3590 Posts Found

The tone and content of dialogue shapes people’s behaviors and beliefs – that is, the corporate culture – faster and more permanently than any reward system, structural change, or vision statement I’ve seen.

Content: Quotation | Sources: Conquering a Culture of Indecision, Harvard Business Review | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Facts and evidence are great levelers of hierarchy. Evidence-based practice changes power dynamics, replacing formal authority, reputation, and intuition with data. This means that senior leaders – often venerated for their wisdom and decisiveness – may lose some stature as their intuitions are replaced, at least at times, by judgments based on data available to virtually any educated person. The implication is that leaders need … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Sources: Evidence-Based Management, Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior

Even in companies respected for their decisiveness, there can be ambiguity over who is accountable for which decisions. As a result, the entire decision-making process can stall, usually at one of four bottlenecks: global versus local, center versus business unit, function versus function, and inside versus outside partners.

…Cross-functional decisions too often result in ineffective compromise solutions, which frequently need to be revisited because the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Sources: Harvard Business Review, Who Has the D? | Subject: Decision Making

A good story and a well-formed argument are different natural kinds. Both can be used as means for convincing another. Yet what they convince of is fundamentally different: arguments convince one of their truth, stories of their lifelikeness. The one verifies by eventual appeal to procedures for establishing formal and empirical proof. The other establishes not truth but verisimilitude.

Content: Quotation | Source: Storytelling: Passport to Success in the 21st Century | Subjects: Communication, Persuasion

Contrary to popular belief, your decisions don’t drive your long term success – your decisiveness does. Said another way, when you reach a crossroads on any issue, the act of choosing creates power, not the choice itself. The issue is momentum. No matter what you choose, when you commit boldly with conviction, you create momentum. When you hesitate you don’t. And success is built on … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Decision Making, Power / Authority

People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.

Content: Quotation | Source: 43 Folders | Subjects: Communication, Leadership, Management, Training & Development

If executives are to create and use a vision effectively, they must develop a precise understanding of what this involves. In other words, they need a clear vision of vision. This Models & Methods article conveys a few of the major definitions and models of corporate visions. These agree on the basics, according to which a good vision defines what we stand for (values) and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: ManyWorlds | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

So far, the single most important discovery in happiness research is the idea of hedonic adaptation. Put simply, we take things for granted after a while. Experiences are so much harder to get used to because they are unique events. When you buy a car, for a few months you cherish it, but within a year you’re totally used to it.

The more you can do … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Personality / Behavior

When it comes to ethics in business, many accept that standards can not only be different from, but even lower than, ethics in everyday life. That should definitely not be so, argues this author. In fact, he says, a corporation’s obligations to its stakeholders bind it to those stakeholders, in turn creating new and specific moral obligations.

Content: Article | Author: Robert Phillips | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Ethics, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Teams rarely manage to improve their performance wholly outside their active working environment, so short-term workshops, no matter how attractive the setting or how heart-felt and candid the members’ exchanges may be, aren’t likely to change their mode of working. Structured self-discovery and reflection must be combined with decision making and action in the real world; the constant interplay among these elements over time is … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Teamwork

There’s a latent productivity in people; they’re just waiting for someone to remind them of their capacity.

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Productivity / Work Tips

Successful people tend to have a high need for self-determination. In other words, the more leaders commit to coaching and behavioral change because they believe in the value of the process, the more likely the process is to work. The more they feel that the change is being imposed upon them–or that they are just trying it out–the less likely the coaching process is to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Managers often confuse two terms that appear to be synonymous but are actually quite different: simple and easy. We want to believe that once we understand a simple concept, it will be easy to execute a plan and achieve results. If this were true, everyone who understood that they should eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly would be in shape. Our challenge for getting … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

The failure of many transformation efforts is caused not so much by people’s resistance to change or by the details of “implementation” as by a deficient understanding of the interplay between organization and behavior.

Content: Article | Author: Yves Morieux | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

That the terrain of decision making is mined with moral hazards has never been much in doubt. But the real question for executives is this: Just how can you make your conscience your guide? This author has suggestions and strong advice that, when taken, can help restore public confidence in business leaders.

Editor’s Note: discusses the author’s concept of teleopathy…

Content: Article | Author: Kenneth E. Goodpaster | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Ethics, Organizational Behavior

Gender is not a good predictor of negotiation performance, but ambiguous situations can trigger different behaviors by men and women. Here is how to neutralize the differences and reduce inequities.

Content: Article | Authors: Dina W. Pradel, Hannah Riley Bowles, Kathleen L. McGinn | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Negotiation, Women in Business

The logic behind the use of options as managerial incentive is flawed once you consider what behaviors are actually rewarded. Roger Martin, Dean of the University of Toronto’s business school and one of the co-founders of the strategy consulting firm Monitor, noted the problems of mixing the measuring and rewarding of performance in an expectations market – the stock market – with the measuring and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Compensation, Organizational Behavior

Strategy and structure are fundamentally about attention. After all, in the world of everyday decision-making, what are strategy and structure? Both strategy and structure are mental constructs, important not in themselves, but for their impact on the people in the organization. There is no absolute reality of a firm’s strategy or its structure, or at least not one that we can all agree on. Rather, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Attention, Organizational Behavior

Organizational structure is the plan for, and the reality of, how power and responsibility are distributed across an organization. We humans are social animals. So, inside our groups, we focus on hierarchy; outside, we focus on the identifiable groups or individuals who represent opportunity or threat. Thus, organizational structure is a powerful vehicle for focusing employees’ and external stakeholders’ attention on a particular aspect of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Attention, Organizational Behavior

Corporate culture is the core of organization behavior. This paper will focus on how W. L. Gore’s two key principles of making money and having fun help to develop committed individuals and teams and how the organization translates core values into individual and enterprise behaviors. Additionally, the paper will focus on how Gore aligns underlying assumptions, core values and organization behaviors to create the environment … [ Read more ]

Content: Case Study | Authors: Bruce Arnold, Gail Sacconey Townsend | Source: OD Network 2005 Annual Conference | Subject: Organizational Behavior | Company: W. L. Gore & Associates Inc.