June 28, 2007
Moving to New Blog Site
Folks,
This is my last post with the Center for School Leadership Development. I've been honored to have had the chance to work with many of you in various roles over the past 5 years.
You can continue reading and "joining the fray" by going to my new blog site, Your Executive Edge. The URL is listed at the bottom of this post.
Best to you and I look forward to continuing the conversation, finding and sharing tips and tools to help you become even more effective.
http://yourexecutiveedge.wordpress.com/
Posted by chitch at 9:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2007
Next to Last Posting?
This post is difficult. Last week, I submitted my resignation as the Principal Fellows Director. Starting July 9, I will be working with Kenan Flagler Business School's Executive Development team. I will be working with another terrific group of people to design and deliver leadership development to the members of the United States Military and the Federal government.
It's bittersweet (or as my terrific program coordinator, Caroline Green noted, "Parting is such sweet sorrow") to write this because I've enjoyed being able to bring some different and hopefully interesting management and leadership tidbits to school executives in NC and around the world.
My initial thought is to continue "the conversation" on another blog that I'd be glad to share with you (just send me an email by July 1st), but another real possibility is just putting the blog on hiatus until further notice. The folks at the Center have been very accomodating so all is good on this end.
Some ideas that I have heard from some of you that interest me (hopefully you as well!?) are continuing the blog in a different part of the web or possibly doing what could be the ultimate in collaboration (writing a book collaboratively on the web and then publishing it in either hard copy or as an e-book). Inspiration for the last idea comes from the "Big Moo", for those who might be interested. We did a similar book with a high school senior, who interned with me this past fall and he and I ended up writing a book of selected Principal Fellow Profiles. As an aside, he told me that the book was a powerful differentiator for him in his college admissions. He's going to pursue journalism at Campbell University. Best of luck, Eric!
What's cool about this book idea is that we could tap into the expertise of many of the school executives around this state who have great ideas and solutions for pressing issues. I'm certainly not trying to make money off of this-any proceeds would go to charity. I'm interested to see if this idea has any merit to help school executives become even better in their work.
I'll write another post or two in the coming two weeks to let you know what I'm thinking. Let me know what you are thinking as well!
Chris
Posted by chitch at 3:01 PM | Comments (0)
December 10, 2006
Blogs I Pay Attention To
Now that I am paying a bit more attention to different blogs, I thought it would be some use to share which blogs I read regularly and what each blog's focus is.
David Maister: Maister (pronounced May-ster) is the preeminent expert on professional service firms.
Tom Peters: Tom (same guy who wrote In Search of Excellence 25 years ago) is another professional service firm expert whom I find as a terrific bookend to Peter Drucker (he has said that he doesn't like the comparison but...). In my view, Drucker outlines "WHAT" excellent executives do, Peters outlines "HOW" to do it. Peters is irreverent, smart-alecky, and consistently spot on.
Bob Sutton: Sutton is a relatively new expert for me to follow. He has written several books on organizational dynamics and innovation. His blog focuses on design. I'm coming to better understand how designing (rather than "structuring"-semantics matter) programs and services helps people to use them more effectively.
Michael Hyatt: Mr. Hyatt is a sometimes blogger. He is the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers and writes From Where I Sit. It's intended for an internal audience, but this gentleman is INCREDIBLY transparent and gives a tremendous perspective.
Guy Kawasaki: Kawasaki is a former Apple employee (I think he headed up the Macintosh Product team), who has gone solo-his thoughts on design and work make me think.
Merlin Mann: Merlin's blog is one that focuses on individual productivity. It has a Mac bias on some of his postings but the ideas help me tremendously.
These are the folks that make me think. Check them out.
And PLEASE send me some ideas on some other thought leaders.
Posted by chitch at 10:25 AM | Comments (4)
September 21, 2006
Why this blog?
Admittedly, I have come to the blog world a bit late to the party. I thought that it would be a passing fad, but once again, I'm wrong.
My goal with this blog is to help encourage a conversation among executives from the educational sector, other aspects of the public sector, and the corporate sector. I'm convinced that there are ideas, concepts, strategies, and tools that we can learn from each other. Whether you decide to post (and I hope you do) or simply read to get a different perspective, welcome to the conversation.
My goal is to post something once a week (Monday is the goal) and check the comments daily.
One of the tenets I'm working from is that this will be useful for you as an executive. I'm counting on Robert Scoble and Shel Israel who mentioned in their book, Naked Conversations is that "you don't win by talking to people but by listening."
Join in.
Chris
Posted by chitch at 7:49 PM | Comments (0)