Noh Review on Sustaining Excellence – September 9, 2012

1. Harvard Business Review “For Those Who Want to Lead, Read” by John Coleman

Overview: This article emphasizes the importance of reading and how reading can develop you to become a better leader. It mainly focuses on the benefits of reading in the context of leadership.

Key Lessons:

• Benefits of reading: insight, innovation, empathy and personal effectiveness
• Reading can improve your intelligence by developing your vocabulary and knowledge as well as abstract reasoning skills, which eventually leads to innovation and insight.
• Reading can increase verbal intelligence and help a leader become a more adept and articulate communicator.
• Reading novels can improve empathy and understanding of social cues, strengthening teamwork and collaborative skills.
• An active literary life can help you stay relaxed and keep a great work-life balance. 

Noh Review: Some people do not like reading because it isn’t exactly an exciting activity. This is especially the case if we are talking about a thick book. What is the main purpose of reading and what is it that people get from reading a book? The answer is obvious and simple. We mainly read a book in order to go through what is written in the book. To enjoy the aforementioned benefits of reading, you don’t necessarily have to read a physical book. Some people prefer reading soft copy over hard copy because staring at the computer screen helps them stay committed and focused. It can even be audio files, mp3 files or video clips which contain the same content of a book. It can really be anything. As long as you are regularly and constantly engaged in the process of obtaining new knowledge, you are on the right track to your personal development.

Article: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/for_those_who_want_to_lead_rea.html

2. Harvard Business Review “Ten Reasons Winners Keep Winning, Aside from Skill” by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Overview: This article discusses how winners sustain their success. It explains 10 important advantages that winners take away from their victory to win again.

Key Lessons: 

In the context of sports, life, in-the-office, etc., winners keep winning because of the following advantages resulting from a victory:

1) Winning puts the winner to a good mood. Because we are humans with feelings, emotions affect our performance. 

2) Winners stay longer together while losers go home early. Spending more time together leads to more solidarity, information sharing and mentoring.

3) Winners accept negative feedback in order to improve while losers tend to avoid feedback. For example, when you receive a horrible mark on your exam, you feel too ashamed to open the exam. Instead of going over every question and figuring things out, you just want to forget about it and be done with it for now. On the other hand, when you receive a 96% on your exam, you feel happy and confident enough to ask your professor where you lost the 4% so that you can learn and improve for the future.

4) Winners have fewer distractions while losers have their own pressure to win and make up for their previous loss

5) Once a winner wins, he has the time and optimism to maintain high aspirations and act generously toward others. This creates a positive culture of mutual respect. 

6) Behind a victory, there’s a solid support system. The support system stays there for the winner’s second and third win. 

7) Winning produces favourable story about the past and future while losing produces more criticism.

8) Winning grants you access to valuable networks and relationships.

9) Winners have more control over their own destiny because they have self-determination.

10) Winners can enjoy their stability and long-term strategies whereas losers often confront new coaches, strategies and systems for the purpose of trying to win next time.

• As long as a winner does not get over-confident, arrogant or complacent, his comebacks are more likely to happen due to the advantages that he has.  

Noh Review: A victory never guarantees anther victory. The competition might get tougher or the winner may lose his motivation to pursue the next victory.  If you have won something in life and you want to keep winning it in the future, I want you to know that regardless of all the odds, you are still at an advantage over others who have yet to win.

Article: http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2012/08/ten-reasons-winners-keep-winni.html