"Individual
commitment to a group effort - that is what
makes a team work, a company work, a society
work, a civilization work."
-Vince Lombardi
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Refreshing Lessons in Empowerment
A lemonade stand is no Fortune 500 company, but with refreshing
simplicity, it reveals some of the key principles of empowerment.
The Customer: An Overlooked
Component of the Innovation Process
Where would YouTube be today if not for its millions of
users? What good would Wikipedia be without all of those
contributors? And how successful could IKEA possibly be
if its customers weren't willing to assemble their own
furniture?
Stephen Brown says the answer
is simple: If not for the contributions of their customers, all three of
those remarkable business successes would be anything but successful.
And there's a lesson in that,
says Brown, for companies of all kinds.
This article offers a framework to help managers
confronted with necessary change understand whether the organizations
over which they preside are capable or incapable of tackling the
challenge.
Conflict Resolution: Simple But Not Easy
(Blame Your Gremlin)
Conflict resolution is, in theory, quite
simple. Yet who among us hasn’t experienced times when our common sense
flies out the window and even the most basic skills desert us. Those
times demonstrate that conflict resolution may be simple, but is far
from easy. Let’s see why.
Usability: Bringing User-centred design inside the
organisation
Trying to get the spirit of usability and user-centered
design (UCD) established internally can be a difficult
and isolating experience, even for the most determined
user champion.
Introducing change of any kind in organisations is difficult at the
best of times, doubly so when you have to break through the concrete
walls of 'process' and 'methodology'. The emotional
journey of trying to introduce usability is no different to that of a
revolutionary, desperately trying to change the status quo through
various guerrilla tactics.
This article offers practical advice of what a user champion can do
to introduce and embed usability and user-centered design within a
company.
Hiring managers have all but
ignored standard IQ, but they remain the best predictor of
managerial success. Here is how to design an interview that uncovers
executive intelligence. A Harvard Business Review excerpt.
Opponents or Partners
The Win/Win Approach is about
changing the conflict from adversarial attack and defence, to
co-operation. It is a powerful shift of attitude that alters the whole
course of communication.
Dialogue and Debate
The need for Conflict-Resolving
Government challenges us to establish civil discourse.
The following three articles
raise our awareness and give strategies:
Getting the Information You Need from
Interviews
Interviewing important information
sources has major implications for the
success of any meeting. Access is often
limited; consultants need to leverage
their time and coax specific - and
sensitive - information from sources.
Persuading people to talk to you openly
involves a clear code of ethics and a
talent for putting people at ease.
Conflict-resolving Media
This document emphasises the
vital role the media can play in Conflict Resolution and Peace Making
globally, nationally and locally. It aims to support journalists in new
and rewarding career paths, where their unique contribution to
problem-solving is recognised and embraced.
Conflict: Constructive or Destructive?
What creates conflict in your organization?
Different views on business decisions and strategy? Disagreement about tactics?
Poor relationships and personality clashes? Conflict occurs for many reasons.
But, by changing how you respond to conflict, you can reduce its harmful effects
and maximize its useful ones.
"If it is well managed, conflict can have
positive outcomes," says CCL's Brenda McManigle. "Conflict can lead to better
decision making, expose key issues, stimulate critical thinking and fuel
creativity and innovation."
Effective Communication Tips for Today’s Manager
"Information Literacy in
a Corporate Environment"
The concept of Information Literacy (IL) recently reared its head as part of a
project I was working on. As an Information Professional, IL is a competency
that I have taken for granted, because it is a natural part of what being an IP
is all about. However, others in a corporate organisation may not possess these
skills. IL has been around for a long time and is a well documented subject -
especially in an academic context (7), but there is very little information
available when it is translated across to a corporate or workplace environment.
I have not specified putting IL into practice in any particular type of
organisation, to enable the reader to understand the broad concepts that can be
put to use. Due to length restrictions, this article is a brief outline of the
main issues, and therefore is by no means fully comprehensive.
How
Organizations Create Social Value
by Manda Salls
A recent study
on the factors that contribute to successful high-performance social
enterprises finds a connection between enterprises that link economic value
with social value.
This was the
focus of a study presented at the colloquium, "The Social Enterprise
Knowledge Network: Seeking Success in Social Enterprise," ending August 1.
This two-year study was the second carried out by SEKN since it was founded
in 2001 as a research partnership between HBS and leading business schools
in Latin America and Spain. SEKN's research centered on smart practices by
social and business organizations in Latin America and Spain.
This research
will be published in Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American
Studies book series through Harvard University Press.
The goal of the
colloquium is to help leaders in businesses and society create social value
for their communities, while in parallel strengthening their organizations.
The study
centered on forty organizations—twenty NGOs (non-governmental organizations)
and twenty corporations—deemed to be high performers in social enterprise
(SE). Through interviews, field research, and comparative analysis, HBS
professor James Austin, HBS senior researcher Ezequiel A. Reficco, UNIANDES
professor Roberto Gutiérrez, and INCAE professor Enrique Ogliastri presented
what the SEKN researchers found to be smart practices for organizations
wanting to create social value.
The researchers
stressed the importance of synergies between Economic Value (EV) and Social
Value (SV), calling them "two sides of the same coin." By aligning EV and SV,
both nonprofits and corporations can:
Read on ...
by Jonathan Byrnes
What is the single most important thing a CEO can do to maximize his or
her company’s performance?
The answer is to creatively, aggressively, and systematically build the
capabilities of the company’s middle management team: the vice presidents,
directors, and managers.
Regardless of what high-potential initiative the CEO chooses for the
company, the middle management team’s performance will determine whether it
is a success or failure. And if the middle management team is performing in
high gear, the managers themselves will generate the right initiatives, and
constantly adapt and improve them during implementation.
Read on
...
Forming, Storming, Norming,
Performing
Helping
new teams perform effectively, quickly.
by Helena Smalman
Smith
Effective teamwork is essential in today’s world, but as
you’ll know from the teams you have led or belonged to,
you can’t expect a new team to perform exceptionally
from the very outset. Team formation takes time, and
usually follows some easily recognizable stages, as the
team journeys from being a group of strangers to
becoming united team with a common goal.
Whether your team is a temporary working group or a
newly-formed, permanent team, by understanding these
stages you will be able to help the team quickly become
productive.
Understanding the
Theory
Article continues
The Ten Values of Excellent Teams
Author: Martin Edwards
Values in teams are the specific beliefs about what is
right and wrong around us. Organizational and team values are about the
culture we should encourage, the standards we should have, and the
principles that should underpin the team’s efforts. They are the essential
building blocks of teambuilding.
Over time all other things may change – an organization’s
people, strategy, finances, beneficiaries – but its values should not. If
these are allowed to degenerate, a team no longer has any unifying core, it
will fragment, staff turnover will increase and results will plummet.
Think about how values should inform your leadership
style. And hold true to them: values are the things upon which you should
never compromise.
Article continues
Not just one of the gang
By Judith Ross
When exploited, a good manager's
intimate working relationships with the team can boost
performance. Too much closeness could lead to discomfort.
In business, as in sports, winning
teams have a well-honed sense of camaraderie that helps team
members to read one another's signals, move as one, and watch
each other's backs. In management circles, this sense of
commitment and connection is often referred to as affiliation.
Many experts consider it an essential component of effective
teamwork.
The more people value their relationships with one another, the
thinking goes, the better they will perform for one another and
the organisation. But can you have too much of a good thing?
According to a new study of 20 executive leadership teams from
Fortune 500 companies conducted by the Philadelphia-based Hay
Group, you can.
While confirming that affiliation is a crucial component of
effective teamwork, the study also showed that too much emphasis
on positive relationships, especially by the team leader, could
hamper performance.
Article continues
Selecting the Best Manager
When filling a management position, should you
promote from within or hire an outsider? Our expert weighs the pros and
cons.
Hiring management-level employees can
often be a daunting task. Of course, the major challenge is to select the
individual who'll best fit into both the position and your business's
culture. Before considering any candidates, however, your first decision is
to determine whether you should promote internally or hire externally. This
article presents the pros and cons of each choice.
There are five good reasons why you
might want to consider hiring an internal candidate. First, it sets a
precedent and second, it's good for morale. Employees are often very pleased
when they see that "one of their own" has been promoted to a
management-level position. And when morale goes up, productivity most often
follows, especially when the employees like or respect the newly promoted
individual.
Article continues
Implement a Mentoring Program in Your Biz
Pick-your-own mentor programs
help new employees move ahead.
By Mark Henricks
Scott Allison, 41, knows the value of
mentors for recruiting, retaining, developing and motivating his 44 employees.
"Every time we've done an employee survey, mentorship has popped up as an
interest and a need," says the president and CEO of San Francisco-based
national independent communications firm Allison & Partners.
Allison's appreciation for mentoring dates to the early days
of the 4-year-old company. Back then, however, the firm didn't have enough
resources to establish a formal mentoring program; there weren't enough senior
people to supply mentors to everyone who was interested. Allison decided to
allow for informal mentoring, where employees got to choose their own mentors.
That method, he figured, made the most of the mentoring resources he had. The
approach worked well enough that today, even though Allison has enough senior
employees to designate mentors, he still uses the voluntary program.
Read
the whole article
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