This is a very hot topic with my clients these days, especially those in Europe. In this video interview, INSEAD Professor Annet Aris speaks about the impact of adding women to boards, and some of the challenges they (and the men they are interfacing with) have to face as they transform the way boards work.
Link to the video interview here: http://youtu.be/-WvkSXjojwg
A good article from Kees van der Graaf at IMD speaking about his driving change model. The model itself is straightforward, but I appreciate most his final paragraph, where he speaks about the need to adapt one’s style to get things done, depending on the situation and the audience.
Sounds like good ol’ Cultural Competence to me.
Full post here: Business Change | IMD.
This HBS Working Knowledge article deals with blind spots we have when it comes to understanding ethics and the impact of the decisions we make. They use Enron as an example. I actually believe Enron not to be a blind spot; people KNEW that they were making money that wasn’t rooted in reality. Too many smart people worked at Enron and invested in it to have me believing that it was just a question of blind spots. Greed is more like it. People walked into that high yield, high risk play with eyes wide open.
There are still plenty of blind spots. I worry about the ones we are not conscious of, our micro-behaviors. These have a more immediate impact on our daily interactions, and when multiplied and sustained, might even feel a bit like unethical treatment to the people that receive them.
Article here: Blind Spots: We’re Not as Ethical as We Think — HBS Working Knowledge.
From the Booz and Co. Strategy and Business series, a treatment on the need to balance compassion and action when trying to lead organizations through change or ambiguity. The author Adam Kahane says:
“Lovve-oriented solutions are almost impossible to sustain in the predatory atmosphere of any political or competitive power structure. To really make change happen, you need to balance love and power”.
This has some relevance to the way corporate inclusion work is often framed up, as part of an effort to create a more compassionate and caring workplace. This clearly has a role, don’t get me wrong, but there is also something to the point that this must be balanced with strong decision making, clear vision setting and accountability.
Full post here: How to Balance Power and Love.
An interesting premise from HBS -that certain behavioral traits are more successfully impacted by “prevention” rather than “promotion”. That is, by focusing on what “not” to do.
This article uses the context of ethics. It may be worth considering how this might eventually turn out. In the Diversity and Inclusion field, most best-in-class companies have moved far away from a list of diversity “donts” (keeping a focus on legal requirements still exists) and are focusing on modeling “desired behaviors”. Of course, there isn’t much change happening in most places I work for.
Perhaps the key is to meet somewhere in the middle? Like tacking a sailboat to the wind, the real skill when thinking about behaving ethically and inclusively may be to learn how to be situational and aware.
Full post here: The Importance of ‘Don’t’ in Inducing Ethical Employee Behavior — HBS Working Knowledge.
This article from Booz and Co. highlights the generation C – for Connected – and the implications for communication, collaboration, multitasking, virtuality, etc. Everything that, despite our best efforts to resist, is increasingly becoming part of our landscape. This is the “disaggregated” communication that I have been going on about to clients and partners for a while now…I’m glad to see that a big consulting shop finally picked it up! lol (for you Gen C’ers out there).
Full article here: The Rise of Generation C.
Timothy Davidson brought this to my attention today. It is a very frank take on the concept of Authentic Leadership from HBR, and flies in the face of so much of the leadership training and pithy one line Twitter feeds that orbit around the topic of leadership.
In a nutshell, if the authentic you is a jerk, perhaps you should try to be a bit less authentic and a bit more circumspect, diplomatic or, dare I say it, sensitive (I can hear the collective groans of all the leaders who have suffered through diversity sensitivity training…). At the very least, one should try to be more aware and a bit more situational in how authenticity is deployed if that authenticity is authentically counterproductive.
Full post here:
One of the visiting professors at INSEAD talks about the role that biculturals and multiculturals can play in helping organizations and groups to “bridge” cultures. It is an interesting premise, and she outlines some of the critical roles that cultural bridges can play.
The real challenge is to replicate this insight and flexibility when multiculturals and biculturals are not present.
INSEAD Knowledge: Biculturals and Multiculturals in Organisations.
I am using a great new tool called Paper.li (www.paper.li), where my daily Twitter traffic gets reformatted into an online “newspaper”. It refreshes every 24 hours and will be a great way to sort through the Twitter noise to get to the high quality posts.
I sorted against the categories “Inclusion” “Diversity” and “Leadership”. Great stuff is out there, and now it’s easy to read!
The link below has today’s “paper” and a way to subscribe. Everyone is welcome as a reader!
An interesting article about the kinds of company cultures and innovation.
Of the three types of organizational cultures: (communal culture, hierarchical one, “market pricing” or “star” culture), it appears, according to this research, that a communal culture improves revenue associated with innovation by as much as 15%. Interesting findings which might carry over to the corporate sector, given that this survey was done in the non-profit, where a communal culture may be more likely from a statistical point of view.
Full post here: The Surprising Effect of Company Culture on Innovation | BNET.
David Lange