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Organization Behavior

Organizations don’t change, people change

Organization Behavior July 30, 2010

Organizations are, quite simply, made up of social interactions:  groups of people.  Organizations will not change if people do not change.  There is no such thing as organization change, they don’t change, people change. All change:  transformation, business process reengineering, technology implementation, mergers & acquisitions, Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, strategic planning or, if you [...]

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Organization sabotage and the butterfly effect

Organization Behavior July 23, 2010

An intervention. Interventions are principal learning processes in the “action” stage of organization development (OD)*. An intervention is what people outside organization development [namely the majority of all professionals are NOT in organization development] call a project or transformation.   The reason a professional might call for an intervention, or project, can easily be identified as [...]

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Organization development is business growth

Organization Behavior July 19, 2010

Organization development has yet to earn a role in all organizations.  Only the most progressive companies even have an organization development role, staff, department, or group.  The challenge to organization development success is that it is hard to find a linear trajectory for success.  Organization development may have clear goals, but the reality, there is rarely [...]

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All hail the solution to the micromanager

Organization Behavior May 19, 2010

How to handle the micromanager? Raise your hand if you love working for a micromanager? Are you a micromanager, you can raise your hand if you are, no one else knows. Micromanagers grind work to a halt. If there is no confidence in work getting done, the fish rots from the head down: the management [...]

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Human capital assessments – the symptom or the disease

Organization Behavior April 14, 2010

The drive to evaluate operations and to contain costs is mistakenly applied as an operational issue across the board.  Too often human capital assessments are lumped into the systems theory world of process and become a technical asset for management’s diagnostic view for cuts.  The result becomes an assessment or evaluation process that is really [...]

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Change management bottom up or top down

Organization Behavior April 4, 2010

Classic change theory: leadership drives change; leadership must be committed for change to work. Seems to make sense, but in reality leadership is irrelevant. The organization’s ability to change is dictated by the operational units and employees, not leadership. The reality: culture eats strategy for lunch. Your workers dictate change and strategy. Leadership doesn’t drive [...]

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The cost of culture, a 50% turnover of the Fortune 500

Organization Behavior February 4, 2010

What is the cost of culture? Why is it even worth identifying corporate culture? Let’s start with what is culture. Culture is the values, norms, assumptions, expectations, and definitions that characterize organizations or affectionately known as: how things are done around here Culture is often a holdover from the founder(s) actions; sometimes developed consciously by [...]

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5 tips to manage better meetings

Organization Behavior December 17, 2009

Meetings, meetings, and more meetings. We have meetings to clear up confusion, to communicate, to interact, to make decisions, to listen, and to collaborate. Too many meetings end without clear decisions and too often it is not until after the meeting is finished when the real conversations begin when people: complain about not being heard, [...]

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Innovation, the technical risk to IQ

Organization Behavior November 16, 2009

I see and read so much about offers to teach or facilitate innovation, but what is innovation? Innovation is risk Innovation is dialogue Innovation is opportunity (also known as diversity) Are you innovative: Do you ask good questions or do you listen without judgment or without looking to interrupt? Do you allow yourself and people [...]

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Change management stormtroopers and system theory

Organization Behavior October 28, 2009

When did systems theory get hijacked by process engineers and change management stormtroopers? When did we allow our organizations to be built and led by analytical, causal, deductive, drones and an over-adherence of frameworks to analyze past events? Frameworks and theories that rely on past events ignore all opportunity for organizations to interact in an [...]

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Change management, project management, and the intervention

Organization Behavior October 15, 2009

Change Management is the Illness Overwhelmingly, organizations rely on process analysis to identify opportunity for savings. Process analysis is most commonly identified as change management. Change Management: Analyze and diagnose business and operations processes with a focus on the greatest areas of improvement in cost, schedule, and quality. Very few enjoy having themselves and their [...]

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Organization strategy and development – party like it’s 1969

Organization Behavior September 24, 2009

How do organizations survive? The only way an organization survives is to grow. Like people, an organization grows and develops by developing new skills, knowledge, and abilities. An organization’s strategy is nothing without an organization’s development. Most professionals have an image of what marketing, sales, accounting, or human resource professionals do, but fewer are naturally [...]

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Why Startups Should ALWAYS Compromise When Hiring? — Never!

Organization Behavior August 12, 2009

Reading a blog on the venture capital website Start Up Hire called: Should Startups Compromise When Hiring? I found a reference to a blog Dharmesh Shah, Chief Technology Officer & Founder of Hubspot* and Onstartups.com, wrote, “Why Startups Should ALWAYS Compromise When Hiring?”. I posted a comment to the blog as I felt Start Up [...]

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The bully in the corner office

Organization Behavior August 3, 2009

I challenge myself to write blogs that might start a conversation either leading to change or to sustain what is working. I want to present an idea to provide a spark for action or follow-through. Anyone can come up with an idea, that’s easy, the hard part is to take an idea into implementation. My [...]

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Diversity facade, part 2: diversity hijacked

Organization Behavior July 20, 2009

On 2 earlier blog posts I write 1) that motivation is the bottom-line success and 2) diversity is about opportunity. In this blog I want to dig into how diversity can negatively affect motivation. First, let’s look at 2 definitions*: Of, relating to, or supporting broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical [...]

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The most difficult industry to work in

Organization Behavior June 5, 2009

I admit each organization is unique. Each handles and manages industry and firm-specific stress and demand differently. I do not admit that organizations are anything more than a system of human interrelations. The organization is a product of human interaction and social construction. Organizations do not follow ordained, industry-driven culture. There is no set of [...]

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The bottom line: motivation

Organization Behavior May 21, 2009

Your organization is only effective when they feel like it.  Have you coached your management and executive team on how to motivate people around your vision?  The bottom line is motivation, their motivation, not yours. A leader holds management accountable to understand, commit, and own their role to translate your vision to their team.  Your [...]

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Emotion versus intelligence – the tortoise and the hare

Organization Behavior April 6, 2009

In a prior post I advocate emotional intelligence as a more important quality job interview criteria than a corporate or team culture fit. What is emotional intelligence or EI? And what does the EI vs. IQ debate mean? Where IQ intends to measure the ability to reason deductively or inductively. Much has come to light [...]

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Buy in

Organization Behavior March 29, 2009

>In organization change I always avoid the term buy in. You may hear the term in some variation of the following: now we need to get [insert stakeholder here] to buy in. I have never been comfortable asking anyone to ‘buy in’ to a strategic plan, a new product launch, or an organization change. ‘Buy [...]

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Leading and managing

Organization Behavior March 26, 2009

Managers manage. Leaders lead. Are these roles so different? A manager is charged to manage their resources against a budget.  Does this allow a manager to maximizing their talent, to cultivate creativity in their team, or to take risks?  The manager needs to deliver to their budget and align their resources to successfully enable their [...]

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What can a 5 year old teach you about leadership?

Organization Behavior March 24, 2009

When an organization’s words do not match action, who is to blame? How many companies have you seen or worked with that have literature, speeches, employee handbooks, or marketing that just does not match the actions or culture inside the organization? Ever been around a company with printed materials that talk of putting people first, [...]

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