Neill Occhiogrosso

For every “make decisions quickly” there is an equally compelling “make decisions carefully” directive. In The Halo Effect, one of the best books I’ve ever read on business, and on critical thinking more generally — author Phil Rosenzweig talks about how the same business decision can be described as “decisive” or “impulsive”, a strategy can be considered “innovative” or “straying from the core.” There are very few, … [ Read more ]

Why You Should Know How Much Your Coworkers Get Paid

How much do you get paid? How does it compare to the people you work with? You should know, and so should they, says management researcher David Burkus. In this talk, Burkus questions our cultural assumptions around keeping salaries secret and makes a compelling case for why sharing them could benefit employees, organizations and society.

Simple Ways to Take Gender Bias Out of Your Job Ads

Iris Bohnet’s new book, What Works: Gender Equality by Design, discusses how organizations can leverage findings from behavioral science research to fight gender bias in the workplace—starting with job listings.

Jesse Sostrin

As an effective leader, it’s […] imperative to act as your team’s capacity keeper, or the shepherd of the time, energy, resources, and focus that your employees have to devote to their essential work. We do this to avoid what I call the manager’s dilemma, the phenomenon that occurs when the gap between the demands you face and the resources you have available to meet … [ Read more ]

Us versus Them: Reframing Resistance to Change

Anyone attempting to lead change in an organization knows to expect some resistance. Change is not a rational process; no matter how positive the future you are creating, it’s natural for humans to struggle with it. Faced with negative remarks, critical questions, or stony silence, change champions naturally begin to interact more with those already on board, consciously or unconsciously distancing themselves from those who … [ Read more ]

Female CEOs: A Steady Hand at the Wheel

Bottom Line: The number of women presiding over large companies still lags far behind men, yet the firms they lead tend to be more risk averse and more profitable over the long term.

Your People’s Brains Need Face Time

A look at the value of in-person meetings for dispersed teams.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The tools of accountability — data, details, metrics, measurement, analyses, charts, tests, assessments, performance evaluations — are neutral. What matters is their interpretation, the manner of their use, and the culture that surrounds them. In declining organizations, use of these tools signals that people are watched too closely, not trusted, about to be punished. In successful organizations, they are vital tools that high achievers use … [ Read more ]

Bill Aulet

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, operational excellence for lunch, and everything else for dinner.

30+ Tips for Effective Team Building

Getting a team to work efficiently requires focus on team building. But what are the best tricks for getting a team to bond and succeed? We’ll provide you over thirty science-backed tips for making the most of your team.

Chris Zook

We call this dynamic the “Growth Paradox:” Growth creates complexity and yet complexity is the number one killer of profitable growth. You cannot win on the outside, in the marketplace, if you are losing on the inside, with an organization stifled by its own growth.

The 5 Elements of a Strong Leadership Pipeline

Investments in traditional leadership development are often misguided and a waste of money. It’s not that development itself isn’t important. But there’s little evidence that much of it works. I’ll share some findings from a study my colleagues and I just completed at Deloitte. We surveyed and interviewed executives from more than 2,000 companies, asking extensive questions about how they develop leaders, how their companies … [ Read more ]

Ed Catmull

You don’t want to be at a company where there is more candor in the hallways than in the rooms where fundamental ideas or policy are being hashed out. Seek out people who are willing to level with you, and […] hold them close.

Adam Grant

A resilient culture has a certain amount of resistance embedded in it. Not too much to capsize it, but enough so that it doesn’t atrophy. What happens when startups get successful and grow is that they become more and more vulnerable to the attraction-selection-attrition cycle, where people of the same stripes are increasingly drawn to the organization, chosen by it and retained at it. The … [ Read more ]

How to Manage Your Star Employee

Managing your star performers should be no sweat, right? After all, they’re delivering results and exceeding targets. But don’t think you can just get out of their way and let them excel. They require just as much attention as everyone else. How do you manage someone who is knocking it out of the park? How do you keep stars excited about their work? And what … [ Read more ]

Why Companies Overlook Great Internal Candidates

Are companies overlooking the skilled people in their own workforce? Perhaps. We see three common scenarios that can cause employers to recruit outside their ranks for talented people (albeit at their own risk).

Peter Cappelli

General Electric used to force out the bottom 10% because they believed it was the A-player, B-player, C-player model. If your company’s doing that, you might want to actually look to see whether it’s true that your bottom 10% this year are the same as your bottom 10% next year. The problem is, if you keep firing your bottom 10%, you’re never going to know … [ Read more ]

Peter Cappelli

Do people who perform well always perform well? And people who perform poorly, do they always perform poorly? The reason this matters is because there is a very prominent theory in the practice of management — something that Jack Welch made famous — about the A-player, B-player, C-player model. The folks at McKinsey & Co. were making a similar case that there are really good … [ Read more ]

Why Women Have Stalled and What Can Be Done About It

According to Professor of Organizational Behavior Shelley Correll, women are not seeing career advancement and opportunities they way they did in past decades. Despite good intentions by corporations and individuals, unconscious biases are holding women back. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.

Bernie Madoff Explains Himself

A few years ago, professor Eugene Soltes phoned convicted felon Bernie Madoff and asked him an important question: How would you explain your actions and misconduct to students? The recorded answer offers sobering lessons for anyone with business ambitions.