the co-operation “between countries that stand against communism should be strengthened: Persia, Israel, Turkey and Ethiopia.

Empirically, it is advised when the Board suggests implementing a change, it’s essential to provide valuable alternatives if such a suggestion does not align with the goal sought to be achieved. Transparency and effective communication is the key for strategic decision-making. Facing challenging situations in the pursuit requires that professionals offer well-analyzed options to the Board ensuring that the company's best interests are upheld. Setting aside personal biases and egos is crucial for aligning with the Board’s common vision. Presenting a professional opinion backed by thorough analysis is the cornerstone of effective decision-making. Clearly outlining trade-offs and potential impacts guides informed choices. Approach decisions with a collaborative mindset, focusing on the organization's long-term success.

An impact map is a visualization and strategic planning tool that enables you to understand scope and underlying assumptions. It was created collaboratively by senior technical and business people in the form of a mind map

As with Lawrence, these other competitors in the field tended to be young, wholly untrained for the missions they were given, and largely unsupervised. And just as with their more famous British counterpart, to capitalize on their extraordinary freedom of action, these men drew upon a very particular set of personality traits—cleverness, bravery, a talent for treachery—to both forge their own destiny and alter the course of history. Among them was a fallen American aristocrat in his twenties who, as the only American field intelligence officer in the Middle East during World War I, would strongly influence his nation’s postwar policy in the region, even as he remained on the payroll of Standard Oil of New York. There was the young German scholar who, donning the camouflage of Arab robes, would seek to foment an Islamic jihad against the Western colonial powers, and who would carry his “war by revolution” ideas into the Nazi era. Along with them was a Jewish scientist who, under the cover of working for the Ottoman government, would establish an elaborate anti-Ottoman spy ring and play a crucial role in creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. If little remembered today, these men shared something else with their British counterpart. Like Lawrence, they were not the senior generals who charted battlefield campaigns in the Middle East, nor the elder statesmen who drew lines on maps in the war’s aftermath. Instead, their roles were perhaps even more profound: it was they who created the conditions on the ground that brought those campaigns to fruition, who made those postwar policies and boundaries possible. History is always a collaborative effort, and in the case of World War I an effort that involved literally millions of players, but to a surprising degree, the subterranean and complex game these four men played, their hidden loyalties and personal duels, helped create the modern Middle East and, by inevitable extension, the world we live in today.

A great story about a big company’s ability to do this comes from one of the world’s biggest businesses, General Electric. I learned about Doug Dietz a few years ago when I saw him speak to a group of executives. Doug leads the design and development of award-winning medical imaging systems at GE Healthcare. He was at a hospital one day when he witnessed a little girl crying and shaking from fear as she was preparing to have an MRI — in a big, noisy, hot machine that Dietz had designed. Deeply shaken, he started asking the nurses if her reaction was common. He learned that 80 percent of pediatric patients had to be sedated during MRIs because they were too scared to lie still. He immediately decided he needed to change how the machines were designed. He flew to California for a weeklong design course at Stanford’s d.school. There he learned about a human-centric approach to design, collaborated with other designers, talked to healthcare professionals, and finally observed and talked to children in hospitals. The results were stunning. His humandriven redesigns wrapped MRI machines in fanciful themes like pirate ships and space adventures and included technicians who role-play. When Dietz’s redesigns hit children’s hospitals, patient satisfaction scores soared and the number of kids who needed sedation plummeted. Doug was teary-eyed as he told the story, and so were many of the senior executives in the audience. Products should be designed for people. Businesses should be run in a responsive, human-centric way. It is time to return to those basics. Let TRM be your roadmap and turn back to putting people first. It worked for our grandparents. It can work for you.

The NTSB operates with small, experienced teams, and each of its reports is approved by a senior board of five, creating a culture of accountability, collaboration, empowerment and pride. Among

BlockChalk is a virtual community bulletin board for neighborhoods in nearly nine thousand cities. In function, it is like a hyper-local version of Twitter. From your cell phone, you can leave a message for someone on your block or street, whether it is to report something you found, announce something happening in your neighborhood, ask to borrow an item, warn people of something to watch out for, or just chat. A typical “chalk” (BlockChalks’s word for a message) reads, “Found dog while running last night @River Bank De & Poppy Way in Edgewater . . . Please post on here if he’s yours, or you know who he belongs to.” It was created by Josh Whiting, who was formerly a senior engineer for craigslist and Del.icio.us, to make it easy for neighbors to interact with each other. Recognizing that some users will want to keep their identity and location anonymous, you can reply privately or respond publicly, “chalkback.

this information without sharing it with me? This is all new information to me. I feel sandbagged.” To his relief and slight embarrassment, I pointed out that it was his own information. We had merely given it some analytical horsepower, in the spirit of broadened collaboration. After that, he became more trustful of the CNC, and a number of his senior leaders became major supporters of the center. Beyond this new trust and cooperation among federal agencies, the other new and innovative component of the linear strategy was the way we started dealing with our liaison partners in foreign intelligence agencies. Brian Bramson, a veteran CIA operations officer and Latin America hand, led the way here—and has never been fully recognized for this achievement. Traditionally, we tried to give liaison partners as little support and intelligence as we could get away with to stay in the game. We did not want to develop their skills to the point where they could jeopardize our other unilateral operations if they turned against us. I understood this reluctance, having seen trusted liaison partners become criminal liabilities. Nevertheless, when it came to attacking drug cartels at the CNC in the early 1990s, we made a decision to truly build up liaison capabilities and share with the locals even high-end resources—everything that could be used to damage the narcotic-trafficking networks. Our strategy was to use our liaison partners as a genuine force multiplier. Combining their on-the-ground knowledge, language abilities, and existing networks with our skills, training, and equipment, we went from minimal bilateral liaison to enhanced multilateral liaison. “The kind of information we were looking for had to be gathered in-country by our good liaison contacts that we trusted … liaison relationships were key,” Brian Bramson said.5 Soon we were building powerful and effective

For the twenty-first-century economic story, the state’s role must be rethought. Put it this way: in the film of the play, the state should be aiming all-out to win Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars—starring as the economic partner that supports the household, the commons and the market alike. First, by providing public goods—ranging from public education and healthcare to roads and street lighting—that deliver for all, not just for those who can pay, so enabling a society and its economy to thrive. Second, by supporting the core caring role of the household, such as with maternal and paternal leave policies that empower both parents, investment in early-years education and care support for seniors. Third, by unleashing the dynamism of the commons, with laws and institutions that enable their collaborative potential and protect them from encroachment. Fourth, by harnessing the power of the market by embedding it in institutions and regulations that promote the common good—from banning toxic pollutants and insider trading to protecting biodiversity and workers’ rights.

LEADERSHIP ABILITIES Some competencies are relevant (though not sufficient) when evaluating senior manager candidates. While each job and organization is different, the best leaders have, in some measure, eight abilities. 1 STRATEGIC ORIENTATION The capacity to engage in broad, complex analytical and conceptual thinking 2 MARKET INSIGHT A strong understanding of the market and how it affects the business 3 RESULTS ORIENTATION A commitment to demonstrably improving key business metrics 4 CUSTOMER IMPACT A passion for serving the customer 5 COLLABORATION AND INFLUENCE An ability to work effectively with peers or partners, including those not in the line of command 6 ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT A drive to improve the company by attracting and developing top talent 7 TEAM LEADERSHIP Success in focusing, aligning, and building effective groups 8 CHANGE LEADERSHIP The capacity to transform and align an organization around a new goal You should assess these abilities through interviews and reference checks, in the same way you would evaluate potential, aiming to confirm that the candidate has displayed them in the past, under similar circumstances.

Individuals became successful in part because of their abilities to debate forcefully and influence others. Inquiry skills, meanwhile, go unrecognized and unrewarded. But as managers rise to senior positions, they confront issues more complex and diverse than their personal experience. Suddenly, they need to tap insights from other people. They need to learn. Now the manager’s advocacy skills become counterproductive; they can close us off from actually learning from one another. What is needed is blending advocacy and inquiry to promote collaborative learning.

You know what it’s like when everyone is on the same page, don’t you? Work is more fun, morale is high, and when one workday ends people look forward to the next one. When everyone’s on the same page, teams get lots done without anyone barking orders or breathing down their necks, hard work isn’t as draining, and sacrifices aren’t a big deal. Problems get solved without too much fuss, but not because everyone always agrees. It’s just that everyone does their best to communicate and cooperate, discussing any temporary rift like adults and coming to consensus quickly. The beauty of having everyone on the same page is that it doesn’t matter who is on the team—aggressive people, collaborators, creative types, bean counters, senior execs, front-line workers, old hands, or new hires—the most diverse groups overcome any obstacles and maintain their momentum.