20 Most Recent Ideas
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
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
Combine Appreciation with Cash Incentives
Google appears to have discovered a way to pay people for being helpful without making it transactional. The company invites employees to nominate colleagues who have been helpful to receive small cash rewards. By making the rewards a product of peer nomination, Google converts a cash payment into a symbol of appreciation. As a result, people are less likely to see the reward as cheapening … [ Read more ]
Authors: Madan Pillutla, Nirmalya Kumar | Source: "Pay for Performance: When Does It Fail?" | Original Publication: Management and Business Review (MBR) | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior | Company: Google
Nominate a designated dissenter
Social influence is particularly potent in group settings, so teams must proactively manage it in meetings. “There’s a fine line between the wisdom of crowds, where groups make better decisions than individuals, and groupthink, where individuals blindly follow a prevailing opinion,” says Jonah Berger. “Someone suggests doing X, and the next person, who might’ve been thinking of Y, will tend to go with X as … [ Read more ]
Author: Jonah Berger | Source: "The Goldilocks Effect and How to Harness Social Influence" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
Give Job Candidates Interview Questions Before the Interview
Before candidates join for the interview round, Peoplism sends a thorough prep guide to sketch out expectations. “We tell the candidate most of the interview questions in advance. While it is a unique approach, I don’t understand why it’s that controversial and why other companies don’t do the same,” says co-founder Liz Kofman-Burns.
There are plenty of behind-the-scenes factors that contribute to someone being a … [ Read more ]
Authors: Amber Madison, Liz Kofman-Burns | Source: "Why Now’s the Perfect Time to Retool Your Hiring Process and Get Creative" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources | Company: Peoplism
Encourage Bad-News Sharing to Foster Open Dialogue
Sharing bad news—top-down, bottom-up, and across the organization—has a number of salutary effects beyond the obvious benefits of transparency. It can elicit empathy and support, break down barriers, and expand the pool of contributors to problem solving. Energy otherwise spent saving face can be channeled into more constructive use. The net result is not just top-down, bottom-up alignment, but stronger horizontal alignment. As with the … [ Read more ]
Authors: Deborah Lovich, Henning Streubel, Joseph Halverson, Robert Werner | Source: "When Leaders Say They Are Aligned—But Aren’t" | Original Publication: Boston Consulting Group | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
Nail Executive Transitions to Avoid “Hero to Xero”
Whether they’re stepping into an existing pair of shoes or carving out a brand-new role, new leaders often face a dose of skepticism from the org. “Whether we intend it or not, a lot of people have a wait-and-see approach. We're excited about them, but is this going to work out? Versus having a vested interest in helping make that person successful,” says Anne Raimondi, … [ Read more ]
Author: Anne Raimondi | Source: "The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2021" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior
Ditch Your To-Do List and Use Your Calendar Instead
Levels’ Sam Corcos has tinkered with a few time management techniques over the years, but the biggest win came from ditching his to-do list altogether and leveraging his calendar instead. Tactically, if Corcos has a task that needs to be completed, he now blocks off time for it on his calendar. “I used to have the habit of overcommitting myself, which became a major source of … [ Read more ]
Author: Sam Corcos | Source: "The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2021" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Productivity/Work Tips
Apply Relevant Investment Criteria
Depending on the structure of a company’s investment portfolio, decision makers may need to apply different criteria in order to highlight differences in the value drivers of various investment types. For example, a strict focus on internal rate of return and payback time may systematically favor incremental improvement investments at the expense of larger breakthrough investments that tend to have longer-term and uncertain payoffs.
The process … [ Read more ]
Authors: Sebastian Stange, Ulrich Pidun | Source: "The Art of Capital Allocation" | Original Publication: Boston Consulting Group | Subjects: Finance, Management, Strategy
Go Beyond Internal Rate of Return
In theory, there is a simple rule for choosing among competing investment projects: sort the list of projects based on their expected internal rate of return and select those with the highest IRRs until the budget is fully committed. In practice, however, the effectiveness of this approach is constrained by the quality of the assumptions that go into the valuations and by the influence of … [ Read more ]
Authors: Sebastian Stange, Ulrich Pidun | Source: "The Art of Capital Allocation" | Original Publication: Boston Consulting Group | Subjects: Finance, Management, Strategy
Translate Portfolio Roles Into Capital Allocation Guidelines
One of our clients, an international energy company, which classifies business units as development, growth, anchor, or harvesting businesses, depending on their position in the market life cycle. Each portfolio role has its own performance requirements, and businesses are managed based on specific sets of financial indicators. More important, the role of each business determines its guidelines for capital allocation. For example, coal power generation … [ Read more ]
Authors: Sebastian Stange, Ulrich Pidun | Source: "The Art of Capital Allocation" | Original Publication: Boston Consulting Group | Subjects: Finance, Management, Strategy
Use the “Black Hat” Technique for New Initiatives
To uncover the hidden traps of big new projects being considered, Jaleh Rezaei relies on the “black hat" technique, where you kick off new initiatives by asking a targeted tough question: “Let’s assume that it’s one year from now and we’ve failed at our goal. What went wrong?”
“This question creates a subtle shift from a very optimistic mindset to triggering the team’s problem-solving neurons. … [ Read more ]
Author: Jaleh Rezaei | Source: "Better Meetings Make for Better Days — 20 Tactical Ideas to Try Out With Your Team" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subject: Management
Shift to a Skills-Based Approach When Hiring
companies are starting to be more intentional about hiring for a candidate’s future potential, not their past history. But it’ll be a long road. Our traditional recruiting processes still place an emphasis on certain types of education, experience, or personal referrals that can lead to a homogenous workforce.
Start by rethinking your job descriptions. Focus on the results you’d like to see, rather than the type … [ Read more ]
Author: Ryan Roslansky | Source: "You Need a Skills-Based Approach to Hiring and Developing Talent" | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources
Manager Effectiveness Index (MEI)
Performance reviews tend to be more heavily weighted to focus downward. (“I’m your manager, and here is what I think of your performance.”) There may be some mechanism for subordinates to provide feedback upward, but it often doesn’t carry the same importance. And that’s how bad bosses often stay in their roles.
One example of an effective model comes from Aron Ain, the CEO of Ultimate … [ Read more ]
Authors: Adam Bryant, Aron Ain | Source: "Do you manage up or down?" | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG)
The Overlooked Stay Conversation
There's some debate over the best way to do exit interviews and how valuable they are. But there's one kind of interview that most organizations fail to do — stay conversations. The concept is simple: Identify your top performers who you hope will stay with you the longest, and ask them why they stay. They may say things like:
- "I have the best manager I've ever
Authors: Nate Dvorak, Ryan Pendell | Source: "Culture Wins When You Listen to Your Top Performers" | Original Publication: Gallup Management Journal (GMJ) | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior
Create Tokens that Align with Your Values
Jean-Denis Grezè has seen time and time again that small gestures can have an outsized impact. “I’m a big believer in incentives that align with the culture and values. A funny one that people don’t realize can be super helpful is creating tokens — objects that you reward for a specific behavior," he says. “You can create a subculture around a new value. Humans … [ Read more ]
Author: Jean-Denis Grezè | Source: "How to Build a Culture of Ownership and Other Engineering Leadership Tips from Plaid & Dropbox" | Original Publication: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Plaid
"We celebrated mistakes at a management gathering with 1,000 people in the room. A manager would get up and say why the environmentally sensitive light bulb or whatever it was…had failed…Then we'd give them $1,000 or a TV or something, depending on the scale of the thing. The point was to share the learning and get smarter as an organization." — Jack Welch
Author: Jack Welch | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior