May 16, 2013
The workplace has never been more global than today. But despite that, I often find the last thing on people's minds when doing international work is the global element. Instead, and often for good reason, people focus on concrete and pressing work details: finishing that PowerPoint deck, running the financials one more time, or planning the logistical elements of foreign travel....
Organizations have nearly perfected implementing the industrial model of managing work — the effort applied toward completing a task. For individuals, this model ensures that we know what we're supposed to do each day. For organizations, it guarantees predictability and efficiency. The problem with the model is that work is becoming commoditized at an increasing rate,...
One of the dumbest corporate governance issues is whether to split the roles of Board Chair and CEO. That debate is now playing out on the front pages of business sections (print and online) as shareholders will decide next week in a nonbinding vote whether to take the...
May 15, 2013
Overcoming people's past perceptions of you isn't easy. When I launched my consulting business seven years ago, I was astonished to find — years later — that acquaintances and even friends hadn't kept up with my career transition. They'd ask about my past work in politics or nonprofit advocacy, oblivious to the changes that had been consuming my life. It wasn't their...
Listen to the language that any leader, consultant, or HR professional uses, and you'll hear them expound at length about how "we" need to change "them." That says it all: the fact is, no one likes to be changed, even if the change is ultimately beneficial.
In his recent HBR blog post,...
Writing under a pseudonym in the Financial Analysts Journal in 1960, mutual fund executive Jack Bogle made "The Case for Mutual Fund Management." Bogle took the track records of four leading mutual funds going back to 1930 and compared them to the performance of the Dow Jones Industrials. Not only had the four beaten the...
For millennia people have run by feel, an "art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain," says Christopher McDougall in his anthropological study of the topic.
Many of us still run this way, of course, but for how much longer? Now we can...
The next time we hear about a bank or insurance company's "green program" — like using energy efficient light bulbs or operating out of a LEED Platinum building — we'll either scream or throw up. Don't get us wrong. We aren't "climate change deniers" and we believe that every individual and organization should use energy and other natural resources responsibly....
If you want to provoke a vigorous debate, start a conversation on organizational culture. While there is universal agreement that (1) it exists, and (2) that it plays a crucial role in shaping behavior in organizations, there is little consensus on what organizational culture actually is, never mind how it influences behavior and whether it is something leaders can change.
This is a problem, because without a reasonable definition (or definitions) of culture, we cannot hope to...
