Go To People: What Every Organization Should Have
Every organization has a few people — very few people — who are its “Go-To” people…those to whom you can turn when you want a difficult situation sorted out, who will get the job done on time and on budget, and who won’t come up with a dozen reasons why it can’t be done but will discover how to do it.
Who are these “Go-To” people? … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Jeffrey Gandz | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior
Peter Drucker
Good manners are the lubricating oil of organizations.
Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Organizational Behavior
Making Up Our Minds
When are people individuals and when are they part of a group?
Content: Article | Source: Kellogg Insight | Subject: Organizational Behavior
The 3 Best Leadership ‘Hacks’
If you’re over a certain age, the term “hacking” probably has negative connotations. You may think of stealing credit card information, Anonymous, WikiLeaks, and denial-of-service attacks. I suggest letting that go and replacing it with this definition: Hacking is messing around with a highly complex system until you find a simple way to make it do things it can’t do now. That definition, applied to … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Dave Logan | Source: CBS News | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior
James E. Copeland, Jr.
[You have to] know who the people are who are most critical to the success of the organization. I would guess that most companies don’t know that. Most organizations… do not know the people up and down the organization who are absolutely critical.
Content: Quotation | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior
Responding to Naysayers and Skeptics
Like so many of us, you have probably been there before, in a meeting room, standing in front of your colleagues, PowerPointing your way to getting buy-in on a business plan. You’re just about to start the wrap-up when the saboteur strikes: “But we tried that two years ago and it didn’t get us anywhere. And you think it’s going to work now, in this … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Organizational Behavior
Tony Robbins Asks Why We Do What We Do
Tony Robbins discusses the “invisible forces” that motivate everyone’s actions — and high-fives Al Gore in the front row.
Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Tony Robbins | Source: TED Conferences LLC | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development
Sylvia Nasar
That to me answers the question of why people embrace bad ideas or ideas that don’t work. It’s because we’re human beings, and we find narratives that are very powerful and appeal to our emotions.
Content: Quotation | Author: Sylvia Nasar | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Thought
Philip Zimbardo Prescribes a Healthy Take on Time
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo says happiness and success are rooted in a trait most of us disregard: the way we orient toward the past, present and future. He suggests we calibrate our outlook on time as a first step to improving our lives.
Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Philip Zimbardo | Source: TED Conferences LLC | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development
Jerry Z. Muller
[Georg] Simmel recognized that the freedom of the liberal capitalist state is not a good in and of itself. Freedom without a sense of direction and purpose breeds boredom and restlessness.
Content: Quotation | Source: The Wilson Quarterly | Subjects: Capitalism, Organizational Behavior
Jerry Z. Muller
It’s a commonplace that there are some things money can’t buy. [Georg] Simmel had a more striking insight: Having money can actually be more satisfying than having the things money can buy. That’s because…money has a “surplus value.” A person with money enjoys the added satisfaction of having a choice of things to buy: “The value of a given amount of money is equal to … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: The Wilson Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, Money, Personality / Behavior
Daniel Kahneman: Beware the ‘inside view’
In an excerpt from his new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, the Nobel laureate recalls how an inwardly focused forecasting approach once led him astray, and why an external perspective can help executives do better.
Content: Article | Author: Daniel Kahneman | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior
Identity Crisis: What Is the Corporate Center’s Role in a Globalized Business?
In a two-speed world—one speed for slow-growing, mature markets and another for rapidly developing economies—the corporate center must step up to a new role. How can companies find the right balance between autonomy and entrepreneurial drive at the local level and global platforms that drive cost and scale advantages?
Content: Article | Authors: David Michael, Fabrice Roghé, Sandra Deutschländer, Sebastian Kempf | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: International, Management, Organizational Behavior
John Jainschigg
People are terrible at abstracting from the general to the specific, but great at abstracting from the specific to the general.
Content: Quotation | Author: John Jainschigg | Subjects: Personality / Behavior, Thought
The Inner Workings of Corporate Headquarters
Analyzing the e-mails of some 30,000 workers, Professor Toby E. Stuart and colleague Adam M. Kleinbaum dissected the communication networks of HQ staffers at a large, multidivisional company to get a better understanding of what a corporate headquarters does, and why it does it.
Content: Article | Author: Michael Blanding | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior
Bill Jensen
If you look closely at how people make decisions, a clear pattern emerges. No matter what the new strategy, initiative, or change program is, people have the same questions: How is this change relevant to what I do? What, specifically, should I do? How will I be measured, and what consequences will I face? What tools and support are available? What’s in it for me?
The … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Bill Jensen | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Change Management, Decision Making, Leadership, Organizational Behavior
Malcolm Gladwell
What is the question we always ask about the successful? We want to know what they’re like – what kind of personalities they have, or how intelligent they are, or what kind of lifestyles they have, or what special talents they might have been born with. And we assume that it is those personal qualities that explain how that individual reached the top … I … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Malcolm Gladwell | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Achievement, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Success / Failure
Phoebe Tsai and Deborah Compeau
Research has shown that poor communication regarding changes in organizations actually results from good intentions (DiFonzo and Bordia, 1998). That is, managers are often silent about changes only because they do not want to mislead employees by giving out (incomplete) information that may be subject to change. In other words, because we know change is stressful, we tend to avoid saying anything that might increase … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Authors: Deborah Compeau, Phoebe Tsai | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Change Management, Communication, Organizational Behavior
Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions?
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we’re not as rational as we think when we make decisions.
It’s become increasingly obvious that the dismal science of economics is not as firmly grounded in actual behavior as was once supposed. In “Predictably Irrational,” Dan Ariely tells us why. … [ Read more ]
Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Dan Ariely | Source: TED Conferences LLC | Subject: Organizational Behavior
