James Wolfensohn

I don’t know whether to call it hypocritical or a crime or simply being blind, but the one thing I’m certain of is that the developed countries must open up their markets. It makes no logical sense to try and help developing countries develop their productive capacity and then deny them access to markets. It makes no sense to spend $300 billion a year on … [ Read more ]

The Realist’s Guide to Moral Purpose

Moral purpose is especially powerful when it prompts leaders to take radical steps that others would not take, and thus change the basis of competition in their industries. That is why moral purpose is a critical, if often unseen, element of strategic breakthroughs. A moral purpose can give a company the collective courage and persistence to strike out from the pack.

A moral purpose’s effectiveness depends … [ Read more ]

Laurence Haughton

Don’t cross the line between enough and too much accountability. To what degree are we able to be accountable? Don’t have people accountable for things not under their control or purview as this comes across as unfair. Our managers ask for the impossible and we complain – that’s normal but not optimal. Measure the right things and draw the line between enough and too much … [ Read more ]

Keith Ferrazzi

What makes people great at small talk? However quickly they can transcend the meaningless chitchat about the weather and what company they work for and engage their conversation partners in discussions about stuff that really matters – like their favorite hobbies, their troublesome teenage children, their frustrations at work, their family relationships that really put a strain on them. Only when you talk with someone … [ Read more ]

Seven Habits for High Effectiveness

The higher up the corporate ladder an executive climbs, the more important it becomes for that individual to operate effectively and to do so reliably. Organizational effectiveness involves more than the sum of the effectiveness of individuals, but must be built on top of this foundation. Self-improvement books have been an American tradition for decades, but one of the most popular and enduring is Stephen … [ Read more ]

James Haines

Subjective judgments do not become objective simply by translating them into numbers. More importantly, when some of the options under review require ethical considerations, we can cloud the difference between right and wrong when we translate all options into a quantitative order of dollar values. If you tell me that option A contains a moral impediment and option B is pristine, that is substantially different … [ Read more ]

Jagdish Sheth

In the early 1900s, Fredrick Taylor applied a scientific method to the management of workers in an effort to improve productivity. Known today as Theory X, its recommendations included a division of labor, similar to that used by Henry Ford in his assembly lines that separated tasks into discrete activities that could be handled by appropriately trained individuals and teams.

But Taylor’s approach, which was … [ Read more ]

Social Irresponsibility in Management

A review of previous evidence suggested that a substantial proportion of managers may be expected to bring serious harm to others in situations where they feel it is proper behavior for their role. Further evidence was provided by the Panalba role-playing study, where 79% of the groups selected a highly irresponsible decision and none chose the decision that was free of irresponsibility. These results were … [ Read more ]

Levers of Organization Design: How Managers Use Accountability Systems For Greater Performance And Commitment

The design of an organisation – the accountability system that defines roles, rights, and responsibilities throughout the firm – has a direct impact on the performance of every employee. Yet few leaders devote focused attention to how this design is chosen, implemented, and adjusted over time. Robert Simons argues that by viewing design as a powerful and proactive management lever – rather than an inevitable … [ Read more ]

Disappointment Without Prior Expectation

While profit and loss can be measured easily enough, the emotional responses that determine whether results feel like success or failure are much more complicated. INSEAD’s Associate Professor of Decision Sciences, Philippe Delquié and Alessandra Cillo argue this response is not a factor of prior expectations, as suggested by previous studies. Instead, outcomes are valued relative to all missed outcomes, whether these alternatives were foreseen … [ Read more ]

Michael S. Poulton

Regulation is merely society’s way of saying that it does not approve of the way business is operating or, that by operating the way it is, business is ignoring what the society has set as objectives and goals for itself.

Michael S. Poulton

Business “ethics,” should not be confused with business “morality.” Morality is the sum total of a particular society’s or organization’s current perceived traditions, beliefs, values, attitudes and norms that have been cultivated over time, institutionalized in religious doctrine, laws, regulations and codes of conduct which explicitly or implicitly suggest how an individual should behave in situations as they are encountered daily. Ethics may well … [ Read more ]

Decision Making Tools

Two tools frequently used by teams to make decisions are Multivoting and Nominal Group Technique. While idea-generating tools such as Brainstorming produce a list of possible alternatives, Multivoting and Nominal Group Technique help to identify the important or popular items or prioritize the items on a list.

Roger Martin

When it comes to innovation,business has much to learn from design. The philosophy in design shops is, ‘try it, prototype it, and improve it’. Designers learn by doing. The style of thinking in traditional firms is largely inductive – proving that something actually operates – and deductive – proving that something must be. Design shops add abductive reasoning to the fray – which involves suggesting … [ Read more ]

John D. Mayer and David Caruso

Emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, and fear refer to feelings that signal information about relationships. For example, happiness signals harmonious relationships, whereas fear signals being threatened. Intelligence refers to the capacity to carry out abstract reasoning, recognize patterns, and compare and contrast. Emotional intelligence, then, refers to the capacity to understand and explain emotions, on the one hand, and of emotions to enhance thought, … [ Read more ]

Robert I. Sutton

There is much evidence that being upbeat rather than unhappy, or optimistic rather than pessimistic, is a personality characteristic that is stable throughout one’s life. One study that followed people over a 50-year period, for example, showed that having an upbeat personality as an adolescent was a strong predictor of job satisfaction decades later. Hiring such upbeat people is one of the best ways to … [ Read more ]

William Wrigley Jr.

When two people in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

Why Your Boss is Programmed to be a Dictator

Did you vote your boss into the corner office? If not, perhaps your boss is a dictator. Chetan Dhruve explains why bosses become dictators.

Editor’s Note: I had some real issues with this manifesto, but the point of ChangeThis is to offer thought-provoking, even controversial, papers so I have added it – read for yourself and decide…

Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.

In most organizations, most of the time, self-interest, short-sightedness, and chicanery are tumbling together with shards of loyalty, commitment, perseverance and integrity. The churning is continuous-fuelled by the dynamism of the modern economy, the restlessness and vibrancy of contemporary life, and the age-old drivers of human nature.

This is why quiet leaders reject cynicism-they see it as too simplistic. Dark-tinted glasses distort reality just as … [ Read more ]