Why CEOs Don’t Get Fired as Often as They Used To

Posted on June 16, 2015

by Per-Ola Karlsson

The number of chief executive officers who were dismissed from their jobs at large global companies fell to a record low last year. At first glance that might suggest complacency on the part of boards of directors, but it’s actually good news about corporate governance in general and CEO succession planning in particular. It means that boards are doing a better job of choosing top leaders — far better than they were doing a decade ago. Data for the world’s largest 2,500 companies also suggests that better CEO succession practices are converging around the world, as regional differences in CEO succession rates have narrowed sharply in recent years. Continue reading →

What Transparency Really Means to You as a Leader

Posted on June 15, 2015

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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 →

The Best Managers Practice ‘Sustainable’ Management

Posted on June 8, 2015

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By Victor Lipman

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 →

Dividing Team Tasks: Is There a Better Way?

Posted on June 4, 2015

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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 →