Bad to great: The path to scaling up excellence

Bad to great: The path to scaling up excellence

Before senior executives try to spread best practices, they should use seven techniques to clear out the negative behavior that stands in the way.

February 2014 | byHuggy Rao and Robert I. Sutton

Leaders who aim to boost organizational performance often start with efforts to kindle good behavior, however they define it. Yet case studies and rigorous academic research show that if you want to create and spread excellence, eliminating the negative is the first order of business. Destructive behavior—selfishness, nastiness, fear, laziness, dishonesty—packs a far bigger wallop than constructive behavior. Organizational researcher Andrew Miner and colleagues, for example, measured the moods of 41 employees at random intervals throughout the workday. The researchers discovered that negative interactions with bosses and coworkers had five times more impact on employees’ moods than positive interactions.¹ This “bad is stronger than good” effect holds in nearly every other setting studied, from romantic relationships to group effectiveness. Read more of this post

The Dangers of Adjacencies Strategy: Why a popular approach to growth may put your company’s health at risk

Posted: January 30, 2014

Ken Favaro is a senior partner with Booz & Company based in New York. He leads the firm’s work in enterprise strategy and finance.

The Dangers of Adjacencies Strategy

“What adjacencies should we enter?” Over the last decade, this question has become synonymous with asking, “How should we grow?” in almost every major company around the world. If growth is an imperative for a business to survive, then entering adjacencies has become the growth strategy du jour. Read more of this post

A Lack Of Sleep Killed This Teenager

A Lack Of Sleep Killed This Teenager

RACHAEL RETTNER, LIVESCIENCE
FEB. 3, 2014, 2:15 PM 2,622

For three years, a teen boy in North Carolina developed progressively worsening movement, speech and memory problems, but doctors remained unable to determine the cause of his deteriorating condition. Read more of this post

Amitabh Bachchan, Scarlett Johansson and the art of the celebrity endorsement

Amitabh Bachchan, Scarlett Johansson and the art of the celebrity endorsement

February 3, 2014 5:57 pmby Andrew Hill

In the strange world of celebrityendorsements, it is usually the brand that dumps the celebrity – as happened, say, when Nike dropped cycling cheat Lance Armstrong in 2012 – rather than vice versa. So it stood out last week when Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan revealed he stopped endorsing Pepsi some years ago, after a young girl asked him why he was advertising a drink her teacher said was “poisonous”. Read more of this post

The powerful art of forgetting

Fiona Smith Columnist

The powerful art of forgetting

Published 04 February 2014 10:12, Updated 04 February 2014 15:55

You probably think you are pretty good atforgetting. I find it comes naturally, but others have to work at it.

Fortunately, for those of us who get around with expressions best described as befuddled, our skills at dropping memories into the trash can of oblivion become somewhat of a strength when it comes to dealing with change. Read more of this post

What Machines Can’t Do; What human skills will become more valuable as computers take over more and more duties

What Machines Can’t Do

FEB. 3, 2014

David Brooks

We’re clearly heading into an age of brilliant technology. Computers are already impressively good at guiding driverless cars and beating humans at chess and Jeopardy. As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology point out in their book “The Second Machine Age,” computers are increasingly going to be able to perform important parts of even mostly cognitive jobs, like picking stocks, diagnosing diseases and granting parole. Read more of this post

Succession exposes risks for hedge funds; Why many founding managers are finding it hard to say goodbye

February 3, 2014 8:26 am

Succession exposes risks for hedge funds

By Stephen Foley

Why many founding managers are finding it hard to say goodbye

“As we age, time becomes our most precious commodity.” So wrote Robert Karr, one of the “Tiger cub” hedge fund managers to have learnt their craft at Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management, who decided last week that he would shut down his $5bn fund, Joho Capital. Read more of this post

The serial adultery of the modern customer; The best way to make shoppers loyal is to give them what they want

February 3, 2014 5:02 pm

The serial adultery of the modern customer

By Andrew Hill

The best way to make shoppers loyal is to give them what they want

The eulogies last week for Justin King, outgoing chief executive of J Sainsbury, make clear he won his crown as Britain’s most successful grocer by reconnecting with his loyal subjects – the shoppers – after years of neglect. But his abdication as chiefexecutive of the country’s second-largest supermarket chain, after a decade in charge, is a good moment to ask whether customer loyalty really matters any more. Read more of this post

Anti-rhetoric can be the best rhetoric; Decrying your opponent’s clever use of words is a clever way to use words

February 3, 2014 4:58 pm

Anti-rhetoric can be the best rhetoric

By Sam Leith

Rhetoric can be written as well as spoken. The rules are – with certain exceptions – basically the same. A fine example was offered recently in an article by the German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in The Guardian, the UK newspaper. Using the anniversary of the first world war – what the Greeks called kairos, or timeliness – Mr Steinmeier sought to defend the European project by arguing that it was the bestbulwark against another such catastrophe. Read more of this post

Retiring on Your Own Terms: Only by saving safely enough to end up with 22 times your annual retirement income can you guarantee that payout

Jan 31, 2014

THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR

Retiring on Your Own Terms

JASON ZWEIG

By creating a new savings plan this past week called the myRA, President Barack Obama refocused attention on the retirement crisis. Read more of this post

Why You Can Never Finish Anything And How to Finally Change It

WHY YOU CAN NEVER FINISH ANYTHING AND HOW TO FINALLY CHANGE IT

NEVER FINISHING WHAT YOU START IS MORE THAN A BAD HABIT–IT STEMS FROM FEARS AND HESITATIONS. HERE’S HOW TO GET PAST THE PROCRASTINATOR’S PARALYSIS.

BY JANE PORTER

The law of inertia tells us a body in motion stays in motion. And the same goes for projects, creative ideas, daily tasks, half-written emails, and that thing you stopped working on to read this article. When you interrupt a task, it can be difficult to pick it up again. Read more of this post

How Inequality Hollows Out the Soul; Our tendency to equate wealth with inner worth invokes deep psychological responses

FEBRUARY 2, 2014, 6:02 PM  20 Comments

How Inequality Hollows Out the Soul

By RICHARD WILKINSON and KATE PICKETT

One of the well-known costs of inequality is that people withdraw from community life and are less likely to feel that they can trust others. This is partly a reflection of the way status anxiety makes us all more worried about how we are valued by others. Now that we can compare robust data for different countries, we can see not only what we knew intuitively — that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive — but that it also damages the individual psyche. Read more of this post

This Is What It Would Be Like If Morpheus From ‘The Matrix’ Was A Valet

This Is What It Would Be Like If Morpheus From ‘The Matrix’ Was A Valet

RICHARD FELONI AND JIM EDWARDS FEB. 2, 2014, 9:01 PM 888

Kia

The last film in the “Matrix” series came out in 2003, but Laurence Fishburne reprised his role as the futuristic Zen master Morpheus in Kia’s Super Bowl commercial tonight. Read more of this post

Jeopardy’s Controversial New Champion Arthur Chu Is Using Game Theory To Win Big

Jeopardy’s Controversial New Champion Is Using Game Theory To Win Big

ERIC LEVENSON, THE WIRE
FEB. 1, 2014, 7:56 AM 302,597 33

Arthur Chu has won thousands of dollars on Jeopardy by using game theory.

Meet Arthur Chu, Jeopardy’s latest and greatest star, who has used Jeopardy game theory to become nightly must-see TV. But his unorthodox methods — though correct by the numbers — have made him a polarizing figure in the Jeopardy community. Read more of this post

John Hennessy, president of Stanford University; The well-connected engineer is looking beyond Silicon Valley

February 2, 2014 2:07 pm

John Hennessy, president of Stanford University

By Andrew Hill and Richard Waters

Last year a professor at Stanford University was looking for new speakers for a lecture series entitled “How I Think About Literature”. Some undergraduates proposed Stanford’s president, John Hennessy – better known as an award-winning engineer and computer scientist, co-author of two widely used textbooks and board member atCisco Systems and Google. Read more of this post

Pulling Mercedes Out of a Chinese Ditch

Pulling Mercedes Out of a Chinese Ditch

ABHEEK BHATTACHARYA

Updated Feb. 2, 2014 7:03 p.m. ET

Mercedes-Benz may be one of the world’s most recognizable car brands, but it has had trouble getting noticed in China. Now, Mercedes is moving to change that. Read more of this post

Selling a Firm? Stick Around After the Deal; Some sellers stay involved with their former company to help the buyers succeed

Selling a Firm? Stick Around After the Deal

Some sellers stay involved with their former company to help the buyers succeed

LISA WARD

Feb. 2, 2014 8:50 p.m. ET

Looking to sell your business? You may need to stay involved with it long after the deal is sealed.

Since the economic downturn, buyers often can’t land a loan to cover the whole cost of acquiring a company—so owners are forced to use an old setup called seller financing. In essence, the seller agrees to get paid over time, betting that the buyer will be reliable enough to keep the business strong and keep making payments. Read more of this post

Leafing Through India’s Ancient Culture and Epics as Recipes for Its Revival

Leafing Through India’s Ancient Culture and Epics as Recipes for Its Revival

Dr. Rabi N. Mishra 

Reserve Bank of India
January 19, 2014

Abstract:       Read more of this post

‘My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread and the Search for Peace of Mind’ by Scott Stossel

‘My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread and the Search for Peace of Mind’ by Scott Stossel

By Jen Chaney, Published: February 1

That Scott Stossel is an incredibly anxious person is no longer a secret. He has admitted this, in extensive detail, in his book, “My Age of Anxiety,” in recent interviews and in a lengthy excerpt that became a cover story for the magazine he edits, the Atlantic. He’s a man “buffeted by worry,” he explains, “stricken by a pervasive sense of existential dread” and plagued by various phobias, including claustrophobia, acrophobia (fear of heights), emetophobia (fear of vomiting), aerophobia (fear of flying) and aeronausiphobia (fear of vomiting on an airplane). He’s also mortally afraid of public speaking and typically chokes back some Xanax, blood-pressure medication and a shot or two of vodka every time he prepares to place his mouth near a microphone — which, these days, is fairly often. Read more of this post

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders Hardcover

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders Hardcover

by David Marquet  (Author)

“Leadership should mean giving control rather than taking control and creating leaders rather than forging followers.”
David Marquet, an experienced Navy officer, was used to giving orders. As newly appointed captain of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine, he was responsible for more than a hundred sailors, deep in the sea. In this high-stress environment, where there is no margin for error, it was crucial his men did their job and did it well. But the ship was dogged by poor morale, poor performance, and the worst retention in the fleet.  Read more of this post

My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind Hardcover – Deckle Edge

My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind Hardcover – Deckle Edge

by Scott Stossel  (Author)

A riveting, revelatory, and moving account of the author’s struggles with anxiety, and of the history of efforts by scientists, philosophers, and writers to understand the condition
As recently as thirty-five years ago, anxiety did not exist as a diagnostic category. Today, it is the most common form of officially classified mental illness. Scott Stossel gracefully guides us across the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive yet too often misunderstood. Read more of this post

Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling [Paperback]

Edgar H Schein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2013 | ISBN-10: 1609949811 | ISBN-13: 978-1609949815

The Key to Effective Communication
Communication is essential in a healthy organization. But all too often when we interact with people—especially those who report to us—we simply tell them what we think they need to know. This shuts them down. To generate bold new ideas, to avoid disastrous mistakes, to develop agility and flexibility, we need to practice Humble Inquiry. Read more of this post

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t Hardcover

by Simon Sinek  (Author)

Why do only a few people get to say “I love my job”? It seems unfair that finding fulfillment at work is like winning a lottery; that only a few lucky ones get to feel valued by their organizations, to feel like they belong. Read more of this post

Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All

Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All Hardcover

by Tom Kelley  (Author) , David Kelley  (Author)

IDEO founder and Stanford d.school creator David Kelley and his brother Tom Kelley, IDEO partner and the author of the bestselling The Art of Innovation, have written a powerful and compelling book on unleashing the creativity that lies within each and every one of us. Read more of this post

Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire Hardcover

Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire Hardcover

by Bruce Nussbaum  (Author)

Offering insights from the spheres of anthropology, psychology, education, design, and business,Creative Intelligence by Bruce Nussbaum, a leading thinker, commentator, and curator on the subjects of design, creativity, and innovation, is first book to identify and explore creative intelligence as a new form of cultural literacy and as a powerful method for problem-solving, driving innovation, and sparking start-up capitalism. Read more of this post

Innovation–The Missing Dimension

Innovation–The Missing Dimension [Hardcover]

Richard K. Lester (Author), Michael J. Piore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 29, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0674015819 | ISBN-13: 978-0674015814 | Edition: 1

Amid mounting concern over the loss of jobs to low-wage economies, one fact is clear: America’s prosperity hinges on the ability of its businesses to continually introduce new products and services. But what makes for a creative economy? How can the remarkable surge of innovation that fueled the boom of the 1990s be sustained? Read more of this post

Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day Hardcover

by Todd Henry  (Author)

“Embrace the importance of now, and refuse to allow the lull of comfort, fear, familiarity, and ego to prevent you from taking action on your ambitions…The cost of inaction is vast. Don’t go to your grave with your best work inside of you. Choose to die empty.” Read more of this post

How to Get People to Do Stuff: Master the art and science of persuasion and motivation Paperback

How to Get People to Do Stuff: Master the art and science of persuasion and motivation Paperback

by Susan Weinschenk (Author)

We all want people to do stuff. Whether you want your customers to buy from you, vendors to give you a good deal, your employees to take more initiative, or your spouse to make dinner—a large amount of everyday is about getting the people around you to do stuff. Instead of using your usual tactics that sometimes work and sometimes don’t, what if you could harness the power of psychology and brain science to motivate people to do the stuff you want them to do – even getting people to want to do the stuff you want them to do. Read more of this post

Shaping Serendipity for Learning: Conversations with John Seely Brown

Shaping Serendipity for Learning: Conversations with John Seely Brown

July 31, 2013 12:40 AM

“Conventional wisdom holds that different people learn in different ways.  Something is missing from that idea, however, so we offer a corollary: 

Different People, 
when presented with exactly the same information in exactly the same way, 
will learn different things.  
Most models of education and learning have almost no tolerance for this kind of thing.   
As a result, teaching tends to focus on eliminating the source of the problem:  
the student’s imagination.”
-John Seely Brown Read more of this post

Why John Seely Brown Says We Should Look Beyond Creativity to Cultivate Imagination

Why John Seely Brown Says We Should Look Beyond Creativity to Cultivate Imagination

By Heather Chaplin

1.8.14 | John Seely Brown is a visiting scholar and advisor to the provost at University of Southern California and independent co-chairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge. He was chief scientist at Xerox Corporation and director of the Palo Alto Research Center. He cofounded the Institute for Research on Learning and was a trustee of the MacArthur Foundation until 2012.

This post is part of a series of conversations with thought leaders on digital media and learning, then and now. In conversation with journalist Heather Chaplin, leaders reflect on how the field of digital media and learning (DML) has changed over time, and where it’s headed.

Spotlight: Do I understand correctly that you started professional life as a bookie? Read more of this post