organizational design

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If We Cared About Our Development

A recent HBR article (Why companies are so bad at treating employees like people) by Herminia Ibarra speaks to the need to re-invent the workplace if there is to be human development at work. As Ibarra characterizes it, this re-invention requires “reimagining complex organizations so that they are more human and agile.” The implication seems to be that making organizations more human and agile involves solving the “thorny problem of developing people.” Continue reading →

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Join the Race

 

With the race to become more productive, more competitive and more profitable having the answer to the question that continues to challenge business managers, how do you motivate people, can be the ticket to winning. Even though Frederick Hertzberg offered a direct and complete answer give them something motivating to do, the question for the majority of business managers remains unanswered.  Further, not understanding the depth of Hertzberg’s answer, we’ve even advanced another classification of management—management can’t do it but leadership can—in hopes of meeting the challenge.  Yet whether you are labeled a manager or a leader the challenge goes largely unmet.

 

What could be the root of the problem and the difficulty in dissolving it? Continue reading →

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Redesign for Capability Not Flatness

In an HBR Blog Network essay by Ron Ashkenas titled “More direct reports make life easier”, the case is made for increasing the span of control so that it becomes “possible to compress the number of hierarchical layers or levels.”  Why do this? Continue reading →

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Challenging The Chain of Command

If management can control things then management can be effective and efficient in realizing the desired results and sustaining the business. You will find very few who would disagree with this if-then thinking.  This thinking is so common that it is rarely, if ever challenged—until now. Continue reading →

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Facilitate Performance, Don’t Appraise It

Ah the annual performance appraisal! Let’s deconstruct this.  Annual means every year.  Performance means accomplishment. Appraisal means offering a judgment on the value of something or someone.  So the annual performance appraisal is a yearly judgment of another person’s value to the organization. Continue reading →

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Performance Appraisal: Pathway to Mistrust

Robert Galford’s HBR Blog Network article, “How to keep your cool during a performance review” suggest there is a widespread abhorrence and likely fear of the annual performance review.  To make what is often a not-so-good experience better Robert offers four tactics: relax; prepare yourself to hear one or more unexpected ‘somethings’; if you don’t agree with the feedback, don’t launch into a defense right away; and when it is over, say thank you, reflect on the overall message and don’t file it and forget it.   While these are no doubt helpful toward making lemonade out of a lemon, they don’t mitigate the overall effect of the annual performance appraisal process. Continue reading →

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Hidden Leadership Lesson #31

Those in authority can provide leadership experience to people in their organization by striving to provide them the opportunity to realize joy in work.  Accordingly, in a New York Times interview, Ori Hadomi (CEO of Mazor Robitics) asserts, “It’s important that people are happy in what they do. I believe my role is not to make people work but to give them the right working conditions so that they will enjoy what they do.”  Although few would argue against a people-centered management approach yet far too many don’t put it into practice.  Continue reading →

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The Gravity of Vision

The Gravity of Vision

In our universe what keeps things together? In a general sense what brings chaos to order?  Gravity. For without it every person and thing would be cast into space, floating aimlessly, making for quite a chaotic existence. If not for gravity then nothing would be at rest on earth.  Moreover this invisible force of attraction provides a general order to the movement of planets in our universe—making it one (whole) system. Continue reading →