John's Music Blog

I wrote earlier today on leadership and The Five Temptations of a CEO, so it seemed an appropriate follow on to comment on an article about “followers” (as opposed to leaders) that I found in my morning newspaper.  The article, written by Barbara Kellerman, was a summary of her article  published in the Harvard Business Review and available here. 

She classifies followers into five types:

1. Isolates
2. Bystanders
3. Participants
4. Activists
5. Diehards

If you are the CEO of a startup or a business unit, you know the importance of picking the right leadership team.  But I wonder how much time you think about hiring the right kind of follower.  You might find a useful resource in this article.

I just finished reading The Five Temptations of a CEO by Patrick Lencioni.  If you’re a Facebook friend of mine, you might be confused, because my reading-list widget on Facebook tells you that I’m reading The Black Swan.

I actually didn’t know about Patrick’s book, until it was handed to me by my co-founder, David, who bought it as a present for a CEO we know pretty well. And I was totally prepared not to like it. After all, it’s only 132 pages and priced at $22.95. It seemed like a bit of pricing arrogance to me. But, hey, David bought the book. It was no skin off my back, if he wanted me to read it.  And sure, he could have bought it used for a couple of bucks, but whatever. (more…)