“Find out what it means to me.” It turns out that most managers could learn something from the late Queen of Soul. Recent research reported in Harvard Business Review* explains that when you ask workers what means most to them, they often say feeling respected by superiors tops the list. Yet employees report more disrespectful behavior each year. Leaders need to learn … [Read more...] about R-E-S-P-E-C-T
culture
Building Organizational Grit
Grit – the exceptional stamina that individuals demonstrate to achieve high performance – is the topic of a recent article* in Harvard Business Review. People strong in grit are always striving to improve, make the sacrifices necessary to achieve, and remain in love with what they do. Research shows that grit predicts high performance in a variety of domains. Given the … [Read more...] about Building Organizational Grit
Building a Learning Culture
Technology continues to rapidly change the skills we need in the workplace to be successful. Coming applications of Artificial Intelligence is just going to speed that up. There is no way that your team or organization will meet its mission goals in the future if you do not have “learning” as a key part of your culture. A recent Harvard Business Review article* suggests … [Read more...] about Building a Learning Culture
Engaged & Exhausted
Employee engagement is the current Holy Grail for organizations. Many employers – including my own, the University of Maryland – are spending millions of dollars to assess employee engagement and implement programs to increase engagement. Given the research on the payoff of having an engaged workforce, these investments make sense (e.g., see extensive research by Gallup). … [Read more...] about Engaged & Exhausted
Conduct a Premortem
We’ve all seen the TV docs do a postmortem to figure out why and how a victim died so the NCIS detectives can catch the bad guy. A lot of organizations will conduct a postmortem after a big event or project has concluded to do an evaluation (though I prefer an After Action Review, since I hope no one died while implementing the project). Research has demonstrated … [Read more...] about Conduct a Premortem