Editor’s Choices for Week Ending Jul 13, 2012

Article of the Week
Change – 3 Essentials For Every Leader (Innovation Excellence)
Big Idea: Leaders concerned with the cost of change should be far more concerned about the cost of not changing. The best of human ingenuity and accomplishment are experienced through change. To learn, create, advance, develop, and sustain, we must change. If you accept this premise as true, then my question is this: why do so many businesses struggle with the practice of change?

Editor’s Choice Articles
Company Culture: Business Values Lead to Profits? Let’s Prove It (Inc.)
Big Idea: At some point more than 15 years ago we defined our company purpose and core values, those behaviors that would never change no matter what else changes in our business.  I started to hear employees talking about these core values in meetings and using them to guide important business decisions.  That’s when I realized that a code of ethics means everything to our business.

Emotional Contagion Can Take Down Your Whole Team (HBR Blog Network)
Big Idea: How much do emotions matter in the workplace? Walk into any Department of Motor Vehicles and you’ll feel the impact of the prevailing mood instantly — a dense fog of sourness, irritability, and listlessness. Walk into almost any Apple store and you’ll experience the opposite — a sense of aliveness and excitement that raises your energy (and makes you want to buy something).

The Critical Path #45: Management vs. Leadership (5X5)
Big Idea: We start with a discussion of RIM’s latest quarterly performance and follow with a description of the inherent tension between managing and leading. To further illustrate this divergence we discuss the conflicting messages from Microsoft relative to the Surface.

Management Lessons From The London Olympics (FastCompany)
Big Idea: London is ready. No matter what it looks like close up, this massive project involving thousands of people, hundreds of groups, and billions of pounds, will be ready when they light the flame on 27 July. As for me, the experience offered a nice refresher course on a few easily overlooked laws of leadership.

Joel Babbit of MNN, on James Bond’s Lesson for C.E.O.’s (NYTimes)
Big Idea: I’m not as focused on superficial things, which I was when I started out. Back then, the number of employees I had was a big deal. The more, the better. Clients? The more, the better. Now I realize how unimportant those things are in the scheme of things. I want fewer people, less management and process, and more actual work. That leads to greater profit, by the way.