By Kevin Eikenberry
It is one of those buzzwords, created by and repeated by consultants and “experts” (people like me). They pick a word or phrase and use it so much it gets a life of its own. And whatever relevance it had to begin with is lost in the faint nodding of heads (because everyone is supposed to agree) or the rolling of the eyes (because people are tired of that buzzword).
The buzzword of the day is transparency. Continue reading
When I was in the corporate world, we had a saying about a certain kind of manager. “He got results, but he left a trail of bodies in his wake.” In other words, he (or she), as we would have said when I was growing up in Boston, was wicked hahd to work for. By delivering results he may have pleased those above, but generally on the backs of those below. His methods – his treatment of subordinates – were unsound. He could succeed in the short term but likely not the long term. And business of course is a long-term enterprise. Which is why I say the best managers practice “sustainable” management. Continue reading
by Phanish Puranam
Self-managed teams may sometimes adopt task divisions that are all wrong for the project. Managerial intervention can help avoid this.
Suppose you were on a team tasked with manufacturing a single handmade wooden toy. For this project, a few component objects must be made from scratch and slotted together to form the finished piece. How would you break the project into manageable tasks to be divvied up among the team?
If you’re like most people, your default option would likely be to assign each part of the toy to a different individual or sub-team. We could call this method object-based, because it focuses on separately creating the pieces, or intermediate objects, that later unite to make the whole. Another approach could be to divide the work into activities that apply across all the parts, such as cutting, painting, and varnishing. Without considering the specifics of the project, such as the number of finished pieces needed, or the skills required to make the various parts, it’s impossible to judge which way would be more effective; but one thing is certain; it is unlikely that the object-based division would always be better. Nevertheless the tendency to pick object-based task division regardless of the task can be very powerful. Continue reading
We’ve all come across this type of person in our careers: the guy who is miserable to work with but who’s also “the top salesman we have.” Or how about “the smartest guy in the room,” who’s also the most unapproachable person you’ve ever met? The talent may well be there but, in today’s increasingly networked workplace, it isn’t a guarantee of success.
Sometimes, very talented people just aren’t a good fit for your organization, but more often, the problem lies in a leaders’ inability to harness or align their employees’ talent to the mission. Either of these situations can cause employees’ talent to atrophy — or, worse, give them a reason to move on to a more engaging position at another company. Your job, as a leader, is to recognize when talent isn’t being used to its fullest potential and correct the situation. Continue reading
by Quy Huy
How a leader manages collective emotions can create or destroy enormous market value. It can also have a huge bearing on what large groups of stakeholders think of you.
One of the reasons Nokia lost the smartphone battle, despite holding a strong position before the iPhone came along, was its lack of speed and inability to react to changing circumstances. As I argued in a previous article, the reason for Nokia’s sluggish reaction was a collective fear among the company’s middle managers, not of the competition, but of losing status and resources within the organization. Continue reading
