1160 Posts found for Source: McKinsey Quarterly

Under nearly any circumstance, reorganizations consume a great deal of time and energy, including emotional energy. When proper communication plans are in place, though, leaders can at least reduce unnecessary anxiety and unproductive wheel-spinning. Planning should start long before employees get word of the changes, include constituents well outside the boundaries of the company, and extend far beyond the announcement of the concept design to … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Rose Beauchamp, Stephen Heidari-Robinson, Suzanne Heywood | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

Everybody values the drive for results, the quality of decision making, dealing with ambiguity, but there are some valuable skills that you don’t see everywhere. One is learning on the fly. People who can learn fast will take charge of a situation and can be mobile between businesses and functions. Another one is managing innovation. To manage innovation, you have to have the ability to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jose Almeida, Ron Williams | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly.

Content: Quotation | Author: Reed Hastings | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Management

Companies that create exceptional customer experiences can set themselves apart from their competitors.

Content: Article | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Customer Related

No matter how strong their ingoing balance sheets and market share—and sometimes because of those very factors—incumbents can’t seem to hold back the digital disruption tide. The champions of disruption are far more often the attackers than the established incumbent. The good news for incumbents is that many industries are still in the early days of digital disruption. Print media, travel, and lodging provide valuable … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Chris Bradley, Clayton O’Toole | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Strategy

Ignore Bitcoin’s challenges. In this interview, Don Tapscott explains why blockchains, the technology underpinning the cryptocurrency, have the potential to revolutionize the world economy.

Content: Article | Author: Don Tapscott | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Trends / Analysis

A supply-and-demand guide to digital disruption.

Content: Article | Authors: Angus Dawson, Jay Scanlan, Martin Hirt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Management, Strategy, Trends / Analysis

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What happens after companies jettison traditional year-end evaluations?

Content: Article | Authors: Asmus Komm, Boris Ewenstein, Bryan Hancock | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

To make meaningful progress on gender diversity, companies must move beyond the averages and focus on the biggest pain points.

Content: Article | Authors: Alexis Krivkovich, Eric Kutcher, Lareina Yee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Women in Business

Since only a few employees are standouts, it makes little sense to risk demotivating the broad majority by linking pay and performance. More and more technology companies, for instance, have done away with performance-related bonuses. Instead, they offer a competitive base salary and peg bonuses (sometimes paid in shares or share options) to the company’s overall performance. Employees are free to focus on doing great … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Asmus Komm, Boris Ewenstein, Bryan Hancock | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Compensation, Human Resources

Identifying clear overperformers and underperformers is important, but conducting annual ratings rituals based on the bell curve will not develop the workforce overall. Instead, by getting rid of bureaucratic annual-review processes—and the behavior related to them—companies can focus on getting much higher levels of performance out of many more of their employees.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Asmus Komm, Boris Ewenstein, Bryan Hancock | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Human Resources

Managers attempt to rate their employees as best they can. The ratings are then calibrated against one another and, if necessary, adjusted by distribution guidelines that are typically bell curves (Gaussian distribution curves). These guidelines assume that the vast majority of employees cluster around the mean and meet expectations, while smaller numbers over- and underperform. […] This logic appeals intuitively (“aren’t the majority of people … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Asmus Komm, Boris Ewenstein, Bryan Hancock | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Human Resources

Four key actions influence employee mind-sets and behavior. Here’s why they matter.

Content: Article | Authors: Bill Schaninger, Tessa Basford | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

The idea behind agile governance is to establish both stable and dynamic elements in making decisions, which typically come in three types. We call big decisions where the stakes are high Type I; frequent decisions that require cross-unit dialogue and collaboration, Type II; and decisions that should be parsed into smaller ones and delegated as far down as possible, often to people with clear accountability, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Kirsten Weerda, Wouter Aghina | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior

People are often cognitively lazy, not just cognitively biased. Our mental shortcuts and unconscious patterns of thought make everyone susceptible to the tactics of interpersonal influence: tactics that depend on the norm of reciprocity, accepting and obeying authority (or its symbols), the power of liking, the value created by scarcity, and the tendency to escalate levels of commitment, even in the face of negative outcomes. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Persuasion

When executives tell me that flattery doesn’t work and that people can see through strategic efforts to garner their support, I cite extensive evidence showing that we are generally quite poor at discerning deception. When the deception is coming from a master deceiver and consummate politician like [Lyndon] Johnson, the odds of successful resistance are quite low.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Persuasion

Thinking on leadership has become a sort of morality tale. There are writers who advocate authenticity, attention to employees’ well-being, telling the truth, building trust, being agreeable, and so forth. A smaller number of empirical researchers, contrarily, report evidence on the positive effects of traits and behavior such as narcissism, self-promotion, rule breaking, lying, and shrewd maneuvering on salaries, getting jobs, accelerating career advancement, and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Leadership

Companies can become more agile by designing their organizations both to drive speed and create stability.

Content: Article | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Kirsten Weerda, Wouter Aghina | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Management

Management books and commentaries often oversimplify, seldom providing useful guidance about the skills and behavior needed to get things done.

Content: Article | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Leadership