Sustainable Innovation and Change: The Learning-Based Path to Growth

For companies that want to make sustainable development a reality, building organizational learning capabilities can be invaluable. Organizational learning has proven very effective in bringing about lasting change and fundamental innovation. In fact, every company interested in capturing growth through innovation and change has needed to develop critical organizational learning capabilities to meet its goals.

When these approaches take hold in an arena such as sustainable … [ Read more ]

La Rochefoucauld

There is a form of eminence that does not depend on fate; it is an air that sets us apart and seems to portend great things; it is the value that we unconsciously attach to ourselves; it is the quality that wins us the deference of others; more than birth, position, or ability, it gives us ascendance.

Focus on the Task

Frances Hesselbein offers some thought-provoking ideas on leaders who are women.

Companies take steps toward understanding employee commitment

“Our experience and industry literature suggest that employee commitment can be measured by the two Rs: retention (whether the employee retains himself or herself in the organization due to positive reasons), and recommendation (whether the employee thinks highly enough of the organization to recommend to others that they join).

We found that an employee is likely to be far more committed to a firm if three … [ Read more ]

Frances Hesselbein

If we want people to listen, we must banish “but” from our vocabulary. How many times has someone told us how well we have performed — and we were feeling good about the feedback, listening carefully — then we have heard “but,” and the positive, energizing part of the feedback was lost in the “but” and what followed it. “But” is nobody’s friend — listener … [ Read more ]

Value Shift: Why Companies Must Merge Social and Financial Imperatives to Achieve Superior Performance

Harvard Business School professor Lynn Sharp Paine had been studying corporate malfeasance long before the Enron debacle. In this book she attempts to introduce readers to an “emerging new standard of corporate performance one that encompasses both moral and financial dimensions.” Based on her researching, teaching and consulting experiences over the past 20 years, Paine has amassed an in-depth understanding of corporate values. She uses … [ Read more ]

Faith at Work

They used to say that the only thing worshipped in business was money, but these days, religion is making inroads into the corporate world. How did that happen–and what will it mean?

Editor’s Note: this article would have been much more interesting had it taken a look at this “trend” from an international perspective…

Art Kleiner, Jack Stack

A financial number is seen, as Mr. [Jack] Stack puts it, as “nothing more than the stories people tell.” …Financial literacy is simply a way of taking those promises and stories seriously. It provides the missing direct experience of the business specifics, in a way that people have reason to trust, because they know their bosses are looking at the same numbers.

Open-book management is … [ Read more ]

All for One

If elite sports teams practice their teamwork, why don’t businesses? They must.

The Visible Process Organization

NASA’s mission control room serves as the inspiration for A.T. Kearney’s organizational approach to managing multiple business-unit companies: the Visible Process Organization (VPO) Framework.

The VPO builds on a company’s existing organizational structure and creates a new unit similar to the mission control room. The framework is designed to bring together key players in key businesses for decision-making and, at the same time, allow each business … [ Read more ]

The Real Keys to High Performance

It appears that the old aphorism, “people are our most important asset,” is actually true. Compelling evidence suggests that organizational success comes more from managing people effectively than from attaining large size, operating in a high-growth industry, or becoming lean and mean through downsizing — which, after all, puts many of your most important assets on the street for the competition to employ. But while … [ Read more ]

New Rules For Team Building

New research disproves some long-held assumptions about what works best when it comes to teamwork.

Discipline Without Punishment

Punishing a problem employee leaves you with . . . a punished problem employee. Is there a better way?

What Women Can Learn About Negotiation

When negotiating compensation, women often sell themselves short. Some practical advice on claiming the power to lead in this interview with HBS professor Kathleen L. McGinn and Harvard’s Hannah Riley Bowles.

Warren Bennis

Two dominant figures of that era (19th-century England) were William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli. Gladstone was a powerful public figure for more than 60 years. It was said that when you had dinner with Gladstone, you thought that you were with the most interesting, brilliant, and provocative conversationalist. And it was said that when you dined with Disraeli — an equally charismatic figure — you … [ Read more ]

Presenting Your Proposal Persuasively

“To get the sponsorship your project deserves, take a “Persuasion Audit.” Evaluate your proposal through the seven universal principles of influence based on the research of Dr. Robert Cialdini, an expert on the art and science of influence. Because work is so complex and fast-paced, Cialdini found that people utilize these principles as shortcuts in their decision-making process.”

The Paradox of Corporate Entrepreneurship

Post-Enron principles for encouraging creativity without crossing the line.

Editor’s Note: offers a detailed look at BP’s management model and the balancing of it’s four components and also offers a quick review of four basic schools of thought on corporate entrepreneurship. A good read…