Organizational culture

It was fascinating to read of HP’s plan to acquire services and consulting giant EDS. In a lot of ways, the idea makes eminent sense. EDS has formidable strengths in the kind of stem-to-stern solutions that many of HP’s corporate customers crave. And HP itself offers a broad array of complementary products that allow for […]

Lessons from IDEO.

When business conditions change, the most successful companies are often the slowest to adapt. To avoid being left behind, executives must understand the true sources of corporate inertia.

A decision-making framework that helps foster a sense of control during uncertain times.

The business world is abuzz today about Greg Smith's parting shot at his long-time employer, Goldman Sachs. Is it accurate? Hard to say, but it has the...

Dilbert is right. Managers are incompetent, worse even than the managers themselves realize. That was the conclusion of a well-known study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999, long before The Office premiered. “Not only do incompetent people reach incompetent conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them […]

IT systems increasingly hold the potential to launch cascading disasters, triggered by the most trivial of incidents. A new type of risk-management culture...

As IBM celebrates its 100th birthday, many observers are rightly calling attention to the many strategic changes the company put itself through to remain relevant amidst dramatic technological and economic change. But one of the biggest transformations IBM went through is less about computers and more about culture. Over the last decade and a half, […]

The most important strategic question facing executives today is how open to be. “How open should I be with customers?” “Should I allow my employees to access their social network sites at work?” “Should I open my product so that people can augment it or should I hold control close?” A recent Financial Times article […]

Five Questions with Bill George Retired CEO of Medtronic

Five steps health organizations can take.

Six years ago, Google's IPO was the most hotly anticipated public offering of the year. But in classic Google style, the offering was neither typical...

Everyone’s wondering what the new COO’s been doing for the last 12 months. He wonders why he can’t get his foot in the door.

Reducing isolation at work is good for business.

Organizational fit is a moving target.

In 1994, Continental Airlines was headed for a crash landing--it was quickly running out of customers and cash. Today, the airline is one of the great...

A consensus is emerging that there has been a shift in the attitudes and values of the U.S. work force and that this shift has been accompanied by increased dissatisfaction with many aspects of work. The evidence for this shift and disaffection has emerged from two camps: systematically recorded observations from case studies and surveys […]

It's against human nature to react favorably to the disruption of process change. Continuous improvement means continuous change, and change takes people...

The players battling for Major League Baseball’s coveted pennants this month represent a microcosm of America. More than 40% of the league’s players are people of color, and most of those are people of Latin descent, according to data in the annual Lapchick Racial and Gender Report Card. Another 9% are African-American, and two of […]

Work with these six building blocks.