190 Posts found for Source_type: Article

A survey evaluating a team’s performance can be a powerful tool for making that team more effective. And the first message that consultants and HR professionals often communicate on these surveys is: “To ensure that the team gets the best data and feels protected, we will make sure responses are confidential.” The widespread assumption is that if team members know their answers are confidential, they … [ Read more ]

Author: Roger Schwarz | Source: What Anonymous Feedback Will (and Won’t) Tell You | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Talented people have so many opportunities that you can’t keep them forever. But even if they stop working for you, they can work with you. But how do you build a network that works? Here are a few tips.

1. There’s more than one way to network. An alumni community can be either an official company initiative or a grassroots effort. It comes down to ownership. … [ Read more ]

Source: Gone, but Not Forgotten | Original Publication: Fast Company | Subject: Human Resources

Instead of a suggestion box with a stack of cards, for example, you can offer a “venture planning” tool kit that enables all employees to submit more robust ideas than a few sentences on paper would allow. The tool kit could ask a series of basic questions — why should I invest, what are the potential markets, who might be the new industry players, what … [ Read more ]

Author: Linda Yates | Source: Will You Get to the Future FIRST? | Original Publication: Management Review | Subject: Innovation

A warning to senior executives of companies across industries: Your recruiters could be repelling your best job applicants. They’re providing the same recruiting messages to all candidates. But the reality is that not all applicants are looking for the same things. So companies must create distinct, targeted recruitment approaches for different profiles of applicants.

Applicants with advanced educational degrees, for example, are attracted to specific attributes … [ Read more ]

Author: Nikki Blacksmith | Source: Executives: Your Company Isn’t Attracting the Best Talent | Original Publication: Gallup Management Journal (GMJ) | Subject: Human Resources

Prudential’s recruiting method, called the Career Development Program, allows people to stay in their current jobs throughout six months of training — mostly online, and at the candidates’ own pace — to earn the professional designations required to become a certified life insurance agent and financial advisor.

Prudential launched the CDP in 2009 as a small-scale experiment, but it’s worked so well that it’s now the … [ Read more ]

Author: Anne Fisher | Source: Prudential’s secret for hiring self-starters: Try before you buy | Original Publication: FORTUNE | Subject: Human Resources

“Kill the Stupid Rules” is an exercise that focuses attention on non-essentials that get in everybody’s way. Most stupid rules are enshrined policies that, over time, become “how we do things around here” — that is, part of the culture. Often they’re minor but familiar irritations: expense documentation requirements, IT departments’ blocking of access to useful websites, monthly operating reports that eat up significant amounts … [ Read more ]

Author: Lisa Bodell | Source: Best Business Books 2012: Organizational Culture | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

“Kill the Company” is an exercise which asks participants to step into their competitors’ shoes and think up a detailed strategy aimed at driving their own company out of business. This is achieved by encouraging people to identify weaknesses in their company — or their business unit or division — and show how a savvy competitor could exploit them. The most useful insights surface when … [ Read more ]

Author: Lisa Bodell | Source: Best Business Books 2012: Organizational Culture | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Strategy

There are myriad business competitions, which companies enter for myriad reasons. Opportunistic CEOs slap together applications for every conceivable prize, hoping to show off their accomplishments or secure a PR payday. But no one undertakes Baldrige on a lark. The application for the award runs to 50 pages, with roughly 250 questions covering every aspect of performance, from strategic planning and knowledge management to work-force … [ Read more ]

Author: Leigh Buchanan | Source: We Will Be the Best-Run Business in America | Original Publication: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Best Practices, Management

Studies have shown that staff at different stages in their career favor different benefits, for example younger staff may tend to favor cash rewards rather than pensions. Companies can overcome these discrepancies by developing flexible “pick and mix” benefit options. An example of this is a points based system where staff at different levels qualify for varying levels of points; these points can … [ Read more ]

Author: Dani Novick | Source: Motivation – A Recruiter’s Perspective | Original Publication: LeaderValues | Subject: Human Resources

In one organization, managers give an “I caught you caring” pin to employees who demonstrate outstanding service or performance. Only a few stellar employees receive this coveted award. Below the words “I caught you caring” is the invitation “Ask me what I did!” This encourages the award-winning employees to share stories about their outstanding performance with their coworkers.

The pins have an ongoing impact on … [ Read more ]

Author: Vandana Allman | Source: Mismanagement in the Henhouse | Original Publication: Gallup Management Journal (GMJ) | Subject: Customer-Related

Make sure that you and people throughout your organization spend lots of time in external benchmarking and “corporate tourism” mode, looking for good ideas to swipe. Many of the opportunities or problems you’re facing now are old hat to somebody somewhere. Learning from other people’s experiences — both the successes and the failures — can take years and millions of dollars off your learning curve. … [ Read more ]

Author: Jim Clemmer | Source: Innovation and Organizational Learning Pathways and Pitfalls (Part 3) | Subjects: Best Practices, Innovation

Global manufacturer 3M has collected thousands of reviews and comments from more than a dozen retail sites and mobile apps, as well as Facebook postings, using them to improve marketing campaigns or create new ones. In one case, the company’s Precision Ultra Edge nonstick scissors were selling below expectations. 3M changed its product copy, quoting the language consumers used online (“they’re great for cutting fabric … [ Read more ]

Author: Matthew Egol | Source: The Social Life of Brands | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Customer-Related, Innovation, Market Research, Marketing / Sales

Breaking down functional silos is key to everything from encouraging communication to building valuable connections to sparking innovation. But, as we all know, bridging interdepartmental chasms is far easier said than done. Fortunately, some companies are starting to come up with creative solutions. Take, for example, Lunch Roulette, a new concept being used at the U.S. arm of pharmaceuticals manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim (BIPI).

Like many good … [ Read more ]

Author: Sylvia Ann Hewlett | Source: A New Way to Network Inside Your Company | Original Publication: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Improvement

When Chip Bergh was made President and CEO of Levi Strauss, he spent the first month mostly listening. He came up with a set of standard questions: What three things must we preserve? What three things must we change? What do you most hope I will do? What are you most concerned I might do? What advice do you have for me? He sent the … [ Read more ]

Author: Chip Bergh | Source: Navigating the First Year: Advice from 18 Chief Executives | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Improvement

Surprise your best customers when they least expect it. A guerrilla marketer mails lottery tickets to her best customer every time the jackpot hits $5 million. This unusual gesture generates a lot of goodwill and keeps customers talking about her.

Author: Kimberly Stansell | Source: Inspire People to Talk about You | Original Publication: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Customer-Related, Marketing / Sales

Kill the Company is about having an out-of-company experience. It’s about examining your weaknesses so that you can make them your strengths. In most businesses each year, we do a SWOT analysis [to examine] our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Most people use it as a political construct to say where they are strong and [to say that] they are not really weak — … [ Read more ]

Author: Lisa Bodell | Source: ‘Kill the Company’: Identify Your Weaknesses Before Your Competitors Do | Original Publication: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Competitive Intelligence, Management, Strategy

Set up an Innovation Slush Fund to provide seed money to champions and skunk works. Couple it with allowing your key operations people 10-15 percent of their time to work on projects that they feel have some high innovation potential. The only condition of getting the money or time is a periodic report (preferably voice mail, E-mail, video, or group presentation rather than a bureaucratic … [ Read more ]

Author: Jim Clemmer | Source: Innovation and Organizational Learning Pathways and Pitfalls (Part 2) | Subject: Innovation

HCL delivers detailed financial performance data broken out by business unit regularly to employees’ desktops. This has stimulated employees to ask more questions, volunteer more ideas, and challenge their managers more often. In turn, everyone is making better decisions — the kind of decisions that directly affect the customer’s experience. Similarly, in a bold twist on the 360-degree employee appraisal tool, all appraisals are posted … [ Read more ]

Author: Vineet Nayar | Source: The Thought Leader Interview: Vineet Nayar | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Executives at Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil were looking for ways to make it more nimble and more realistic about its goals. So they adopted a new approach to year-end budgeting, which breaks it out into three different sets of numbers. These included targets (“what we want to happen”), forecasting (“what we think will happen, whether we like what we see or not”), and … [ Read more ]

Source: Listening to employees: The ‘Beyond Bureaucracy’ M-Prize winners | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance, Management

Have every new employee do customer support for two weeks. The first week is a typical “first week at a new company” which includes a formal day of orientation on the first day. The next four days are structured around on-boarding the person and getting them involved in their role and their team, but not too deeply. This allows there to be a “break in … [ Read more ]

Author: Brad Feld | Source: Have Every New Employee Do Customer Support for Two Weeks | Subjects: Customer-Related, Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior