Information at our fingertips. Master leadership
October 18, 2007
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Information has changed. This video shows how information has changed so well and is a call to action. We need to change with the information. Of course, so many people already have, and the young in particular wouldn’t know what a cardfile looks like. When I was a college professor, sending students to the library was considered cruel and unusual punishment. Most had never seen an article in a journal that was not online. Many journals are fully online already and so many more will follow. (Publishers don’t yet understand what that means. They still charge by subscription and make it hard to buy an article.)
Seth Godin talks today about the role of finding information in education. Spending insane amounts of time finding information before you can evaluate it, is no longer the most important skill—in fact it never was. It was always the hurdle, the rite of passage. Most important is the skill to evaluate information and with so much information being thrown at you these days, that skill is more and more important.
Leaders can sift through information quickly and see what is relevant, because they start from a core understanding of the world that drives them. If you don’t have such a core understanding, you will be lead by the nose.
What is the metaphorical lesson for leaders? You are not in control in the way that leaders thought they were. Leadership is not about control over anything or anybody but yourself. There is too much going on in too many different directions. The more you want to control, the less you will succeed. This is a flat world. Get used to it. A leader in this world leads from the front and by example. People follow mostly because they haven’t yet figured out their own direction. Once they do, they will become leaders themselves and then they are not behind you but with you.
Technorati Tags: internet, flat, leadership, godin, wikipedia
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