134 Posts found for Source: The Conference Board Review

The science—yes, science—of innovation.

Content: Article | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Innovation

Despite the variety of personalities and attitudes out there, you can still roughly categorize people into two groups: the problem-bringers and problem-solvers. When you ask a problem-bringer about a problem, you’ll hear about the problem and nothing more. We’ve all worked with these folks, and you know that they can spend all day telling you about a problem without ever coming close to offering a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Mark Murphy | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

An economy doesn’t operate by market forces alone—it’s dependent on actions of business and consumers and government. There is a clear role for government in creating an environment in which business gets new opportunities. Yes, government should get out of spaces where it doesn’t have to be and let business do its thing. But government needs to be where there are so-called external effects, which … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Bart van Ark | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Economics, Government, Politics

because Disruptions necessarily take root in unattractive markets, the quest for innovation can begin by looking not where the money is (the essence of good management) but, rather, where the money isn’t (the essence of good Disruption). Consequently, rather than encourage a wide range of solutions to a host of problems—typically the result of an emphasis on variation—innovation processes can begin by focusing people’s creative … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Innovation

Einstein said that if he had an hour to save the world, he’d spend fifty-nine minutes defining the problem and one minute finding the solution. The reality is that people spend sixty minutes running around finding solutions to problems that don’t matter or that were never defined properly.

Content: Quotation | Author: Stephen Shapiro | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Innovation, Problems / Solutions

When you hire people to work for you, it should be expected that they have a basic level of competence. When you simply recognize people for doing what they are hired to do, it reinforces a culture where the status quo is good enough. If the company is so risk-averse that people aren’t willing to try anything new, while all you do is reward people … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Stephen Shapiro | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Accountability, Human Resources, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

If you’re going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you, but the bureaucracy won’t.

Content: Quotation | Author: Admiral Hyman Rickover | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Bureaucracy

A good way to start a conversation about whether a corporate culture is inclusive is to ask, “What would your daughter think about working here?” or, “Do you think your daughter—or niece or granddaughter—would find it easy to make as successful a career here as you have?”

Content: Quotation | Author: Alison Maitland | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Diversity, Women in Business

The gulf between the question you want to ask and the question you can answer is often unbridgeable.

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Knowledge

We shouldn’t take the view that we need a single narrative that unifies our experiences. Rather, we should carry multiple narratives simultaneously, continuously updating our estimates of the contours of each and our assessments of which is most likely to be right as new data points become available. Need to understand why your company is successful? Entertain the possibility that you’ve just been lucky, as … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Knowledge, Wisdom

a repository is no better than the questions asked of it, and people tend to seek only information that they perceive is relevant to them, because their notions of relevance are limited by their lack of information—the so-called relevance paradox. This doesn’t matter much, however, if people don’t ask questions in the first place. Left to themselves, people prefer to exploit the unofficial KM systems … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: James Krohe Jr. | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Knowledge, Organizational Behavior

The awkward truth is that while failure may teach a company how to succeed, success often teaches a company to fail, by misleading it into thinking that it knows more than it does.

Content: Quotation | Author: James Krohe Jr. | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Achievement, Success / Failure

At the heart of KM has always lurked a subversive notion: If knowledge is a company’s most important asset, and if the people who work for it collectively possess a deeper knowledge of how the company works, then the people employed by it should be better placed to run it than the executives. Harnessing collective wisdom only needs some means to manage collectively.

Content: Quotation | Author: James Krohe Jr. | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Knowledge

In a new market, you need to secure a foothold. World domination can come later.

Content: Case Study | Author: Stephen Wunker | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: International – Africa, Management, Strategy | Industries: Finance / Banking, Telecommunications | Company: Celpay

If you fear that your company has a shortage of leaders, you will buy solutions from any number of consultants and gurus eager to charge you a lot of money to fix problems you don’t actually have. I am a frugal HR professional, though, and I’m 100 percent sure you don’t lack leadership. You lack a way to identify and cultivate existing employees who can … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Laurie Ruettimann | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Human Resources

What you want to remember is that every single time you tell a story, you have a goal. Why hide it? People see that you’re hiding something, and they don’t trust you. You need to have your intention clear before you go into the room. You have to be congruent. Make sure your feet, tongue, heart, and wallet are going in the same direction, because … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter Guber | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Storytelling

There are fundamental tenets of Japanese management which remain relevant around the world. Of these, the four most important ones are: Linking a detailed understanding of customer needs with a work environment that motivates workers to satisfy those needs; close attention to details of product quality supported by cross-functional communication; a willingness to learn from competitors’ best practices; and a spirit of continuous improvement.

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter Cohan | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: International, Management

The most important thing that companies have learned in the past twenty years is that managing knowledge requires knowing more about both knowledge and management than a lot of big firms seem to know.

Content: Article | Author: James Krohe Jr. | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Knowledge Management

The pursuit of perfection is one of great adversaries of speed, performance, and execution.

Content: Quotation | Author: Mike Myatt | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Execution

War is war—and very different from business. In war, your enemy is hidden on the other side of the hill and is waiting there to surprise and destroy you. Your enemy is an army or air force or navy, like you, and the match is like chess.

But in business, the enemy is more like the old comic-strip character Pogo once said: “We have met the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Joel Kurtzman | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Competition