Daniel Kahneman

Intuition is very good — provided that you have [first] gone through the exercise of systematically and independently evaluating, the constituents of the problem. Then when you close your eyes and generate an intuitive, comprehensive image of the case, you will actually add information.

Daniel Kahneman

Much of human error is not even attributable to a systematic cause, but to “noise.” When people think about error, we tend to think about biases. […] But in fact, a lot of the errors that people make is simply noise, in the sense that it’s random, unpredictable, it cannot be explained.

Carl Spetzler, Hannah Winter, Jennifer Meyer

Conventional thinking […] confuses a good decision with a good outcome. Most will say, “We cannot know how good a decision is until we’ve seen the results.” That makes no sense in a world of uncertainty and unforeseeable events that decision makers cannot control. A good decision, for example, might be undermined by poor implementation. Or events on the far side of the world may … [ Read more ]

Alex Charfen

Brian Welle

What we were expecting to find is that we would have a long list of individual characteristics that would help us determine the composition of an effective team.

You would want a 10-year mix. You want to make sure you have gender diversity, you want extroverts, you want introverts, you want highly conscientious people — you want that whole mix. If we could quantify that mix, … [ Read more ]

Brian Welle

The amazing thing about organizations is, as human beings we all know how to do the basics. We know how to interact with each other. We can get through the day. We can work in teams relatively productively, but there is so much room to optimize all of that. If you can take a step back and understand the dynamics, you can actually help the … [ Read more ]

Julie Zhuo

Teams that fall in love with a problem have more successful outcomes than teams that fall in love with particular solutions. This is because knowing that a problem is worth solving continues to be motivating even when a team doesn’t come across the right solution on the first, second, or Nth try.

Julie Zhuo

How you measure success is critical to the long-term results of your team because it’s the thing that people rally around. Make sure to give this exercise the proper time and attention (more, even, than you would give to thinking about “how should we do this?”).

Carol E. M. Anderson

The good business question is, “How are our [revenues, margins, market share, expenses] compared to our potential?” Are there behavioral considerations at the workforce or leadership level that are prohibiting us from achieving that potential?

Driek Desmet, Ewan Duncan, Jay Scanlan, Marc Singer

While companies often obsess about the “boxes and lines” of organizational structure, it’s more important—and significantly more difficult—to focus on processes and capabilities.

Three Things All Good Bosses Do

A good boss can make a big difference. But what makes a supervisor effective? Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor of Economics Kathryn Shaw found that strong managers use similar strategies and have a lasting positive impact on the careers of their employees. Here’s how they do it.

Robert Kegan

There’s a lot of time spent looking at learning and learning organizations, but we don’t give as much attention to all the ways we prevent ourselves from learning. Not only the ways we do that individually but also the ways organizations get built to cover our weaknesses and call each other to account. All of those activities, which are ways of avoiding discomfort and anxiety … [ Read more ]

Robert Kegan

You might think about leadership as having to do with the intersection of psychology and business knowledge. All leaders have both an agenda they’re driving and an agenda that’s driving them. The agenda you’re driving is the business part of it. The agenda that’s driving you is the psychology part.

The agenda that you’re driving seems to me highly mutable because it’s dependent on lots of … [ Read more ]

Robert M. Galford, Bob Frisch, Cary Greene

When organizational structures were relatively uncomplicated, the pyramid worked well. But as they grew in complexity (for example, as domestic businesses went global and/or diversified), it became more challenging for information to move smoothly up and down and more difficult for top managers to “see” what was going on many layers below, much less convey relevant insights and make informed decisions.

Enter American consultant and … [ Read more ]

The Serious Fun of Shared Experiences at Work

Shared experiences are a powerful tool for managers to build high-performing teams. They help to shape values, norms, and behaviors that allow people to get work done more efficiently and effectively.

Lou Gerstner

If the practices and processes inside a company don’t drive the execution of values, then people don’t get it. The question is, do you create a culture of behavior and action that really demonstrates those values and a reward system for those who adhere to them?

Overcome Resistance to Change with Two Conversations

The biggest hurdle to effective organizational change is people. A core part of your job as a leader is to help others overcome the inherent, very human bias toward maintaining the status quo. You first need to identify who — that is, which individuals and groups — have the biggest potential to thwart positive change. Then you have to unstick them. Doing so begins with … [ Read more ]

Jeffrey Pfeffer

In medicine and, for that matter, other disciplines such as engineering, we demand expertise and try as best we can to assess whether or not people know what they are doing and talking about. In leadership, a good story coupled with enough self-assurance is often sufficient.

Therefore, in the domain of leadership development, where interventions as frequently measured by their entertainment value and with no science … [ Read more ]

Jeffrey Pfeffer

Measures signal what is deemed important inside companies, because what is measured must be, almost by definition, important—just for the very fact of it being measured. Conversely, what is neglected by measures is, by inference, unimportant. Measures focus people’s attention. Measures typically drive rewards and reinforcement, because performance on measures has consequences for people’s raises, promotions, and job tenure. Therefore, and it should come as … [ Read more ]

The Unrecognised Impact of Merit-Based Incentives

Changing the way executives in professional service firms are compensated can help organizations address some tough organizational dilemmas.