Daybreak Hike Around the Schutzhaus Tierser Alpl
27th September 2011
Notes: 5
Red Winged Leadership is a program conceived a year ago by the Graduate Leadership Formation Certificate cohort, a group of Seattle University MBA students specializing in leadership development. The Red Winged Leadership Award ceremony held in the spring intends to honor leaders committed to embracing the unique intersection where leadership, business acumen, and social impact overlap. In its second year, Red Winged Leadership has already changed the perception of what it means to lead for 40+ students directly involved in the program. A growing band of supporters are also emerging from the business community, university faculty, alumni, and other students.
What is Leadership?
Defining leadership beyond a dictionary reference is not a simple task. The ‘10-‘11 GLFC cohort spent several intense hours debating this topic and arrived at the following definition. Leadership is the art of inspiring and empowering others as a catalyst to guide towards a shared vision with integrity and empathy and awareness. One commonality that became clear from the discussion is individuals hold varying aspects of leadership dearer and are inspired by different experiences and types of leaders.
What is Red Winged Leadership?
Red Winged Leadership is unique by focusing on individual leaders making an impact on the community. The award is about bringing extraordinary stories to light to recognize community contribution and inspire others. Red Winged Leadership is the story of last year’s winner Rahwa Habte who created a safe community space at her restaurant Hidmo Eritrean Cuisine in Seattle’s Central District. It is the story of Dylan Higgins who co-founded SaveTogether.org to inspire people to help others achieve their goals through shared savings. It is the story of Linda Ruthruff who runs Street Bean Espresso, a coffee shop that employs youth transitioning from street life. It is the story of our GLFC cohort at Seattle University striving to become better leaders, redefining leadership, and the hope of where future cohorts will take this effort.
What is Your Leadership Story?
In addition to keeping our supporters updated with the happenings of the Red Winged Leadership Award ceremony we have begun posting inspirational stories and quotes to our followers on Facebook and Twitter. Share your leadership story or what leaders inspire you on our Facebook page wall at http://facebook.com/redwinged or send an @reply to our Twitter account at http://twitter.com/redwingedleader. You can read more about Red Winged Leadership on our website at http://seattleu.edu/albers/redwinged and also see our new promotional video!
Today marks a new year, a chance to watch bowl games, and an opportunity to evaluate your own playbook as a project manager. Specifically, is a quarterback sneak in your PM playbook?
Many project managers have the ability to manage scope, schedule, budget, risks, and resources via tracker spreadsheets. However, managing in this fashion creates gaps in your execution. These gaps can manifest as cut scope, increased budget, and more than likely an end product that does not tie together well for users.
In 2011 I challenge project managers to get in the game. This means at times you have to run the football yourself. You can assist your team to make the small gains necessary to deliver a product and reach the end zone. This may mean getting involved to ensure a key piece of functionality is delivered on time, helping the QA team test the product, or answering user training questions. There is a delicate balance here to not assume long term responsibilities that should be handled by existing or new team members. If executed correctly though, the PM quarterback sneak will make you a better manager and help you ship better products.
Brook Buchanan is the Founder and Principal Consultant for Collistic
Ten years ago today I decided to quit my job.
I remember November 5, 2000 as a day I saw Pearl Jam play Key Arena and decided to quit my job. Right out of college I was a sales rep for what would become Ameriprise Financial. I realized quickly financial sales was not my calling in life. The entrepreneurial structure of the business had drawn me in with the opportunity to build my own book of work. The day to day of the job though especially the cold calls started to do me in. At some point, probably to avoid picking up the phone, I started thinking about how the business was run. Everything about the job was very manual and completely paper driven. I began to spend a great deal of time thinking about ways technology could help the organization operate more efficiently. I’d been obsessed with computers since I was a little kid, but never really linked the interest to career. I walked into work the next day and quit. Technology was my passion.
The last 10 years has taken me through software and consulting companies both small and large. There are pluses and minuses to each but all eventually limited what I wanted to do in one form or another because what I want is to run my own business.
Why Collistic, Why Now
Why not now can be one of the greatest obstacles you can face in life. In the short time since starting Collistic in the spring the company has grown to include a brand, initial service offerings, a small band of collaborators, and yes clients!
A lot of organizations are challenged by how to build successful technology programs that really add value to customers and employees. These challenges occur both in product planning and roll-out. There are many services companies focused in the middle on project execution. We have expertise there too, but our main focus is helping clients build technology programs that stand the best chance of being widely adopted and successful.
Next Steps
Something is changing about how people want to work. Namely with the amount of focus work takes in our lives people want more. Most organizations are struggling as this concept of “more” is individualistic and isn’t static. The growth of Collistic will be tied to this direction. Nothing would make me happier than building new partnerships anywhere in the world and never buying central office space or servers. Collistic (collective + holistic) as a company name was chosen with the hope that other unique people would join the organization and shape its path. Collistic may not see the fastest growth as a result, but unique growth is the goal.
I hope you’ll follow us as this story unfolds.
Brook Buchanan
Founder, Collistic
Great brief on the Business Case for Emotional Intelligence http://j.mp/adfltc #EQ #Leadership
Last night I attended the inaugural Red Winged Leadership Award ceremony created by Seattle University MBA students in the Graduate Leadership Formation Certificate program. The Red Winged Leadership Award was created to recognize Seattle area business leaders for their social impact.
More for-profit companies should have a focus on social change. This is the premise of the statement I provided @AlbersatSU to get into next year’s graduate leadership cohort. In starting a business the choices of profit (focus on bottom line) or non-profit (focus on service goals) should not be mutually exclusive. I believe building a profitable, service oriented business isn’t easy, but achievable through a people oriented culture which can create unique value to the community.
People are sick of the status-quo at work and want something more. I just finished reading Rework http://37signals.com/rework/ and Linchpin http://www.squidoo.com/linchpin which both reached similar conclusions that people are looking for something that inspires them to do their best work. Listening to the stories of the Red Winged Leadership finalists http://bit.ly/bdiCOR inspired an auditorium of people last night. My hope is the cohort I am a part of next year is able to foster the awards program created by this year’s team to inspire even more.
