Redefining the Middle Manager Role

A bank redefined the [middle manager] role. They knew the role had become unwieldy, and as they looked into it they found that just by having a direct report, every people manager had 105 tasks to do. Some of these tasks made sense for a manager: performance reviews and coaching. But there were other things, like simple approvals of credit cards or expense reports, that … [ Read more ]

Authors: Bill Schaninger, Bryan Hancock, Emily Field | Source: "The future of middle management" | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The Pay-to-Quit Program

Managers need to create incentives that will encourage employees to reveal their true levels of motivation. One such strategy is to offer employees money to resign voluntarily — the so-called Pay-to-Quit strategy. Zappos, the online shoe and clothing retailer, was the first to employ the strategy, making what has become known as “the offer”: a bonus for new hires to quit following a four-week training … [ Read more ]

Author: Uri Gneezy | Source: "How a 'Pay-to-Quit' Strategy Can Reveal Your Most Motivated Employees" | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Human Resources

Ask New Employees for Critical Observations

Ask new employees to keep a diary of observations from each meeting and each day during their early employment period. Then set up a time for them to make a presentation to you, or perhaps you and your leadership team, about what they’ve learned, what didn’t make sense, what they have seen done differently in previous jobs, and so on. This gives the new person … [ Read more ]

Author: Ron Ashkenas | Source: "Is Bad Onboarding Stifling Your New Senior Leaders?" | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Increasing Access to Social Capital

Access to social capital is a sticking point for employees... To increase access, business leaders must first understand who has it—and who doesn’t. Advanced analytics can make it easier than it’s ever been to provide that understanding.

One electronics company, for instance, is using HR, facilities, and operations metadata (calendar invitations, email, HR information systems, and so on) and advanced analytics to map knowledge flows and … [ Read more ]

Authors: Bill Schaninger, Brooke Weddle, John Parsons, Taylor Lauricella | Source: "Network effects: How to rebuild social capital and improve corporate performance" | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Capture How Your Employees Are Feeling

Acknowledging emotions and understanding how individual factors influence change aversion may be as important as factors inherent to the initiative itself. Yet we find that leaders often miss this critical component. Identify ways to capture how people are feeling and coping before, during, and after a change program. Building the institutional muscle to gain real-time insight into employees’ emotions through pulse checks and manager check-ins … [ Read more ]

Authors: Adriann Negreros, Julia Dhar, Martin Reeves | Source: "How Change Aversion Can Derail a Transformation" | Original Publication: Boston Consulting Group | Subjects: Change Management, Human Resources, Organizational Behavior | Company: Ubiquity Retirement + Savings

The Premortem Technique
The premortem technique is a sneaky way to get people to do contrarian, devil’s advocate thinking without encountering resistance. If a project goes poorly, there will be a lessons-learned session that looks at what went wrong and why the project failed—like a medical postmortem. Why don’t we do that up front? Before a project starts, we should say, “We’re looking in a crystal ball, and … [ Read more ]

Profit Mapping
A profit map, the core analytical tool of profitability management, displays the profitability and cost structure of every product in every customer in the company. Profit maps show exactly where profit is flowing and where it is lost.

A profit map is not especially difficult to develop, but it is completely different from the information developed for financial reporting. Many finance managers make the … [ Read more ]

Review Profitability Before Expanding Capacity
When faced with the need to expand manufacturing capacity and the inherent investment required, first perform a thorough profitability analysis (a profit map) of each product produced from the capacity-constrained factories (this includes profitable products being sold unprofitably to selected customers). Since many companies have a significant amount of unprofitable business, it is quite possible that stopping the unprofitable sales can free up enough capacity … [ Read more ]

Deploy a Redeployment Pool
Intel monitors changing skill requirements and institutes a redeployment program when it becomes necessary to downsize a business. Under this program, managers effectively lay off people, and the head count of the business unit is moved off the payroll. These excised people enter a redeployment pool under the auspices of human resources. Once in the pool, employees generally have four to six months, and can … [ Read more ]

Fiercest Competitor Workshop
One good way to get at these disruptive designs (innovations) is to do what we at my firm call a "Fiercest Competitor Workshop," which starts with the premise that you have been fired from your old organization but you have access to ample capital and talent. Your task is to design the fiercest competitor that could take the market from your old firm. In my … [ Read more ]