299 Posts Found

Organization design can and should provide an effective and practical resolution to many stubborn strategy and business-execution issues. If a redesign is to work, senior executives need to recognize that all three elements of design—structure, individual capabilities, and roles and collaboration—are essential in making a change.

If an organization’s structure is its skeleton, then individual capabilities are its muscular system, providing energy and vitality, … [ Read more ]

Author: Julie Kilmann | Source: Role Charters | Original Publication: Boston Consulting Group | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Sometimes workplace rules don’t have anything to do with customer engagement, a better workplace, limiting risk or liability, or avoiding catastrophes—they exist to make life easier for a small part of the organization without any regard for other more important factors. These rules ensure compliance with the policies of a particular department. And those in that department often fiercely guard and protect their rules.

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Author: Tom Rieger | Source: Guarding the Guards: Crushing the Bureaucratic Rules that Limit Success | Original Publication: ChangeThis | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

37signals recently held a Comedy Central-style celebrity roast of its top-selling product in an attempt to find out what employees really thought were its weaknesses and ways it could be improved.

How was this different than the usual product meeting? For one thing, everyone was there. Designers, programmers, customer service folks—everyone had an opportunity to rip on something without worrying about hurt feelings. People … [ Read more ]

Author: Jason Fried | Source: Want to Know What Your Employees Really Think? | Original Publication: Inc. Magazine | Subject: Management

There’s a new story at your business every day. Maybe you dreamed up a great idea or shot down a bad one. Maybe a customer surprised you with the way he or she uses your product. Perhaps a client or an employee came to you with a suggestion for something you’d never thought of before.

There are hidden opportunities in these everyday moments. They make great … [ Read more ]

Author: Jason Fried | Source: Telling Your Company’s Story in Video | Original Publication: Inc. Magazine | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Every change initiative has its own unique risk profile. Bain has identified 30 specific risks that threaten to disrupt change efforts, things like poor sponsorship and change overload. These risks tend to occur with predictable patterns over the life cycle of a change. But only a handful of these risks determine success or failure at each stage. At the beginning of a change initiative, for … [ Read more ]

Author: Patrick Litre | Source: Realize results: Busting Three Common Myths of Change Management | Original Publication: Bain | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Looking back at past forecasts and their realizations can help prevent overconfidence and suggest places where unexpected factors may emerge. Recently, researchers Victor Jose, Bob Nau, and Bob Winkler at Duke University proposed new rules to score and reward good forecasts. An effective “scoring rule” provides incentives to discourage the forecaster from sandbagging, a proverbial problem in corporate life. For example, Gap Inc. measures the … [ Read more ]

Author: Tim Laseter | Source: Cleaning the Crystal Ball | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Management

Rather than the typical scenario, in which a supervisor decides whom to hire, the employees who will be the new worker’s peers make the choice. Hiring managers tend to select applicants who think like them, but that often fails to create the best group chemistry. “The hiring teams do a much better job of picking people and you’ve got people surrounding that new person who … [ Read more ]

Author: Lynn Chambers | Source: Weaving a New Corporate Culture | Original Publication: CFO | Subject: Human Resources

An example of a metric that matters is return on innovation investment (ROI²). A series of Booz & Company studies conducted over the past seven years statistically correlates ROI² with organic growth, and links innovation spending with financial performance in ways that can lead decision makers to generate higher, more reliable returns on innovation and research and development. The statistical validity of ROI² bolsters its … [ Read more ]

Author: Jamie Campbell | Source: Crafting Best-in-Class Business Intelligence | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Innovation

If you look at most applications on Monster.com or Craigslist, the instructions are very simple: “Send a cover letter and resume to (email address).”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. However, an issue that can come up in a tough job market is that you’ll have a tough time separating the wheat from the chafe.

Let’s say 500 people apply for the position you posted. … [ Read more ]

Author: Neil Patel | Source: How To Get More Qualified Job Applicants | Original Publication: OPEN Fourm | Subject: Human Resources

It’s often difficult in creative fields to set specific deliverables to which you can attach incentives. And the very fact that a manager focuses so much on money can strip away workers’ own intrinsic motivations or blind them to other goals that don’t come with a bonus attached.

In the search for other solutions, Harvard Business School professor Karim R. Lakhani and London Business School professor … [ Read more ]

Author: Karim R. Lakhani | Source: Getting to Eureka!: How Companies Can Promote Creativity | Original Publication: HBS Working Knowledge | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Bill [Gates] required that the first slide in the deck be the lowlights—not the highlights—the lowlights. In other words, what’s not going well and you would tend to focus the whole meeting on the first slide which is the lowlights which is what you should be doing. I can’t tell you, and I suspect you’ve experienced the same thing, how many meetings you go to … [ Read more ]

Author: Barry Moltz | Source: The Secrets Of Working With Bill Gates | Original Publication: OPEN Fourm | Subject: Management

In order to take full advantage of the latent practical knowledge of staff and conduct a revision of company processes, after 3 weeks every new employee is encouraged to single out all the idiosyncrasies that the company has as well as question practices and procedures. Using the simple questions below (or more sector specific questions), management encourages communication and discovers new ways of looking at … [ Read more ]

Source: Hack: Getting Value out of New Employees by Kaeden Arnold | Original Publication: Management Innovation eXchange (MiX) | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Every company should have a set of pricing metrics that measure the financial and operational health of pricing across the business. These metrics may include simple data, such as the average selling price, discount, and margin for key products; operational data, including the number of pricing exceptions and win/loss percentages; and special measures to track the progress and impact of specific pricing initiatives. Best-practice companies … [ Read more ]

Author: Walter L. Baker | Source: Building a better pricing infrastructure | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Pricing

As companies in emerging markets grow in number and in strength, they become tougher competitors for multinational companies, for which a dearth of intimate local knowledge is increasingly costly. Furthermore, the war for managerial talent is heating up in the developing world. Companies with reputations for developing local leaders are far more likely to attract the talent they need to pursue attractive growth opportunities. These … [ Read more ]

Author: Jeffrey A. Joerres | Source: Beyond expats: Better managers for emerging markets | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: International

We use 70–20–10: 70 percent on our core business, 20 percent on adjacent business, 10 percent on others, as a sort of allocation principle, and we are constantly moving people around to achieve that percentage. Another thing we have is something called 20 percent time, where we tell people, especially in engineering, that they can spend 20 percent of their time on whatever they want. … [ Read more ]

Author: Eric Schmidt | Source: Eric Schmidt on business culture, technology, and social issues | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly

It’s easy for organizations to fall into the habit of seeking sales growth only through existing customers. Even though the sales force is typically best placed to find and approach potential clients, individual reps may shun the uncomfortable task of cold-calling in favor of selling to customers they know well.

One large distributor of auto parts tried tackling this problem by separating these activities. Its … [ Read more ]

Author: Maryanne Hancock | Source: Using your sales force to jump-start growth | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Would-be innovators need to break free of preexisting views. Unfortunately, the human mind is surprisingly adroit at supporting its deep-seated ways of viewing the world while sifting out evidence to the contrary. Indeed, academic research suggests that even when presented with overwhelming facts, many people (including well-educated ones) simply won’t abandon their deeply held opinions. The antidote is personal experience: seeing and experiencing something firsthand … [ Read more ]

Author: Marla M. Capozzi | Source: Sparking creativity in teams: An executive’s guide | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Customer-Related, Innovation

In a discussion with one person, a team, a class, an off-site meeting, before you get off-stage, take a moment to tell the people you are with — those who may be ready to follow you — that you know who they are, that you respect what they’re doing and that you’re extremely grateful for their hard work upon which you’re going to get your … [ Read more ]

Author: Michael Useem | Source: Mission Critical: 15 Principles to Help Leaders Meet Their Toughest Challenges | Original Publication: Booz & Company | Subject: Leadership

When bringing a new employee onto your team, the experience of current employees can be extremely valuable, particularly those who themselves were recently the new kid on the block. Ask your current employees what they wish they had known sooner. Brainstorm a list of buzzwords and acronyms. And ask current employees what their plans are to help the newcomer get on board and up to … [ Read more ]

Author: Dick Grote | Source: Making Onboarding Work | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

When you start a business, it’s difficult to know what to look for in a good hire. “I learned the hard way that the last thing you want to do is hire people who aren’t 100 percent sure that they want to work for you or 100 percent clear on what they’re getting themselves into,” says Ben Lerer, CEO of Thrillist. To make sure potential … [ Read more ]

Author: Tara Fuller | Source: How To Hire: An OPEN Forum Guide | Original Publication: OPEN Fourm | Subject: Human Resources