LEADING THOUGHTS

By nature, I go out of my way to help colleagues with no thought of personal gain, but for some reason, I seem to continually find studies that depict altruism as a behaviour for yokels and rubes, certainly not the way to win friends and influence enemies. Sure enough, here are researchers from the Kellogg School of Management who report, based on three studies, that altruism is a double-edged sword. “On the one hand, generous individuals are admired for their kindness, compassion, and willingness to help. On the other hand, they may be perceived as feeble ‘bleeding hearts’ who lack the guts to make tough decisions that might advance the goals of the organization.” Read the article

Well, this is progress, I guess: A growing number of HR directors are clawing their way onto their company Boards. In many cases, they’re doing a decent job, even chairing remuneration committees, right at the heart of strategy. They’re also becoming trusted confidants of the CEO, probably because they are the only directors not gunning for the top job. And that’s the truth: You’re more likely to see a vegan at an Aussie barbeque than an HR director as a CEO. Read the article

 photo credit: dogoodhq

Between LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social networking sites, it’s easier than ever to reconnect with colleagues and friends from your distant past. Maybe you’d rather keep those connections in the past. But there’s a good case to be made that dormant ties can be even more valuable than current ties. “Insights from dormant ties tend to be more novel, and more efficient to get, than those from current ties.” Read the article

They are too infrequently performed, though they can help employees immensely. When they are done, they can be biased or focus on the wrong metrics. Can performance reviews be redeemed? Turns out, feedback loops and other innovations are giving performance reviews new life. Read the article

Today, we come not to bury the Net Generation employee but to explore what employers need to do to avoid coming across as boorish dead-heads. In this short clip from McKinsey & Company, Clay Shirky, author and professor of new media at New York University, discusses the challenges Millenials face in many workplaces (you don’t mind cranking out some PowerPoint slides this weekend, do you?) and what employers need to do to retain these up and comers. Remember, Shirkey says, “Behaviour is motivation filtered through opportunity.”

Over the past decade, neuroscientists have come a long way in figuring out how ideas form in the human mind. As it turns out, their findings contradict how most companies understand and organize innovation. The new model of the brain is based on “intelligent memory,” combining analysis and intuition and requiring a different form of brainstorming.

Read the article

Women are entering higher education on par with their male counterparts but few are making it into the executive suites and boardrooms during their subsequent careers. For all the gains women are making, there remain two significant gaps: pay and leadership.

Read the article

For Generation Y — “Millennials” between the ages of 15 and 30 — the future seems anything but bright. They are a generation that “expected the world would be the way it has been for the past 20 years. They had expectations that they would find jobs and make lots of money. This will be a disappointed generation.” Go to article

A rosier view: For now, your employer isn’t likely to feel the need to create a happier or healthier workplace because a long line of people will take your job if you falter. But that’s a short-sighted view. Employers are losing the loyalty of their best employees at the worst possible time. Go to article

When it comes to team effectiveness among senior leaders in both politics and business, the two cultures face similar challenges. There are very few “real” teams at the top in either the public or the private sector. That probably explains why most companies and government agencies have such serious problems with accountability and performance. Go to article

Alas the “glass ceiling” is one of those sad facts of modern organizational life that knows no national boundaries.  Doesn’t matter the country: despite rising female labour participation rates, women can’t seem to crack senior management ranks.

There are the usual reasons: the lack of transparency around promotion policies; work-family conflict; the old boys’ network; and the lack of visibly successful female role models. In her study of female managers in Ireland, Christine Cross (U Limerick) found similar dynamics at play but also what she calls an under-appreciated phenomenon: that “visibility” or being known to the senior management team is a crucial “career progression strategy.”

It is a strategy for which women of a certain age are ill-equipped, Cross says. “The age during which women are most often taking time out of their career for childbirth coincides with the time they are most active in seeking promotion,” she writes in the Leadership & Organization Development Journal. “As a consequence of taking maternity leave, a woman’s absence from the organisation directly impacts her visibility in organisational life. This study highlights that where women are away from the office for these extended periods, they believe, because of their absence, they are ‘forgotten about’ by the senior management team.”

Cross’s conclusions are based on in-depth interviews with 30 female managers from across a wide range of industry sectors in Ireland. The women in the study also observed that men in their organizations overtly engaged in self-generated visibility, a strategy the female respondents did not want to employ.

Hmm. . . do you buy that?

I have seen the way some men network and it’s not a pretty sight. Everyone knows they are doing it, just to get in with the ‘in crowd’. People talk about them behind their backs about how they are always smoozing up to the most senior people, and there is this one guy who is really junior, but wants to hang out with the ‘big boys’. But it’s working for him, even though we are all saying he shouldn’t be doing it because he’s making a laughing stock of himself.
—Retail store manager quoted by Cross

“Barriers to the executive suite: evidence from Ireland”, by Christine Cross; Leadership & Organization Development Journal (Vol. 31 No. 2, 2010, pp. 104-119)

photo credit: Let Ideas Compete

You’re flush with excitement because you’ve just hired an industry high flier. How can you make sure that your new star employee isn’t a flash in the pan?

Top-notch talents do not automatically perform at high levels, say Groysberg (Harvard Business School), Lee (RiskMetrics Group), and Abrahams (Harvard Business School). Writing in the MIT Sloan Management Review, they offer advice on how to get the best out of the best.

Their main point is that “star” hires perform at their peak when surrounded by colleagues of similar talent. As proof, they point to a study they performed among equity analysts who benefited (as did their customers) by working with sharp portfolio strategists and salespeople.

Why is this so? It turns out that high-quality colleagues act as sources of information, provide insightful feedback, serve as valuable interfaces between knowledge workers and clients, and enhance the reputation of their star colleagues.

This management strategy also leads to higher retention of the top performers, the authors state. “The goal here is the so-called Matthew effect: The more stars a company has, the easier it is to develop and retain such high-caliber individuals.”

Three other pieces of advice:

:: Avoid lavishing high salaries on your new star hire; doing so risks demoralizing co-workers. In fact, the authors write, high achievers may be willing to accept a pay cut for the opportunity to work with similarly talented employees.

:: Stars may not have the instinct to play well with others, especially when managerial time and resources are scarce and the urge to compete is greatest. Managers should therefore create a culture of collaboration by encouraging face-to-face contact and building a compensation package that rewards appropriate behaviour.

:: Don’t neglect home-grown talent. By developing high potentials from within and building bench strength, you will be rewarded with greater loyalty and less disruption when a key person leaves.

“What it Takes to Make ‘Star’ Hires Pay Off”, by Boris Groysberg, Linda-Eling Lee, and Robin Abrahams; MIT Sloan Management Review (Vol. 51, No. 2, Winter 2010, pp. 57-61)

photo credit: Noel Feans

As head of the world’s largest confectioner, Cadbury CEO Todd Stitzer has plenty of challenges, not least of which is leading a multinational corporation that retains some of its Quaker culture. In this interview with INSEAD, Stitzer discusses his own leadership journey, managing through a “de-merger” and downsizing, waging a war for talent, and maintaining your sanity.

Go straight to the 4:20 mark, where Stitzer talks about the split between Cadbury and Schweppes.

At 6:38 he explains his messaging to employees going through a major downsizing.

At 8:50 he discusses the still prevalent Quaker culture, and the tension between high performance and social responsibility.

At 10:12 Stitzer reveals the Cadbury approach to talent management. Factoid: over the past five years, about 30 percent of the top 150 employees changed positions.

At the 12:00 mark he discusses the qualities he looks for in a leader: selflessness and high engagement (a willingness to “invest in accomplishment”).

And at 14:15 Stitizer gives his recipe for work-life balance: not playing golf with the boys on Saturday mornings.