675 Posts found for Source: Harvard Business Review

When you join an organization, you have a short window of time to adapt to its culture. It’s the old 90-day rule. And we know too many talented individuals who have stumbled in their new company because they failed to read the cultural tea leaves. This happens because most organizations don’t explain the cultural rules to newcomers, and new hires are so focused on the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Allan H. Church | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Career, Culture, Organizational Behavior

The flaw in so many policy statements, especially those of business, is that they contain no action commitment—to carry them out is no one’s specific work and responsibility. Small wonder then that the people in the organization tend to view such statements cynically, if not as declarations of what top management is really not going to do.

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

It is a waste of time to worry about what will be acceptable and what the decision maker should or should not say so as not to evoke resistance. (The things one worries about seldom happen, while objections and difficulties no one thought about may suddenly turn out to be almost insurmountable obstacles.) In other words, the decision maker gains nothing by starting out with … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Decision Making

It’s a common complaint. Companies keep trying to show the world that they are socially conscious and keep losing the battle. A major reason companies don’t get credit for their good works is they employ a one-size-fits-all strategy to communicating their efforts, while what’s needed are focused messages that matter to each of their four different audiences:

1. Corporate watchdogs such as social media activists, NGOs,

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Mark R. Kramer | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Public Relations, Social Responsibility (ESG)

What we see when we administer 360-degree feedback surveys on behalf of leaders is that the executives with really low scores in one or more areas are often completely unaware of their fatal flaws. They are shocked to find themselves scoring so low — even though approximately 30% of all the leaders we’ve studied have at least one fatal flaw.

Content: Article | Author: Jack Zenger | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Career, Personal Development

A well-designed operating model involves far more than the lines and boxes or spans and layers in the organization chart. It includes accountabilities. Who has P&L authority? Who on that org chart has the authority to make which decisions? As companies move to more agile operating models, they must learn to balance accountability with autonomy. A new operating model also requires a governance structure and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Eric Garton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Practically every organization today has a set of core values that ideally function as the “operating instructions” of the company. The goal of articulating the essential and enduring principles of your organization is to inform, inspire, and instruct the day-to-day behaviors of everyone who works at your company. But this rarely happens, because most core values statements don’t get at what’s unique about the firm. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Denise Lee Yohn | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Management

Saying no is one of the greatest gifts an executive can give their organization. Too many leaders overestimate the capacity of their organizations under the ruse of “stretch goals” or “challenge assignments” to justify their denial of the organization’s true limitations.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ron Carucci | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Good customer service seems like common sense for businesses. But how valuable is it really?

Until now, this has not been rigorously quantified across different companies. Businesses are understandably reluctant to share their CRM and sales data, and most research in this field has been based on surveys. But as more Americans seek customer service online, social media offers a better platform for analyzing interactions between … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Wayne Huang | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Customer Related

Closing the gap between strategy and execution may not be about better execution after all, but rather about better learning — about more dialogue between strategy and operations, a greater flow of information from customers to executives, and more experiments. In today’s fast-paced world, strategy as learning must go hand in hand with execution as learning — bypassing the idea that either a strategy or … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Amy Edmondson | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Effective executives know when a decision has to be based on principle and when it should be made pragmatically, on the merits of the case. They know the trickiest decision is that between the right and the wrong compromise, and they have learned to tell one from the other. They know that the most time-consuming step in the process is not making the decision but … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Decision Making

Our work suggests that culture can be managed. The first and most important step leaders can take to maximize its value and minimize its risks is to become fully aware of how it works. By integrating findings from more than 100 of the most commonly used social and behavioral models, we have identified eight styles that distinguish a culture and can be measured.

Content: Article | Authors: Boris Groysberg, J. Yo-Jud Cheng, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

For more than a decade, leading human resource strategists have hit on a recurring theme: You want your star players working in the roles that matter most to the business. For example, in 2009 professors Brian Becker, Mark Huselid, and Richard Beatty estimated that in most companies less than 15% of jobs are what they call strategic positions and said management should focus “disproportionate investments” … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Lynn Cowart | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Human Resources

Self-awareness seems to have become the latest management buzzword — and for good reason. Research suggests that when we see ourselves clearly, we are more confident and more creative. We make sounder decisions, build stronger relationships, and communicate more effectively. We’re less likely to lie, cheat, and steal. We are better workers who get more promotions. And we’re more-effective leaders with more-satisfied employees and more-profitable … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Tasha Eurich | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Companies often fail to address the tough questions about strategy and execution: Are we really clear, as a leadership team, about how we choose to create value in the marketplace? Can we articulate the few things the organization needs to do better than anyone else in order to deliver on that value proposition? Are we investing in those areas, and do they fit with most … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Paul Leinwand | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

They vary in deference and decision making.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Erin Meyer | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: International, Leadership

To safeguard your company at the level of purpose, you must make strategy the servant rather than the master. Strategies are time-bound and target specific results. Your purpose, in contrast, is what makes you durably relevant to the world. Strategy is but one of several important means to operationalize your purpose. Intrinsic human connection to your purpose is even more important.

Content: Quotation | Author: Laurent Chevreux | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

Your organization’s growth opportunities fall into four different categories, and in order to develop your business in a commercially sustainable manner, you need four specific types of project manager to pursue them. The employee types and the growth opportunities that they are best at pursuing can be positioned along two dimensions: (1) Is the growth opportunity in line with our existing strategy? (2) Can a … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Carsten Lund Pedersen, Thomas Ritter | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Project Management

For every company wrestling with evolutions in its strategy, success depends as much on matching the operating model to those evolutions as it does on the soundness of the strategy itself. Whether a company has reinvented itself, sought growth through expansion, or turned to partnerships or M&A, gaps between what it says it does for customers and what it delivers are usually the result of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Eric Garton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

Congratulations! You got the job. Now for the hard part: deciding whether to accept it or not. How should you assess the salary as well as the other perks? Which publicly available information should you rely on? How should you try to get a better deal? And what’s the best way to decline an offer if it’s not the right job for you?

Content: Career Information | Author: Rebecca Knight | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Benefits / Comp., Evaluating Job Offers