Reed Hastings

Controlling innovation is an oxymoron. You inspire innovation. You support innovation. Unlike the quality process, where the goal is to reduce variability, innovations require you to look for ways to increase variability. And business model innovation is scary because it is the toughest to take on.

Mark W. Johnson

Every thriving enterprise is propelled by a strong customer value proposition (CVP)—a product, service, or combination thereof that helps customers more effectively, conveniently, or affordably do a job they’ve been trying to do.

Karen Martin

Problems are simply gaps between how an organization is performing now and how it wants to or needs to perform. Gaps carry less emotional weight than problems, and are subject to less judgement and avoidance. It’s just a gap, and clarity-driven problem solving is the best tool for closing it.

Sally Helgesen, Marshall Goldsmith

Successful people are often particularly skilled at coming up with reasons for continuing workplace behaviors that in fact no longer serve them. In What Got You Here, Marshall [Goldsmith] showed how their resistance is often rooted in what he calls the success delusion—the belief that because you’ve been successful, not only do you not need to change, you probably should not change. Because if you … [ Read more ]

Michael C. Bush

Great workplaces are not created through a particular set of benefits, are not unique to a particular industry, or limited to public or private organizations. Instead, universally, a Great Place to Work is one where employees trust the people they work for, have pride in the work they do, and enjoy the people they work with. […] Our latest research shows, however, that this general … [ Read more ]

Carter Cast

The popularity of assessment tools designed to measure a person’s talents in dozens of competency areas indicates that both companies and employees are taking a positive approach to on-the-job feedback. […] There are two problems with companies’ excessive focus on the positive. First, not all strengths are of equal importance. What you’re good at might not be what your firm needs you to be … [ Read more ]

Jeanne Liedtka

One longstanding and popular theory of how change occurs, attributed to Richard Beckhard […] argues that behavioral alterations are a function of four factors: the dissatisfaction with the status quo, the clarity and resonance of the new future, and the existence of a pathway to get there, all balanced against any perceived loss associated with making the change.

William E. Schneider

All these [people] problems have to do with people separating from one another: in silos, by disengaging, by thinking they understand when they don’t. When leaders believe everybody is clear about the direction of their enterprise, but employees perform in a way that doesn’t fit that direction, leaders and employees are separated. When people blame one another for mistakes, they create separation. These separations, or … [ Read more ]

William E. Schneider

Culture means how we hire, structure, deploy, compensate, and develop our employees to deliver on our customer promise. It establishes and underpins a company’s: structure, membership criteria, conditions for judging effective performance, communication patterns, expectations and priorities, the nature of reward and compensation, the nature and use of power, decision-making practices, and teaming practices (among others). It is about our community of employees. It is … [ Read more ]

William E. Schneider

Profit and non-profit enterprises are living people systems. Embracing this belief (and its implications) will significantly change your leadership for the better. Customers, employees, and leaders are not commodities and they are not separate from one another. They are different, but they are not separate. If you take away any one of the three—customers, employees, or leaders—you don’t have an enterprise! […] The promise that … [ Read more ]

William E. Schneider

Every kind of for-profit and/or not-for-profit enterprise falls into one of four categories determined by (and named after) their customer promise: the predictable and dependable enterprise delivering consistent, reliable, and dependable products or services; the best-in-class enterprise delivering one-of-a-kind and distinctive products or services; the customized enterprise delivering a unique solution to each customer; or the enrichment enterprise promising fulfillment and the realization of higher-level … [ Read more ]

Todd Warner

Organizations are vibrant, living social systems. At the core of these systems are local tribes. These tribes develop their own mythology, ways of working, and norms; […] In aggregate, organizations are poor at localizing things (whether strategies or new technology platforms), because they generally lack the language and lens for affecting tribalism.

Kate Raworth

To the alarm of governments and financiers, forecasts for GDP growth in many high-income countries are flat-lining, opening up a crisis in growth-based economics. Mainstream economics views endless GDP growth as a must, but nothing in nature grows forever, and the economic attempt to buck that trend is raising tough questions in high-income but low-growth countries. That’s because today we have economies that need to … [ Read more ]

Kate Raworth

In the 20th century economic theory whispered a powerful message when it comes to inequality: it has to get worse before it can get better, and growth will eventually even things up. But extreme inequality, as it turns out, is not an economic law or necessity: it is a design failure. Twenty-first century economists recognize that there are many ways to design economies to be … [ Read more ]

How Women Rise: Helping Women Change the Behaviors that Get in Their Way

It’s not surprising that many of the behaviors that hold men and women back would be different. After all, women often have very different experiences at work. And experience shapes habits and responses. Familiar habits and responses may feel intrinsic, like part of who you are. But they are not you; they are you on autopilot. Bringing them to conscious awareness is the first step … [ Read more ]

For Outstanding Performance, Change How You Solve Problems

Ask any business leader if he or she is good at solving problems and the likely response is, “Of course!” After all, business leaders spend a lot of their time navigating problems. If they weren’t good at it, those leaders would lose their jobs, wouldn’t they? Not if the organization doesn’t know what robust problem solving looks like. Most organizations don’t and as a result … [ Read more ]

A Better Business through a Great Place to Work for All

What it means to be a great workplace has evolved. We have entered a new era, a new frontier in business. Our economy has evolved through agrarian, industrial, and ‘knowledge’ phases to the point where the essential qualities of human beings—things like passion, creativity, and a willingness to work together—are the most critical. In this ‘human economy,’ every employee matters.

How Brilliant Careers are Made (and Unmade)

Getting things done through others—the essence of leadership—requires a combination of technical skills (being proficient in areas important to the success of the business), intrapersonal skills (especially strong self-management skills, which are driven by self-understanding and self-control), and interpersonal skills (the ability to develop and foster strong relationships and gain the enlistment of others). People may derail due to a lack of technical, job-related skills, … [ Read more ]

Your Enterprise as Living System: Success Starts with Knowing the Kind of Business You’re Really In

Every kind of for-profit and/or not-for-profit enterprise falls into one of four categories determined by (and named after) their customer promise: the predictable and dependable enterprise delivering consistent, reliable, and dependable products or services; the best-in-class enterprise delivering one-of-a-kind and distinctive products or services; the customized enterprise delivering a unique solution to each customer; or the enrichment enterprise promising fulfillment and the realization of higher-level … [ Read more ]

Are We There Yet?

Whether our economic airplane can keep on cruising or is about to stall mid-air, one thing is evident: it is currently heading for a destination that we do not want to reach, one that is degenerative and deeply divisive. If we reorient ourselves to the economic destination that we do want—an economy that is regenerative and distributive by design—then new questions about growth come to … [ Read more ]