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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

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!"

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.

Shared by Maggie Lewis, MSLOC Instructor and Alumna "Culture is critically important to business success around the world. That was the response from an overwhelming 84 percent of the more than 2,200 participants in our 2013 Culture and Change Management Survey. The survey, conducted by the Katzenbach Center at Booz & Company, was undertaken to better understand global perceptions of culture, its impact on change, and the main barriers to successful, sustainable transformation. In addition to culture's critical role in the overall success of an organization, survey responses suggest strong correlations between the success of change programs and whether culture was leveraged in the change process. Our findings point to using a holistic, culture-oriented approach to change for the best results. Despite its critical role, however, there is a disparity between the way culture is seen by companies and the way it is treated. Less than half of participants report that their companies effectively manage culture, and more than half say a major culture overhaul is needed. How can companies close this gap, and begin to effectively leverage the power of culture to achieve more sustainable transformations?"

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."

March 2, 2014 Shared by Keeley Sorokti, MSLOC alumna "Over the last few years, there has been an enormous amount of industry discussion about how the digital world is changing the way we work. To any reasonable observer, the ways that we communicate, interact, and collaborate with each other are all in the midst of profound change. At least the why seems fairly clear. At at high level, there appear to be three major root causes for why collaboration - the very core of how people come together and function as a business - is in the midst of reinvention: Hierarchical management styles break down in the face of the inherent complexity and scale of the modern business environment. New digital tools have put us in constant and direct contact with nearly every person in the developed world at virtually no cost or effort. Thus businesses are now primarily subject to the power laws of networks, rather than the legacy rules of business. There has been a sustained shift in the power of creation, as the edges of our organizations and marketplaces now have readily in hand as much - and often more - productive power and reach than our institutions. The obvious cause is today's pervasive global platforms for self-expression (yes, by this I largely mean social media, but also all forms of digital connectedness.)"

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. "

Using meditation in the classroom to improve focus. Summarizes research on multi-tasking with technology. Includes reading recommendations.

By Jeff Haden Shared by Catherine Suer, MSLOC Student "I love setting goals. Unfortunately, my goals don't always love me back. I've tried using silence to accomplish a goal, and I've tried to sneak up on big goals, and although those strategies work, they're hardly foolproof. Fortunately James Clear, an entrepreneur and guy who thinks a lot about goals, habits, and success, has a much better approach to achieving almost any goal--and it's an approach anyone can use."

March 26, 2014 by Alan Todd Shared by Whit Wesenberg, MSLOC Student "Gathering dispersed learners in the same location is difficult. Even if getting everyone in the same place were cheap and easy, few companies have enough physical seats to accommodate all the people they would like to develop. Transforming the math that dictates the reach and scale of corporate learning through virtual technology is attracting CLOs' attention and a growing flow of venture capital. But the concern remains that quality is being sacrificed in the quest for scale. Many learning leaders are waiting to see how experiments play out in higher education, and those who have begun to experiment generally relegate virtual learning to low-priority subjects like compliance-driven training and basic technical or vocational knowledge."

Author: Eleanor Barkhorn March 14, 2013 Shared by: Valencia Ray, MSLOC Student Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In is full of quotable lines: "What would you do if you weren't afraid?"; "As women must be more empowered at work, men must be more empowered at home"; and so on. There's one line in particular that jumped out at me and I felt compelled to follow up on: "As a man gets more successful, he is better liked by men and women, and as a woman gets more successful, she is less liked by men and women."

By Luis Suarez February 21, 2014 in CMS Wire Here we are, 2014 and still wondering what the future of collaboration is - as if we didn't know already. Despite all efforts to trump it or get rid of it altogether in favor of other noble concepts like cooperation, the hard truth is that collaboration has always been here. and it will continue to be here for many years to come. It's a human trait. It's our capability of getting work done together. Effectively. So why is it that even today we are still questioning its inherent value within the business world? Is it because of technology? Or certain business processes? Maybe it's the people after all? In reality, it's none of these. It's because of Human Resources and its inability to get it right by empowering knowledge workers to excel at what they already do: collaborate sharing their knowledge more openly and transparently.

By Eric Jaffe Shared by Keeley Sorokti, MSLOC alumna "By now we're all familiar with the stereotypes of different generations in the workplace. Boomers are workaholics who respect authority and have a lifelong loyalty to their company. Generation X employees prize a work-life balance. Millennials float from job to job and flaunt managerial authority and are too busy texting to care what you think of that. Given the popular consensus about office generational gaps--and the abundance of advice columns on bridging them--you'd think evidence for these traits would be strong. That's not at all the case, says management scholar John Bret Becton of University of Southern Mississippi. "We're always looking for a reason why people are different," Becton tells Co.Design. "But at least half of the research shows there's really not a lot of difference.""

By Beth Kuhel March 8, 2014 "If you want to get hired and stay hired you need to know how hiring managers think. Since Google is setting the standard for attracting, hiring (and paying) top talent, examining and understanding their hiring standards and practices could help you even if you have no interest in working there."

Author: Nicole Carter Date: March 11, 2014 Shared by: Andee Weinfurter Description: It's the fourth day of SXSW Interactive, And though the throngs of geeks And enthusiasts are getting tired, it didn't stop a hAndful of them from lining up to see Patricia Korth-McDonnell, partner And managing director of design firm Huge, talk about chaos And creativity.

By Jeanne Ebersole, MSLOC 2012 Few women hold roles at the top levels of organizations and of those who do, many have reported their intent to leave within five years. This study investigates the transition experiences of executive women who have opted out. It explores the genesis of their desire to opt-out, the support they received and would have liked to receive as well as the role of coaching in the process. Participants reported experiencing a distinct transition process with identifiable phases and that coaching would be useful in the transition.

Author: Karen Bonsignore Date: NA Shared by: Sandy Schwan, MSLOC Alum on Evolving Strategies blog Organizational leaders must fully understand the consequences of disengagement, and devote attention and resources to initiatives that will increase and sustain employee engagement. Employees are free to leave their jobs to find more fulfilling work, or a better work environment, or even a more supportive boss. However, building an engaged workforce is the responsibility of a leader: from the top-down. The reason is that while there are known factors that can drive or derail engagement, regular employees are generally not in control of company policies and practices. Consequently, the buck begins at the top.

Author: Karen Bonsignore (MSLOC Alumna) Date: NA Shared by: Sandy Schwan, MSLOC Alumna magine how employee engagement might be increased if the performance feedback was for the purpose of positively influencing behavior change, or helping an employee grow in their job, and inspiring creativity and inspiration in a workforce. Yet no performance system is perfectly objective: no matter how hard we may try to be objective, our (even our reviewers') feelings, opinions, judgment are still subjective and will always interfere with the system! So how do we use a flawed system to our advantage?

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."

This community is a venture of the Master's Program in Learning & Organizational Change at Northwestern University. We are scholar practitioners exploring topics at the intersection of learning and change - and how best to prepare workplace leaders and learners for the future.