A Better Business through a Great Place to Work for All

What it means to be a great workplace has evolved. We have entered a new era, a new frontier in business. Our economy has evolved through agrarian, industrial, and ‘knowledge’ phases to the point where the essential qualities of human beings—things like passion, creativity, and a willingness to work together—are the most critical. In this ‘human economy,’ every employee matters.

What You Need to Know About Women at Work

Around the world, women are paid at lower rates and wages than men and are less likely to be promoted. They also tend to work in different sectors. The implications are everyone’s business.

Realizing the Value of Your Merger with the Right Operating Model

Substantial changes to an operating model are often necessary to achieve an organization’s strategic objectives and deliver the promised value of a merger. Making these changes requires a thoughtful, leader-driven process to navigate the unique constraints and risks of the endeavor.

The Helix Organization

Separating people-leadership tasks from day-to-day business leadership can help organizations strike a better balance between centralization and decentralization, reduce complexity, and embrace agility.

How Brilliant Careers are Made (and Unmade)

Getting things done through others—the essence of leadership—requires a combination of technical skills (being proficient in areas important to the success of the business), intrapersonal skills (especially strong self-management skills, which are driven by self-understanding and self-control), and interpersonal skills (the ability to develop and foster strong relationships and gain the enlistment of others). People may derail due to a lack of technical, job-related skills, … [ Read more ]

Creating High-Performance Innovation Teams at Scale

For innovation initiatives to succeed, they must be staffed with the right combination of talent.

The 6 Decision-Making Frameworks That Help Startup Leaders Tackle Tough Calls

High-stakes decisions are seldom clearly cut. On a team, it’s difficult to get consensus on what the “best” option even means; with an excess of choices, leaders can fall into the paralysis of indecision, wasting precious time and opportunities. How do you make a choice that optimizes for both speed and sagacity? Should you place more weight on data, or go with your gut? How … [ Read more ]

In Praise of the Purposeless Company

No purpose? No problem. Create customers, care for employees, be a good citizen, and make money instead.

Your Enterprise as Living System: Success Starts with Knowing the Kind of Business You’re Really In

Every kind of for-profit and/or not-for-profit enterprise falls into one of four categories determined by (and named after) their customer promise: the predictable and dependable enterprise delivering consistent, reliable, and dependable products or services; the best-in-class enterprise delivering one-of-a-kind and distinctive products or services; the customized enterprise delivering a unique solution to each customer; or the enrichment enterprise promising fulfillment and the realization of higher-level … [ Read more ]

How Highly Diverse Teams Can Help Untangle Complexity

Top teams work best — and fastest — when they are based on the right criteria and include a highly diverse group of people from all levels across an organization, including outside stakeholders, write David Komlos and David Benjamin in this opinion piece.

Why Tim Cook is Steve Ballmer

What happens to a company when a visionary CEO is gone? Most often, innovation dies and the company coasts for years on momentum and its brand. Rarely does it regain its former glory. Here’s why.

Editor’s Note: for more on this theme, read “Visionary, Salesman and Pragmatist Model of Business Succes.”

How to Create Happier Employees

Professor Jochen Menges on the ways companies can develop well-being initiatives that genuinely make people feel better.

Three Keys to Faster, Better Decisions

Decision makers fed up with slow or subpar results take heart. Three practices can help improve decision making and convince skeptical business leaders that there is life after death by committee.

Changing the Change Rules at Google

There is no single way that Google manages internal change, like a reorganization. But we’ve been piloting a new approach that has been used in different parts of the company, impacting thousands of Googlers. After piloting and iterating on our work, we came up with a four-step approach to business-driven organizational change we call “ChangeRules.” Four analytical questions drive this approach: Why? What? Who? How? … [ Read more ]

The Assumptions Employees Make When They Don’t Get Feedback

One piece of feedback that the executives I coach receive over and over again from their direct reports is: “She doesn’t give enough helpful feedback.”

When I ask these direct reports about the impact this has on them, I find that, in the absence of understanding why they’re getting so little feedback, they often make up their own explanations.

Here are three of the most common stories … [ Read more ]

Amy Edmondson

Psychological safety takes off the brakes that keep people from achieving what’s possible. But it’s not the fuel that powers the car. In any challenging industry setting, leaders have two vital tasks. One, they must build psychological safety to spur learning and avoid preventable failures; two, they must set high standards and inspire and enable people to reach them.

25 Employee Incentive Ideas that Won’t Break the Bank

Employee recognition is the timely informal or formal acknowledgement of a person’s or team’s behavior, effort or business result that supports the organization’s goals and values. It is a known fact that appreciation is one of the top motivators for employees to work harder and to be more committed to their companies. Even cost-efficient forms of appreciation show employees that they are valued. Therefore, here … [ Read more ]

Maud Lindley, Jeffrey Schwartz, and Malcolm Thompson

Why should organizations care about groupthink? Why not just let the prevailing point of view stand? That may be an expedient solution, but it can cause problems in the long run. An innovative enterprise needs employees who feel that they can contribute freely and bring their whole selves to work. If people are expected to rise above the status quo and challenge their competitors, they … [ Read more ]

Maud Lindley, Jeffrey Schwartz, and Malcolm Thompson

If you’re a leader taking a stand on values in your enterprise, you have a seemingly Herculean task: to engage all your employees, regardless of their attitudes and backgrounds. It’s not possible to achieve your goal by excluding the people who disagree with the prevailing corporate point of view. Nor can you avoid values altogether these days; some topics, including diversity and inclusion, LGBT identity, … [ Read more ]

What You Can Learn from Your Employee Networks

Many companies support resource groups that bring people together, but stop short of assessing their value.