Cultural Cohesion

It’s easy to spend your life with people who think like you. Yet hanging out with like-minded people is the opposite of open-mindedness.

It seems that any given week provides ample reminders that leaders cannot control the degree of change, uncertainty, and complexity we face. The authors offer six strategies to improve a leader’s ability to learn, grow, and more effectively navigate the increasing complexity of our world.

The truth is that employees start out motivated but the work environments they find themselves in suck that motivation out of them. In other words, they come to the job with their “motivation buckets” filled (or mostly so), then the organization (and its managers) poke holes in those buckets.

Maynard Webb offers a blueprint for teaching a team to take on more responsibilities.

Many organizational leaders struggle to ideate sustainable business strategies that will see them consistently turning a profit and keeping ahead of the competition. This struggle has become even more magnified in the wake of evolving trends and lifestyle adjustments made by the average consumer in response to the digital transformation seen across almost all sectors.

In Keith Cunninghams’ book, “The Road Less Stupid,” he explains that most people think of good company culture as having the fridge stocked with Gatorade and a foosball table in the back room. These, however important, have more to do with perks than actual culture.

How can we preserve the benefits of remote or hybrid work as offices reopen without unintentionally institutionalizing the downsides of virtual models? That is the question facing many employers today.

Managers used to be selected and promoted largely based on their ability to manage and evaluate the performance of employees who could carry out a particular set of tasks. But three disruptive, transformative trends are challenging traditional definitions of the manager role: Normalization of remote work, automation, and changing employee expectations.

Some teams are really good at identifying problems. When colleagues propose new ideas, team members readily ask tough questions and point out risks. But they ought to be providing constructive feedback as well. How can you encourage team members to think more creatively about solving problems?

If decisions have to go through you, you’re the choke point at the bottom of the funnel, controlling the flow. Conversely, if you provide clear direction, resources, bounded authority, and accountability, enabling others to make decisions, you turn the funnel into a megaphone, amplifying your influence and impact.

Naomi Bagdonas and Connor Diemand-Yauman, lecturers at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, hilariously explore the power at the intersection of humor, business, and leadership. It’s no joke.

Culture emerges from a variety of ingredients within your organization, and cookie-cutter approaches won’t get it right.

Managers and leaders can be one and the same, but not every manager is equipped with the leadership skills that help fuel a high-purpose company culture.

This is a reprint of a story I wrote several years ago. It points to the attributes of great teams and great organizational culture and I am both inspired and pleased to share it with you again here. That said, there are a few things that I have learned since the original writing that are worth sharing before you begin.

We live in an age of polarization. Many of us may be asking ourselves how, when people disagree with or discount us, we can persuade them to rethink their positions. The author, an organizational psychologist, has spent time with a number of people who succeeded in motivating the notoriously self-confident Steve Jobs to change his mind and has analyzed the science behind their techniques. Some leaders are so sure of themselves that they reject good opinions and ideas from others and refuse to abandon their own bad ones. But, he writes, “it is possible to get even the most overconfident, stubborn, narcissistic, and disagreeable people to open their minds.” He offers some approaches that can help you encourage a know-it-all to recognize when there’s something to be learned, a stubborn colleague to make a U-turn, a narcissist to show humility, and a disagreeable boss to agree with you.

Senior leaders can become insulated from early signs of danger and opportunity. Here’s how to overcome that.

Conflicting demands and challenges must be managed. Here’s how.

It’s natural for leaders to emphasize the importance of hitting financial targets, but making numbers the centerpiece of your leadership narrative is a costly mistake. Financial results are an outcome, they’re not a root driver for employee performance, and a growing body of evidence tells us that overemphasizing financial targets erodes morale and undermines long-term strategy. Leaders looking to motivate employees must instead use their time with their teams to build belief in the organizational purpose, the intrinsic value of the employees’ work, and the impact they have on customers, and each other. To do so, the authors recommend three tactics: 1) Reevaluate how you use your leadership airtime; 2) Discuss your customers with specificity and emotion; and 3) Resist the urge to widely share every measure of financial performance.

Awaiting AI’s prevalence, companies’ upskilling strategies range from doing nothing to empowering employees to set their own career paths.