675 Posts found for Source: Harvard Business Review

If you want to be really good at something, it’s going to involve relentlessly pushing past your comfort zone, along with frustration, struggle, setbacks and failures. That’s true as long as you want to continue to improve, or even maintain a high level of excellence. The reward is that being really good at something you’ve earned through your own hard work can be immensely satisfying.

Here, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Tony Schwartz | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Personal Development

Following on the first article on defining customer experience, this second installment looks at the first essential step of improving the experience you deliver, which is mapping out your customer journey.

Content: Article | Author: Adam Richardson | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Customer Related

Management is responsibility for the performance of a group of people. It’s a simple idea, yet putting it into practice is difficult, because management is defined by responsibility but done by exerting influence. To influence others you must make a difference not only in what they do but also in the thoughts and feelings that drive their actions.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kent L. Lineback, Linda A. Hill | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Management

If productive influence doesn’t arise from being liked (“I’m your friend!”) or from fear (“I’m the boss!”), where does it come from? From people’s trust in you as a manager. That trust has two components: belief in your competence (you know what to do and how to do it) and belief in your character (your motives are good and you want your people to do … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kent L. Lineback, Linda A. Hill | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Trust

As a follower, we may not be able to change our leader’s style. But we can help solve the problem by adjusting our own work style. Based on my experience — meeting with two or three CEOs a week for the past five years — I have come to think of leaders as falling into one of three categories. Being able to categorize which type … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Li Xin Bai | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

Recently, Bob Sutton posted a list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe. Now he’s following up by delving into each one of them. This post is about the tenth belief: “Bad is stronger than good. It is more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.”

Content: Article | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Management

Although we might wish that the rules for attaining power were different, or different for women, they aren’t. There’s no question that women are as qualified as men to hold positions of power. I would argue that we need them to do so. The question is: when will they step up to the pursuit of power, vigorously and strategically?

Content: Article | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Women in Business

In reviews of leadership writings and research, Bob Sutton kept bumping into an old and popular distinction that has always bugged him: leading versus managing. Rather than rejecting the distinction between leadership and management, he says that the best leaders do something that might properly be called a mix of leadership and management. At a minimum, they lead in a way that constantly takes into … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management

Have you ever walked into an airport, seen that there is nobody in line at the check-in counter, but still made a bee-line for the self-service kiosk? Better yet, have you ever waited in line for an ATM machine even though there is nobody in line for the teller inside the bank?

If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, you’re not alone. Most customers … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Lara Ponomareff, Matt Dixon | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Customer Related

Recently, Bob Sutton posted a list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe. Now he’s following up by delving into each one of them. This post is about the third belief: “Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my people to make a little progress every … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

To do the right thing, a leader needs to understand what it takes to do things right, and to make sure they actually get done.

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management

Recently, Bob Sutton posted a list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe. Now he’s following up by delving into each one of them. This post is about the second belief: “My success — and that of my people — depends largely on my being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods.”

Content: Article | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management

Fight as if you are right, and listen as if you are wrong.

Content: Quotation | Author: Karl E. Weick | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Personal Development

Robert Sutton has come to conclude that all the technique and behavior coaching in the world won’t make a boss great if that boss doesn’t also have a certain mindset. His readings of peer-reviewed studies, plus his more idiosyncratic experience studying and consulting to managers in many settings, have led him to identify some key beliefs that are held by the best bosses — and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The heat of the moment is a powerful, dangerous thing. We all know this. If we’re happy, we may be overly generous. Maybe we leave a big tip, or buy a boat. If we’re irritated, we may snap. Maybe we rifle off that nasty e-mail to the boss, or punch someone. And for that fleeting second, we feel great. But the regret—and the consequences of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Dan Ariely | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The finding: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. It’s possible to predict which executives will win a business competition solely on the basis of the social signals they send.

The study: Sandy Pentland and colleague Daniel Olguín Olguín outfitted executives at a party with devices that recorded data on their social signals—tone of voice, gesticulation, proximity to others, and more. Five days … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Sandy Pentland | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Organizational Behavior

If your firm has downsized recently, you’re now managing a bunch of survivors—the lucky ones who didn’t get laid off. But good fortune doesn’t make for good performance—at least not in this situation. Chances are, you’re presiding over a heightened level of employee dysfunction, even if you don’t see it yet. Here are areas to address to limit the damage.

Content: Article | Authors: Anthony J. Nyberg, Charlie O. Trevor | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Human Resources

Should you join the millions of people every year who take the plunge and start their first ventures? Developed by Babson College professor Daniel Isenberg, this 20-question quiz on HBR.org takes just a few minutes to complete and might help you decide.

Content: Article | Author: Daniel Isenberg | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Our prehistoric ancestors spent much of their waking hours foraging for and consuming food, an instinct that obviously paid off. Today this instinct is no less powerful, but for billions of us it’s satisfied in the minutes it takes to swing by the store and pop a meal in the microwave. With our physical needs sated and time on our hands, increasingly we’re finding psychological … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Dan Ariely, Michael I. Norton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Marketing / Sales

A big reason every generation thinks that its solutions are new is because it thinks its challenges are brand new. People can’t quite bring themselves to believe that managers of the past faced remarkably similar problems, found frustration and satisfaction in similar sources, and came up with similar solutions.

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Management