1297 Posts found for Source: strategy+business

Could differences in how women and men articulate ambition early in their careers play a role in determining what opportunities come their way?

Content: Article | Author: Sally Helgesen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Women in Business

Even experts can be blind to important features of their subjects. I have done a lot of work on country competitiveness, but if anybody had asked me in 2000 to name the top 100 conditions that underpin a thriving economy, I wouldn’t have mentioned “a well-functioning land registry system.” Then I read [Hernando] de Soto’s compelling case that the ability to get clear title to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Roger L. Martin | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Economics, Expertise, Knowledge

In business, there is a tendency to seek absolutes. They can be metrics […] or prejudices, or any other accepted perspective. The leader’s main job should not be to provide a script, but to provoke the mindfulness of everyone in the company.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ellen Langer | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Management

A lot of rules don’t exist for the manifest reason. Speed limits, for example, don’t really regulate speed. The authorities use them to pull over who they want to pull over, often for a variety of reasons. Most company rules are like that. The companies know most people are breaking the rule. Why do they keep it in the first place? So it’s there when … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ellen Langer | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Management

leaders have to recognize that everything people do makes sense from their perspective, and that everyone can provide value in the right context. Someone who seems rigid is actually someone you can count on, somebody stable. If she seems impulsive, she’s spontaneous. If he seems gullible, he also promotes trust and candor.

If you’re a leader, once you recognize this, not only do you end up … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ellen Langer | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

It’s not hard to see why stories are so powerful. Advocacy messages, whether for a cause or a brand, automatically invite scrutiny. They prompt us to put our guard up. Stories are different. Not only do stories encourage people to identify with the characters they portray, but by inducing the willing suspension of disbelief they leave the audience predisposed to accept their premise, at least … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Storytelling

When organizations reward people—whether through reputation, opportunities, or promotion—for saving money even if they waste time, employees orient their behavior accordingly.

But organizations can take actions that will start to change this mind-set. For example, company leaders could start counting time as carefully as they count money. Projects and organizational initiatives can have time budgets just as they do financial budgets, enabling organizations to track whether … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jennifer J. Deal | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Time Management

Jim Collins and Jerry Porras wrote in Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies that many great chief executives are “time tellers.” They create great products and services, but their value lasts only as long as they are personally present. Senior executives should be more like “clock builders”: focused on making a great company—a company where people think as entrepreneurially as the leaders do, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Zhang Ruimin | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Leadership, Management

You and your rivals have access to virtually all the same resources. Only by constantly thinking of new ways to reorganize these factors can you differentiate yourself. It’s like poker. Everyone has the same number of cards. It’s how you play your hand that matters.

Content: Quotation | Author: Zhang Ruimin | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Competition

We all come from somewhere. Where we come from affects the way we view things, and the way we understand one another. In every international situation, some things are cultural, and some things are personal. If it’s cultural, then you need to help people in the room understand that, for example, when someone speaks in a way that is startlingly direct, that’s because where he … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Erin Meyer | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Culture, International, Organizational Behavior

The advantage to having people from all over the world on a team is that you may find that you have more innovation and creativity, and that you’re closer to your local markets. The disadvantage is that multinational teamwork is usually a lot less efficient than monocultural teamwork. When we’re all from the same culture, we don’t have to talk about how we work together. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Erin Meyer | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Culture, International, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

The belief in the essential equity, not to mention the efficacy, of pay for performance remains a bedrock of many modern firms. And it’s often a prime reason that companies today are so likely to describe themselves as meritocracies in which anyone with smarts, talent, commitment, and guts can thrive.

Yet the work I’ve done in recent decades with organizations’ diversity efforts suggests that this meritocratic … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Sally Helgesen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

By throwing time at problems, managers were burning out their employees. By asking people to work such long hours, companies were also creating a sort of rigidity. But research has shown that creativity and innovation require time for reflection. Moreover, we know that if you constrain time, people work more intelligently. And from our own experience, we knew that if people work for 10 hours, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Lotte Bailyn | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Productivity / Work Tips

Our society is still compartmentalizing “work” and “life,” looking for a way to even the scales, when we should be rethinking the perspective that values time as the ultimate capital. In systems based on such a mind-set, success comes to those who seem to be working the hardest, because they are always accessible. People cling to an outmoded view that work should be done by … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Laura W. Geller, Lotte Bailyn | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Productivity / Work Tips, Work

I think the trouble with much of the advice out there right now is that it accepts the organizational and societal status quo. For example, there are companies that support telecommuting, but still require people to be accessible between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. That defeats the purpose. The purpose of giving people autonomy is allowing them to work when they are most productive. Time … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Lotte Bailyn | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Work

Bottom Line: Despite privacy concerns, businesses can benefit from including personalized information about potential customers in their email advertising appeals.

Content: Article | Author: Matt Palmquist | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Advertising, Marketing / Sales

Jessica Kennedy has researched the origin of unethical behavior, and why it takes hold. She has found that the whole story is more complex. It’s not always about power corrupting. Rather, power causes people to identify so strongly with their group that they lose sight of whether that group’s actions cross an ethical line. This identification can lead them to support misconduct, rather than stopping … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jessica Kennedy, Laura W. Geller | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Ethics, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior, Power / Authority

Also known as the “outcome effect,” outcome bias is a cognitive process that causes individuals to evaluate a decision based on the final result, whether that outcome was achieved by chance or through a sound process. When a good outcome results, the entire effort is judged positively. Conversely, a sound decision process may be condemned if the end product is negative for reasons unrelated to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Eric McNulty | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Luck, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

If some goals tell you little or nothing about what strategies to pursue, other goals effectively tell you too much. This happens when goals are expressed in terms of metrics, for example, to achieve a certain size, market share, growth rate, margin, or rate of return. Where do such goals come from? In the end, they are arbitrary, no matter how much they might be … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ken Favaro | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Strategy

To be effective, goals and metrics must be embedded either in a deep understanding of cause and effect or in a thoroughgoing learning process that leads to that understanding.

Content: Quotation | Author: David K. Hurst | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Goals, Measurement