3590 Posts Found

An expert’s job is to be right — to solve the client’s problems through the application of technical and professional skill. The advisor behaves differently. Rather than being in the right, the advisor’s job is to be helpful, providing guidance, input, and counseling to the client’s own thought and decision-making processes. The client retains control and responsibility at all times; the advisor’s role is subordinate … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: David Maister | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Consulting / Analytical Tools, Decision Making, Expertise

Too often, workers are evaluated based on results rather than on the quality of the decision. Given that most consequential business decisions involve some uncertainty, the upshot is that organizations wind up rewarding luck rather than wisdom. From a rational decision-making perspective, people’s decisions should be evaluated based on the information the decision maker had available to him or her at the time, and not … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Don A. Moore, Francesca Gino, Max H. Bazerman | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subjects: Ethics, Organizational Behavior

When I talk about S&M, I’m talking about seduction and manipulation. The most successful people in business, warfare, politics, and life itself are masters of the art of manipulation. But it’s the combination of the two that is important, because people who are manipulators are seen as selfish and in the wrong. Manipulate is a dirty word, but if you combine it with seduction — … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Nina DiSesa | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Power / Authority

Has positive thinking gone too far in corporate America? That may sound like a bizarre question: Optimism is widely seen as a virtue of American culture and key to success in business. Cultural norms and beliefs about good business practice increasingly stress looking at the sunny side and de-emphasizing the problematic.

But such overly positive thinking is difficult to reconcile with the need to make realistic, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Susan Webber | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Cost-benefit analysis can be an effective tool to analyze simple, one-dimensional problems, such as whether to install dividers on dangerous stretches of highway, where relatively unambiguous data is in abundant supply and there is little controversy. It also is a good way to elucidate the trade-offs for a given policy or regulation, or to produce a summary statistic about its economic efficiency.

But the cost-benefit method … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Denise Caruso | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Decision Making, Risk Management, Trends / Analysis

We are endowed with a native scorn of the abstract; we ignore what we do not see, even if our logic recommends otherwise. We tend to overestimate causal relationships. When we meet someone who by playing Russian roulette became extremely influential, wealthy, and powerful, we still act toward that person as if he gained that status just by skills, even when you know there’s been … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Most people expect all swans to be white because that’s what their experience tells them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are. Our minds are … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Source: Edge Foundation | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Organizational Behavior

In psychological science, power is defined as one’s capacity to alter another person’s condition or state of mind by providing or withholding resources—such as food, money, knowledge, and affection—or administering punishments, such as physical harm, job termination, or social ostracism. This definition de-emphasizes how a person actually acts, and instead stresses the individual’s capacity to affect others. Perhaps most importantly, this definition applies across relationships, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Dacher Keltner | Source: Greater Good | Subject: Power / Authority

When we seek equality, we are seeking an effective balance of power, not the absence of power. We use it to win consent and social cohesion, not just compliance. To be human is to be immersed in power dynamics.

Content: Quotation | Author: Dacher Keltner | Source: Greater Good | Subject: Power / Authority

One of the central questions concerning power is who gets it. Researchers have confronted this question for years, and their results offer a sharp rebuke to the Machiavellian view of power. It is not the manipulative, strategic Machiavellian who rises in power. Instead, social science reveals that one’s ability to get or maintain power, even in small group situations, depends on one’s ability to understand … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Dacher Keltner | Source: Greater Good | Subject: Power / Authority

Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Subjects: Personal Development, Personality / Behavior

When the first person said, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” he or she permanently warped our understanding of pictures. The point of a good picture isn’t to eliminate words, it’s to replace as many as possible so that the words we do use are the important ones. (Rather than spending time verbally describing coordinates, positions, percentages, qualities and quantities, if we simply show … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Dan Roam | Source: ChangeThis | Subject: Communication

A successful deal may hinge on the ability to create trust — or uncover deception.

Content: Article | Author: Alix Nyberg Stuart | Source: CFO Publishing | Subjects: Negotiation, Organizational Behavior

Yesbutters don�t just kill ideas.
They kill companies, even entire industries.
The yesbutters have all the answers. Yesbut we�re different.
Yesbut we can�t afford it.
Yesbut our business doesn�t need it.
Yesbut we couldn�t sell it to our workforce.
Yesbut we can�t explain it to our shareholders.
Yesbut let�s wait and see.
All the answers. All the wrong answers.

Whynotters move Companies.

The next time you�re in a meeting, look around and identify
the yesbutters, the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Unknown | Subjects: Achievement, Attitude, Organizational Behavior

In business, getting the active cooperation of two or more people you have no direct control over can be a daunting task. But, this is a common situation in cross-functional teams. People who fail to communicate informally with their colleagues and only address business issues behind the doors of formal meetings, may find it more difficult to obtain colleagues’ cooperation, as well as that of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Martin Gargiulo | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Accounting techniques like budgeting, sales projections and financial reporting are supposed to help prevent business failures by giving managers realistic plans to guide their actions and feedback on their progress. At least that’s the theory. But when Gavin Cassar, a Wharton accounting professor, tested this idea, he found something troubling: Some accounting tools not only fail to help businesspeople, but may actually lead them astray. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Gavin Cassar | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Accounting, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

Humans do not make rational, logical decisions based on information input, instead they pattern match with either their own experience, or collective experience expressed as stories. It isn’t even a best fit pattern match, but a first fit pattern match. The human brain is also subject to habituation, things that we do frequently create habitual patterns which both enable rapid decision making, but also entrain … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: David Snowden | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior, Thought

An environment that supports learning has four distinguishing characteristics: psychological safety, appreciation of differences, openness to new ideas, time for reflection.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Amy Edmondson, David Garvin | Source: BNET | Subjects: Learning, Organizational Behavior

Training prepares Managers to delegate, motivate, influence, coach, communicate, recognize and strategize. Often it does not prepare a Manager for the difficult employee who is resistant to most motivating, influencing, coaching, and recognition techniques. Here are a few examples of how to handle some difficult types.

Content: Article | Author: Louise Kiernan | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

This online diagnostic tool is part of a Harvard Business Review package on organizational learning aimed at helping you judge your own organization’s learning capabilities. It will help you answer key questions, including: To what extent is your unit functioning as a learning organization? and what are the relationships among the factors that affect learning in your unit?

Content: Online Resource | Authors: Amy Edmondson, David Garvin | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subjects: Knowledge Management, Management, Organizational Behavior