682 Posts found for Source: Harvard Business Review

You think you’ve found the right candidate to fill your open position and now it’s time to check references. What’s the best way to get the information you need? Should you ask each person the same questions? What do you read—if anything—into the tone of their voice? And how do you overcome the fact that so many companies only allow you to talk to HR … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Rebecca Knight | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Human Resources

The number of priorities admitted to by an organization is revealing. It is notable that if the risk appetite of a senior executive team is very low (or if they are not able or inclined to make the tough choices), they will tend to have a generous portfolio of priorities; they don’t want to take the risk of not being compliant, missing a market opportunity, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Executive teams replete with functional experts (CFOs, CHROs, etc.) are so common today one forgets they were not always the norm. By some accounts, the average team size for large firms is now 10, double what it was 30 years ago. Although larger teams theoretically bring benefits, such as a diversity of perspectives, practical downsides have grown with team size. So what can a CEO … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jacques Neatby | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management

We tend to hire people on the “hard” (IQ and experience) but fire them for their failure to master the “soft.” References are one of the best ways to assess the latter.

Content: Quotation | Author: Claudio Fernández-Aráoz | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Human Resources

We analyzed data describing the behavior of 3,492 participants in a development program designed to help managers become better coaches. As part of this program, their coaching skills were assessed by others in 360-degree assessments. We identified those who were perceived as being the most effective listeners (the top 5%). We then compared the best listeners to the average of all other people in the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jack Zenger | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

There is a lot of hype surrounding data and analytics. Firms are constantly exhorted to set strategies in place to collect and analyze big data, and warned about the potential negative consequences of not doing so. In this article we explore why. Based on our work with companies that are trying to find concrete and usable insights from petabytes of data, we have identified four … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Anja Lambrecht | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Management

Leaders want to get better in the here-and-now, not to be judged against a competency map or be sold an abstract theory about what leadership should look like. If you want to become a great leader, become a student of your context — understand your organization’s social system — and mind your routines. Leadership development is more about application than theory.

Content: Quotation | Author: Todd Warner | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Leadership, Personal Development, Training & Development

Individuals can make a difference in an organization, but a social system — particularly in large organizations — is always stronger. Fundamentally, organizations domesticate people—they condition people to work in certain ways, and they inadvertently perpetuate the status quo. People get tagged as “talented” when they fit in (or pretend to). This ends up exacerbating conformity and fear, and perpetuating the very problems that the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Todd Warner | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Even small decisions can have a big impact.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Scott Berinato | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

The functional model of organizations is an important reason why so many companies struggle with the gap between strategy and execution. It makes a company good at many things, but great at nothing. When functional boundaries prevail, there is no construct for managing capabilities. It isn’t clear who owns the capabilities, how to track spending on them, or how to connect them to the strategy … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Cesare R. Mainardi, Paul Leinwand | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Why have we lost touch with W. Edwards Deming. Through his red bead experiment he showed that we often get a false read on workers because we judge them too narrowly. Deming believed that we can improve worker performance only when we improve the entire system they work within. And he believed that managers wrongly apply incentive pay plans, forced rankings, and all sorts of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Joshua Macht | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, People

The system that’s changing the way we work.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Darrell K. Rigby | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Management

Chris Zook of Bain explains the predictable crises of growth and how to overcome them.

Content: Article | Author: Chris Zook | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Management

Writing and delivering performance reviews can be one of the most challenging tasks for any manager. Asking the following five questions can help.

Content: Article | Author: Benjamin Dattner | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

The strength of cross-cultural teams is their diversity of experience, perspective, and insight. But to capture those riches, colleagues must commit to open communication; they must dare to share. Unfortunately, this is rarely easy. In the 25 years we’ve spent researching global work groups, we’ve found that challenges typically arise in three areas.

Content: Article | Author: Ginka Toegel | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Culture, International, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

Most internal organizational barriers result from complexity and bureaucracy that has accumulated as leaders scaled up their businesses. We call this dynamic the “Growth Paradox:” Growth creates complexity and yet complexity is the number one killer of profitable growth. You cannot win on the outside, in the marketplace, if you are losing on the inside, with an organization stifled by its own growth. But what … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Chris Zook | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

What makes a great leader? Although the core ingredients of leadership are universal (good judgment, integrity, and people skills), the full recipe for successful leadership requires culture-specific condiments. The main reason for this is that cultures differ in their implicit theories of leadership, the lay beliefs about the qualities that individuals need to display to be considered leaders. Research has shown that leaders’ decision making, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: International, Leadership

There are several ratios you can look at that will help you evaluate whether your company can generate sales and control its expenses. I talked with Joe Knight, author of the HBR TOOLS: Return on Investment and co-founder and owner of Content: Article | Author: Amy Gallo | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Finance

Keep in mind the distinction between a threshold competence and a distinguishing one. A threshold skill means everyone must meet this criterion just to be considered for a job. […] After that, though, are distinguishing competencies, the skills or abilities that you find in star performers in an organization but not in those who are mediocre – those just good enough to keep their job. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Goleman | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Human Resources

The U.S. venture-capital industry is envied throughout the world as an engine of economic growth. Although the collective imagination romanticizes the industry, separating the popular myths from the current realities is crucial to understanding how this important piece of the U.S. economy operates. For entrepreneurs (and would-be entrepreneurs), such an analysis may prove especially beneficial.

Content: Article | Author: Bob Zider | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Venture Capital