134 Posts found for Source: The Conference Board Review

There’s another thing that organizations often miss: They assume that the things you go out and study should be the things that are right in the middle of the market, so they talk to customers who are in the middle of the bell curve about the products that the company already makes. That’s usually the least useful form of observation. The most useful is to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Tim Brown | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Innovation, Market Research

The most sensible thing Peter Drucker ever said about leadership is this: “Leadership is all hype. We’ve had three great leaders in this century—Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.” He was right. Those guys had it all: vision, oratorical ability, relationship-building skills, charisma, relentless focus, outside-the-box thinking, follower-attracting magnetism.

Supply your own essential leadership characteristic, and it should not be difficult to make the argument that these fellows … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jim Stroup | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subject: Leadership

Decades ago, a major disservice was done to business when the idea that managers and leaders were separate and that leaders were “better” than managers was introduced.

The difference between being labeled a good, mediocre, or bad manager is often the difference between how many of the so-called leadership traits the manager embraces. Leaders are said to have vision and the ability to communicate it … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Miki Saxon | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Leadership, Management

We work with many scientists, chemists, engineers, and accountants. By training, they are usually able to absorb, digest, and analyze large amounts of information. Their challenge is in making the leap from information to implication. Frequently, head-only leaders will struggle with the implications because wild swings in social, economic, and technological trends undermine logical, fact-based forecasts. Guts-only leaders will miss the boat because their … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: David L. Dotlich, Peter C. Cairo, Stephen H. Rhinesmith | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Decision Making, Leadership

We all know good people who are not good leaders. The human being who gets shoved into the leadership machine is not a lump of unformed clay. As humankind has learned over many millennia, ideal people with exceptional character traits are exceedingly rare. Sometimes truly good people fail as leaders, and sometimes deeply flawed people prove to be great ones.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Gen. Tony Zinni, Tony Koltz | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subject: Leadership

We naturally develop patterns of thought and behavior over time. These are a sort of survival technique, enabling us to deal with what life has taught us can be classified and dealt with by recourse to routine approaches. As a result, our reservoirs of intellectual energy are freed from being drained by repetitive solutions to the same problems, and are available to be alert to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jim Stroup | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

What can science fiction accomplish that management books cannot?

Content: Article | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subject: Personal Development

Rather than seeking out contrary or little-understood points of view, many of us need so badly to be told we’re right that we’ll pay people to do it.

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Learning, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Why you need to reconfigure the company around your people.

Content: Article | Authors: John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, Lang Davison | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Here’s a list of ways you can help so-called business gurus see their bullshit. You can help them recognize when they’ve gone too far and have drunk their own Kool-Aid.

Content: Article | Author: Scott Berkun | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subject: Miscellaneous

Ad man Roy Spence wants to know what your purpose is.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Matthew Budman, Roy M. Spence Jr. | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subject: Miscellaneous

The stakes have never been higher, and employees have never needed straight talk from their leaders more than they do now. So why do so many organizations keep communicating in the same ineffective way?

The answer is simple. They’re stuck using an old model: Disseminating information = effective communication.

Although outdated communication assumptions aren’t working, there are two pieces of good news. First, changing the way … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Alison Davis | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

There are two kinds of people in the world—either process-oriented or project-oriented.

Content: Quotation | Author: Steve Miller | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subject: Process

Here’s the thing: In every corporation and every politician, in every university, in every country, sooner or later, you get envy. You’re struggling, and you see another organization in your space. And the tendency—if you don’t have a purpose that you can articulate—is to strike out on a mission to become a worse them. Purpose says: “Wait a minute; stop it; if we try to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Roy M. Spence Jr. | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subject: Mission

Title inflation is an easy move that makes everyone happy, one with few costs other than a couple of boxes of new business cards. Right?

Wrong. Companies have employed this seemingly harmless strategy since they began etching executives’ names on office doors, and all the evidence points to very real and negative results.

Content: Article | Author: Warren Rosenstein | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Gratitude has received little serious attention in the literature on job attitudes. This may be because most people see it as a spontaneous emotional response to an external event. But University of California psychologist Robert Emmons makes a compelling argument that gratitude is better thought of as a discipline or a skill, more akin to goal-setting or time management, rather than simply another dimension of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: E. L. Kersten | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Attitude, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Scenario planning aims to prepare you for your next crisis, whatever it may be.

Content: Article | Author: Constance Gustke | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Management, Strategy

You are not talented at your job. You never will be. But wait: That’s the good news—because talent, argues Geoff Colvin, doesn’t exist in the first place—at least not in the traditional sense of the word. It is not, he points out, an innate ability. The sooner you realize that Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and you were not meant to be great business … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Geoffrey Colvin, Vadim Liberman | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Career, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Traditional management tools are grounded in clear and stable goals; they function poorly in complex situations where goals need to rapidly evolve. Most of them work by defining the objective, identifying tasks to reach that objective, developing a schedule for starting and finishing each task, and then monitoring the progress of each task. This process—known as Management by Objectives—helps you in situations that are well-ordered … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Gary Klein, Jay Rothman | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subject: Management

If most companies aren’t delivering demonstrably exceptional performance, what is the justification for granting demonstrably exceptional compensation to senior executives? Rare indeed is the pay-for-performance contract that seeks to pay only for performance by separating out the effects of luck from the contributions of the skill and effort of the executive.

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: “The Conference Board Review” | Subjects: Compensation, Corporate Governance