Stephanie Quappe, David Samso Aparici, Jon Warshawsky

As for the genius of innovation, clearly the one percent spark of inspiration is nurtured by a positive culture. But the 99 percent perspiration ingredient comes from employees who love what they do, as well as where they do it, and who invest in that Holy Grail of productivity called “discretionary … [ Read more ]

Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein

Whether or not they have ever studied economics, many people seem at least implicitly committed to the idea of homo economicus, or economic man—the notion that each of us thinks and chooses unfailingly well, and thus fits within the textbook picture of human beings offered by economists.

If you look at economics textbooks, you will learn that homo economicus can think like Albert Einstein, store as … [ Read more ]

Culture and the Myth of the Black Box

Culture tends to be something of an enigma in the study of companies. Everyone agrees over cocktails that culture is important and hopes their company has a “good” culture versus a “bad” culture. For all of its implied significance, however, cultural change tends to rate alongside tarot card reading and astrology in terms of credibility. It lurks in the unfortunate category of “soft” issues that … [ Read more ]

Dan Ariely

We’re incredibly good at telling ourselves stories, and these help us feel as if we are honest even when we act dishonestly.

Atanu Chaudhuri, Craig Giffi, Kumar Kandaswami, Shalabh Kumar Singh

While companies assume there is necessarily a trade-off between efficiency and responsiveness in a constrained environment, research shows that only those organizations operating near the performance frontier (the optimal performance a company can achieve) should expect trade-offs. The companies that operate away from the frontier have the potential to improve both … [ Read more ]

Chronic Misalignment

Why leadership’s calls for better organizational alignment don’t work, and how a simple ‘value language’ can remove common barriers

The Overconfidence Trap

With respect to the imprecision in defining M&A best practices, we want to highlight the extent to which maxims about effective deal management can be misconstrued or twisted in ways that miss important points. Truisms espoused by academics and advisors, or shared among executives, can be less complete than they seem on the surface. When the margin for error is narrow, that can lead to … [ Read more ]