Belbin

82% - Monitor Evaluator
64% - Plant
55% - Implementer
52% - Completer Finisher
52% - Specialist
47% - Shaper
42% - Resource Investigator
35% - Co-ordinator
22% - Teamworker

As a prolific thinker, you possess talents for both originating and evaluating new ideas.  This means that you are most likely to make your mark in an area where the problems are complex and difficult.

In order to avoid being seen as "all thought and no action", keep an eye to the practical application of your ideas and strategies and do not be drawn into a general debate that can lead to purely academic analysis.

Buffett

To refer to a personal taste of mine, I'm going to buy hamburgers the rest of my life. When hamburgers go down in price, we sing the 'Hallelujah Chorus' in the Buffett household. When hamburgers go up in price, we weep. For most people, it's the same with everything in life they will be buying -- except stocks. When stocks go down and you can get more for your money, people don't like them anymore.

(via Fortune)

Leadership and the art of plate spinning

What are your company’s ten most exciting valuecreation opportunities?
Who are your ten best people?
How many of your ten best people are working on your ten most exciting opportunities?

It’s a rough and ready exercise, to be sure. But the answer to the last question—typically, no more than six—is usually expressed with ill-disguised frustration that demonstrates how difficult it is for senior executives
to achieve organizational alignment.


3 paradoxes that are both particularly striking and quite difficult to reconcile.

1) Change comes about more easily and more quickly in organizations that keep some things stable
2) Organizations are more likely to succeed if they simultaneously control and empower their employees.
3) Business cultures that rightly encourage consistency (say, in the quality of services and products) must
also allow for the sort of variability—and even failure—that goes with innovation and experimentation.

(via McKinsey Quarterly)

Link dump

Don Draper teams up with the data center - CMO / CIO cross-pollination
Patagonia: less consumption, less waste, and higher-quality goods
See's Candies (Berkshire)
Leadership lessons from Nick Saban
Kayak takes on big dogs
Jeff Bezos - The ultimate disrupter
Are Subarus the best cars money can buy ?