Teams
Lift Outs: How to Acquire a High-Functioning Team
Boris Groysberg and
Robin Abrahams
December
Reprint R0612J
Managing Multicultural Teams
Jeanne Brett, Kristin Behfar, and
Mary C. Kern
November
Reprint R0611D
When to Let Them Duke It Out
Tony Simons and
Randall S. Peterson
Forethought, June
Reprint F0606E
Showing posts with label Behavioral managment issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Behavioral managment issues. Show all posts
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Managing Energy of the Work Force
Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time.
By: Schwartz, Tony,
Harvard Business Review,
Oct 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 10
To effectively reenergize their workforces, organizations need to shift their emphasis from getting more out of people to investing more in them, so they are motivated--and able--to bring more of themselves to work every day. To recharge themselves, individuals need to recognize the costs of energy-depleting behaviors and then take responsibility for changing them, regardless of the circumstances they're facing.
Defined in physics as the capacity to work, energy comes from four main wellsprings in human beings: the body, emotions, mind, and spirit. In each, energy can be systematically expanded and regularly renewed by establishing specific rituals--behaviors that are intentionally practiced and precisely scheduled, with the goal of making them unconscious and automatic as quickly as possible.
At Wachovia Bank, we took a group of employees through a pilot energy management program and then measured their performance against that of a control group. The participants outperformed the controls on a series of financial metrics, such as the value of loans they generated.
Tony Schwartz (tony@theenergyproject.com) is the president and founder of the Energy Project in New York City, and a coauthor of The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal (Free Press, 2003).
By: Schwartz, Tony,
Harvard Business Review,
Oct 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 10
To effectively reenergize their workforces, organizations need to shift their emphasis from getting more out of people to investing more in them, so they are motivated--and able--to bring more of themselves to work every day. To recharge themselves, individuals need to recognize the costs of energy-depleting behaviors and then take responsibility for changing them, regardless of the circumstances they're facing.
Defined in physics as the capacity to work, energy comes from four main wellsprings in human beings: the body, emotions, mind, and spirit. In each, energy can be systematically expanded and regularly renewed by establishing specific rituals--behaviors that are intentionally practiced and precisely scheduled, with the goal of making them unconscious and automatic as quickly as possible.
At Wachovia Bank, we took a group of employees through a pilot energy management program and then measured their performance against that of a control group. The participants outperformed the controls on a series of financial metrics, such as the value of loans they generated.
Tony Schwartz (tony@theenergyproject.com) is the president and founder of the Energy Project in New York City, and a coauthor of The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal (Free Press, 2003).
Communication among Engineers
Are Your Engineers Talking to One Another When They Should?
By: Sosa, Manuel E., Eppinger, Steven D., Rowles, Craig M.,
Harvard Business Review,
Nov 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 11
A new application of an established project management tool, the design structure matrix, can help a company identify where failures in planned communications could occur as well as recognize when project teams engage in useful technical communications that were not planned.
• If a company finds that a lot of planned communication is not taking place, then it should revisit its product development organization. Even projects that are completely organized around a product's architecture are typically vulnerable to communication breakdowns.
Manuel E. Sosa is an assistant professor of technology and operations management at Insead in Fontainebleau, France. Steven D. Eppinger is a professor of management science and engineering systems and deputy dean at MIT's Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Craig M. Rowles was a Module Center manager at Pratt & Whitney, based in East Hartford, Connecticut; he is now CEO of Emegear, a medical device company in Carpinteria, California.
By: Sosa, Manuel E., Eppinger, Steven D., Rowles, Craig M.,
Harvard Business Review,
Nov 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 11
A new application of an established project management tool, the design structure matrix, can help a company identify where failures in planned communications could occur as well as recognize when project teams engage in useful technical communications that were not planned.
• If a company finds that a lot of planned communication is not taking place, then it should revisit its product development organization. Even projects that are completely organized around a product's architecture are typically vulnerable to communication breakdowns.
Manuel E. Sosa is an assistant professor of technology and operations management at Insead in Fontainebleau, France. Steven D. Eppinger is a professor of management science and engineering systems and deputy dean at MIT's Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Craig M. Rowles was a Module Center manager at Pratt & Whitney, based in East Hartford, Connecticut; he is now CEO of Emegear, a medical device company in Carpinteria, California.
8 Ways to Build Collaborative Teams
8 Ways to Build Collaborative Teams.
By: Gratton, Lynda, Erickson, Tamara J.,
Harvard Business Review,
Nov 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 11
Executive Support
Investing in signature relationship practices
Modeling collaborative behavior
Creating a "gift culture
Focused HR Practices
Ensuring the requisite skills
Supporting a sense of community
The Right Team Leaders
Assigning leaders who are both task- and relationship-oriented
Team Formation and Structure
Building on heritage relationships
Understanding role clarity and task ambiguity
Lynda Gratton (lgratton@london.edu) is a professor of management practice at London Business School and a senior fellow at the Advanced Institute of Management. She is the author of Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organizations Buzz with Energy - and Others Don't (Berrett-Koehler, 2007). Tamara J. Erickson (tjerickson@concoursgroup.com) is the president of the Concours Institute, the research and education arm of BSG Alliance. She is based in Boston and is a coauthor of several articles for HBR, including the McKinsey Award winner "It's Time to Retire Retirement" (March 2004).
By: Gratton, Lynda, Erickson, Tamara J.,
Harvard Business Review,
Nov 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 11
Executive Support
Investing in signature relationship practices
Modeling collaborative behavior
Creating a "gift culture
Focused HR Practices
Ensuring the requisite skills
Supporting a sense of community
The Right Team Leaders
Assigning leaders who are both task- and relationship-oriented
Team Formation and Structure
Building on heritage relationships
Understanding role clarity and task ambiguity
Lynda Gratton (lgratton@london.edu) is a professor of management practice at London Business School and a senior fellow at the Advanced Institute of Management. She is the author of Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organizations Buzz with Energy - and Others Don't (Berrett-Koehler, 2007). Tamara J. Erickson (tjerickson@concoursgroup.com) is the president of the Concours Institute, the research and education arm of BSG Alliance. She is based in Boston and is a coauthor of several articles for HBR, including the McKinsey Award winner "It's Time to Retire Retirement" (March 2004).
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Systematic Errors in Processing Information in M&As
Deals Without Delusions. By: Lovallo, Dan, Viguerie, Patrick, Uhlaner, Robert, Horn, John,
Harvard Business Review,
Dec 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 12
Our work has shown that companies that aggressively leverage acquisitions for growth are at least as successful in the eyes of the capital markets as those that focus on purely organic ways to grow. Nevertheless, recent research from McKinsey & Company reveals that approximately half of acquiring companies continue to pay more for acquisitions than they're worth.
when executives take a targeted debiasing approach to M&A, deals can be more successful. The approach requires executives first to identify the cognitive mechanisms at play during various decision-making steps and then to use a set of techniques to reduce bias at specific decision points, thereby leading to sounder judgments.
Confirmation bias.
Overconfidence.
Underestimation of cultural differences.
The planning fallacy.
Conflict of interest.
The Bidding Phase: Avoiding the Winner's Curse
McKinsey survey suggested that successful acquirers are much more likely to exit when competitors initiate a bidding war: 83% of the successful companies withdrew at least sometimes, compared with only 29% of the unrewarded (not so successful)companies.
One technique for avoiding the winner's curse is to tie the compensation of the person responsible for the deal's price to the success of the deal - for example, to the percentage of estimated synergies realized.
The Final Phase biases
Once an initial bid is accepted, the acquirer has an important opportunity for additional due diligence, since it now has much greater access to the target's books. The final negotiation phase also encompasses the deal's legal structuring (for example, the exact composition of payment cash or stock). In this final phase of due diligence, the goal is to honestly evaluate the investment case in light of the more detailed information now available from the target. Two biases can come into play.
The first stems from a tendency to underreact to surprising news.
The sunk cost fallacy can cause an acquirer to continue pursuing the target even when it shouldn't.
Dan Lovallo (dan_lovallo@external.mckinsey.com) is a professor of management at the University of Western Australia Business School in Perth and a senior adviser to McKinsey & Company. He is a coauthor of "Delusions of Success: How Optimism Undermines Executives' Decisions" (HBR July 2003).
Patrick Viguerie (patrick_viguerie@mckinsey.com) is a director in McKinsey's Atlanta office.
Robert Uhlaner (robert_uhlaner@mckinsey.com) is a partner in the firm's West Coast office.
John Horn (john_horn@mckinsey.com) is an associate in its Washington, DC, office.
Harvard Business Review,
Dec 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 12
Our work has shown that companies that aggressively leverage acquisitions for growth are at least as successful in the eyes of the capital markets as those that focus on purely organic ways to grow. Nevertheless, recent research from McKinsey & Company reveals that approximately half of acquiring companies continue to pay more for acquisitions than they're worth.
when executives take a targeted debiasing approach to M&A, deals can be more successful. The approach requires executives first to identify the cognitive mechanisms at play during various decision-making steps and then to use a set of techniques to reduce bias at specific decision points, thereby leading to sounder judgments.
Confirmation bias.
Overconfidence.
Underestimation of cultural differences.
The planning fallacy.
Conflict of interest.
The Bidding Phase: Avoiding the Winner's Curse
McKinsey survey suggested that successful acquirers are much more likely to exit when competitors initiate a bidding war: 83% of the successful companies withdrew at least sometimes, compared with only 29% of the unrewarded (not so successful)companies.
One technique for avoiding the winner's curse is to tie the compensation of the person responsible for the deal's price to the success of the deal - for example, to the percentage of estimated synergies realized.
The Final Phase biases
Once an initial bid is accepted, the acquirer has an important opportunity for additional due diligence, since it now has much greater access to the target's books. The final negotiation phase also encompasses the deal's legal structuring (for example, the exact composition of payment cash or stock). In this final phase of due diligence, the goal is to honestly evaluate the investment case in light of the more detailed information now available from the target. Two biases can come into play.
The first stems from a tendency to underreact to surprising news.
The sunk cost fallacy can cause an acquirer to continue pursuing the target even when it shouldn't.
Dan Lovallo (dan_lovallo@external.mckinsey.com) is a professor of management at the University of Western Australia Business School in Perth and a senior adviser to McKinsey & Company. He is a coauthor of "Delusions of Success: How Optimism Undermines Executives' Decisions" (HBR July 2003).
Patrick Viguerie (patrick_viguerie@mckinsey.com) is a director in McKinsey's Atlanta office.
Robert Uhlaner (robert_uhlaner@mckinsey.com) is a partner in the firm's West Coast office.
John Horn (john_horn@mckinsey.com) is an associate in its Washington, DC, office.
Breakthrough Thinking from Inside the Box
Breakthrough Thinking from Inside the Box.
By: Coyne, Kevin P., Clifford, Patricia Gorman, Dye, Renée,
Harvard Business Review,
Dec 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 12
Most managers and professionals are quite capable of thinking effectively inside a box. They live with constraints all the time and automatically explore alternatives, combinations, and permutations within their confined space. We have found that if you systematically constrain the scope of their thinking (but not too much), people are adept at fully exploring the possibilities, and they can regularly generate lots of good ideas - and occasionally some great ones. Setting the right constraints is a matter of asking the right kinds of questions: ones that create boxes that are useful, but different, from the boxes your people currently think in.
Ten years ago, as part of a larger project for McKinsey's strategy practice, we led a team of consultants who developed such an approach to brainstorming. It involves posing concrete questions and orchestrating the process for answering those questions.
The most fertile questions focus the mind on a subset of possibilities that differ markedly from those explored before, guiding people to valuable overlooked corners of the universe of possible improvements.
Ideas for better Brainstorming
Ensure that everyone is fully engaged
Focus every discussion using your preselected questions
Do not rely solely on one brainstorming session.
Narrow the list of ideas to the ones you will seriously investigate right away
Kevin P. Coyne (kevin@kevincoynepartners.com) is the founder of Kevin Coyne Partners, an executive-counseling firm in Atlanta, and previously was a director of McKinsey & Company. Patricia Gorman Clifford (trish_clifford@mckinsey.com) is a senior strategy expert in McKinsey's office in Stamford, Connecticut. Renée Dye (renee_dye@mckinsey.com) is a senior consultant in the firm's strategy practice and is based in Atlanta.
By: Coyne, Kevin P., Clifford, Patricia Gorman, Dye, Renée,
Harvard Business Review,
Dec 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 12
Most managers and professionals are quite capable of thinking effectively inside a box. They live with constraints all the time and automatically explore alternatives, combinations, and permutations within their confined space. We have found that if you systematically constrain the scope of their thinking (but not too much), people are adept at fully exploring the possibilities, and they can regularly generate lots of good ideas - and occasionally some great ones. Setting the right constraints is a matter of asking the right kinds of questions: ones that create boxes that are useful, but different, from the boxes your people currently think in.
Ten years ago, as part of a larger project for McKinsey's strategy practice, we led a team of consultants who developed such an approach to brainstorming. It involves posing concrete questions and orchestrating the process for answering those questions.
The most fertile questions focus the mind on a subset of possibilities that differ markedly from those explored before, guiding people to valuable overlooked corners of the universe of possible improvements.
Ideas for better Brainstorming
Ensure that everyone is fully engaged
Focus every discussion using your preselected questions
Do not rely solely on one brainstorming session.
Narrow the list of ideas to the ones you will seriously investigate right away
Kevin P. Coyne (kevin@kevincoynepartners.com) is the founder of Kevin Coyne Partners, an executive-counseling firm in Atlanta, and previously was a director of McKinsey & Company. Patricia Gorman Clifford (trish_clifford@mckinsey.com) is a senior strategy expert in McKinsey's office in Stamford, Connecticut. Renée Dye (renee_dye@mckinsey.com) is a senior consultant in the firm's strategy practice and is based in Atlanta.
Making Relationships Work - Marriage
Making Relationships Work.
By: Coutu, Diane,
Harvard Business Review,
Dec 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 12
A Conversation with Psychologist John M. Gottman
The best science we have on relationships comes from the most intense relationship of all - marriage. Here's what we know about it.
Few people can tell us more about how to maintain good personal relationships than John M. Gottman, the executive director of the Relationship Research Institute. At the institute's Family Research Laboratory - known as the Love Lab - Gottman has been studying marriage and divorce for the past 35 years.
Successful couples, he notes, look for ways to accentuate the positive. They try to say "yes" as often as possible.
It sounds simple, but in fact you could capture all of my research findings with the metaphor of a saltshaker. Instead of filling it with salt, fill it with all the ways you can say yes, and that's what a good relationship is. "Yes," you say, "that is a good idea." "Yes, that's a great point, I never thought of that." "Yes, let's do that if you think it's important." You sprinkle yeses throughout your interactions - that's what a good relationship is.
I want to stress that good relationships are not just about knowing when to fight and how to patch things up. We also need humor, affection, playing, silliness, exploration, adventure, lust, touching - all those positive emotional things that we share with all mammals. Something that's been so hard for me to convey to the media is that trivial moments provide opportunities for profound connection.
I think that men need to learn how to embrace their wives' anger.
By: Coutu, Diane,
Harvard Business Review,
Dec 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 12
A Conversation with Psychologist John M. Gottman
The best science we have on relationships comes from the most intense relationship of all - marriage. Here's what we know about it.
Few people can tell us more about how to maintain good personal relationships than John M. Gottman, the executive director of the Relationship Research Institute. At the institute's Family Research Laboratory - known as the Love Lab - Gottman has been studying marriage and divorce for the past 35 years.
Successful couples, he notes, look for ways to accentuate the positive. They try to say "yes" as often as possible.
It sounds simple, but in fact you could capture all of my research findings with the metaphor of a saltshaker. Instead of filling it with salt, fill it with all the ways you can say yes, and that's what a good relationship is. "Yes," you say, "that is a good idea." "Yes, that's a great point, I never thought of that." "Yes, let's do that if you think it's important." You sprinkle yeses throughout your interactions - that's what a good relationship is.
I want to stress that good relationships are not just about knowing when to fight and how to patch things up. We also need humor, affection, playing, silliness, exploration, adventure, lust, touching - all those positive emotional things that we share with all mammals. Something that's been so hard for me to convey to the media is that trivial moments provide opportunities for profound connection.
I think that men need to learn how to embrace their wives' anger.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
You Think You're a Good Listener But
So You Think You're a Good Listener.
By: Barwise, Patrick, Meehan, Seán,
Harvard Business Review,
April 2008, Vol. 86, Issue 4
Some important ideas
Our research – based on Personnel Decisions International's surveys of over 4,000 U.S. managers across various industries and functions – revealed an important additional pattern:
The gap between managers' self-evaluations and colleagues' assessments is widest when it comes to gauging receptiveness to hearing about difficult issues. The difference is clear in ratings of behaviors such as "Encourages others to express their views, even contrary ones" and "Listens willingly to concerns expressed by others."
We believe, is that in most boss-subordinate relationships, superiors overestimate their openness to receiving difficult messages and simultaneously underestimate the extent to which the power difference discourages subordinates from speaking their minds.
Managers should assume that they are less open to unwelcome messages than they think – and recognize that they may be sending subtle signals that discourage frank input.
Patrick Barwise (pbarwise@london.edu) is an emeritus professor of management and marketing at London Business School. Seán Meehan (meehan@imd.ch) is the Martin Hilti Professor of Marketing and Change Management at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland.
By: Barwise, Patrick, Meehan, Seán,
Harvard Business Review,
April 2008, Vol. 86, Issue 4
Some important ideas
Our research – based on Personnel Decisions International's surveys of over 4,000 U.S. managers across various industries and functions – revealed an important additional pattern:
The gap between managers' self-evaluations and colleagues' assessments is widest when it comes to gauging receptiveness to hearing about difficult issues. The difference is clear in ratings of behaviors such as "Encourages others to express their views, even contrary ones" and "Listens willingly to concerns expressed by others."
We believe, is that in most boss-subordinate relationships, superiors overestimate their openness to receiving difficult messages and simultaneously underestimate the extent to which the power difference discourages subordinates from speaking their minds.
Managers should assume that they are less open to unwelcome messages than they think – and recognize that they may be sending subtle signals that discourage frank input.
Patrick Barwise (pbarwise@london.edu) is an emeritus professor of management and marketing at London Business School. Seán Meehan (meehan@imd.ch) is the Martin Hilti Professor of Marketing and Change Management at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland.
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