3605 Posts Found

Individuals in roles that possess power but lack status have a tendency to engage in activities that demean others, according to new research from Stanford Graduate School of Business, USC, and the Kellogg School.

Content: Article | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Humans are conclusion-drawing animals, and we will never leave dots unconnected.

Content: Quotation | Author: Doug Riddle | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

A committee is a group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.

Content: Quotation | Author: Richard Harkness | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

Collaboration rarely occurs naturally, because leaders, often unintentionally, erect barriers that block people from collaborating. Many people, though not all, of course, have a natural tendency to collaborate, but they are not left to their own devices. And the culprit is modern management.

Managers and management thinkers celebrate decentralization, which works like this: You delegate responsibilities for products, business areas, and geographies to a group of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Morten T. Hansen | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

With fresh faces in organizations and new interns flooding offices, it’s time to really think about what the first steps are for bringing a new employee onto your team.

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

Before the Industrial Revolution, individuals owned the processes, tools, and procedures, and suddenly they were taken over by the corporation. That went on for 150 or 200 years, and as we shifted into the knowledge- and service-work economy, we put more and more back on the shoulders of the individual worker. The corporate infrastructure has not kept up with the changes in the design of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Bill Jensen | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Economics, Knowledge, Organizational Behavior

The need to empower natural leaders isn’t an HR pipe dream, it’s a competitive imperative. But before you can empower them, you have to find them.

Content: Article | Author: Gary Hamel | Source: Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) | Subjects: Human Resources, Leadership, Organizational Behavior

If managers were allowed to live their value of Family, maybe they wouldn’t work fifty hours a week, regularly stay away from home, or constantly take the job home with them. If managers were allowed to live their value of Integrity, maybe they wouldn’t represent a product to customers as performing the best and at the lowest cost when it doesn’t, it isn’t—or it doesn’t … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Stan Slap | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Organizational Behavior

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The finance chief is often well placed to guard against common decision-making biases.

Content: Article | Authors: Bill Huyett, Olivier Sibony, Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Apply open-book management to boost employee ownership.

Content: Article | Author: Morey Stettner | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Managing for effectiveness in what economists call tacit interactions—the searching, coordinating, and monitoring activities required to exchange goods, services, and information—is about fostering change, learning, collaboration, shared values, and innovation. Workers engage in a larger number of higher-quality tacit interactions when organizational barriers (such as hierarchies and silos) don’t get in the way, when people trust each other and have the confidence to organize themselves, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Bradford C. Johnson, James Manyika, Scott C. Beardsley | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Knowledge, Management, Organizational Behavior

We found that the performance of companies in relatively tacit-interactive sectors varied far more than that of other companies. The level of performance variability (defined as the standard deviation of performance divided by the mean level of performance) was 0.9 for companies in sectors with a low level of tacit interactions. Among companies in sectors with a middling number of tacit interactions it was 5.5, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Bradford C. Johnson, James Manyika, Scott C. Beardsley | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

In his new book, Flying without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success, HBS professor Thomas J. DeLong explores the world of “high-need-for-achievement professionals” or HNAPs—those for whom the constant, insatiable need to achieve can lead to anxiety and dysfunction. Plus: book excerpt.

Content: Article | Authors: Kim Girard, Thomas J. DeLong | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Career, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

But the fact is that content employees don’t drive a company to achieve big wins. It takes employee conviction, desire and ambition, and those traits don’t create a naturally “aligned” workforce. Show me an organization where employees are universally content, and I’ll show you a failure about to happen. The bottom line is this: If you want your company to innovate and to deliver sustainable … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Saj-nicole Joni | Source: ChangeThis | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The many interactions you have during your day, whether planned or unplanned, have the potential to become a high point or a low point in someone’s day. Each of these small moments is an opportunity to clarify the agenda and to influence the course of events. Each interaction is a chance to transform an ordinary moment into a TouchPoint.

The secret to mastering the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Douglas Conant, Mette Norgaard | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Communication, Leadership

You need a certain amount of discord in your meetings. If you just have discord, well, then you have a university, right? So what you want to do is you need a deadline. So discord plus deadline. Who enforces the deadline? Me. That’s my job. Or whoever is running the meeting. So if you have discord and deadline, then you’re likely to produce a consensus. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Eric Schmidt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Productivity / Work Tips

Good stories have three components: a strong beginning, a strong end, and a point of tension. Most people confuse stories with situations. They’ll tell about a situation: X happened, Y happened, Z happened. But a good story takes Y, the middle part of the story, and creates tension or conflict where the reader or the audience is drawn into the story, what’s going to happen … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jennifer Aaker | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Storytelling

There are at least four important stories that all companies should have in their portfolio. The first is the “who am I?” story—you know, how did we get started? The second is the “vision” story, the “where are we going in the future?” This may or may not be connected to the “who are we?” story. A third is the “apology and recovery” story. In … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jennifer Aaker | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Storytelling

There is a direct, and measurable, relationship between employee engagement and a company’s success. Want to increase your earnings per share by almost 30%? Get your employees involved.

Content: Article | Author: Eric Mosley | Source: Chief Executive | Subject: Organizational Behavior