3590 Posts Found

Most people think that they need to know a lot about a subject before they speak about it. The challenge of speaking calls up thoughts that you don’t even know are percolating inside your brain. People are unread books. Speaking forces you to say out loud what you know deep inside.

To think deeply, don’t ask questions. Talk about something that you don’t entirely know—and discover … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Harriet Rubin | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Communication, Learning, Thought

All around us there is a breakdown of values […] It is not just the […] overpowering greed that pervades our business life. It is the fact that we are not willing to sacrifice for the ethics and values we profess. For an ethic is not an ethic, and a value not a value without some sacrifice to it. Something given up, something not taken, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Ethics, Integrity, Leadership, Values

When you connect the development of your top talent with the needs of your organization, everyone wins—and your best people stay. To assess how well you’re retaining your top talent, take our interactive quiz.

Content: Article | Author: Susan Cramm | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Ethics programs have arisen in response to the public’s outcry over the perceived unethical behavior of American business. The rapid response in the establishment of ethics programs is encouraging, though interesting issues have emerged that merit discussion.

Content: Article | Author: Jere E. Yates | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Ethics

Competent people have a predictable, reliable process for solving a particular set of problems. They solve a problem the same way, every time. That’s what makes them reliable. That’s what makes them competent. Competent people are quite proud of the status and success that they get out of being competent. They like being competent. They guard their competence, and they work hard to maintain it. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Seth Godin | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Change Management, Competence, Organizational Behavior

A lot of folks whom I talk to speak wistfully about what they would do if they were “in charge.” I’ve got news for them: If they’re willing to be in charge, people will put them in charge!

People are fascinated by folks who are willing to carry responsibility. All too often, people add their own burdens to those that their leader must already carry—but, in … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Seth Godin | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

How do you define your people? Through the economic expansions and contractions of the past twenty years, executives have struggled to define and redefine the employer-employee relationship, using various analogies, metaphors, and sound bites to explain the complex, shifting connection.

Employees are no longer personnel, costs, or workers—they’re associates, assets, thinkers. They’re certainly not cogs in the industrial machine—today, they’re key links in the customer value … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: John M. Bremen, Thomas O. Davenport | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Most people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us, good disagreement is central to progress. She illustrates (sometimes counterintuitively) how the best partners aren’t echo chambers—and how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Margaret A. Heffernan | Source: TED Conferences LLC | Subject: Organizational Behavior

There’s a human law that says that the gap between the one at the top and the average is a constant. And it’s terribly hard to work on that huge average. You work on the few at the top, and you raise them, and the rest will follow.

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Education, Management, Organizational Behavior, Training & Development

Five ways to boost the impact of new endeavors without adding bureaucracy or cost.

Content: Article | Authors: Jørn Bang Andersen, Robert C. Wolcott | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior

You can’t build a great company by tolerating mediocre leaders. A Q&A with Raad Al-Saady, managing director at Abdul Latif Jameel.

Content: Thought Leader | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Anyone who pulls the organization in new directions must look inward as well as outward.

Content: Article | Authors: Erica Ariel Fox, Nate Boaz | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Where we get in trouble in this world is that people are pushing and shoving for three things: money, recognition, and power and status. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things—except if you define yourself by them. See, the opposite of money as a drive is generosity, generosity of time, talent, and treasure. The opposite of recognition is service, and the opposite of power … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ken Blanchard | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Wisdom

I’ve been studying decision-making at the top for many years and what I’ve found is that good decisions nearly always result from robust decision processes. Similarly, decisions that go wrong nearly always stem from procedural or organizational failures. In fact, just five mistakes account for the vast majority of poor decisions.

Content: Article | Author: Michael C. Mankins | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

Being prepared to make major changes is what most executives will not do or are not prepared to do. Certainly this is true of corporate boards. Look at their makeup: twelve guys who are in other businesses and who have other lives to live. Why would they want to create havoc? So […] they’ll make cautious instead of intrepid decisions. Boards are set up to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ricardo Semler | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Change Management, Corporate Governance, Management, Organizational Behavior

By eliminating the bottom 10 percent every year, you’re losing a tremendous investment, because these people could change places and be used in other ways. You’re also sending the message up and down the line that your company is a military hierarchy. The Welch paradigm is, after all, a military paradigm; it is a Norman Schwarzkopf paradigm. What’s the difference between them? None to speak … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ricardo Semler | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Human Resources, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

The Columbia Business School professor says the era of sustainable competitive advantage is being replaced by an age of flexibility. Are you ready?

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Rita Gunther McGrath, Theodore Kinni | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

It’s so easy for people to hide behind a mission statement, to follow the military model—to go there, find, and destroy. Why? That’s not a question to be asked. In the end, a mission statement is reductionist: If this is my mission, then everything else is not. Even more so a credo. When you say, That’s the way we do things around here, that signals … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ricardo Semler | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Management, Mission, Organizational Behavior, Vision

Simple decision rules, structures and relationships are not likely to be effective approaches when the task at hand involves making decisions in the context of complex systems. Ironically, many of our most embedded management practices—such as designing for optimization and for efficiency—only exacerbate the risks of things going wrong at a systems level. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the most robust complex systems are often not designed for … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Gökçe Sargut, Rita Gunther McGrath | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior, Risk Management

In a Stanford GSB presentation, the retired general explains how to succeed in a rapidly changing environment.

Content: Article | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior