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Recommended by Ryan Smerek, MSLOC Faculty Book Description: Unlock your mind From the bestselling authors of Thinking, Fast and Slow; The Black Swan; and Stumbling on Happiness comes a cutting-edge exploration of the mysteries of rational thought, decision-making, intuition, morality, willpower, problem-solving, prediction, forecasting, unconscious behavior, and beyond. Edited by John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org ("The world's smartest website"-The Guardian), Thinking presents original ideas by today's leading psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers who are radically expanding our understanding of human thought. Daniel Kahneman on the power (and pitfalls) of human intuition and "unconscious" thinking * Daniel Gilbert on desire, prediction, and why getting what we want doesn't always make us happy * Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the limitations of statistics in guiding decision-making * Vilayanur Ramachandran on the scientific underpinnings of human nature * Simon Baron-Cohen on the startling effects of testosterone on the brain * Daniel C. Dennett on decoding the architecture of the "normal" human mind * Sarah-Jayne Blakemore on mental disorders and the crucial developmental phase of adolescence * Jonathan Haidt, Sam Harris, and Roy Baumeister on the science of morality, ethics, and the emerging synthesis of evolutionary and biological thinking * Gerd Gigerenzer on rationality and what informs our choices

Written by Peggy Troyer, MSLOC Alumna March 18, 2014 "One of my responsibilities, as my company's Human Resource Partner, is to help managers make the right decisions on how they should reward their employees during our annual compensation review cycle. Over the years, a common assumption my managers may come to me for advice is, "How could anyone stay motivated to work if I don't give them a raise? Everyone must get something or they will surely leave." Is there more to a job than just money? Lately the people who have been awarded 5-8% pay increases have been the ones to leave our organization. In one recent exit interview, a high-performing employee said, "For some reason, I get paid exceedingly well for what I do, and though it was nice, I just didn't understand why the company won't use the money to hire more help." Interestingly, why do people still make the decision to stay with an organization after receiving no increase, while others leave after receiving an 11% increase in compensation and rave reviews?"

What really sets the best managers above the rest? It's their power to build a cadre of employees who have great inner work lives-consistently positive emotions; strong motivation; and favorable perceptions of the organization, their work, and their colleagues. The worst managers undermine inner work life, often unwittingly. As Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer explain in The Progress Principle, seemingly mundane workday events can make or break employees' inner work lives. But it's forward momentum in meaningful work-progress-that creates the best inner work lives. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees in 7 companies, the authors explain how managers can foster progress and enhance inner work life every day. The book shows how to remove obstacles to progress, including meaningless tasks and toxic relationships. It also explains how to activate two forces that enable progress: (1) catalysts-events that directly facilitate project work, such as clear goals and autonomy-and (2) nourishers-interpersonal events that uplift workers, including encouragement and demonstrations of respect and collegiality. Brimming with honest examples from the companies studied, The Progress Principle equips aspiring and seasoned leaders alike with the insights they need to maximize their people's performance. Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration and a Director of Research at Harvard Business School. Michelle Bavester, MSLOC student recommends this book. She says: "The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile? Her book has a checklist of sorts for making work meaningful and igniting engagement in employees. There's a lot of real-life examples from her research that she uses to illustrate her points as well. It's a great read!"

Author: Lex Sisney Date: April 17, 2014 Shared by: Andee Weinfurter, MSLOC student In a previous post I shared that every business has mass, which is a measure of its resistance to change. The challenge in getting an organization to change direction is the fact that its mass isn't neatly self-contained. Rather, it's scattered throughout its people, systems, structures, and processes - and the collective inertia causes resistance to change. In order to get the organization to execute on its strategy, you've got to get the mass contained and headed in one direction.

By Bea La O', MSLOC 2014 Capstone Research "This study seeks to understand how managers make strategic decisions through the lens of three approaches proffered by Mintzberg and Westley (2001): "think-first," procedural rationality, "see-first," insight and intuition, and "do-first," sensemaking. Through interviews with six leaders on strategic decision issues that range from changing the growth strategy of a large healthcare firm to redefining the talent management framework of a large quick service restaurant company, the study finds managers switch between the three approaches over the course of considering a decision issue. It also finds managers manage the inherent tension between "thinking-first," "seeing-first," and "doing-first," and socialize decision issues with stakeholders using "think-first," procedural rationality, and "do-first," sensemaking. "

Author: Heidi Grant Halvorson February 14, 2014 Shared by, Diane Knopke, MSLOC Student The good news (and its very good news) is that you can get better about not putting things off, if you use the right strategy. Figuring out which strategy to use depends on why you are procrastinating in the first place:

By Marshall Moore February 18, 2014 Shared by Kelly Ross, MSLOC alumnae and MSLOC Coach in the Organizational and Leadership Coaching Certification program. "Good coaches get results, respect, and awards-just ask the three managers recently inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. But what makes a coach or mentor good? One school of thought says they should hold their mentees to specific performance benchmarks and help them reach those benchmarks by targeting their personal weaknesses. Popofatticus But new research suggests a different tack-namely, to nurture a mentee's strengths, aspirations for the future, and goals for personal growth. Indeed, studies suggest that this positive approach is more effective at helping people learn and change; for instance, it helps train business school students to be better managers, and it is more effective at getting patients to comply with doctors' orders."

By Teresa Torres, MSLOC Student on her Product Talk blog July 12, 2012 There's been a lot of confusion around brainstorming these days. First, there was the New Yorker article by Jonah Lehrer claiming that brainstorming doesn't work. Scott Berkun wrote a rebuttal arguing Lehrer's logic was flawed. Twitter exploded with comments. I'm going to try to make sense of it all.

Shared by Brynn Harrington, MSLOC alumna, on Twitter "Gallup has found that one of the most important decisions companies make is simply whom they name manager. Yet our analysis suggests that they usually get it wrong. In fact, Gallup finds that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time. Bad managers cost businesses billions of dollars each year, and having too many of them can bring down a company. The only defense against this massive problem is a good offense, because when companies get these decisions wrong, nothing fixes it. Businesses that get it right, however, and hire managers based on talent will thrive and gain a significant competitive advantage."

Shared by Kim Bayma, MSLOC Student, on Twitter "The ranks of businesses that are certified B Corps are growing quickly. In 2012, when B Lab released its first annual "Best Businesses for the World" list, there were already more than 500 firms that had committed to meeting the nonprofit certifying organization's high social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency standards. By 2013, about 650 companies had achieved B Corp status, including well-known brands like Patagonia and Ben & Jerry's. This year has seen even bigger growth, with a total of 970 companies across 60 industries in 32 countries committed to one goal: Redefining business "success" as being about more than just about making the biggest profit."

By Maria Konnikova March 8, 2014 Shared by Jeff Merrell, MSLOC Associate Director ""I HATE quotation. Tell me what you know," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal one spring day in 1849. He was talking about a very specific tendency. When we're faced with an issue that's meant to be thought provoking (in this particular case, immortality), we reach for the easy way out. "I notice," he writes, "that as soon as writers broach this question, they begin to quote." Quotation becomes a way not to add depth to your thinking, but to avoid thinking in the first place. Welcome to the world of the Internet. What would Emerson have made of it? Examined from one perspective, it's a place that provides endless fodder for the type of anti-thought he despised. He would have shuddered to find himself quoted and requoted millions of times (make that millions plus one), often with little understanding of who he was or what he stood for. Decontextualized knowledge - snippets that stream past as links, tweets, posts, memes - dominates. "

Author: Phyllis Korkki Date: April 12, 2014 Shared by: Jessica Catz, MSLOC Student Who really makes the changes in an organization? It's not always the people with the highest executive titles. A growing body of research has pointed to the importance of informal leaders known to researchers as "brokers," who have the gift of connecting employees in productive new ways.

Author: Peggy Troyer (MSLOC Alum) Date: NA Shared by: Sandy Schwan (MSLOC Alum), on Evolvong Strategies blog Is there more to a job than just money? Lately the people who have been awarded 5-8% pay increases have been the ones to leave our organization. In one recent exit interview, a high-performing employee said, "For some reason, I get paid exceedingly well for what I do, and though it was nice, I just didn't understand why the company won't use the money to hire more help." Interestingly, why do people still make the decision to stay with an organization after receiving no increase, while others leave after receiving an 11% increase in compensation and rave reviews?

by Robert Kegan, Lisa Lahey, Andy Fleming, and Matthew Miller April, 2014 Shared by: Valencia Ray (MSLOC Student) by Robert Kegan, Lisa Lahey, Andy Fleming, and Matthew Miller

Author: Nick Tasler May 7, 2014 Shared by: Robin Bellerby, MSLOC Alum Three pervasive myths continue to make strategic thinking an elusive skill set in today's organizations.

This book by Lawrence G. Hrebiniak is recommended by BK Simerson, MSLOC 431 Leading with Strategic Thinking Instructor. It is not focused on learning and organizational change but is a very useful book.

March 28, 2014 By Torben Rick Shared by Sandy Schwan, MSLOC alumna "Organisations must become increasingly able to change quickly and easily. The business must be flexible yet capable of implementing and sustaining organisational change. Deciding what to change is one thing. Making changes stick is another. To improve your odds, use this change management checklist:"

By Aliah D. Wright in SHRM MSLOC alumnus, Judah Kurtz, is quoted in this article. Embrace the Inevitable For any of this to work, companies are going to have to take a leap of faith and embrace working in new ways. "To communicate more extensively and effectively, embracing technology inside the enterprise to leverage that is going to become that much more essential," said Judah Kurtz, senior manager of the talent solutions practice and an executive coach in the executive coaching practice at BPI group in Chicago. "If you can understand the knowledge and expertise of people throughout the organization … [they] are the ones who are going to be able to share information and documents and best practices and data or whatever ends up becoming an opportunity for us to have this back-and-forth dialogue," he said. Experts say that's when the real benefits begin.

11/04/2013 by Dan McGinn Shared by Claudia Richman, MSLOC Student, on Twitter - @claudiarichman

November 25, 2013 by Lisa Evans Thanksgiving provides an opportunity to reflect on all that we're grateful for, but for some companies, gratitude is not a once-a-year occasion, but is a value embedded in their company culture. Shared by Dorie Blesoff, MSLOC Instructor

Shared by Dorie Blesoff, MSLOC 441 Designing Sustainable Strategic Change Instructor