675 Posts found for Source: Harvard Business Review

While it’s true that what gets measured gets managed, measurement should not be confused with management.

Content: Quotation | Author: Beth Jones | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Management

A wealth of research shows that female leaders, much more than their male counterparts, face the need to be warm and nice (what society traditionally expects from women), as well as competent or tough (what society traditionally expects from men and leaders). The problem is that these qualities are often seen as opposites. This creates a “catch-22” and “double bind” for women leaders.

To alleviate this … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Alyson Meister, Ronit Kark, Wei Zheng | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Women in Business

Companies should do two things to harness the power of analytics in their marketing functions. First, rather than create data and then decide what to do with it, firms should decide what to do first, and then which data they need to do it. This means better integrating marketing and IT, and developing systems around the information needs of the senior management team instead of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Carl F. Mela, Christine Moorman | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Marketing / Sales

A great deal of research has been devoted to identifying the key determinants of engagement. Why is it that some people are more engaged — excited, moved, energized by their jobs — than others? Traditionally, this research has focused on the contextual or external drivers of engagement, such as the characteristics of the job, the culture of the organization, or the quality of its leaders. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

There are three elements to a culture: behaviors, systems, and practices, all guided by an overarching set of values. A great culture is what you get when all three of these are aligned, and line up with the organization’s espoused values. When gaps start to appear, that’s when you start to see problems — and see great employees leave.

Content: Quotation | Author: Melissa Daimler | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

One of the biggest challenges facing management scientists has been the struggle to produce knowledge that is both academically rigorous and applicable to practicing managers. There are two problems that contribute to this challenge.

The first is what we called the “Lost in Translation” problem, which refers to the fact that almost no managers turn to academic journals for advice on how to improve their skills … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Debra L. Shapiro | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: MBA Related

A culture is simply the collection of beliefs on which people build their behavior. Learning organizations – Peter Senge’s term — classically focus on intellectually oriented issues such as knowledge and expertise. That’s plainly critical, but a true growth culture also focuses on deeper issues connected to how people feel, and how they behave as a result. In a growth culture, people build their … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Tony Schwartz | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

The overarching goal of most business schools is to train future leaders to lead. But how well schools meet this goal, and to what extent their teaching influences their students’ leadership, is an open question. Does business school education really shape students’ minds and behaviors many years later, when they’ve reached decision-making positions at major corporations and financial institutions?

We explore this question by looking at … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jiwook Jung | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: MBA Related

There is a fault line where tensions often erupt in mergers. This fault line is what we call tightness versus looseness. When tight and loose cultures merge, there is a good chance that they will clash.

Tight company cultures value consistency and routine. They have little tolerance for rebellious behavior, and use strict rules and processes to uphold cultural traditions. Loose cultures are much more fluid. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Michele Gelfand | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Mergers & Acquisitions

To make a good decision, you need to have a sense of two things: how different choices change the likelihood of different outcomes and how desirable each of those outcomes is.

Content: Quotation | Author: Walter Frick | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Management

For many leaders, delegating feels like something they know they should do, but don’t do. When the senior leaders of an organization can’t or won’t delegate, the culture suffers. Before leaders can successfully and effectively delegate, they need to understand their own resistance. Once a leader has begun to shift his or her mindset, it’s time to start shifting behaviors. In my own work … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Deborah Grayson Riegel | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Management

CARVER is a system for assessing and ranking threats and opportunities. Developed during World War II, CARVER (then one letter shorter and known as CARVE) can be both offensive and defensive, meaning it can be used for identifying your competitors’ weaknesses and for internal auditing. In addition, many security experts consider it the definitive assessment tool for protecting critical assets.

Since it draws on both qualitative … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Luke Bencie | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Risk Management

In overcoming resistance to change and building support for change, leaders need to communicate an appealing vision of change in combination with a vision of continuity. Unless they are able to ensure people that what defines the organization’s identity — “what makes us who we are” — will be preserved despite the changes, leaders may have to brace themselves for a wave of resistance.

Content: Article | Author: Merlijn Venus | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Change Management

Executives should be thinking about four different types of competition to maintain relevance in a changing environment. These four competition types can be positioned along two dimensions, which reflect two distinct questions: (1) “Are there customers for which to compete?” and (2) “Are we being outcompeted?”

These questions will help you identify the type of competition that currently exposes you to the greatest existential threats. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Carsten Lund Pedersen | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Strategy

We all complain about meetings. We have too many. They’re a waste of time. Nothing gets done. These complaints often have merit, but they are so broad that they’re difficult to argue with and harder to address.

There are specific complaints that can be tackled, however. When I ask people in the workshops I lead what they most want help with, five issues consistently come up. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Paul Axtell | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Productivity / Work Tips, Teamwork

When the funnel metaphor reigned, communication was one-way, and every interaction with consumers had a variable media cost that typically outweighed creative’s fixed costs. Management focused on “working media spend”—the portion of a marketing budget devoted to what are today known as paid media.

This no longer makes sense. Now marketers must also consider owned media (that is, the channels a brand controls, such as websites) … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: David C. Edelman | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Marketing / Sales

When we talk about bias, we often tie it to acts of discrimination or prejudice. But according to cognitive science, everybody, by virtue of having a brain that’s constantly seeking efficiency, is biased in some way — and not all biases make us actively malicious.

The key is how we manage our biases.

While biases can affect any of an organization’s talent decisions, they can be especially … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Beth Jones | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

We see a paradox in two important analytics trends. The percentage of marketing budgets companies plan to allocate to analytics over the next three years will increase from 5.8% to 17.3%—a whopping 198% increase. These increases are expected despite the fact that top marketers report that the effect of analytics on company-wide performance remains modest, with an average performance score of 4.1 on a seven-point … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Carl F. Mela | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Marketing / Sales

These findings echo one of the main concerns associated with monetary rewards that sometimes fail to accomplish their goals. Academics refer to this phenomenon as the crowding-out effect of explicit incentives on intrinsic motivation. In other words, associating an economic value with a certain activity changes the nature of the exchange. If health care workers sanitize their hands because it is in the best interest … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Susanna Gallani | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Life on a global team isn’t necessarily equitable. Employees far away from headquarters often have less access to the team leader. As a result, they may have a harder time getting their concerns noticed and attended to. Additionally, more peripheral members of global teams are often forced to speak in a language that’s not their own and communicate in a style that’s not necessarily second … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Andy Molinsky | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, International, Teamwork