3605 Posts Found

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Brian Welle | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

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.

Content: Quotation | Author: Julie Zhuo | Source: Medium | Subjects: Challenge, Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Problems / Solutions, Teamwork

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?”).

Content: Quotation | Author: Julie Zhuo | Source: Medium | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

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?

Content: Quotation | Author: Carol E. M. Anderson | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Human Resources, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

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.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Driek Desmet, Ewan Duncan, Jay Scanlan, Marc Singer | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

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.

Content: Multimedia Content | Authors: Beth Rimbey, Kathryn Shaw | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert Kegan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Learning, Management, Organizational Behavior

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert Kegan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Personality / Behavior

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Bob Frisch, Cary Greene, Robert Galford | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

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.

Content: Article | Author: Augusto Giacoman | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Teamwork

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?

Content: Quotation | Author: Louis V. Gerstner | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Values

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 ]

Content: Article | Author: Sally Blount | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Expertise, Human Resources, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

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 ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Management, Measurement, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

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

Content: Article | Author: Olivier Chatain | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

In domains like music, sports, where there’s a lot of individual training, you see the ratio between training and performance. You probably perform less than 1% of the time that you spent training. Whereas in business, it’s more like 99% performance and 1% training.

Content: Quotation | Author: Anders Ericsson | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Career, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Training & Development

I was struck, yet unsurprised, by a new survey featured in the Financial Times showing that women view “workplace culture” as the biggest impediment to their careers by a significant margin. Although work–life balance continues to monopolize public discussion, the number of female respondents reporting that a workplace designed by and for male advancement was the primary barrier to their own advancement was nearly double … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Sally Helgesen | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Women in Business

We know from research literature that there are not right or wrong cultures. What we know is that there is no certain type of culture that predicts high performance. What predicts this is culture alignment – you understand your core values, and everything you do, how you hire, develop, mentor, guide, engage your employees. When the values are aligned, those organizations are way more profitable. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Natalie Baumgartner | Source: Techstars | Subjects: Culture, Management, Organizational Behavior

The causes of business demise—of a failure to endure—are well documented at a general level. They include failure to address changes in market demand or competition effectively; human failings such as hubris, exhaustion, or loss of ambition; loss of operational competitiveness; and above all an inability to deal with new, often disruptive, technological innovations. And sometimes, of course, external factors outside a company’s control, such … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ian Davis | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Business Rules, Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

One of the risks of using motivation and discipline as single bullet strategies is that none of us is disciplined in every part of our lives. Neither are we motivated all of the time. And yet we rely on these two psychological factors to drive engagement and performance.

A better option, in our opinion, is to utilize design over discipline. What this means is, designing systems … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Dan Gregory, Kieran Flanagan | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior