3605 Posts Found

An executive’s character traits are linked to certain patterns in a firm’s investments, strategy decisions, and overall performance, a new study finds.

Content: Article | Author: Matt Palmquist | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Organizational Behavior

New survey results find that the most effective transformation initiatives draw upon four key actions to change mind-sets and behaviors.

Content: Article | Authors: Bill Schaninger, Ellen Viruleg, Tessa Basford | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

… the matrix organization […] gained favor in the 1970s as a solution for large organizations struggling to coordinate decision making and activities that cut across functional and business-unit lines. The theory was strong, but when Tom Peters appraised the scene, in the late 1970s, “the matrix ‘solution’ had brought with it problems at least as knotty as those it was supposed to cure.”

The quest … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Suzanne Heywood, Wouter Aghina | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

Resources come in two forms—assets and capabilities—and it’s important not to confuse them. Understanding assets is not that hard. […] People-based skills and capabilities can be even larger sources of value, but they are much harder to assess. […]

Capabilities are relative, so an external lens is critical. Formal benchmarking is one obvious method. Another is to get honest input on strengths and liabilities from people … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Dan Simpson | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

We analyzed data describing the behavior of 3,492 participants in a development program designed to help managers become better coaches. As part of this program, their coaching skills were assessed by others in 360-degree assessments. We identified those who were perceived as being the most effective listeners (the top 5%). We then compared the best listeners to the average of all other people in the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jack Zenger | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Instead of dealing with talent shortage, many oil and gas companies are now juggling a surplus of labor. Rapid performance management systems can help address near-term workforce needs as well as build stronger organizations.

Editor’s Note: although ostensibly focused on the oil and gas industry, the four-step framework provided is relevant to any large organization.

Content: Article | Authors: Christopher Handscomb, Laura Borland, Mark Dominik | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

During the past six years, we have studied the behavior and performance of more than 3,000 teams across a range of organizations, functions, and geographies. Our data includes responses from the four groups associated with teams: the team leader, the team’s members, the line manager of the leader, and the team’s external stakeholders. Specifically, we surveyed them on 16 factors that together helped us determine … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Colin Price | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

There has been much discussion about the effects of rampant automation on the economy and on the labor market in particular. There has been much less attention paid to its effects on human talent and motivation. But what decades of human-factors research tell us is that when computers and other machines take challenging tasks away from us, we turn into observers rather than actors. Distanced … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Nicholas G. Carr | Subjects: Economics, Organizational Behavior, Skills

One scholar shows how you can gain more power, and why you should be leery.

Content: Article | Author: Shana Lynch | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

My successor will need one other particular strength: the ability to fight off the ABCs of business decay, which are arrogance, bureaucracy and complacency. When these corporate cancers metastasize, even the strongest of companies can falter.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Source: BusinessWeek | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

According to a new study, nice guys finish first in the race up the corporate ladder. And yes, it’s usually guys who emerge victorious. Hiring committees tend to disproportionately value candidates’ interpersonal qualities, the authors found, and elevate far fewer similarly credentialed women than men to the CEO role.

Content: Article | Author: Matt Palmquist | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Individuals can make a difference in an organization, but a social system — particularly in large organizations — is always stronger. Fundamentally, organizations domesticate people—they condition people to work in certain ways, and they inadvertently perpetuate the status quo. People get tagged as “talented” when they fit in (or pretend to). This ends up exacerbating conformity and fear, and perpetuating the very problems that the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Todd Warner | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Don Faul shares the nuts and bolts tactics of influential storytelling he’s learned at Google, Facebook and as Head of Operations at Pinterest — and the three types of stories every manager and startup founder should be able to tell fluently.

Content: Article | Author: Don Faul | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Storytelling

A lot of people attribute groupthink to cohesion. They think that if we’re too close, if we trust each other too much […] then we’re not going to challenge each other. That turns out to be false. Cohesive groups often make the best decisions. People frequently when they trust each other are willing to challenge each other and say, “I know this person is not … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Adam Grant | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

If you want to be an original – the kind of nonconformist who champions new ideas and really drives creativity and change in the world – I thought you had to be an early bird, a first mover. But again, the evidence proved me wrong. Turns out that most originals are great procrastinators. The reason for this is pretty simple. […] What I noticed as … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Adam Grant | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Career, Creativity, Innovation, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

In thinking about change, I like to use a simple three-part framework: capturing attention, securing approval, and orchestrating adoption. Like any simplifying framework, this has limitations. But it has one primary benefit: It emphasizes the need to go slow to go fast. What do I mean? Investing sufficient time and effort to gain attention and secure approval will increase the likelihood that organizations will adopt … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Susan Cramm | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

No organization is perfect and there will always be flawed people who make bad decisions or take ill-advised actions. But the more comfortable the many good people in your company become at telling truth to power and the better the powerful become at hearing it, the less likely you are to confront an uncomfortable truth about your organization in the headlines. Resolve the small issues … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Eric McNulty | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Accountability, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

It can be easy to reduce malfeasance to the acts of a few bad apples. This kind of thinking absolves the organization, and even the larger system, of blame — it’s a comfortable place for those invested in the status quo. I take a lesson from a healthcare system where I conducted a number of interviews earlier this year. Their quality ratings had gone from … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Eric McNulty | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Accountability, Best Practices, Management

At a deep level, no matter where we come from, we are driven by common physiological and psychological needs and motivations. Yet the culture in which we grow up in has a significant bearing on the ways we see communication patterns as effective or undesirable, to find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, to consider certain ways of making decisions or measuring time “natural” or … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Erin Meyer | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Culture, Decision Making, International, Personality / Behavior, Thought

The functional model of organizations is an important reason why so many companies struggle with the gap between strategy and execution. It makes a company good at many things, but great at nothing. When functional boundaries prevail, there is no construct for managing capabilities. It isn’t clear who owns the capabilities, how to track spending on them, or how to connect them to the strategy … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Cesare R. Mainardi, Paul Leinwand | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior