Richard Nisbett, University of Michigan, has a fascinating study in which he took a group of American college students and a group of native Chinese and Japanese students who had just arrived in the United States and asked both groups to take photograph portraits of each other. A typical portrait taken by an American student […]
In late 1953 the Swanson brothers had a glut of turkey. They were turkey wholesalers and had overestimated the market. So now they had 235 metric tons of turkey riding around the U.S. in refrigerated rail cars and the executive team was wondering what to do. Can’t you just imagine the CFO showing charts of […]
“I can’t recall a period of time that was as volatile, complex, ambiguous and tumultuous. As one successful executive puts it, ‘if you’re not confused, you don’t know what’s going on’.” – Warren Bennis Yesterday we had the honor or producing an event with Ram Charan, surely one of, if not the, most sought-after executive […]
“I don’t care how talented you are, if you cannot work as part of a team, you cannot reach ultimate success. With a talented team that wants to work together, you can accomplish anything. I have taken very talented smart people who did not play on a team and shown them the door.” – Joe […]
There’s an old adage that goes like this: you take the job for the money, stay for the people, and leave because of your boss. If we believe this is true, then it becomes more about the quality of relationship, environment, and fulfilling expectations (the job actually reflects the brochure), than managing precisely what people […]
“Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.” –Margaret Wheatley Recently we were collaborating with a prominent speaker, author and scholar on an interview project about creating […]
New Research Shows Corporate Training Budgets Are Misaligned Although 64% of Learning Executives Believe Informal Learning Approaches Have Higher Impact, More Than Two-Thirds of Corporate Training Budgets Are Spent on Traditional Formal Training – Bersin & Associates Props to Dan Pontefract who pretty much inspired this whole post about the mashup of Andy McAfee’s Enterprise […]
Dream well. You may find yourself there. -Neal Bushoven “Companies are people” is a popular expression to celebrate that the engine of a company is the people who work there, and it’s success or failure is built on the collaborative, innovative and actionable power of those people. But remember, a Company is a kind of […]
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, recognized the role of conceptual output as early as 1997 in a speech at the University of Connecticut when he said “The growth of the conceptual component of output has brought with it accelerating demands for workers who are equipped not simply with technical know-how, but […]
We recently had the cool opportunity to interview Professor Yves Doz from INSEAD University in Paris and he had three bits of advice for those looking to make a difference: expose yourself to new environments, get curious, and challenge yourself. He has a great story about a big company CEO who travels alone and incognito […]