3590 Posts Found

Saying no is one of the greatest gifts an executive can give their organization. Too many leaders overestimate the capacity of their organizations under the ruse of “stretch goals” or “challenge assignments” to justify their denial of the organization’s true limitations.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ron Carucci | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

We have things called hard conversations, and we ask people all the time, “What’s the last hard conversation you had?” Because our belief is that as companies get bigger, people tend to be less willing to have the hard conversation. And if you look at companies that fail, it’s not like they sat there one day and suddenly said, “Oh, God, our business is gone!” … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Carolyn Everson | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Some observers might consider organizational silos—so named for parallel parts of the org chart that don’t intersect—a structural issue rather than a cultural one. But silos are more than just lines and boxes. The narrow, parochial mentality of workers who hesitate to share information or collaborate across functions and departments can be corrosive to organizational culture.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Julie Goran, Laura LaBerge, Ramesh Srinivasan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The critical question for executives concerned with their organization’s risk appetite is whether they are trusting their employees, at all levels, to make big enough bets without subjecting them to red tape.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Julie Goran, Laura LaBerge, Ramesh Srinivasan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Risk Management

One of the things about failure is that it’s asymmetrical with respect to time. When you look back and see failure, you say, ‘It made me what I am!’ But looking forward, you think, ‘I don’t know what is going to happen and I don’t want to fail.’ The difficulty is that when you’re running an experiment, it’s forward looking. We have to try extra … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ed Catmull | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Success / Failure

During the early years of the industrial revolution, the formula for driving worker productivity appeared to be so much easier: give them more money and they’ll work longer and harder. That philosophy seemed to be supported by behavioral economists, who discovered the concept of “market-driven norms,” which influences the perception that a person has of their own worth in the marketplace. Many decades hence, that … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Alaina Love | Source: SmartBrief | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Effective executives know when a decision has to be based on principle and when it should be made pragmatically, on the merits of the case. They know the trickiest decision is that between the right and the wrong compromise, and they have learned to tell one from the other. They know that the most time-consuming step in the process is not making the decision but … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Decision Making

Our work suggests that culture can be managed. The first and most important step leaders can take to maximize its value and minimize its risks is to become fully aware of how it works. By integrating findings from more than 100 of the most commonly used social and behavioral models, we have identified eight styles that distinguish a culture and can be measured.

Content: Article | Authors: Boris Groysberg, J. Yo-Jud Cheng, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

Why do companies need to be more nimble? McKinsey’s Aaron De Smet and Chris Gagnon explain what’s driving organizational agility, why it matters, and what to do.

Content: Multimedia Content | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Chris Gagnon | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

If your company cannot be great without you, it is not yet a great company. It is merely a group of people who happen to have a leader. The test as to whether it’s a great company is it doesn’t need you.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jim Collins | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

When we were studying in Built to Last, we were looking at companies that were visionary through generations, which meant sometimes you had to discount the role of any individual leader. You couldn’t say that Walt Disney was Disney because Walt Disney’s walking around anymore. There’s something about the company. And I still believe that. I still believe that even if you go back to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jim Collins | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

Gil Shklarski, CTO at Flatiron Health, has adapted a framework from his executive coach Marcy Swenson to serve as a tool for his team to quickly and efficiently create alignment around decision-making — and at the same time, foster a level of psychological safety that would take fear, self-consciousness and anxiety out of the process.

Content: Article | Author: Gil Shklarski | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

Too many companies do not measure employee satisfaction or the support functions’ performance effectively and so fail to understand the needs of the employees using these internal services. The result is a diminished opportunity to take corrective action.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Nicolas Maechler, Sébastien Lacroix, Sylvie Bardaune | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Companies with the highest percentage of female directors have been shown to outperform on return on equity, return on sales and return on invested capital. They pay less to gobble up other firms. They have lower stock price volatility. And those with more women at the top have even been shown to have fewer governance controversies, such as bribery and fraud. Yet according to a … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jena McGregor | Source: The Washington Post | Subject: Women in Business

Self-awareness seems to have become the latest management buzzword — and for good reason. Research suggests that when we see ourselves clearly, we are more confident and more creative. We make sounder decisions, build stronger relationships, and communicate more effectively. We’re less likely to lie, cheat, and steal. We are better workers who get more promotions. And we’re more-effective leaders with more-satisfied employees and more-profitable … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Tasha Eurich | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

As business leaders and entrepreneurs, you know that success requires the resilience to keep moving ahead even when confronted with obstacles and roadblocks. You have a willingness to swim upstream and not give up simply because the tide is against you. Resilient people are successful because they possess these 8 qualities.

Content: Article | Author: LaRae Quy | Source: SmartBrief | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

About $8 billion a year is spent on diversity trainings in the United States alone. Now, I tried very hard to find any evidence I could. […] Sadly enough, I did not find a single study that found that diversity training in fact leads to more diversity. Now, that’s disappointing, discouraging, but maybe when we unpack it also understandable. The unpacking means that there’s a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Iris Bohnet | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Training & Development, Women in Business

Working on health works. It’s good for your people and for your bottom line.

Content: Article | Authors: Chris Gagnon, Elizabeth John, Rob Theunissen | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Management, Organizational Behavior

“We rise in power and make a difference in the world due to what is best about human nature, but we fall from power due to what is worst.”

Content: Article | Author: Maria Popova | Source: Brain Pickings | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Power / Authority

What underlying assumptions about centralized trust do you make in your own work? How would instantaneous peer-to-peer trust with no need for a centralized third party change things? If you could meet a stranger and be able to enter into a trusted exchange without needing a third party, what changes in your theoretical perspective on the world? That model of interaction is what distributed trust … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Marc-David Seidel | Subjects: Economics, Management, Organizational Behavior, Trust