Tag Archives: Human Resources

Does Your Company Make You a Better Person?

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by Robert Kegan, Lisa Lahey and Andy Fleming

When we hear people talk about struggling to maintain work-life balance, our hearts sink a little. As one executive in a high-performing company we have studied explained, “If work and life are separate things—if work is what keeps you from living—then we’ve got a serious problem.” In our research on what we call Deliberately Developmental Organizations—or “DDOs” for short—we have identified successful organizations that regard this trade-off as a false one. What if we saw work as an essential context for personal growth? And what if employees’ continuous development were assumed to be the critical ingredient for a company’s success? Continue reading →

Want Your Team to Perform Better? Try Positive Reinforcement.

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By Bill Sims, Jr.

Are you keeping up with your New Year’s resolution? If you’re like most folks, you’re probably hard at work on that new diet or workout program.

While you’re doing those next 25 crunches, ask yourself these questions: What’s my New Year’s resolution for my business? What are the exercises that will help me and my team perform better at work this year?

That answer is positive reinforcement. Continue reading →

Leadership Is Not a Solitary Task

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by John Coleman

 

 

An inspiring historical story is once again making the rounds at least partially because of its inclusion in Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, David and Goliath. In it, Gladwell tells the story of the French town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, which became a safe haven for Jews in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. Led by minister André Trocmé, the residents of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon saved between 3,000 and 3,500 Jews (in addition to others seeking refuge) from 1940 until the end of the war, bringing them into the community and hiding them from French and Nazi officials. By any measure, their actions were courageous and inspiring. They were also an example of the power of community in leadership. Continue reading →

How Business Can Help Measure Education Outcomes that Matter

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80-kantrowby Alan Kantrow

Employers the world over tell us that what truly counts in hiring decisions is not the rote knowledge that helps college students answer examination questions, but skills and competencies that are essential for, and often developed at, work.  To be useful, the bricks of modern education need the straw of experience-based skills.  Bricks without straw tend to crumble; they cannot support weight, as has been known from Biblical times. Continue reading →

Five Questions Every Leader Should Ask About Organizational Design

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80-john-beeson by John Beeson

A few years ago Dave Ulrich, a management thought leader from the University of Michigan, made a comment I found both insightful and profound: “Every leader needs to have a model of organization design.” Typically a graphic depiction of the organizational components to be addressed in a redesign (for example, McKinsey’s 7S model, which includes strategy, structure, systems, staff, skills, and so on), every consultant and his brother flogs an organization design model. Dave didn’t advocate any particular design model, just one the leader knows how to employ and one flexible enough to be applied to the range of organizational situations a leader faces in the course of a career. Continue reading →