3588 Posts Found

What’s interesting is that people often treat middle managers as the dispensable layer of the organization. This may be a contracting issue. Those at the very top are incentivized with high compensation tied to stock options. Those at the very bottom have simpler tasks that are spelled out in legally enforceable hourly contracts. Not so for those in the middle, who are responsible for implementing … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Claudine Gartenberg | Source: IESE Insight | Subjects: Human Resources, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

As … Viktor Frankl noted in his writings, we are motivated not so much by money or material objects as by a fundamental need for meaning in our lives, which may come from family, religion, our vocation or something else that acts as the modal force of who we are as individuals. Now, taking that insight and expanding it to companies in the shared sense, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Claudine Gartenberg | Source: IESE Insight | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Rituals—even seemingly silly ones—help employees bond and add meaning to their work.

Content: Article | Authors: Francesca Gino, Kristen Senz, Michael I. Norton | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

If I were to lay out the requirements for a great leader, having a clear cultural aspiration and a plan to drive it through the organization would be really near the top of my list.

Content: Quotation | Author: Chris Gagnon | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Culture, Leadership, Organizational Behavior

The success of hallmark cultures is that they read one of these groups of [business] books that hung together with a consistent philosophy, and they really, really stuck with it. A little bit of best practice here, a little bit of best practice there will get you killed.

Content: Quotation | Author: Chris Gagnon | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Culture, Organizational Behavior

As we get into the [organizational] imperatives, you’ll see most of them are about people: who we are, how we show up, how we see ourselves as part of a larger organization, how we collaborate. How we make decisions, how we show up as talent, and how we use the talent we have.

Content: Quotation | Author: Elizabeth Mygatt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Every company has to include technology. Technology is there to enable people. But I’ll tell you, what’s really important is people. An organization is designed to organize people and their work and their efforts. Almost all the things that we discuss as keys or imperatives can be enabled by technology, but they’re designed to help people perform. At the heart of this thinking is humanism, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Chris Gagnon | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Organizational Behavior

Business and life are built upon successful mediocrity, and victory comes to companies not through the employment of brilliant men, but through knowing how to get the most out of ordinary folks.

Content: Quotation | Author: Richard Hofstadter | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

While early employees help set implicit norms, building systems early in a company’s lifecycle sets explicit norms. How do decisions get made? How are meetings structured? How are goals set? These systems are much easier to build when the company is small, and very challenging to put into place as the company grows.

Content: Quotation | Author: Kevin Fishner | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

Reflection doesn’t take anything away from decisiveness, from being a person of action. In fact, it generates the inner toughness that you need to be an effective person of action — to be a leader. Think of leadership as the sum of two vectors: competence (your specialty, your skills, your know-how) and authenticity (your identity, your character, your attitude). When companies and people get stuck, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter Koestenbaum | Subjects: Decision Making, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

We’re a memo culture, not a meeting culture, and we put a lot of time into long-form documentation. Why? My belief is that content scales; your time doesn’t. I’ve personally written many hundreds of pages of strategy and documentation to align the team. Keep in mind what content replaces: taking meetings to explain the same material over and over again, emailing people, meetings, calls, seemingly … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Sam Corcos | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Communication, Management, Organizational Behavior

When it comes to gender equity in the workplace, many organizations focus largely on hiring more women. But to achieve more equitable representation, it’s also critical to examine disparities in how employees are evaluated and promoted once they’re on board. In this piece, the authors discuss their recent research on this topic, which found that competitive evaluation systems in which employees are ranked against one … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Klarita Gërxhani | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Diversity, Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Women in Business

Gender diversity can be a profound business challenge —or a source of competitive advantage. But it’s not women who need to change. It’s the workplace.

Content: Article | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Diversity, Human Resources, Women in Business

One of the challenges of leading remote workers is ensuring that they share a clear understanding of four key areas: their goals, their individual roles, the resources at their disposal, and the norms that will govern their interactions. This alignment can be hard to achieve when employees are co-located. But it becomes even more difficult when they are working separately and at a distance.

Content: Quotation | Author: Theodore Kinni | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

For the past couple of years, Annie Duke has been sharing her advice with founders and angel investors in closed sessions for the First Round community, but given our focus on open-sourcing so others in the tech ecosystem can learn, we thought readers of The Review would be curious to see a few pages from her decision-making playbook, tailored specifically for the startup context.

In this … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Annie Duke | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

Powerful questions are open-ended questions. When you ask a closed-ended question, like a yes or no query, you cut yourself and your interlocutor off from the opportunity of deep listening. Why are open-ended questions important? They can lead to discovery, insight or even a commitment that fuels further action. Managers must become accustomed to asking good open-ended questions. The practice naturally engages partnership.

[…]

The power … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Iffet Türken | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Communication, Management, Organizational Behavior

Nonpromotable work profoundly affects women’s careers and lives. In her new book, Lise Vesterlund explains why women so often agree to it—and how they can say no.

Content: Article | Authors: Justine Jablonska, Lise Vesterlund | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Diversity, Human Resources, Women in Business

Asking questions and listening to the questions of others helps leaders make better decisions.

Content: Article | Author: Pia Lauritzen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Career, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Most founders tend to remain high-level when the topic of culture comes up. For starters, there are tons of reads on why culture matters, but strikingly few on how to actually architect it. We all understand what it means to some extent, but it’s rarely defined or broken down. There are frameworks for product/market fit or founder-led sales, but when it comes to culture, the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Laura Del Beccaro | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Culture, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

There are two camps on the most effective way to frame an innovative idea. One contends you should emphasize why the idea is desirable. The other says you should focus on how to implement the idea. Which one is right? A research project found that the answer depends on your audience. If you’re making a pitch to novices, focus on why. If you’re making it … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Denise Falchetti, Gino Cattani, Simone Ferriani | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Communication, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Organizational Behavior