A talent shortage combined with today’s intense push for constant growth and competitive differentiation can make hiring the right people a difficult balancing act: Organizations want to hire qualified experts with specialized skills but they also want to build up their talent pool of broad knowledge and general skills for greater flexibility and agility. This […]
Read More… from The Generalist Bias: Why Specialists Are Undervalued
Troubled manufacturing company the KSV is at crisis point. Its Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) program has failed to deliver the expected benefits, and two of its biggest customers, Avobus and Ecotech, are threatening to defect. Senior members of staff are divided, and, after a particularly difficult meeting, managing director James Grader, brought in to […]
Read More… from Calling in the Consultants: Risks and Rewards
The KSV plastics company is in trouble. A myopic cost control program has created supply chain and production problems and made it difficult to deliver orders on time and to acceptable standards. One of its best customers, Avobus, looks likely to ‘walk’. Managers are working themselves into the ground to keep the business afloat – […]
Read More… from The Surprising Reality of the Leadership of Change
"47 per cent say their current high-potential talent pool does not meet their anticipated needs." The term ‘high-potential’ is often found in business literature referring to employees. What exactly differentiates one from other employees? According to this Idea, high-potential employees are those identified as having the latent talent, ability and aspiration necessary to hold successive leadership positions […]
Economic theory tells us that human capital, i.e. employee ability, is positively linked to productivity and that high performers should be rewarded. Strong financial incentives for performance, however, can carry unexpected costs for companies. (The financial crisis was but the most vivid demonstration of this.) A recent study of a private Polish retail bank suggests […]
The type and amount of information collected by organizations today is on a scale never seen before. This explosion in the volume of data received through sources such as social media feeds, customer service databases, etc., has created a new opportunity for businesses to compete by collecting and analysing this so called “big data.” And […]
Developing deeper awareness of our own prejudices is often cited as the solution to racism. Recent research, however, suggests it’s just the first step. In a pilot study conducted at an American university, 75 per cent of white respondents acknowledged and were consciously aware of their own racial prejudices — and in a follow-up study, […]
Read More… from Conquering Racism by Taking Personal Responsibility
The greying of the post-war baby boom generation and increasing life expectancy are threatening the financial sustainability of pensions systems in many industrialized countries. European governments are responding by raising the mandatory retirement age. But this could be a short-sighted strategy. Recent research suggests that working for longer can have a negative effect on cognitive […]
Read More… from Delaying Retirement Can Be Bad for the Brain
"The answer is moral leadership, or, more specifically, respectful leadership." One of the goals of leaders is to motivate employees to perform well, work in the collective interest and define themselves in terms of ‘we’ rather than ‘me’. (See Idea Number 164, ‘Instilling Morality In Organizations’.) In this, leaders who are demographically different from followers are […]
Read More… from Fostering Diversity and Inclusion with Respectful Leadership
The banking crisis and scandals involving companies such as Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and, more recently, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, have made the need to understand moral behaviour in organizations more urgent. Research so far has tended to take a leader-focused approach, implying that the ethical behaviour of leaders translates directly to ethical behaviour in followers. […]
