Earlier this year, AT&T completed its acquisition of Time Warner in an $85 billion deal that will reshape the media industry. Together, Cigna and Express Scripts will fundamentally change the insurance industry. And Amazon turned retail on its head by…
Organizational Leadership
What It Takes to Be a Leader in the Digital Age
Progressive organizations consistently lament the dearth of capable leaders who can take up the reins at the top and sustain a robust stride toward continued prosperity. One of the reasons for this is the changing role and skill set of…
Design of Work Experience: A Different Way of Customizing the Culture
You may be thinking, “Another culture model? Who needs another tool?” Given all that’s out there, the skepticism is well-founded. This one, however, fills a much-needed gap when it comes to culture-building. Design of Work Experience (DOWE) is a concept,…
Encourage the Quiet to Give Voice to the Sounds of Silence
Are you an introvert or an extrovert? That’s a tricky question. I have a hard time answering it myself. That’s the problem of binary questions — you are forced to choose one or the other. Being quiet is a choice…
Women Are Ready to Lead, So Put Them In
For the past few decades there’s been a lot of talk about how companies need to build a strong bench of female leaders to diversify C-suites and senior management roles. It would be counter to a significant body of research…
How Much Easier Things Would Be With an HR Siri
When is the last time you had to go searching for something — a file, or a document perhaps — in order to do your job? How long did it take you? What could you have been doing instead? In…
What Toys R Us Teaches Us About Leadership Cultivation
The demise of Toys R Us — the toy store that captivated every elementary schoolkid’s daydreams — was ultimately just another illustration of management gone wrong. It can be easy to point fingers at big box and online competitors as…
How to Read the Virtual Body Language Of Remote Workers
All managers want their teams to be happy and engaged in their jobs. Unfortunately, even the greatest companies will occasionally find themselves with an unhappy employee. Managers know there are certain patterns to look out for that may reveal an…
How to Avoid These 3 Culture Change Pitfalls
Culture change is a human experience. It’s not just a business imperative, as it has been viewed for decades, as reflected in these expressions: “If we’re going to grow, we have to change the culture” and “This culture is toxic,…
Competence Isn’t Enough. You Need Champions and Maybe a Little Narcissism
Do you work closely with executives? If you do, you’ve probably run into a few surprising aspects to leadership that don’t get talked about much. For instance, what’s with the common occurrence of charming, good looking executives moving quickly up…
Do Your Subcultures Align Or Undermine Your Company Values?
It can be surprising when you first see the signs of an organizational subculture forming When the company is small, employees are much closer to the central embodiment of its mission, vision, and values, because everyone is working closely together….
We Want Disruption Until It’s Us Being Disrupted
“So many of us in business (say) ‘I want innovation. I want disruption. I want the next big thing’,” said Bradley West to his DisruptHR audience in Winnipeg last year. But “Stop changing my process,” he added mockingly. The message…
Hire For a Mission, Not a Job
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in the event of success.” Legend has it that Sir Ernest Shackleton used the copy above in an ad to recruit his…
Futureproof Your Organization by Hiring From Within
The war for talent is heating up this summer with the recent news that there are more job openings than unemployed job seekers. In many ways, it’s a job seeker’s market. This is not only putting more pressure on employers…
Build a More Engaged Workforce These 4 Ways
Companies are becoming increasingly concerned with the internal culture of their company these days – and for good reason. Gallup has famously studied and reported on the American workplace reporting that the level of engagement among employees has a huge…
Creativity Thrives When People Move
Feeling uninspired and need a jolt of creativity? Brace yourself. I recently read about a development that’s fascinating … and maybe a little freaky. Researchers found a way to stimulate the area of the brain responsible for creative thought. It turns out…
What Uncertain Business Environments Reveal About Workforce Planning
The Brexit Day countdown is on, and yet, political tussles over whether the UK will keep its close financial services ties with the European Union show little signs of resolving. For large American banks using London as a major European hub, this means…
Do Your Values Just Hang On a Wall?
“I suggest you take another look at your core values as they are not being delivered.” The words were uttered at an exit review by an employee on his way out. This story was told to me by a retail…
What Brexit Impacted Companies Need to Be Doing Now
For businesses that operate in the UK, the looming British exit from the European Union (“Brexit”) presents several challenges for managing employees who are EU nationals. Perhaps most significantly, EU nationals will need additional, visa-like documentation to work in the…
The Secret to Productivity May Be Air Conditioning
Call them dinosaur-brains or Neanderthals, there are people in every business who live to make us miserable. They aren’t necessarily actively toxic, but some are so rude, bureaucratic, and/or annoying, your automatic response may be to disengage from them and your work….