3590 Posts Found

When companies look for a manager, they should look for experience, right?

Well, maybe not. INSEAD professors Kishore Sengupta and Luk Van Wassenhove say their research has revealed what they call the “experience trap.”;

“Conventional wisdom holds that as we do more things more often, we learn from experience and get better and better, and what we found in our research was that actually some of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Kishore Sengupta, Luk N. Van Wassenhove | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

It sounds simple, but in fact you could capture all of my research findings with the metaphor of a saltshaker. Instead of filling it with salt, fill it with all the ways you can say yes, and that’s what a good relationship is. “Yes,” you say, “that is a good idea.” “Yes, that’s a great point, I never thought of that.” “Yes, let’s do that … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: John M. Gottman | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Personality / Behavior

Psychologist, author and Harvard professor Gardner (Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons) has put together a thought-provoking, visionary attempt to delineate the kinds of mental abilities (“minds”) that will be critical to success in a 21st century landscape of accelerating change and information overload. Gardner’s five minds-disciplined, synthesizing, creating, respectful and ethical-are not personality types, but ways of thinking available to anyone who invests the time and … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Howard E. Gardner | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

strategy+business reviews the best behavioral theory books of 2007.

Content: Related Content | Author: Howard Rheingold | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Organizational Behavior

Today the average college student or corporate worker considers themselves a “multitasker.” …They end up with a huge list of things that fracture their attention. This isn’t wrong in any way — for the most part it’s admirable — but there is an old saying: to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a chronic multitasker, everything is a task. Soon, the things … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Stephen R. Covey | Subjects: Attention, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

This article will help you explore one dimension of the complex relationship between you and your company: the cultural match factor, or “How compatible is your personality with the organizational culture of the company for which you work?” Even more than that, it will provide you with the assessment tools to figure out whether you are, indeed, compatible. One tool helps you evaluate the company … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Ileana Rizescu, Mark Mallinger, Ph.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Understanding human systems requires looking from many angles. Based on his 50 years of research into organizational dynamics, the author describes some useful approaches.

Content: Article | Author: Edgar H. Schein | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

A plan is only a scenario, and almost by definition, it is optimistic. Any complex undertaking is subject to myriad problems — from technology failures to shifts in exchange rates to bad weather — and it is beyond the reach of the human imagination to foresee all of them at the outset. Although the probability of any one of these events could be low, the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Kahneman | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Personality / Behavior, Planning, Risk Management

In many cases, what looks like risk-taking doesn’t take courage at all; it’s just unrealistic optimism. Courage is a willingness to take the risk once you know the odds; optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don’t know the odds. There’s a big difference.

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Kahneman | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Personality / Behavior, Risk Management

Organizations are out there every day, making tons of decisions, but they aren’t keeping track of them. There are many factors within organizations that make them reluctant to learn from experience, so it’s a forlorn hope, but the goal would be to have dispassionate evaluations of past decisions, and to spend some effort in figuring out why each decision did or did not pan out. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Kahneman | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Decision Making, Learning, Organizational Behavior

Reputation…lubricates reciprocity, and reciprocity, say evolutionary psychologists, is how humans manage to mesh self-interest and the public good, identity and community.

Content: Quotation | Author: Howard Rheingold | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Professional women face a common double standard: how the display of emotion can be perceived as an indicator of the incapacity for leadership; don’t show emotion and be rejected as unfeminine. Communication and organization experts at Emory University and its Goizueta Business School explore the role of women and emotion in the workplace and note that for future generations, many of the stereotypes may no … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Emory | Subject: Women in Business

What is it about going through life, making decisions flying by the seat of our pants, without a plan to get to a clear destination that has us all so captivated? To have the confidence to strike out on your own—research and professional opinion be damned—and take a stand, make a choice, set off in a new direction… just like that? As it turns out, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Kevin J. Clancy, Peter C. Krieg | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

In a wired world, connecting people to what matters most is the name of the game. That’s because innovation and value emerge primarily out of people’s connections. So if connecting is so important, which kinds of connections matter most when it comes to business performance?

Content: Article | Author: Robin Athey | Source: Deloitte | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Whenever change is on the agenda, the power of relationships trumps the power of position.

Content: Quotation | Author: Karen Stephenson | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Power / Authority

The Spring 2007 issue of Rotman magazine contains 124 pages of varying quality articles and other information. I personally recommend reading the following:
– Thought Leader Interview: Daniel Kahneman
– Countering the Biggest Risk of All by Adrian Slywotzky and John Drzik
– Bounded Awareness by Dolly Chugh and Max Bazerman
– Hull’s Laws: What we can learn from derivatives mishaps by John Hull
– A Primer on the Management … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Management, Miscellaneous, Organizational Behavior, Risk Management

When functional operations are impeding client interaction, it’s time for a change. “Codan 2000” was one such changing project launched by a Danish rubber company. INSEAD Professor Paul Evans and Michael Wulff Pederson check Codan 2000’s performance and its self-managed teams after two years, providing insight into the human side of Operations Management.

Content: Case Study | Authors: Michael Wulff Pedersen, Paul A. L. Evans | Source: INSEAD | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Codan Gummi A/S

How do you develop the people who will one day lead your company? High Flyers challenges conventional wisdom about how to groom executives for the top positions in the firm by presenting a strategic framework that senior managers can use to identify and develop future executives. McCall demonstrates that the best executives aren’t necessarily managers who possess a previously identified, generic list of traits or … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Morgan W. McCall, Jr. | Subjects: Human Resources, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

People need something familiar to relate to in order to gain a sense of comfort with the new, the strange. Creative ideas take the facts, feelings and everyday fictions we all share and find new ways to connect them. By making the new and strange seem familiar, you not only establish an opening for your audience to interpret your idea, you create a backdrop against … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Alan Parr, Karen Ansbaugh | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Change Management, Communication, Storytelling

In describing something new, something beyond most people’s vision, you need to create a mental map for them to follow you and your idea to its successful conclusion. The art of making a mental map is to hook your audience with what they know and then explain what they don’t know. Start with a construct that everyone is familiar with and add to it.

So … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Alan Parr, Karen Ansbaugh | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Change Management, Communication, Storytelling