Csikszentmihalyi describes eight characteristics of flow:
This is part 3 of 3.
Part 1: The Functional Organization
Part 2: The Leadership Model
Deciding how to organize areas of expertise to best enable collaboration and rapid decision-making has been an important responsibility of the CEO.
The adjustments Tim Cook has implemented in recent years include dividing the hardware function into hardware engineering and hardware technologies; adding artificial intelligence and machine learning as a functional area; and moving the human interface out of software to merge it with industrial design, creating an integrated design function. Based on the HBR article, “How Apple Is Organized for Innovation” by Joel M. Podolny and Morten T. Hansen:
This is part 2 of 3.
Part 1: The Functional Organization
Part 3: Leadership at Scale
Ever since Steve Jobs implemented the functional organization, Apple’s managers at every level, from the senior vice president on down, have been expected to possess three key leadership characteristics: deep expertise that allows them to meaningfully engage in all the work being done within their individual functions; immersion in the details of those functions; and a willingness to collaboratively debate other functions during collective decision-making.
When managers have these attributes, decisions are made in a coordinated fashion by the people most qualified to make them. Based on the HBR article, “How Apple Is Organized for Innovation” by Joel M. Podolny and Morten T. Hansen:
This is part 1 of 3.
Part 2: The Leadership Model
Part 3: Leadership at Scale
Adopting a functional structure may have been unsurprising for a company of Apple’s size at the time. What is surprising—in fact, remarkable—is that Apple retains it today, even though the company is nearly 40 times as large in terms of revenue and far more complex than it was in 1998. Senior vice presidents are in charge of functions, not products.
As was the case with Jobs before him, CEO Tim Cook occupies the only position on the organizational chart where the design, engineering, operations, marketing, and retail of any of Apple’s main products meet.
Besides the CEO, the company operates with no conventional general managers: people who control an entire process from product development through sales and are judged according to a P&L statement. Based on the HBR article, “How Apple Is Organized for Innovation” by Joel M. Podolny and Morten T. Hansen:
The acclaimed author and teacher explains the principles that are integral to the process of forgiving according to Buddhist philosophy.
David Foster Wallace‘s 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College is a timeless trove of wisdom.
“Greetings parents and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
In April of 1958, Hunter S. Thompson was 22 years old when he wrote this letter to his friend Hume Logan in response to a request for life advice.
Thompson’s letter, found in Letters of Note, offers thoughtful and profound advice.
April 22, 1958
57 Perry Street
New York City
Dear Hume,
You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dangerous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal— to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.
People read dominance, trustworthiness, and competence into the faces of politicians but do they also perceive such social qualities in other nonverbal cues? We transferred the body movements of politicians giving a speech onto animated stick figures and presented these stimuli to participants in a rating experiment.
Analyses revealed single-body postures of maximal expansiveness as strong predictors of perceived dominance. Also, stick figures producing expansive movements and many movements throughout the encoded sequences were judged high on dominance and low on trustworthiness.
In a second step, we divided our sample into speakers from the opposition parties and speakers that were part of the government, and male and female speakers. Male speakers from the opposition were rated higher on dominance but lower on trustworthiness than speakers from all other groups.
In conclusion, people use simple cues to make equally simple social categorizations. Moreover, the party status of male politicians seems to become visible in their body motions.
A team of researchers from the Netherlands found that hand gestures, when used strategically, influence how certain words are heard.
Participants were 20% more likely to hear and interpret the words being spoken when accompanied by a matching hand gesture and 40% as likely to hear the wrong word when the gestures did not match.
Previous research has suggested that certain hand gestures can signal extraversion and dominance and that speaking with gestures, in general, tends to lead to being evaluated as warm, agreeable, and energetic.
– Molly Hanson
Expressing yourself with your voice, body, and hands can help you to get into the zone. Animating your communication helps you feel your message and transfer this same feeling to your audience.
Sadly, most people speak in a monotone and use little to no gestures. Boring!
Let’s get into the zone and express ourselves!
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