Leadership development doesn’t just happen. It takes a strategic view to understand how to bring in new talent and cultivate existing talent. Talent cultivation is an essential component to a thriving organization’s culture. The key to ensuring leadership cultivation is to create and maintain robust performance appraisal and management systems for the entire staff.

David Castro’s new book, Genership, promises to shake up a genre that has become very tired over the past 15 years. Most books in print on the subject of leadership or management offer an increasingly predictable blend of advice grounded in common sense, generally suggesting simple strategies for getting along well with others while achieving effectiveness as an executive.

The language of Twitter can be confusing to someone who is new to “tweeting,” with the use of terms such as hashtags, retweets, and followers. In his book “The Tao of Twitter” author Mark W. Schaefer (@markwschaefer) makes it easier to get started on the popular micro-blogging site. With over 100 million tweets sent per day, the power of Twitter simply cannot be ignored.
 

Although Mindfire is a relatively short book, coming in at less than 200 pages, it packs a powerful punch. It is broken down into 3 parts: Gasoline, Sparks, and Fire. Each section features essays with titles such as "How to be a free thinker" and "Book Smarts vs. Street Smarts." Berkun's writing covers a wide range of philosophical topics that are relevant in today's difficult times. His unique vision gives the reader a different perspective on how to look at various opportunities, challenges and personal goals.

In the not too distant past, to obtain news, a person would have either turned on the television or picked up a newspaper. These were both predominantly ‘one-way’ communications, whereby the TV watcher or newspaper reader consumed the information being presented without making any independent contributions. The nightly news was delivered by a network anchor, interspersed with video clips and live remotes from a variety of newsworthy locations. Newspapers were dropped off on your doorstep each morning and readers would browse the headlines to see what the editor found interesting and worth reporting.

"Everybody needs an evil plan. Everybody needs that crazy, out-there idea that allows them to actually start doing something they love, doing something that matters."- Hugh MacLeod

I tweet; therefore, I am."

If René Descartes were alive today, chances are his metaphysical musings would be limited to 140-character tweets. Few people would be able to suffer through the cerebral ruminations of a French philosopher addressing the dualism of human existence.

Today's literate society wants immediate results. We don't want to plod through hundreds of pages of blurring text. We want to move the mouse, click, and get to the point. Instant answers are the name of the game. The advancement of technology is creeping into every aspect of our lives. At this point, is there any turning back? Is this a good thing?

The Power of Social Innovation provides the entrepreneur in all of us with ideas and ways to create social innovations at the community level. Goldsmith argues that to “create truly vibrant cities [and communities], we need to invent new approaches.” But more importantly, he argues that we “need to grow and execute [scale] these social innovations across entire systems.”