Weekend reading 2019.52

This weekend, I'm starting a new recurring series called Weekend Reading. It's just a list of links to articles that I've read this week that I want to share with you for your enjoyment over the weekend – because they're interesting, or funny, or perplexing, or I learned something, or some linear combination of those, or some other reason. To keep track of the time, the titles have the year and the week of the year. Got it? Let's go.

• "In praise of the incomplete leader" (Harvard Business Review). Lots of encouragement here for academic leadership here, especially for people like me who do not have everything figured out yet. "It’s time to end the myth of the complete leader: the flawless person at the top who’s got it all figured out. In fact, the sooner leaders stop trying to be all things to all people, the better off their organizations will be."
• "What makes someone a great leader in the digital economy?" (MIT Sloan Management School Ideas Made to Matter blog). The title sounds very corporate, but make no mistake, higher education is operating in a digital economy as well and we need great, or at least good, leadership in order to thrive. The article identifies four "digital blind spots" for leaders (that includes you, if you're in an institution that values shared governance) and ways to prepare against those.
• "The extensive evidence of co-requisite remediation's effectiveness" (Inside Higher Ed). Co-requisite remediation is the concept in which a student who needs remediation in a subject (math or otherwise) enroll directly into the course they need to take along with a second, parallel course at the same time that provides background and support — rather than having them take a sequence of remedial courses one after the other until they reach the course they need. It's a promising but somewhat controversial approach; this article presents a cogent, research-informed series of rebuttals to criticism of the idea.
• "How busyness leads to bad decisions" (BBC Worklife blog). Academic types tend to define themselves by how busy they are. But as this article explains, that busyness can lead to "tunneling" which can lead us to make poor choices about how we allocate the limited amount of attention we have.
• "Tips for a year-end review" (GTD Blog). This is a short podcast conversation with David Allen on how to approach a year-end review. It's not too late to have one! I like Allen's approach, asking "What would I like to be true a year from now?", much better than the old-fashioned New Year's resolution concept. More coming about this next week.

Have a great start to 2020!