3605 Posts Found

There’s a lot of talk about “the trophy generation” and that people just need constant compliments. But I believe it’s the meaning-making generation. Folks want to know what they’re doing actually matters. If not, why are they working so hard? It’s important to help your employees understand that their hard work is being seen and that it makes a difference to the company’s goal. While … [ Read more ]

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

What we human beings do—if we’re left alone—is go create something out there in the world. Unfortunately, because we love status so much and we love to be involved, we wind up creating ever more elaborate bureaucracies. I think that’s the default that we should expect, unless we deliberately try to trim that back and make sure it never has a chance to latch onto … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Bureaucracy, Organizational Behavior

The norm of science is just a community that has come together to agree on how they’re going to resolve their arguments. They’re going to resolve them with evidence. That norm of evidence-based arguments can be brought into any company and put to work right away. We have to make a decision about what we are going to do next, how the future is going … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Culture, Decision Making, Organizational Behavior

For us, ultra-social human beings, all you need to do to maintain a culture is put in place the pain of social exclusion. Follow the norms, and if you don’t, we’re not going to beat you to a pulp. We’re just going to exclude you. That is legitimately and truly painful to human beings. That’s the glue that holds human cultures together, is that threat … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

Confidence is a great thing for a human being to have. We follow more confident people. We’re more likely to trust them, to listen to them, to ally with them. The data on this are overwhelming. And so what appears to have happened—and this is a theory that I believe; I think it holds up really well—is that we have been wired to be chronically … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

HIPPO is my new favorite business acronym. It stands for “highest-paid person’s opinion.” And it’s how most companies make most of their decisions. There could be some analysis that the data nerds did, but then they tee it up to the HIPPO. And the HIPPO essentially says, “Look. If the evidence aligns with my prior beliefs, with my intuition, with my big HIPPO gut, great, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior

Data from the General Social Survey (an annual project of the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center) suggests that job satisfaction is derived primarily from four factors: learning opportunities and variety, relationships with managers and coworkers, low stress, and extrinsic benefits (including pay and bonuses). Consider how well your organization meets these key drivers and which ones need improving.

Content: Quotation | Author: Matthew Bidwell | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Here’s what every company can do to check in with employees during times of change, managing transitions in ways that lower threat levels while boosting wellbeing.

Content: Article | Authors: Heather C. Vough, Julija N. Mell, Karoline Strauss, Mailys George | Source: IESE Insight | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Malone, the author of 2004’s The Future of Work and a pioneering researcher in the field of collective intelligence, is in a singular position to understand the potential of AI technologies to transform workers, workplaces, and societies. In this conversation with Deloitte’s Jim Guszcza and Jeff Schwartz, he discusses a vision outlined in his recent book Superminds—a framework for achieving new forms of human-machine collective … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Jeff Schwartz, Jim Guszcza, Thomas Malone | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Decision Making, IT / Technology / E-Business, Organizational Behavior, Productivity / Work Tips

Psychological safety effectively functions as an equalizer—enabling diverse and disadvantaged employee groups to achieve the same levels of workplace satisfaction as their more advantaged colleagues.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Ashley Dartnell, Elizabeth Knarr, Gretchen May, Nadjia Yousif | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Diversity, Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

A noble corporate purpose — that is, one aimed at doing something good in the world … is best found at the intersection of four areas: the human needs the company would like to address; the company’s unique capabilities; what the company’s employees are passionate about; and how the company can create economic value. Exploring these areas and their intersection requires solid fact finding and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Hubert Joly | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Goals, Management, Organizational Behavior

Why the most enduring organizations stop chasing trends and start designing systems that prioritize people over processes.

Content: Article | Authors: Josh Bersin, Josh Browning | Source: Big Think | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

When I feel myself not communicating as clearly as I would like to, not using precise language, with a single person, a group of people, or an audience on TV, generally, it means that I haven’t understood two things completely.

“What specifically am I trying to communicate?” and “Have I properly understood the details of that subject and how I’m going to express myself on them?”

[…] … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ros Atkins | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Communication, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

For more than half a century, brainstorming has been the go-to method for teams to surface new ideas. But there’s ample evidence that shows it rarely works well. Research shows that individuals working separately tend to generate more creative ideas than groups brainstorming together. Good ideas get lost due to pressure to conform, fear of looking foolish, and the difficulty of breaking through the noise. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Adam Grant | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

Putting people together in a group doesn’t automatically make them a team. Neither does convening a group of individual experts and giving them a problem to solve. Research reveals that the smartest teams aren’t composed of the smartest individuals. The best teams are aligned around a common goal, evaluated on a collective outcome, organized around a unique role for each member, and motivated to share … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Adam Grant | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

As many organizations get larger, they get more effective at delivery. That delivery muscle pushes out discovery, and people wake up 20 years later and realize they have all delivery and no discovery. That’s not a problem, except the world continues to change, and they need to continue to evolve also. The end result is very large companies that have powerfully effective delivery muscles, yet … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ron Shaich | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

Change is absolute. It is ongoing. What an organization does by its very nature is lock in processes to reproduce or to continue what it does. If we get very good at doing what was valued yesterday, as the world continues to evolve, we aren’t highly conscious of that change. We also aren’t aware enough of the continuing demand from the organizations we work in … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ron Shaich | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

One of the things that happens when we speak spontaneously is that many of us are uncovering what we want to say while we are saying it. That leads us to speak more than we need to. Being concise, clear, and focused is key… We want people to understand how we came to our conclusions or the suggestions and recommendations that we’re making. That information … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Abrahams | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Communication, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

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