Nearly three out of four Americans say that they’re bored at work.* They feel that their knowledge, skills and abilities aren’t being used, and that their companies don’t care. To give you an idea of the size of the problem, imagine that instead of boredom, they were all too sick to even show up. The streets […]
In 1959, Frederick Herzberg published his now famous two-factor theory of motivation. It articulated two categories of activities that occurred in organizations, and which defined what compelled people to be productive. To this day, it continues to surprise organizations, managers, and scholars. The factors were named hygienic and non-hygienic. Hygienic factors were those things that […]
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 […]
Organizational narratives are the manifestation of the shared beliefs an organization holds about itself as a collective. “Our organization stands for innovation,” is a common example; “This will never work here, we are too conservative for that” yet another. Corporate narratives that deal with the collective view the organization holds about itself often form and […]
Much is made of delivering value to shareholders. Ask any senior director, manager or member of the board what his or her goal is in the company, and that will be the most likely response. It’s predictable, and it’s a cop-out. More on that in a moment. The term shareholder refers to those who have […]
Everyone has heard the statistic. Two-thirds of all change initiatives fail to achieve their expected business benefits – a statistic that has stayed constant from the 1970s to the present. This failure rate represents billions of dollars in lost productivity, wasted resources, opportunity costs and rework—not to mention the negative impact on organizational morale and […]
Have you ever been blindsided by a colleague’s words or actions? Or maybe been part of a team that spent more time complaining about others in the business rather than collaborating and solving the business decision at hand? If you have answered “yes” to either or both questions then you are probably not in an […]
Productivity is becoming more important every day. Fundamentally, it means doing much more with much less. And to be sure, there is scope for making, not only workers, but also the environment in which they work more efficient. You’ve probably noticed, for example, just how many organizations in both the public and private sectors waste […]
Jesse Jacoby
Erika Jacobi
