4751 Posts Found

Companies and shareholders often focus on maximizing short-term returns. In contrast, resilience requires a multi-timescale perspective: forgoing a certain amount of efficiency or performance today for the sake of more-sustained performance in the future.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kevin Whitaker, Martin Reeves | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management

We underestimate our teams when we assume that they will demand all the facts or an ironclad plan. People are often just looking for signs of a caring culture — that we’ll be here for them and that, if something’s wrong, we’ll create an avenue for them to share that.

Content: Quotation | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The best leaders ask questions they genuinely want to know the answers to. To do that, stop and check in with yourself: Why am I asking this question? Do I genuinely want to hear from this person or am I trying to make sure that I don’t look bad? Am I checking a box or am I trying to truly engage?

Content: Quotation | Authors: Massella Dukuly, Vanessa Tanicien | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management

Trust and transparency are the two biggest factors that impact engagement metrics, and if you don’t share survey results, you’ll erode both. You don’t have to do everything employees want, of course, but explain why you’re moving forward with some ideas and not with others. Organizations tend to do a poor job with the ‘why.’ They tell the team the ‘what,’ but not the reason behind … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Chris Powell | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Even though most business schools, executive training courses, and leadership programs espouse servant leadership, few bosses manage to fully commit to it. Perhaps that’s no surprise. In most organizations, the average manager has neither the incentives nor the skills to focus on employee happiness. Consider how most businesses make promotion decisions: people who get ahead tend to be either current high performers or those who … [ Read more ]

Authors: Bill Schaninger, Tera Allas | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

In many ways, there is only one question any manager need ask: How do I make my team members’ lives easier—physically, cognitively, and emotionally?

Content: Quotation | Authors: Bill Schaninger, Tera Allas | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Management

It stands to reason that managers would play a crucial role in their employees’ workplace happiness. The wealth of literature on what makes for a good workplace highlights two aspects that line managers directly control: good work organization—that is, providing workers with the context, guidance, tools, and autonomy to minimize frustration and make their jobs meaningful—and psychological safety, which is the absence of interpersonal fear … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Bill Schaninger, Tera Allas | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Nobody wants to fail, but when there’s failure, does it get debriefed so that learning occurs in the organization? If there’s success, do you debrief to try to improve, as well? Debriefing shouldn’t be a code word for “We only do it when we fail.” You want to secure the ways that you succeed, as well. If you did succeed, part of the development and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Gregory P. Shea | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Best Practices, Management, Organizational Behavior

Regular partnership check-ins are essential to make sure that, like any relationship, both sides are getting what they need.

Content: Article | Authors: Ankur Agrawal, Eileen Kelly Rinaudo, Sean Brown | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Management

It’s not easy to spot those who spend all their energy looking up, so organizations need systems to root them out.

Content: Article | Author: Adam Bryant | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

The best managers ask questions and invite specific, meaningful feedback. Ask your direct reports, “What is one thing I can do to improve?” or “ Is there a roadblock I can remove for you?,” Finally, if you ask for feedback, follow through on it. If your direct reports give you feedback and then get radio silence in return, they’re never going to give you feedback … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Liz Fosslien | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

Expertise is the starting point of any added value. It exists both individually and in teams, both centrally and locally. The key is to identify and then leverage it. Experts should be identified, recognized, and shared wherever they can add value. Some experts are so important that they should spend half their time answering direct requests. They should be mobile, in order to allow delivery … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Charles-Etienne Bost, Eric Sauvage, Luca Olivari, Samuel Cazin | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

Effective leaders learn early to target only important issues — and ones they have a fair shot of winning. That requires two skills. The first is the ability to accurately estimate the level of conflict a particular course of action will elicit. (This is where EQ can support OQ.) The second is the maturity to not engage in unimportant issues. In many ways the second skill is … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: George Yip, Nelson Phillips | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management

About one-third of US companies reallocate no more than 1 percent of their resources from year to year. Whether through bias, office politics, or plain old inertia, they simply roll this year’s plan into next year. It should, by now, go without saying that this is a terrible starting position from which to expect transformative change. Companies can escape the cycle by creating target portfolios, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Bradley, Marc de Jong, Wesley Walden | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance, Management

Companies should embrace nine imperatives that collectively explain “who we are” as an organization, “how we operate,” and “how we grow.”

Content: Article | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Chris Gagnon, Elizabeth Mygatt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Management

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When you’re asked to help young, underrepresented talent succeed, here’s what you’ll need to know to do the job right.

Content: Article | Author: Wanda T. Wallace | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior, Training & Development

Traditionally, time and money are invested in nurturing high performers or coaching low performers. But organizations actually get better results from improving the performance of the majority of employees—the average workers. The key is to identify the bright spots in the workforce (those “outliers” whose work exemplifies high performance), focus on what they do differently, and replicate it across the majority. We call this approach “Shifting … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Kristen Etheredge | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Training & Development

Your response to failure should be as transparent as possible. When people see someone fail, and then see that our response is not to fire them but to get them the help they need to improve, everyone is empowered. Everyone feels more comfortable to ask questions and to admit fault. And that’s how organizations really end up getting better — when people feel like they … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ray Smith | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

In my work as an angel investor and advisor, I often find myself dishing out the same advice: Do the work to make sure you are building a product that people will actually find valuable. That requires an incredibly deep understanding of the user, their hopes, and their motivations, instead of taking the easier path of operating off of untested assumptions.

Many entrepreneurs may do this … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Sunita Mohanty | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Market Research, Marketing / Sales, Project Management