Incite Your Month: January 2022

At CTQ, we kick each month off with a collection of ideas & recos from the team’s recent curiosity diet. It helps us ‘incite’ the rest of the month. Here’s this month’s edition. 

Read the shownotes below

 
 
 

Prefer an audio version of this edition? Listen below.

 
 
 

One insightful book

How to Thrive in the Virtual Workplaceby Robert Glazer

What: Tips for working better in a remote-first environment

One takeaway: Start with a clear vision, values, and goals and be consistent about them. This helps anchor and orient teams, even if distributed.

Check it out if:... you are interested in learning about the nuts and bolts of doing well in a hybrid working world.


One incisive book summary

The Power of Giving Away Powerby Matthew Barzun

What: A book about how the best leaders realize the power of letting go!

One takeaway: Organizations designed as constellations are dynamic, allowing individuals to shine as stars and yet, remain connected to others to form something greater.

Check it out if:... you like to learn about organisational design and mindset.


 

One intriguing article

9 Steps to Overcome the Biggest Obstacle to Learning: Time by Udemy

What: A short collection of ideas to help create a learning environment at work from one of the world’s best known online learning platforms.

One takeaway: Udemy introduced a DEAL (Drop Everything and Learn) hour which is put on every employee’s calendar. 

Check it out if:... you are interested in learning about learning interventions.


 
 

One inspiring smartcast

How Should Leaders Apply Branding Lessons To Create A Great Organizational Culture? With Ambi Parameswaran

What: Ambi Parameswaran is one of the foremost branding gurus in India. In this CTQ Smartcast, Ambi talks about applying lessons of brand-building to creating an organization's mythology.

One takeaway: Always carry a notebook to write down story ideas as they happen.

Check it out if: ...you are curious about the importance of mythology-creation in building organizational cultures.


 

One interesting podcast

Stanley McChrystal on the Military, Leadership, and Risk on Conversations with Tyler

What: A retired four-star general on how leaders can learn from history and deal with new threats in cybersecurity and drone warfare. 

One takeaway: Militaries of the future will need very innovative people and people with ‘cultural acuity’ a component of which is better and wider language skills.

Check it out if:... you enjoy leadership lessons from the armed forces


One Habit Tip from CTQ

Learn to debug a habit when it’s not working. You can start with this question: “do I have a reliable slot for this habit?”


Closing with an inciting ‘FutureRing’ question

"What is one non-obvious change that is likely to happen to people working in a hybrid work environment?"