3588 Posts Found

Research shows that using feedback is how organisms — and organizations — stay alive. Here’s how leaders can make the most of the anxiety-producing process.

Content: Article | Authors: Beth Jones, Chris Weller, David Rock | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior

In this INSEAD Knowledge podcast, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour Mark Mortensen proposes a more holistic approach to understanding employees’ needs, while offering practical solutions to ensure that they remain fully invested in their organisation and its goals.

Content: Multimedia Content | Authors: Mark Mortensen, Nick Measures | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

What we found is teams with psychological safety and a supportive work environment actually benefit from being edgy and pushing to do better. But you put that same edge, that same kind of push, on a team that doesn’t have psychological safety or an open and supportive work environment, and it has the opposite effect. It actually makes the team go into a sort of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Aaron De Smet | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

When people claim they have survey fatigue, they’re not tired of you asking them. They’re upset about you not doing anything with it.

Content: Quotation | Author: Bill Schaninger | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Through most of the last three and a half, four decades, we’ve changed our approach to developmental experiences throughout childhood. In large part, it was to reward kids for their participation in order to avoid the disappointment of perceived failure. My point is we’ve raised two generations of folks who believe that participation and the collective is the end result. I think we’re seeing things … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Bill Schaninger | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

If you want a test-and-learn environment, you have to make it OK to share failure, so that not only can I learn from failure but others can learn from my failure, and they don’t have to make the same mistakes I made.

Content: Quotation | Author: Aaron De Smet | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Success / Failure

Sometimes we hear this thing about “embrace failure. Failure is good.” Actually, it’s not that failure is good. I, at least, don’t like failure. I like working with people who don’t like failure. But there’s a difference between not liking failure and having failure be taboo and not discussed or shared or learned from. If you never fail, you probably aren’t being bold enough.

Content: Quotation | Author: Aaron De Smet | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Success / Failure

Transaction costs are now low enough that you can have a gig economy. We can create technology-enabled platforms that allow us to have collaboration at scale through nonemployees or quasi employees.

Now there were some economists who said that when transaction costs fall enough, the large employed workforces will go away. That was the prediction. I never agreed with it, because another reason why people work … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Aaron De Smet | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, Organizational Behavior

Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer shares advice for gaining power through resources, reputation, and relationships.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Jeffrey Pfeffer, Simon London | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Power / Authority

Russ Laraway’s book When They Win, You Win, weaves together tons of existing management studies from top-notch sources like Gallup, his own primary research, as well as thoughtful stories from his own decades-long career.

From the Marines to software to VC, Laraway has spotted a pattern that frequently crops up and muddies the waters for managers everywhere. “People have become far too focused on all the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Russ Laraway | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

When we open ourselves to curiosity, we are more apt to reframe situations in a positive way.

Content: Quotation | Author: Francesca Gino | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Every company strives to be innovative, but most are missing key ingredients. How can you identify which ingredients your organization needs — and which employee styles can fill in the gaps? The authors’ research distills four key innovation styles that can lead to success — generators, conceptualizers, optimizers, and implementors — and explains how common they are across sectors. Then, they outline a four-part framework … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Andy Wu, Goran Calic, Min Basadur | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

[Don’t] treat all decisions uniformly. I think the most obvious axis to break them down on are degree of reversibility and magnitude. Things with low reversibility and great impact and magnitude, those ones you do want to really deliberate over and try to get right.

Content: Quotation | Author: Patrick Collison | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior

Divide decisions into one-way versus two-way door decisions. Two-way door decisions are those that are relatively easy to undo. Both Bezos and Branson argue that we shouldn’t waste a lot of time deliberating and debating such decisions, but rather try them out and then roll them back if needed. Two-way door decisions are great opportunities for learning. In contrast, one-way door decisions are those that … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Mark Mortensen | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior

Achieving change is difficult. Organizations spend more than $10 billion annually on change transformations, but more than 50% of efforts fail to meet objectives. To better understand why, despite our best intentions, change efforts tend to fail, we looked to the literature—and found that “loss aversion” presents a helpful point of reference.

To better understand this phenomenon, we surveyed more than 200 people across the US … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Adriann Negreros, Julia Dhar, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

In a traditional hierarchical organization, it is not unusual to see seven, eight, or even nine layers of management. In agile, that effectively goes down to three. It is a radical shift, as middle managers don’t exist in the agile model, but the middle-management function remains, albeit in a different form. The role of middle management absolutely continues to be done, just not any longer … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Joe McCollum | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Although power is distributed, it is rarely balanced. It is relative and changes with the context. Sometimes you are dealing with people who need the resources you control, such as a team seeking your permission to pursue a project; sometimes you need the resources other people control, such as a colleague’s cooperation to execute a plan. Whatever the case, the balance of power in a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Theodore Kinni | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Power / Authority

Hierarchical structures can be useful even for teams that need to be agile.

Content: Article | Authors: Daniel A. Levinthal, Özgecan Koçak, Phanish Puranam | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Are you in a situation where the challenge you’re facing requires you to be adaptable, or can you solve it with things that have worked for you before? That distinction is a very important distinction, and it’s very helpful for people to determine if they can solve this situation with old answers or if they need to develop and be open for new things to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Michiel Kruyt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

What is the best indicator that someone you work with should (or shouldn’t) be trusted?

Content: Article | Author: Leah Fessler | Sources: Pocket, Quartz | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Trust