When I worked for Citibank in the eighties as a young professional, I used to tell my friends that the corporate culture in Citibank taught me to be rude. In those days, Citibank was known to be aggressive and even arrogant, and one survived only by adapting to this rough-and-tumble environment. Corporate cultures have become […]
By now, students of organizational behavior are probably familiar with Professor Adam Grant’s research on givers and takers, which he has summarized in his book Give and Take (Grant, 2013). Grant has found that people have three general interaction styles: taking, giving and matching. Takers, according to Grant, like to get more than they give. They believe […]
Frank, a management consultant with his own independent business, believes in networking especially as a source of potential clients. His week is filled typically with lunches with potential and former clients, and evening meetings with various business groups, e.g., other consultants, business networking events, etc. Fortunately, Frank is very extroverted, and he loves schmoozing and […]
I recently returned from Singapore, where I taught an executive MBA class in Global Leadership to a group of mostly Asian managers and executives. As part of the course, they were required to participate in a 360-degree feedback process using a a popular instrument, the Leadership Practices Inventory (Kousez and Posner, 2012). For many of […]
Are differences across cultures diminishing? With globalization and the dominance of U.S. culture over the past few decades, several of my students and as well as managers I have discussed this with believe that they seem to be. For example, Alex is a Singaporean human resources manager working for a French company based in Singapore […]
In March of this year, a Google computer defeated the world’s reigning Go champion in four out of five matches. Several years earlier, IBM’s Watson computer defeated two of Jeopardy’s greatest champions and IBM’s Deep Blue competed successfully against the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov. We are all aware of the use of robots […]
Recently, Goldman Sachs again made the headlines in the business news, but this time for something different than the usual financial news about the company. It has decided to move away from its 9-point system for performance evaluations to providing employees with more timely and frequent performance feedback. It will still keep its 360-degree feedback […]
During a strategy update with the top 100 executives of a Fortune 500 corporation, the CEO discussed each of the thirteen “strategy initiatives” that the company had recently launched. They ranged from changing the sales model, introducing new product categories, expanding to new markets overseas, partnering with other firms in alliances and joint ventures, and […]
Although the term positive deviance has been around for at least twenty years, not many executives I know are familiar with this term, much less with using it as a tool to improve their organizations. And unlike other organizational change initiatives, there seem to be few examples of successful applications of positive deviance in the […]
Cultural fit matters to senior executives. Several years ago, the CEO of a major consumer products company decided to hire an executive from GE to a senior level position, partly to help drive change in the company’s culture. GE’s culture, at least during the Jack Welch era when this event took place, was characterized by […]