Leadership Lessons From Game of Thrones

With the start of Game of Thrones Season Three only hours away it is a good time to revisit and update one of my old blog posts 4 Leadership Lessons From Game of Thrones.

When I originally read the five available books in George R.R Martin’s ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ I found myself thinking about the leadership and life lessons that could be extracted from the series. Quotes like ‘Kill the boy’ haunted some of my more boy-like decisions, and Ygritte’s ‘You know nothing Jon Snow’ played through my head whenever I took issue with a management decision.  I would reflect on the possibility that many more factors were at play than I could see, and that I still had some distance to travel in my journey to be a more effective person (and leader).

So here is my list of seven leadership lessons from Game of Thrones, expanded from my original list of 4: Continue reading

MBA Reading List

MBA Reading List 2013
From a studying perspective, the more widely read you are, the more possible sources of information and references you will have. But the reason to read is bigger than just better marks or an easier time finding references-

Reading is one of the ways you can level-up

By level-up, I mean, improve yourself, to be and contribute more. Think and grow.

Are you reading something currently? There are so many books that finding the right one to start reading can be hard. So if you’re currently without a read, don’t worry here’s my reading list. I’m sure you’ll find something worth your time.

The MBA Reading List

1. The Startup Owners Manual – Steve Blank and Bob Dorf Continue reading

New Year’s Resolutions and The Future You

I haven’t done a post in a while. I have been too busy having a holiday from work, study and blogging. Whilst it was really nice not having to do any of those three, it wasn’t without some guilt.

So with blogging, I made a resolution to do better –  at least one blog post per week.  Which is a perfect segway into the first post of 2013 – the cultural phenomenon of the New Year’s resolution, personal motivation, and the future you.

New Year’s Resolutions

This year I noticed a number of articles in the media, frowning on the practice of new years resolutions, and this sentiment was also echoed by a number of my friends and colleagues.

Some of the arguments against making new years resolutions were: Continue reading

Chase the Cool

I’ve had this saying going for a few months now, where I tell my friends that they need to ‘Chase the Cool’. The concept has had some incubation, and now I think I’m at the point I can walk people through behind my new ethos, my new compass, on what I should and should not aspire to do, or be. I hope you like it and find it useful.

To help illustrate the point I’ll use a real life story. It’s easy to find many stories that match, but for this example, we’ll pick the story of the PS22 Primary School Chorus in Staten Island, New York. Know of it?

Here’s a sample:

PS22 Chorus performing ‘Walking on a dream’ by Empire of the Sun.

The origins of the PS22 Chorus are very humble. It started with the music teacher, Mr Breinberg thinking, wouldn’t it be cool to engage the kids via music? Wouldn’t it be cool to record the kids singing covers of modern songs, songs that probably aren’t normally sung in schools?

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4 Leadership Quotes From Game of Thrones

HBO’s Game of Thrones TV series has been a huge hit (recently declared most pirated TV show of 2012). Season two has recently ended so I thought it would be fun to consider a few quotes from leadership perspective. This is obviously meant tongue-in-cheek, don’t take this too seriously!

So without further ado – here are my top 4 Leadership Quotes From Game of Thrones!

DISCLAIMER: Whilst I have not included spoilers, some of the concepts have been taken from events in the books which have not transpired in the TV show yet..

1. Winter is Coming

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Beware the Juncture

When was the last time you heard someone say ‘at this juncture’? Beware the juncture. Why? Chances are, when you last hear it used, it went a little like this:

“At this juncture,”

Sounds good so far….

“we’ll do it this <non-awesome way>”

At some point, during the meeting, or afterwards, you’ll feel glad the decision was so agreeable. Everyone leaves the meeting without having to do any additional work!

Continue reading