MSLOC Community

Author: Will Yakowicz Shared by: Cathy Brough April 28, 2014 Is your company innovation-friendly? It's easy to talk about the need to innovate, create new ideas, and build new avenues of revenue, but if your employees aren't submitting ideas, it may mean they are holding on to them.

Author: Susan Scrupski Shared by: Jeff Merrell, MSLOC Faculty April 24, 2014 My friends and colleagues at Change Agents Worldwide are kicking off a "blog carousel" to address all these reasons why organizations can't change. This list was carefully compiled by a Product Engineer of the Milwaukee Gear Company in 1959. These objections still live on today in memos, meetings, analysis decks, and teleconference calls over a half-century later.

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

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: Frank Kalman April 22, 2014 Shared by: Andee Weinfurter, MSLOC Student Even the worst of business problems come with hidden positivity, says author Kathy Cramer. The trick is developing a leadership mindset where being positive is your biggest asset.

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.

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: Irene Hayes (MSLOC Student) Date: Jan 14, 2014 Shared by: Sandy Schwan (MSLOC alumnae) on her blog, Evolving Strategies

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?

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?

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.

Kolko, Jon (2007), "Information Architecture and Design Strategy: The Importance of Synthesis during the Process of Design". In the 2007 Industrial Designers Society of America Conference proceedings.

Author: Amy Gallo August 10, 2010 Shared by: Sean Radford, MSLOC Student

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:"

Author: Dan Levy March 27, 2014 Shared by Brynn Harrington Here are some of the tips I've been using over the last decade to gather more feedback and to build a culture of feedback within my teams.

March 14, 2014 By Paul Boag Shared by Tammie Green, MSLOC Alumna "If digital is just a tool in our business arsenal, then it fundamentally alters how we approach this new medium. It will even redefine what your job should be. If digital is just a tool, we might not even need Web professionals. I can tell you now that from a certain point of view they are right to criticize me. In fact, yes, at their most fundamental level, digital technologies such as the Web and mobile are just tools like any other we work with. Like electricity or the printing press, we can use these tools to achieve a business objective. For example, to persuade prospective customers to buy a product, you might get a brochure printed. This would require both the power of electricity and a printing press. Alternatively, you could build a website, send an email or create a Facebook page. Digital is just another tool in your arsenal."

By Art Kleiner in strategy+business | booz&co. March 11, 2014 Shared by Eric Fridman, MSLOC Student "The idea of using mindfulness as a guide to better business practices has taken on such currency as a management fad lately that it already has a detractor: The New Republic's Silicon Valley curmudgeon, Evgeny Morozov. Known for his skepticism about Internet-fueled democracy, Morozov has penned a new article called "The Mindfulness Racket," in which he claims that workplace meditation-the leading edge of the fad-is a weak substitute for the substantial change that businesses really need. "

Author: Daniel Goleman March 12, 2014 Shared by: Justin Jacques, MSLOC Alum

Author: Shane Parrish March 24, 2014 Shared by Teresa Torres, MSLOC Student How we experience the world may be as important as, or more important than the hard, objective facts about the world. This is especially true for the specific set of problems where past data or scenarios no longer seem relevant.