3605 Posts Found

Why do so many successful entrepreneurs feel like fakes?

Content: Article | Author: Leigh Buchanan | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

A lot, says the author of Vital Friends: The People You Can’t Afford to Live Without. In fact, he says they’re so valuable that managers should actually be fostering close relationships in the office.

Content: Article | Author: Tom Rath | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subject: Organizational Behavior

If you are less successful at work than you could be, you might be your own worst enemy for being too individualistic.

Content: Article | Author: Mitch McCrimmon, Ph.D. | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Complaining about my father’s vagaries would be like complaining that Yogi Berra doesn’t make sense when he talks. When someone’s flaws are also their defining and most seductive characteristics, you just have to accept the consequences.

Content: Quotation | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Human Resources, Personality / Behavior

“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit,” Harry G. Frankfurt writes, in what must surely be the most eyebrow-raising opener in modern philosophical prose. “Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.” This compact little book, as pungent as the phenomenon it explores, attempts to articulate … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Harry G. Frankfurt | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Organizational Behavior

[stories] fulfill a profound human need to grasp the patterns of living-not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a very personal, emotional experience.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Communication, Management

There are two ways to persuade people. The first is by using conventional rhetoric, which is what most executives are trained in. It’s an intellectual process, and in the business world it usually consists of a PowerPoint slide presentation in which you say, “Here is our company’s biggest challenge, and here is what we need to do to prosper.” And you build your case by … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Communication, Organizational Behavior, Storytelling

Nothing is more frustrating than trying to get people to alter the way they do things. New research reveals why it’s so hard and suggests strategies to make it easier.

Content: Article | Author: Christopher Koch | Source: CIO Magazine | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

In purely top-down structures, key information and insights from below are often missed. Decisions take too long and are not as targeted and effective as they would be if information from front-line employees were taken into account.

But what governance system to use? Not a model based on consensus or democracy. Consensus often devolves into the least-common-denominator approach. People give in to what the largest egos … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Brian Robertson | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Big corporations must make sweeping organizational changes to get the best from their professionals.

Content: Article | Authors: Claudia Joyce, Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Individual coaching is the death of the group. Working with a single person, you can’t see how his behavior affects the whole system. And giving people evaluations rather than creating situations where they can learn to evaluate themselves doesn’t really raise their awareness. Also, the coach is usually the instrument of hierarchy, a way of asserting behavioral control from the top.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Coaching, Organizational Behavior

We keep hearing that OD is dead. We hear that change management has replaced it. But change management is about driving change from the top, and reasserting hierarchy. It’s a way of talking about change but not changing anything.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Teams are a way of making groups more comfortable for men by adapting the language of sports. Groups were about collaboration and learning, but teams can be focused just on winning. This appeals to organizations focused on the bottom line, but the ability of people to make breakthroughs is compromised.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

People respond almost too well to monetary incentives. That is, ‘firms get what they pay for’, but since these schemes cannot be targeted well, what firms get is often not what they want.

If an organization is going to function well, it should not rely solely on monetary compensation schemes. The ability of organizations to place workers into jobs with which they identify and the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: George Akerlof, Rachel Kranton | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior

In a model of utility, a person’s identity describes gains and losses in utility from behaviour that conforms or departs from the norms for particular social categories in particular situations.This concept of utility is a break with traditional economics, where utility functions are not situation-dependent, but fixed.

Identity is useful to economists because it suggests a natural way in which behaviour can vary within a population. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: George Akerlof, Rachel Kranton | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Economics, Organizational Behavior

This clever and entertaining essay from Paul Graham discusses how outsiders, free from convention and expectations, often generate the most revolutionary of ideas.

Editor’s Note: I really enjoyed reading this and highly recommend it…

Content: Article | Author: Paul Graham | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

Motivational speeches are about making people feel good about themselves and enthusiastic about where they can go. But in my experience, it doesn’t work to paint a rosy picture and say “Doesn’t it look great over there?” and expect everyone to drop what they’re doing and go in that direction. What I do is, instead of trying to make people feel good about where they … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Russell Hochschild shows that for many professionals, “home” and “work” have reversed roles. Home is the source of stress and guilt, while work has become the “haven in a heartless world”–the place where successful professionals get strokes, admiration, and respect.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Career, Organizational Behavior

A firm can adopt one of two mind-sets: It can apply an operational mind-set, approaching work as a routinized endeavor amenable to a standardized set of procedures and supported by detailed budgets and schedules. Alternatively, an organization can adopt an experimental mind-set-approaching work much like a research and development effort in which testing, learning, and adaptation take precedence over standardization. In such an environment, much … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Team members work in increasingly diverse environments. They include age, gender, race, language, and nationality. Beyond these differences, there are also deeper cultural differences that influence the way conflict is approached. One reason that teams fail to meet performance expectations is their paralysis through unresolved conflict. The paper discusses the impact of culture on the prevention and resolution of conflict in teams and suggests seven … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: John Ford | Source: Mediate.com | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior