Ask 100 managers how they define organizational culture, and you’ll probably get as many different definitions as possible. Even scholars cannot agree; and that means that your definition is as appropriate as anyone else’s. This makes the challenge, however, of creating the culture that you want particularly difficult, because it is almost impossible to hit […]
We all love a good story, whether our preference is for fiction or non-fiction. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading a book, watching a movie, or listening to the news, expanding your mind watching a TEDx talk or listening to a podcast. All these media use stories to communicate their messages. Why? One reason is […]
Listening with empathy is held up as the acme of great leadership. The best leaders have inspiring visions, are effective communicators and possess what may seem like boundless energy; but above all they know what it means to listen. Listening is a lost art; and it is an art. It requires creative thinking. You can’t […]
Does your organization rely on teamwork? Are all of your teams functioning the way that you would like them to? Do you think that there’s room for improvement? Given the amount of interest in team effectiveness, it’s reasonable to assume that you would like some tips on how to improve yours. That’s nothing to be […]
Probably the greatest challenge that scholars face in organizational behavior is getting access to information about what people do when they’re at work. Without it, they have nothing to analyze, evaluate, talk about, or publish. And if they can’t publish, then they’ll perish, because as far as universities are concerned they’ll have little, if anything, […]
Twenty years ago, Pearn Kandola – an Oxford-based business psychology firm – conducted a study in which they looked at the claims that companies made about the kind of people that they wanted to recruit. One thing they discovered was that managers tended to weed out the people who exhibited the very characteristics they said […]
The business of business has always been to provide products and services to customers. Throughout the ages, plans have been made, resources organized, people recruited (or conscripted), and everything coordinated together so that as near as possible the desired outcome was realized. Of all these elements, however, there is one on which the success or […]
Good things are possible when new managerial blood is brought into an organization. For one thing, there are often fresh ideas. You know yourself how easy it is to get so close to something that you can’t see the forest for the trees. You can’t see a solution that’s obvious to someone from the outside. […]
Jesse Jacoby
