Links for April 6 2014

16 Leadership Lessons from a Four Star General
Quote: Rank, authority, and even responsibility can be inherited or assigned, whether or not an individual desires or deserves them. Even the mantle of leadership occasionally falls to people who haven’t sought it. But actually leading is different. A leader decides to accept responsibility for others in a way that assumes stewardship of their hopes, their dreams, and sometimes their very lives. It can be a crushing burden, but I found it an indescribable honor.

Why We Miss Creative Ideas That Are Right Under Our Noses
Quote: Creativity and innovation in organizations is inherently difficult. In part, because the people who make decisions tend to be the people with the most experience. That experience helps you spot big mistakes but it also makes it harder for you to “recognize out of the box possibilities” or do something that might go against how your organization makes money today

Oh I See (CIO Inverted): The King is dead, long live the king
Quote: The future belongs to the enterprise which has mastered the art and science of consistently finding needles in the haystack of data. The individual who can make this happen shall be anointed the new high priest; only time will tell whether s/he will be the Chief Digital Officer or the Data Scientist or the CIO making a transition to becoming the orchestrator of such services. It is certain that sooner or later this will become commoditized and challenge the adopters to find new differentiators sooner than later.

IA is Not New
Quote: But what I am saying is that 90% of the ground we’re “breaking” has already been broken. And if we took a second to look, we’d understand that we’re really just standing on the shoulders of giants.