167 Posts found for Source: Across the Board (ATB)

If you look at the North American Industry Classification System’s thousand categories of business, there are only seven, like running a nuclear power plant, where large economies of scale benefit a company. In the end, competitiveness does not turn on abstract notions of scale. You could probably argue that many companies have overshot the appropriate scale for being competitive. If they downscale, they could increase … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Management

Are companies getting their money’s worth by psychological testing of workers? More to the point, is there any real evidence that years of testing have produced more honesty among employees, identified more leaders, or eliminated more crazies – or is testing merely another management hallucination brought on by breathing copier toner fumes?

Some quick answers: While testing is better than not testing, there are many more … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: James Krohe Jr. | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

Harvard professor Michael Porter has what he believes to be a cure for what ails our system. It’s called competition.

Content: Thought Leader | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Management | Industry: Healthcare

Surveys show that workers aren’t resentful of CEOs’ exorbitant pay-in fact, Americans in general are surprisingly blasé about inequality-but that’s partly because they aspire to that pinnacle. People hunger to be managers because they know that’s the only path to the good life in corporate America . . . which is one reason why we have so many inept managers. This is yet another argument … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Competence, Human Resources

It seems that if the task is tough, Americans take charge. If the talk is tough, we take cover.

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: International, Organizational Behavior

You’ve just started a new job. Your company is expecting big things from you. Here’s how to live up to – and exceed – their expectations.

Content: Article | Author: Katie Beavan | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Career, Management

Everyone says it’s very important. Everyone wants to do it well, because their reputation depends on it. And most executives think they’re a lot better at it than they are. The subject isn’t sex, or even golf. It’s customer service. Every company that sells something – by definition, every company – says that service matters, but these days the maxim that retailers live by is … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: James Krohe Jr. | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Customer Related

Tommy Lasorda, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, and the list goes on. These days, there’s no shortage of self-help gurus eager to motivate your employees. Unfortunately, the companies just as anxious to hire them are victims of an extraordinary sham. The Self-Help and Actualization Movement, as author Steve Salerno explains in SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless (Crown), consists of countless authors, motivational speakers, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Vadim Liberman | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

We know very well today how to measure customer satisfaction. What most companies do not have is a way to make the link between customer satisfaction and the bottom line.

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Customer Related

Many companies fundamentally misconceive how their customers perceive product quality. For instance, a typical company breaks down the different processes that lead to the sale – product design, manufacturing, and the rest – into discrete operations for purposes of budget and management. But the consumer doesn’t, and he sees anything that detracts from his experience of using a product as a defect. Service is an … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Customer Related

There are some companies that say, Let’s do whatever it takes to meet the requirements of the law. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you have to recognize that the law, by definition, typically is made up of rules that have been made to address previous situations. It’s tough for it to anticipate future violations that might occur. Companies that invest in building an ethical … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Ethics, Legal

Are you smarter than your employees? Since leaders are generally expected to have greater knowledge than their staff, let’s assume that you are. Extrapolating from that, does being smarter than your employees individually mean you are also smarter than them collectively? If your answer is “yes,” you are either an unbridled egomaniac or you simply do not understand the power of collective intelligence.

Content: Article | Author: Francisco Dao | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Imitation comes naturally to human beings. Despite our vaunted individualism, we are the most imitative animals on Earth. The trick is merely to avoid imitating stupidly. And it seems reasonable to believe that we do so by imitating success. But in a 2001 paper pointedly titled “In Search of Excellence: Fads, Success Stories, and Adaptive Emulation,” two Cornell University researchers remind us that our natural … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Richard Conniff | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Management

What I have a problem with are the amounts of money that corporate America is spending on motivational training. I’ve attended presentations by…leading figures in “training and motivation” who present this very expensive, rah-rah cheerleading nonsense. These people are getting paid $1,000 to $5,000 a minute, but they aren’t accomplishing anything more than a sales manager can accomplish simply by taking his staff out to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Motivation, Training & Development

CEOs are making more than ever, while their employees’ real wages are falling. Why is no one leaping to the barricades?

Content: Article | Author: James Krohe Jr. | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Corporate Governance

Twenty years ago, a fortysomething man didn’t feel the immense pressure to be a great dad that he feels today. If you were a C-suite executive and had kids at home, taking care of them was the job of your wife, community, school, church, and the Little League coach. And people were OK with that. Societal expectations weren’t that you were going to spend thirty … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Women in Business

How management thinkers from India are changing the face of American business.

Content: Article | Authors: Des Dearlove, Stuart Crainer | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: International

Many managers believe that a good corporate culture can encourage employees to share their opinions and solve the diversity requirement, but with few exceptions corporate cultures work against the sharing of dissimilar ideas. In the competing schools of thought on culture — team versus competitive — both models embody elements that undermine collective intelligence. The team concept, based on fostering familiarity and friendly cooperation between … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

Once an organization decentralizes, localized decision-making restores diversity of opinion and offers the opportunity to tap into a wide body of knowledge. But there’s a problem: How do you aggregate that knowledge? Similar to the issues created by a competitive internal culture, the transfer of power away from the center toward the frontline employees often results in local knowledge not being shared throughout the organization. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The only thing harder than starting something new in a bureaucracy is stopping something old. So the trick is not to ask to start something new — just start it. If you wait and ask for forgiveness for having done something you did not get permission for, you’re much more likely to get away with it than if you go and say, “Can I do … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Bureaucracy, Organizational Behavior