Engaging Employees and Customers

/
Engaging Employees and Customers

My research, teaching and consulting frequently focuses on employees and the strategic use of human capital, and the topic of employee engagement has been hot for some time now. It’s clearly important—organizations oftentimes thrive most when their employees are fully contributing their efforts and expertise. Related to the topic of employee engagement is the area of customer engagement—another critical topic. 

Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to pick the brain of someone who is on the front lines of engaging both employees and customers at one of the world’s largest companies: Heather Gordon, Ph.D. 

Heather is currently the customer strategy manager at Duke Energy Corporation. Here’s my interview with her. 

Read More

Research-Based Implications of The Gig Economy

/
Research-Based Implications of The Gig Economy

Chances are that you’ve encountered the “gig economy” in your organization already, even if you haven’t called it that.

Simply speaking, it refers to the increasingly prevalent trend of people and organizations choosing to work in temporary, contingent arrangements. I’ve experienced it across a number of industries and sectors, from working alongside adjunct professors to advising Afghan police officers alongside civilian contractors. I’ve worked with a number of businesses that are increasingly maintaining a contingent workforce that can respond to shifting labor demands.

Read More

For Those About to Lead

/
For Those About to Lead

For those about to lead, I salute you. 

The vast majority of people go with the flow. Many people—even those whom we often dub “leaders”—fulfill their roles by finding out what others expect of them and meeting those expectations. This includes many heads of state—current, former and aspiring—military generals and admirals, university presidents and chief executives. 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with going with the flow, depending on

Read More

Should We Abolish Performance Reviews?

/
Should We Abolish Performance Reviews?

In four weeks from today, I’ll be enjoying the company of thousands of organizational psychologists at this year’s annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) in Anaheim, Calif. This is a fun-loving crowd. It’s probably also one of the few crowds in which you’ll find passionate debates about topics such as psychometrics, leadership assessments or classical test theory.

At last year’s conference, in fact, a structured debate took place on the topic of performance appraisals. Yes, you read that correctly.  

Read More

What HR People Need to Know About Change

/
What HR People Need to Know About Change

In a recent post and in some of my research, I’ve been exploring the role that human resources (HR) plays in organizational change. This includes both HR as a function and HR professionals themselves as they get involved (either proactively or reactively) in change efforts.

And there’s one key aspect of organizational change that I think is helpful for HR people to consider. 

Read More

Bill Gates Built the Deadliest Weapon in the U.S. Military

/
Bill Gates Built the Deadliest Weapon in the U.S. Military

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, unwittingly created a weapon of mass destruction for the U.S. military when his company created PowerPoint. It can be a useful tool for presentations, but within the U.S. military it has become a ubiquitous technology and communication format that structures much of what gets done, particularly for staff officers.

The proliferation of PowerPoint within the U.S. armed forces is nothing new, and its presence is no surprise to those of us who have served within it. But one could argue that its use is so pervasive that it even structures how people think and how they make decisions.

So in some ways, Microsoft PowerPoint is the deadliest weapon in the U.S. military’s arsenal. The question, though,

Read More

What’s HR’s Role in Change Management?

/
What’s HR’s Role in Change Management?

Is human resources (HR) the organizational function that must lead when dealing with organizational change?

Or is managing change a fundamental leadership competency that a wide array of people from every function should have or develop? If that’s the case, should HR professionals themselves try to be change agents?

What works best in organizations that are dealing with a particularly turbulent business environment?

These are a few of the questions that I had the pleasure of discussing last week in a lively conversation in Cincinnati with

Read More

The HR Mindset That Wins Friends and Influences CEOs

/
The HR Mindset That Wins Friends and Influences CEOs

During a recent conversation I had with a senior executive, I brought up some of my efforts to promote strategic thinking and using data to guide decision-making among human resources (HR) professionals. She nodded in agreement, but then she interrupted.

“You know, there’s one thing I hate about our HR department,” she said. “They think like gate keepers, when they should be thinking like service providers.”

She went on to describe how

Read More

Leadership to Change the World

/
Leadership to Change the World

Recently, I did something that changed the world. It might have been an encouraging word, a provocative question, a smile.

But honestly, I have no idea what it was.

Recently, you did something that changed the world. It might have been an offer to help, an attentive ear, a cup of coffee.

But you, like me, probably don’t know exactly what you did either.

You see, everything we do can either

Read More

How a Startup Revolutionized its Meetings

/
How a Startup Revolutionized its Meetings

Some parts of life are easy to dislike. World hunger and terrorism come to mind.

For many people, so do workplace meetings.

But the startup Gild Collective—comprised of three cofounders, Jessie Deye, Kelsey Pytlik, and Rachel Bauer McCreary—has realized that meetings can not only be helpful, but they can be essential for driving alignment and productivity.

Read More

Why CEOs (Might) Hate HR

/
Why CEOs (Might) Hate HR

In the American television comedy series "The Office," the hostility between Michael Scott, regional manager of the mythical paper company Dunder Mifflin’s branch in Scranton, Pa., and Toby Flenderson, the branch’s human resources director, is a recurring theme.

During one particularly humorous scene, Michael learns suddenly that Toby—who had left the office previously—has returned.

Michael’s reaction?

Read More

Feed Them Radishes! And 3 More Ways to Stifle Change

/
Feed Them Radishes! And 3 More Ways to Stifle Change

We are creatures of habit. We continually seek—or create—routines. The structures of our days and our weeks give us predictability, and that makes us comfortable. 

None of this is inherently bad. In fact, routines and habits let us free our minds to work on other, more complex problems. If we had to think actively about everything in our day, deliberately evaluating every decision from the time we roll out of bed until we return to the pillow, we’d be overwhelmed. 

What does this have to do with agility, human resources, leadership and change? 

Everything. 

Read More

Using the Premortem to Drive HR Agility

/
Using the Premortem to Drive HR Agility

When the unexpected strikes, our brains often start working like we’re being chased by a wild animal. Levels of hormones—specifically, adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol—increase, resulting in a range of reactions including increased heartrate, elevated blood pressure and tunnel-vision like focus on the threat. 

This is great if you actually are being chased by a lion. The threat is singular, and your immediate actions are likely singular as well (for example, run fast to shelter). 

But it’s not so great if you’re facing a complex problem in your organization. 

Read More

Strike a match: Agile improvisation in the face of disaster

/
Strike a match: Agile improvisation in the face of disaster

On August 5, 1949, a team of 15 smokejumpers parachuted into the Mann Gulch near the Missouri River in Montana to fight a fire that had started the previous day. At first appraisal, fighting the fire seemed a simple task. But thus began one of the worst disasters in the modern history of wildfire suppression in which all but two of the team members lost their lives.

Immortalized in Norman Maclean’s book Young Men and Fire[i], in the folk song Cold Missouri Waters by James Keelaghan and in famed organizational scholar Karl Weick’s scholarly analysis[ii], the incident is a tragic-yet-fascinating account of a team attempting to sense and respond to a rapidly evolving environment. It’s a story of improvisation, counter-intuitive action and collapsed team structures.

According to Maclean’s account, the team

Read More

The Power We All Have But Rarely Use

/
The Power We All Have But Rarely Use

“Hey, you did a really great job in a tough situation. They’re lucky to have you.” I heard the gentleman in front of me say these two simple sentences to the United Airlines flight attendant as we exited the plane. It was a flight that normally takes about one hour, but it turned into more than three hours for all of us aboard the aircraft due to weather considerations. The flight attendant’s reaction to this unsolicited positive feedback, as you can imagine, was one of delight and appreciation.

Read More

Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

/

Derek Sivers is an interesting guy--entrepreneur, speaker, musician, performer, writer, programmer, and more. I first heard him speak at a music business conference in 2004, when he was running CDBaby, the wildly successful online music store that catered to independent musicians. Sivers made a video a few years ago called "Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy." I think it's great. As a management professor, I've used it in class numerous times as a great way to spark discussion about leadership, followership, risk taking, creativity, and other related topics.

Check it out below and see what you think.


Surviving The Next Catastrophe by Reducing Vulnerabilities

/
Surviving The Next Catastrophe by Reducing Vulnerabilities

If the renowned organizational sociologist Charles Perrow had a classic-rock theme song, it just might be “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet,” the 1974 hit song by Bachman Turner Overdrive. Let me explain. In his classic book, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, Perrow discussed the numerous high-risk technologies that pervade modern life and the dangers they pose for society.

First published in 1984 with an updated version released in 1999, Normal Accidents presents an argument for the inevitability of large-scale disasters such as nuclear meltdowns, petrochemical-plant explosions, maritime accidents, and so forth. 

Read More

Hiring the Right People in a Labor Market Flush with Talent: The Importance of Valid Selection Practices

/
Hiring the Right People in a Labor Market Flush with Talent: The Importance of Valid Selection Practices

It’s about supply and demand, human-resource style. Remember when the unemployment rate in the United States was less than 5%? According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, that describes about five of the past 10 years. That also describes times when employers spent much of their energy on recruiting talent, or wooing top performers to apply for jobs.But times have changed. The unemployment rate now sits at 8.9%, which means employers everywhere are coping with huge numbers of job applicants for a small number of job openings. Recruiting is still important, and valid selection is always important. In a labor market flush with talent, however, figuring out whom to hire from the crowd is all the more crucial—and tricky.

So what really has changed?

Read More