3605 Posts Found

The real problem of scaling excellence is ignorance. What is an excellent organization? One that doesn’t repeat the same mistakes. And when do you repeat mistakes? When the connections inside organizations are weak or atrophied. If people aren’t connecting, your ignorance multiplies.

Content: Quotation | Author: Hayagreeva Rao | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

It’s interesting, the people who are really good at getting things done, they’re not just optimists. In fact, research shows they have high positive and high negative affect, which means they’re really optimistic and confident things will turn out in the end, but they’re really, really worried about every little detail and how it’s going to screw things up.

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Achievement, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

When we looked at cases where scaling failed, they seemed to have the trifecta of illusion, incompetence, and impatience; this idea of “We’re going to do it all at once, we don’t have time to slow down and do it right. But we’re so great, we can do it.”

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Matthew Ridgway, U.S. army general in the Korean War, says, “The hard decisions are not the ones you make in the heat of battle.” A lot of people can do that. The hard part is actually sitting in a meeting and speaking your mind about a bad idea that’s going to put thousands of lives in jeopardy — and convincing the decision makers that it’s … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Hayagreeva Rao | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Decision Making, Leadership

Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure. They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s an idiot or I didn’t get the resources or the market moved.

Content: Quotation | Author: Laszlo Bock | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Career, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Geographically dispersed teams are increasingly common in the modern workplace. How do you overcome the challenges of supervising employees in different locations and time zones? What steps should you take to build trust and open lines of communication? How should you establish routines? And how do you help remote workers feel part of a team?

Content: Article | Author: Rebecca Knight | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Staff who like their work and want to stay are a prized asset. So how can a company generate a high level of engagement? This article focuses on research into the connection between employee engagement and company loyalty, specifically for multinationals operating in India and China.

Editor’s Note: not a comprehensive study but some of the issues discussed are quite interesting and add something useful … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Caroline Scotter Mainprize | Source: Cass Business School | Subjects: Human Resources, International, Organizational Behavior

Money isn’t the great motivator people often suppose. In fact, excessive monetary rewards can lead to bad behaviors.

Content: Article | Author: Claudio Feser | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Every manager must make the distinction between “correlation” and “cause and effect” regularly, as the topic comes up in many guises.

Content: Quotation | Author: Thomas C. Redman | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Trends / Analysis

There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Patrick M. Lencioni | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Why do we do what we do? Our standard answer is that we do what we do because we expect it to lead to good consequences. [Don] Quixote reminds us that there is another possible answer: We do what we do because it fulfills our identity, our sense of self. Identity-based actions protect us from the discouragement of disappointing feedback. Of course, the cost is … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: James March | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Many organizations try to change but most of their change efforts are doomed to failure from the beginning. The type and amount of change that is attempted is simply beyond the ability of most organizations to implement successfully. Admittedly, some organizations have made amazing transformations. A key barrier in most change efforts is the motivation to change; all too often it is simply missing. We … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Christopher G. Worley, Edward E. Lawler III | Source: University of Southern California | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

How good a rater do you think you are? The research record reveals that neither you nor any of your peers are reliable raters of anyone. And as a result, virtually all of our people data is fatally flawed.

Content: Article | Author: Marcus Buckingham | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

There’s a reason it’s called ‘paying’ attention: it’s a substantial cost in terms of time and energy. But nothing fundamental has changed. Everyone is still amazed when you actually listen deeply to what they are saying, and respond to that rather than simply waiting them out so you can spew forth your own talking points.

Content: Quotation | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Attention, Communication

Data and privacy, social network analysis, sensors, wearable computing, and location intelligence: Name a technological trend that’s revolutionizing commerce and society, and Sandy Pentland and MIT’s Media Lab were likely doing it before anyone else was even writing about it.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Sandy Pentland, William D. Eggers | Source: Deloitte Review | Subject: Organizational Behavior

As a leader, you cannot motivate anyone. What you can do is cultivate a workplace where it is more likely for someone to experience optimal motivation.

Optimal motivation means having the positive energy, vitality, and sense of well-being required to sustain the pursuit and achievement of meaningful goals while flourishing. Optimal motivation is the result of satisfying three basic psychological needs that lie at the heart … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Susan Fowler | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

Hal Gregersen has discovered one consistent characteristic across the companies he’s studied in The World’s Most Innovative Companies; the ability of these leaders to ask lots of deep, provocative questions to which they don’t have the answers. In essence, they’re inquisitive learners.

Content: Quotation | Author: Hal Gregersen | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

Social psychologists have determined that primitive humans, in their struggle for existence, developed the ability to judge other people almost instantly along two categories of perception, which are known as warmth and competence. In fact, all humans have a primal, unconscious ability to make these two crucial judgments with a high degree of speed and accuracy: What are the intentions of this person toward me? … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Chris Malone | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

When we face a tough creative challenge, we always look to those with the most expertise. The truth is that some level of expertise matters, but the most creative solutions come from those on the fringes of the subject area, who know enough to understand but not enough to block their creative thinking. Research shows that, over the course of their careers, most individuals tend … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: David Burkus | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Creativity, Expertise, Innovation, Organizational Behavior

When we’re stuck on a creative challenge, it can become easy to place blame on our constraints. If we had more resources or less specific requirements, then our creativity could really soar. The truth is that creativity is highest in a constrained environment. Researchers found that individuals are more creative after engaging in tasks laden with obstacles and roadblocks. That’s why many of the most … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: David Burkus | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Creativity, Innovation, Organizational Behavior