3590 Posts Found

Most internal organizational barriers result from complexity and bureaucracy that has accumulated as leaders scaled up their businesses. 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. But what … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Chris Zook | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The state of workplaces, not just in the U.S. but all over the world, can only be described as dire. Whether you prefer Gallup’s data on employee engagement or the surveys on engagement or job satisfaction emanating from the various human resource consulting firms and the Conference Board, the picture that emerges is consistent: mostly disengaged, dissatisfied, disaffected employees. Moreover, there is no evidence that … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

When we lose confidence that people have the will to do the right thing, and we turn to incentives, we find that we get what we pay for. […] There is really no substitute for the integrity that inspires people to do good work because they want to do good work. And the more we rely on incentives as substitutes for integrity, the more we … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Barry Schwartz | Source: Brain Pickings | Subjects: Human Resources, Integrity, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Bestselling author and Wharton professor Adam Grant has spent years researching and interviewing originals. In this interview, Grant explains why it’s imperative for early-stage companies to hire originals. He shares how he singles them out and delves into recommended questions and exercises that can help startups find and hire them.

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Adam Grant | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

leaders have to recognize that everything people do makes sense from their perspective, and that everyone can provide value in the right context. Someone who seems rigid is actually someone you can count on, somebody stable. If she seems impulsive, she’s spontaneous. If he seems gullible, he also promotes trust and candor.

If you’re a leader, once you recognize this, not only do you end up … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ellen Langer | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

It’s not hard to see why stories are so powerful. Advocacy messages, whether for a cause or a brand, automatically invite scrutiny. They prompt us to put our guard up. Stories are different. Not only do stories encourage people to identify with the characters they portray, but by inducing the willing suspension of disbelief they leave the audience predisposed to accept their premise, at least … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Storytelling

When organizations reward people—whether through reputation, opportunities, or promotion—for saving money even if they waste time, employees orient their behavior accordingly.

But organizations can take actions that will start to change this mind-set. For example, company leaders could start counting time as carefully as they count money. Projects and organizational initiatives can have time budgets just as they do financial budgets, enabling organizations to track whether … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jennifer J. Deal | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Time Management

We all come from somewhere. Where we come from affects the way we view things, and the way we understand one another. In every international situation, some things are cultural, and some things are personal. If it’s cultural, then you need to help people in the room understand that, for example, when someone speaks in a way that is startlingly direct, that’s because where he … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Erin Meyer | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Culture, International, Organizational Behavior

The advantage to having people from all over the world on a team is that you may find that you have more innovation and creativity, and that you’re closer to your local markets. The disadvantage is that multinational teamwork is usually a lot less efficient than monocultural teamwork. When we’re all from the same culture, we don’t have to talk about how we work together. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Erin Meyer | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Culture, International, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

Companies will better integrate their people, processes, and structures by following nine golden rules.

Content: Article | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Deirdre McGinty, Steven Aronowitz | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The belief in the essential equity, not to mention the efficacy, of pay for performance remains a bedrock of many modern firms. And it’s often a prime reason that companies today are so likely to describe themselves as meritocracies in which anyone with smarts, talent, commitment, and guts can thrive.

Yet the work I’ve done in recent decades with organizations’ diversity efforts suggests that this meritocratic … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Sally Helgesen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

By throwing time at problems, managers were burning out their employees. By asking people to work such long hours, companies were also creating a sort of rigidity. But research has shown that creativity and innovation require time for reflection. Moreover, we know that if you constrain time, people work more intelligently. And from our own experience, we knew that if people work for 10 hours, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Lotte Bailyn | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Productivity / Work Tips

Our society is still compartmentalizing “work” and “life,” looking for a way to even the scales, when we should be rethinking the perspective that values time as the ultimate capital. In systems based on such a mind-set, success comes to those who seem to be working the hardest, because they are always accessible. People cling to an outmoded view that work should be done by … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Laura W. Geller, Lotte Bailyn | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Productivity / Work Tips, Work

I think the trouble with much of the advice out there right now is that it accepts the organizational and societal status quo. For example, there are companies that support telecommuting, but still require people to be accessible between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. That defeats the purpose. The purpose of giving people autonomy is allowing them to work when they are most productive. Time … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Lotte Bailyn | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Work

Quite a lot, it turns out. Good bosses can have a multiplier effect that ups everyone’s game, according to new research by Christopher Stanton.

Content: Article | Author: Michael Blanding | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior

What makes certain teams excel and others perform below par? In a new book, Committed Teams: Three Steps to Inspiring Passion and Performance, Mario Moussa, Madeline Boyer and Derek Newberry divulge the surprising secrets to developing a high-performance team and the common mistakes groups make that hinder their cooperation.

Jeffrey Klein, executive director of the McNulty Leadership Program at Wharton, recently spoke with Moussa, a Wharton … [ Read more ]

Content: Multimedia Content | Authors: Jeffrey Klein, Mario Moussa | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Despite the massive spending on training, companies may end up doing things that stifle rather than promote engagement. It starts with how companies ask questions about employee engagement. The standard practice in almost all organizational survey son the subject is to rely on what Kelly calls passive questions—questions that describe a static condition. “Do you have clear goals?” is an example of a passive question. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kelly Goldsmith, Marshall Goldsmith | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Online communities are helping companies engage with employees to accelerate change.

Content: Article | Authors: Arne Gast, Raul Lansink | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

There are five ways in which social distance gets created and you have to manage each differently. To begin with, team structure—the physical configuration of the global team, how many people are in what location, not to mention where the leader is. Then there are the processes that you use for managing team interactions—without carefully managing communication, team interactions can end up as a dialogue … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

Jessica Kennedy has researched the origin of unethical behavior, and why it takes hold. She has found that the whole story is more complex. It’s not always about power corrupting. Rather, power causes people to identify so strongly with their group that they lose sight of whether that group’s actions cross an ethical line. This identification can lead them to support misconduct, rather than stopping … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jessica Kennedy, Laura W. Geller | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Ethics, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Power / Authority