RSSMix.com Mix ID 288172

If Your Boss is an Asshole, Don't Give Him or Her the Book

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:54:35 -0500

One of the strange things about The No Asshole Rule that took me at least a year after publication to understand is that just owning, displaying, and -- in particular -- giving someone the book as a present (or even...

If Your Actions Inspire People to Dream More, Learn More, Do More and Become More, Then You Are A Leader

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:59:11 -0500

Apparently, John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States said that. I like that quote because, while so much writing, research, and advice focuses on what leaders say and do (which is right), sometimes people forget that the...

Switch is #1 on The New York Times List: The Heath Brothers Do It Again

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:52:59 -0500

I opened that The New York Times Books section yesterday, and there it was: Chip and Dan Heath's new book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard was Number 1 on the "Advice" list (a list that is...

DoYou Like My New Graphics?

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:34:15 -0500

I was rather shocked, and quite delighted, to get an email from Katie Clark at IDEO yesterday with several different new graphics for the top of my blog. I didn't ask her or talk to her about, she just decided...

Boris Groysberg's Research on Star Employees: Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:35:57 -0500

I have written here fairly often about research by Harvard Business School's Boris Groysberg on the virtues and limits of star employees. One of my posts described has delightful research that shows firms should steal superstar women, not men. It...

Join Us and Whitney Mortimer for "IDEO in 4 Acts" this Wednesday at Stanford

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:57:06 -0500

This Wednesday, March 3rd, we are holding a special section of my class on Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-Based Approach. Class will be held in an auditorium at Stanford, at Gates B01. Our guest star for the day is IDEO Partner...

One Answer to the Question:""What's the Worst Advice You Advice You Ever Received?"

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:30:40 -0500

An editor at Psychology Today, where I am now blogging, wrote and asked for some ideas her might use in the print edition. His question was "What's the worst advice you've ever received (Or just some really bad advice ...)....

From Chaos Comes Creativity, from Order Comes Profit

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:16:33 -0500

There is saying, kind of a crude little formula, I have been using for years when I write and give talks on what it takes to build a culture where people innovate routinely (which I think I stole from Charles...

Blame, Failure, and The No Asshole Rule

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:44:04 -0500

As I emphasize on my list to left of 15 Things That I Believe, one of the best diagnostic to assess whether an organization is effective or innovative is "What Happens When Someone Makes a Mistake?" I made that this...

The Best Asshole Buster Story I've Heard In a Long Time

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:13:11 -0500

A reader named Kevin just wrote and told me a great story: A good friend of mine in college was at a busy nightclub, on the crowded dance floor, dancing with his girlfriend. It was very crowded, to the point...

Is It Time for a Stupid Rules Contest at Stanford?

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:47:48 -0500

I love my university, I've been treated far better than I deserve during my 25 plus years at Stanford. But as much a I love it, I wonder if it is time for us to run something like a "stupid...

How Much Do You Hate Performance Reviews? Take Sam Culbert's Test

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:23:41 -0500

One of the most lively discussions we've had on this blog was around a post I wrote a couple years ago called Performance Evaluations: Do They Do More Harm Than Good. The reason, I argued, is that that they are...

The Urban Dictionary Accepted Passhole! Please Vote for it When It is Posted

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:51:15 -0500

I just got an email (it took them just a couple hours) from the Urban Dictionary that our definition of Passhole as ""someone who opts out of participating in a decision, but then complains bitterly about the outcome." has been...

Passhole Wins: But Don't Use It to Blame the Victims of Broken Organizations or Bad Bosses

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:22:31 -0500

Or, in the words of Steve Jobs, the journey was the reward in this case. As most readers will recall, this all started as a little contest in response to Mozilla's Asa Dotzler: Let's Invent a New Word or Phrase:...

Lazy Bee, Passhole,Unconscientious Objector, Inverted Cheerleader, Submarine, Seagull, Weenie-whiner, Whampire, or Free-griper?

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:06:47 -0500

I am both delighted and overwhelmed by the deluge of smart and often responses to my last post: Let's Invent a New Word or Phrase: What do you call someone who "opts out of participating in something but then complains...

Cowen calls for evidence in health care options

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:40:33 -0500

Image via WikipediaYes, it’s been a little quiet here lately (other than comments about 9/11 being an inside job, and who knows what kind of traffic mentioning that will bring?). The reasons are twofold: first, I have been building a new business I started early last year; and second, I just launched a blog that [...]

Let's Invent a New Word or Phrase: What do you call someone who "opts out of participating in something but then complains about the outcome."

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:37:01 -0500

This question came in an email yesterday from Mozilla's Asa Dotzler, who is renowned for his skill as an open-source marketer, especially in spreading the Firefox browser. The engine that propels any open source community is having a wide range...

IDEO CEO Tim Brown: "I found it vaguely embarrassing and frustrating to be in an office."

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:13:27 -0500

I have argued in the past that there are a lot of evidence-based disadvantages to working in an open office, as there are many more interruptions, distractions, and other stressors --- and of course less privacy. And there are quite...

What a Mess: The Tenure Appeal Meeting at Ohio University

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:33:58 -0500

I got a comment this morning about the outcome of the the appeal meeting at Ohio University for Bill Reader's tenure case. You may recall that I wrote about this in detail in my post on The No Asshole Rule...

I Am Now Blogging at Psychology Today

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:43:08 -0500

I just started blogging at Psychology Today last week. This page and blog will remain the place where I put the lion's share of my effort. Most of my posts will appear here first, and then I will reprint some...

You Know It Is Snake Oil When They Say That It Explains 75% of Success in Life

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:26:21 -0500

I clearly have strong beliefs about what drives human behavior, and think there is pretty strong evidence to support many of them. At the same time, I believe equally strongly that there are no magical cures for organizational and individual...

Outsourcing NASA could be, you know, dangerous

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:08:40 -0500

Useful recommendations for NASA:An aerospace panel is warning NASA that relying on private companies to send astronauts into space would raise serious safety issues.The federal watchdog Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said that outsourcing would be “unwise and probably not cost-effective” because private space companies are not yet technically advanced enough to safely put astronauts into [...]

On the relationship between orgs and crowdsourcing

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:03:25 -0500

Good post at Warren Ng’s blog:Corporations exist for a reason. That reason most likely is attributed to the power of many, yet corporations break down when executives make bad decisions and the remainder of the company suffers. Promotions and bonuses are put on hold or worse jobs are lost. Seems that corporations havent figured out [...]

Positive psychology and adoption without coercion

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:20:40 -0500

Although positive psychology and its bastard child Appreciative Inquiry have a cadre of Mafia-esque adherents, there’s no need to throw out the baby with the bathwaterc:In 1998,Dr. Martin Seligman became President of the American Psychological Association (APA) and publicly promoted an entirely new field of studyknown today asPositive Psychology. Dr. Seligman argued that for far [...]

Should spies emulate journalists?

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:16:51 -0500

Image via WikipediaInteresting, especially the advice to think like journalists:American intelligence in Afghanistan is broken, says the top U.S. intelligence officer there. Thats because it focuses too much on whacking Taliban, and not enough on figuring out Afghanistans social and cultural landscapes.But the report fromMaj. Gen. Michael Flynn, the top intelligence aide to International Security [...]

Social network analysis exposes Panty Bombers habits

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:22:12 -0500

This post describes the methodology used to map Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s online communications:Given our specific interest in the online behavior of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, we were most interested in analyzing the direct and indirect communication network associated with the handle Farouk1986 (aka Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab). Therefore, it was necessary to filter the broader universe of [...]

Terror plot a cascade of failures

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:23:21 -0500

A New York Times editorial today reviews what happened in the terror incident two weeks ago on Northwest Airlines Flight 253:The report implicitly acknowledges all of this, saying that the system failed to identify, correlate, and fuse into a coherent story all of the discrete pieces of intelligence held by the U.S. government about both [...]

NCTC likely focus of terror report

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:06:13 -0500

It appears the forthcoming terror report will implicate the young National Counterterrorism Center:Without naming the agency, he put theNational Counterterrorism Center, the new entity formed after 9/11 to do precisely this function, squarely in his crosshairs.Until the report (to be released today) has been fully dissected and cross-examined, it is impossible to say whether President [...]

Best sentence on intel in 8 years

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:29:23 -0500

Perspicacity points to Doyle McManus:“By shining light on organizational dysfunction that’s hard to dramatize, the attempted bombing has highlighted a problem that desperately needs to be solved.”Finally.Posted in bureaucracy, Current Events, foreign policy, leadership

New round of intel reform posturing begins

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:16:22 -0500

Just a quick break from vacation to observe the friction between the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of Central Intelligence:The White House this month issued a classified order to resolve mounting frictions between the nation’s intelligence director and the CIA over issues including how the agency conducts covert operations, U.S. officials said.The intervention [...]

A Different Kind of Blog

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:20:31 -0400

I was delighted to find the blog group at AoM and also disappointed I missed the recent session at the Chicago meeting. I am new to blogging, but started my own up in June this yeardue to my interest and research in a particular business sector which seems to be moving at a pace that [...]

Finding, Reading, and Commenting on Scholarly Blogs

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:39:51 -0400

Hi folks,I wrote up a page on The Wisdom of Managing Change that includes the slides I used in my presentation on Friday, as well as hotlinks to most of the websites I mentioned.I hope the page on finding, reading, and commenting on scholarly blogs is useful, both for those who attended the PDW, and [...]

Is it ethical to use a pseudonym?

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:32:55 -0400

During our discussion on Friday, the issue of the ethics of claiming authorship or being pseudonymous (blogging with a pseudonym) was raised. Motivation of the author, context of the blog, and awareness of the audience are all relevant factors.Karen Mishra argued that academics should not blog using a pseudonym, but should instead claim their identity. [...]

AoM parties

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:17:45 -0400

Do you have the list of the parties?[eds.' note: SOMEONE has a list to the parties, and that person might become veeeeery popular, if s/he would share this with everyone, say, by posting it in the comments. We're already cruising the horsdooverays at the OMT shindig.]

a personal history of blogging

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:52:42 -0400

In this morning’s panel, I talked about Management Professor Notes II, where I blogged between 2005 and 2007, while I was a professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I thought that PDW participants might enjoy reading some of my archived blog entries; here are three of particular interest:Why I Ask Students to [...]

What is a blog and the blogosphere (links)

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:05:52 -0400

These are some links I will use for part of the workshop today.What is a blog?Work MattersAuthentic OrganizationsThe DNA of the living web: the Cluetrain Manifesto.Graphic of what happens to your post.What is the Blogosphere? Technorati report.The Academic Blogosphere-Wiki for Academic Blogs (maybe100-200?)As a stab in the dark, I searched the Chronicle of Higher Education [...]

Reflections From A Novice

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:25:44 -0400

I am honoured to have been invited to contribute to InsightsToActions. You can find out a wee bit more about me here http://www.thesmartworkcompany.com/who-we-are/Why Do I Blog?As a novice blogger of just eight months, I blog mainly to sort out what I think. I also do it to have a voice. What I get in return [...]

A Brief Message for my AOM Colleagues

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:23:13 -0400

Bob Sutton of Stanford University has been blogging since June 2006. Bobs blog, Work Matters, is easily my favorite and I have been following it and sharing it with my students for several years. There is a link on Bobs site to the Asshole Rating Self-Exam. Within the first 15 minutes of [...]

What kind of Info Tech user are you?

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:30:29 -0400

Are you a roving node, an surfing drifter, or an aging hippie a media mover?Don’t know? Interested to find out?The Pew Internet & American Life Project has a 2 minute survey you can take that will find your place in their typology of Info & Communication Technology Users.It’s interesting to see the array of types [...]

Insights for Better/More Fun Conference Participation

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 15:17:14 -0400

Two social media gurus, each reflecting on the same conference experience (SXSW), wrote about how they and others might have a better experience something more fun, more interesting , and more enriching.Their insights, and your personal reflections on them, might help you frame your AOM conference experience differently this year. What do you think?Click through [...]