3590 Posts Found

People do better work when they have lives of their own. That’s not always a popular opinion, but I’ve seen how true it is over and over again. It’s not just people with kids or spouses. Everybody has a community outside of the office. So few employers respect that — if you make it a point to, that will bind your employees closer to you. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Carly Guthrie | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

According to Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd, authors of Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, culture is “information that affects individuals’ behaviors and that they learn from other members of their species through imitation, learning, and other social practices.” […] And if we accept that culture is information that affects individuals’ behavior, then understanding it requires us to figure out what … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Juan Luis Suárez | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

Freek Vermeulen explains why unhelpful practices go unnoticed and suggests how rooting them out can help innovation.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Freek Vermeulen, Jeremy Grant | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

[Andrew Fastow] thinks all management decisions should face one simple question. “If this company were privately owned, and I were leaving this company to my grandchildren, would I make this decision?”

Content: Quotation | Author: Thomas Watson | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Decision Making, Management

We all complain about meetings. We have too many. They’re a waste of time. Nothing gets done. These complaints often have merit, but they are so broad that they’re difficult to argue with and harder to address.

There are specific complaints that can be tackled, however. When I ask people in the workshops I lead what they most want help with, five issues consistently come up. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Paul Axtell | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Productivity / Work Tips, Teamwork

The design of defaults is thus of great importance. And that importance is only magnified by the flawed nature of human decision making. Although lawmakers, economists, and providers of healthcare and social services used to assume that people based decisions on their own rational self-interest, seven decades of behavioral data have demonstrated that this is rarely true. In reality, people are influenced by random factors … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Sally Helgesen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior

When we talk about bias, we often tie it to acts of discrimination or prejudice. But according to cognitive science, everybody, by virtue of having a brain that’s constantly seeking efficiency, is biased in some way — and not all biases make us actively malicious.

The key is how we manage our biases.

While biases can affect any of an organization’s talent decisions, they can be especially … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Beth Jones | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Research sheds light on which employee incentives work best.

Content: Article | Source: Kellogg Insight | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Managers typically spend roughly 80 per cent of their time solving a problem and only 20 per cent actually examining the problem and its context. For situations of high complexity or novelty, another approach is required such that 80 per cent of one’s time is spent exploring the challenge and its context.

Content: Quotation | Author: Charles J. Palus | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Decision Making, Management

Empathy isn’t natural for everyone, but I have a way I like to test for it. I ask people to recount a conflict on the job. Then I ask them to describe what was going on inside the other person’s head. If they can explain why the other person wanted them to do something, that’s the sign of empathy — and a manager.

Content: Quotation | Author: David Loftesness | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

The employee-work contract has changed, compelling business leaders to build organizations that engage employees as sensitive, passionate, creative contributors. Two years of research and discussions with hundreds of clients suggest five major elements and underlying strategies that work together to make organizations “irresistible.”

Content: Article | Author: Josh Bersin | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Corporate America’s gender-diversity programs are falling short. Companies need to think differently to ignite change.

Content: Multimedia Content | Authors: Alexis Krivkovich, Eric Kutcher, Simon London | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Diversity, Human Resources, Women in Business

Authentic informal leaders (AILs) are not people in your organization who have been endowed with formal authority by title or by memo. Rather, they possess and exhibit certain leadership strengths such as the ability to do something important well and showing others how to do it (exemplars), or they demonstrate the skill of connecting people across the organization (networkers). Some AILs influence behavior by being … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Reid Carpenter | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

These findings echo one of the main concerns associated with monetary rewards that sometimes fail to accomplish their goals. Academics refer to this phenomenon as the crowding-out effect of explicit incentives on intrinsic motivation. In other words, associating an economic value with a certain activity changes the nature of the exchange. If health care workers sanitize their hands because it is in the best interest … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Susanna Gallani | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Building culture doesn’t always have to entail a huge cost or commitment. In fact, some of the most powerful culture-building tools are essentially DIY hacks. Here’s a look at some of the most effective tools Hootsuite has found over the years.

Content: Article | Author: Ryan Holmes | Source: Medium | Subjects: Culture, Management, Organizational Behavior

One of the fundamental tenets of evolving organizational culture is to focus on those “critical few” behaviors, or patterns of acting that are tangible, observable, repeatable, and measurable, and will help an organization to achieve its strategic and operational objectives. In an earlier article, I described how to identify and select the critical few behaviors in your organization that will drive change and evolve culture. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Kristy Hull | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

They might be skills, but they’re not soft.

Content: Article | Author: Seth Godin | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Stretch targets succeed only when employees believe they can meet their goals if they try hard enough and that they will be rewarded if they do. There has to be a chance of failure in order to motivate employees to work harder. But if they expect failure and see targets as unrealistic, they will conclude that they won’t receive a bonus anyway and just stop … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Hugues Lavandier, Ken Schwartz, Ryan Davies | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Rather than assuming critical thinkers are resisters, we would do better to treat them as guardians. Guardians see what needs to be protected, and the trust that can be destroyed by a broken promise or a shortcut. Who else will ask the hard questions? Guardians keep us honest in the face of self-delusion or blind spots. […] When you approach guardians as responsible, thinking adults … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Elizabeth Doty | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Organizations are more likely to innovate and thrive when they unleash the potential of individuals and the power of self-organizing teams, says the online retailer’s CEO.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Chris Gagnon, Tony Hsieh | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Zappos.com