4744 Posts Found

As the key architect of Netflix’s organizational culture, Patty McCord threw out the handbook — a process she describes in her aptly titled book, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility. In this edited conversation, McCord shares her radical approach to talent management and organizational development, highlighting the principles and practices that contributed to building a high-performance work environment and industry-defining corporate culture. Her … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Patty McCord, Yih-Teen Lee | Source: IESE Insight | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

Companies repeatedly launch cost reduction programs—with mixed results. To cut costs sustainably, they need to redesign the organization and change the underlying behaviors that lead to cost creep.

Content: Article | Authors: Kevin Kelley, Miyabi Honda, Sarah Baxter, Travis Meyer | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Too often, companies focus on organizational structure at the expense of governance, leadership, and ways of working. Rigid structures lock talent into fixed teams. Companies fail to establish clear mechanisms for building future-proof competencies into the organization and to adopt company-wide mechanisms for structuring alignment across teams.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Andrew Toma, Benjamin Rehberg, Jaap Backx, Julia Madden | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Technocratic management, no matter how brilliant, cannot unwind the structural inequalities that are dismantling the American middle class. To think that it can is to be insensible of the real harms that technocratic elites, at McKinsey and other management-consulting firms, have done to America. Such obliviousness may not be malevolent; but it is clueless.

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Markovits | Source: The Atlantic Monthly | Subjects: Economics, Industry Specific, Management | Industry: Consulting | Company: McKinsey & Company

Meritocrats … changed not just corporate strategies but also corporate values… Executives who rose up through these companies, on the mid-century model, were embedded in their firms and embraced these values, so that they might even have come to view profits as a salutary side effect of running their businesses well. When management consulting untethered executives from particular industries or firms and tied them instead … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Markovits | Source: The Atlantic Monthly | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management

Because complex goods and services require much planning and coordination, management (even though it is only indirectly productive) adds a great deal of value. And managers as a class capture much of this value as pay. This makes the question of who gets to be a manager extremely consequential.

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Markovits | Source: The Atlantic Monthly | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management

The Mack Institute’s Corporate Venturing Report presents a data-driven analysis of how corporations are engaging with startups today. Based on a systematic review of the world’s 500 largest companies, it reveals a corporate venturing landscape defined by structured, mutually beneficial partnerships. These collaborations enable corporations and startups to access new technologies, build business ecosystems, and tackle complex challenges.

Content: Article | Authors: Claudio Garcia, Gary Dushnitsky, Serguei Netessine, Valery Yakubovich | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Management, Strategy

When you ask folks what they’d like more from their manager, the answer is almost always they want more feedback. I read it in just about every performance review of a manager that I cover.

Content: Quotation | Author: Marcel Weekes | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Training & Development

Exceptional managers know how to deal with situational differences. They don’t bring a single hammer to every problem in front of them. They assess the situation and then they look to their toolkit — or go find new tools — in order to motivate and support that individual.

Content: Quotation | Author: Marcel Weekes | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

When it comes to setting expectations — for example, assigning a deadline for an upcoming project — always make it a two-way dialogue. Ask your team: “Is this an aggressive but reasonable goal? Is this something we can land?” And it almost doesn’t matter if the answer is yes or no, because what you’re doing is opening up the space to have a further dialogue … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Marcel Weekes | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

In the first couple of 1:1s start putting together a written document. How does the report like to receive feedback? Are there things that trigger them? What are the things they want to do more of? What are their ambitions? Where do they feel they need to be pushed? … That helps set the table for how this relationship will go. Invest the time upfront. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Marcel Weekes | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Training & Development

Unconventional project-management approaches are fine in normal times, but they don’t work during transformations, when individual initiatives and portfolios of initiatives require the cooperation of multiple departments and the careful use of scarce resources. Everybody needs to align on one way of doing things—using the same process, accessing the same tools, and following the same cadence for reporting and meetings.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Connor Currier, Cordelia Chansler, Julia Dhar, Kristy Ellmer, Paul Catchlove, Simon Weinstein | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Project Management

Companies have a huge growth opportunity in emerging markets, but only if they have the right approach to get their products onto store shelves and into consumers’ hands.

• Many emerging markets have expanding populations and rapid GDP growth, making them more attractive than developed countries.
• They also pose some challenges, such as highly fragmented retail channels, small-scale retailers, gaps in the skills of frontline sales staff,

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: International, Management

“Move fast and break things” gave speed a bad name. You can move fast and take care of people. In fact, when you’re taking care of people, you can move even faster. People think the only way to fix things is to slow down. It’s not true. Meaningful change happens with momentum.

Content: Quotation | Author: Frances Frei | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Professor Rory McDonald, an expert in disruptive strategy, urges corporate leaders to learn from startups—and preschoolers—as they seek to reinvent their organizations.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Matthew Duffey, Rory McDonald, Tom Fleming | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Strategy

Before you can become a “growth machine” you need to become a learning machine. The first overarching goal is to turn your startup into an instrument for discovering your big growth levers.

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Management

To unlock a team’s abilities, a manager at any level must spend a significant amount of time on two activities: helping the team understand the company’s direction and its implications for team members and coaching for performance.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Marc Vinson, Monica McGurk | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

To stay focused, productive, and motivated, leaders need to develop their own working rhythms and routines. Here’s how some CEOs do it.

Content: Article | Authors: Gautam Kumra, Janice Koh, Jennifer Chiang, Joydeep Sengupta, Mukund Sridhar | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management

So whether you’re a manager delivering feedback to your direct report, or sending feedback up the management chain, the best way to make your conversation heard is to make the listener feel safe, and to show that you’re saying it because you care about her and want her to succeed. “If you come off with even a whiff of an ulterior motive — you want … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Julie Zhuo | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Cognitive technologies and business process reengineering could be a match made in heaven, but only if organizations do the work to redesign their processes with cognitive technologies’ specific capabilities in mind.

Content: Article | Author: Thomas H. Davenport | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Management, Process