For the past several years, I have written blog posts of takeaways from the latest issues of Leader to Leader, where I am managing editor. They have included not only the main articles, but also the brief ‘From the Front Lines’ features, where I interview researchers/authors about their current research findings and publications.
In this post, I’m reaching back five years and six years to focus on takeaways from the eight issues published during that time period. I hope you are drawn both to our articles that yielded the takeaways, and the original research (in either journal article or book form) that we routinely cite in the ‘From the Front Lines’ features.
Fall 2019 issue 94
Rethinking high-cost/low-productive factors
Article: Navigating the Future of the Aging Workforce
Sample quote from Mark A. D. van Dongen:
“Many companies still think in terms of older employees between 55–65 as high-cost/low-productive factors one should try to replace with younger ones, who are less expensive. There is even a specific savings calculation on how to take this effect into account (the Noria effect), which shows we see people as cost factors, and not as adding value.”
Enhanced knowledge of selling tools and processes
Article: The Crucial Organizational Roles of Salespeople and Sales Managers
Sample quote from Sebastian Hohenberg:
“Everybody sells every day multiple times inside and outside the business world—however, most of the time without explicitly noticing it. When I write a project proposal or ask for a budget at work, I am essentially selling an idea to my colleagues or superiors. When I am suggesting to go out for dinner, I am essentially selling the plan of ‘eating out at the XYZ restaurant’ to my friends, family, or colleagues. Selling is everywhere and an enhanced knowledge of the selling tools and processes could help to improve everyone’s success in various facets of life.”
Summer 2019 issue 93
Taking ownership of our way of working
Article: Battling Bureaucracy in the Future Of Work
Sample quote from Aaron Dignan:
“People often ascribe their problems to their colleagues. The leaders say the people are the problem. The people say it’s the leaders that are causing all the trouble. The key epiphany of my research for the book was: it’s neither. The system is what’s broken. The organizational operating system. The principles and practices that govern how we structure teams, make decisions, meet, share information, and so much more. If we can take ownership of our way of working and learn to evolve that as we do our products and services, many of the personal dynamics begin to fall away. What’s left is the work we each have to do on ourselves—our self-awareness, our vulnerability, our mastery of craft.”
Having credibility as a synthesizer
Article: Achieving Innovation by Creative Construction
Sample quote from Gary P. Pisano:
“Good synthesizers are not ‘jacks of all trades.’ You have to establish your competence and credibility in some technical or functional area. This is key because if you don’t have that, then you won’t have credibility as a synthesizer. You will be viewed as someone who ‘could not make it’ in a particular domain. Great synthesizers have deep expertise, but they also have the capacity to make connections across fields and domains. And this requires that you broaden your knowledge base over time. Synthesizers generally have diverse experience. So, I would recommend early on that you broaden your experience base in terms of technologies, markets, or functions.”
Spring 2019 issue 92
Differentiating aspects of what makes an economy really circular
Article: What Does the Circular Economy Really Entail?
Sample quote from Sylvie Geisendorf:
“In recent years, the idea of a circular economy has been more and more discussed, but we felt there was a lack of differentiation from related concepts such as cradle-to-cradle, the blue economy or industrial ecology. One purpose of our paper was to show where they overlap, but also how most do not focus on all aspects that need to be considered to make an economy really circular. Only a few, for example, aim for zero waste, some do not consider how raw material is sourced, while others do not look at how products are used.”
Beyond a rational weighing of value and price
Article: Multiple Layers of Meaning In the Concept Of Customer Experience
Sample quote from Anne-Madeleine Kranzbühler:
“Although it has been known for a long time that customer satisfaction does not only stem from a rational weighing of value and price, we still lack profound knowledge on the role of the human senses and especially emotions during touchpoints and across journeys. As a consequence, managers’ efforts still rely to a large extent on guesswork. It is further essential that the body of research that is there already is made more easily accessible to practice.”
Winter 2019 issue 91
Moving from being a steward of employment to being a steward of work
Article: Assessing the Future of Automation, Work, and Jobs[BR1]
Sample quote from Ravin Jesuthasan and John W. Boudreau:
“HR is certainly able to take on the shift in its remit from being a steward of employment to being a steward of work. However, its degree of preparedness for this new challenge is highly varied. We see evidence of progressive HR functions actively embracing this change and training managers on job deconstruction. They are transforming their mandate to include all the organization’s talent, not just its employees. Yet there are many others who are merely focused on the firefighting associated with a changing landscape of work, that is, reacting to talent deficits and skill mismatches.”
Narrowly defined goals can lead to narrow thinking
Article: Putting Organizational Goals into Action
Sample quote from Marylène Gagné:
“It is definitely possible for certain types of goals to lead to unwanted outcomes. Research shows that narrowly defined goals can lead to narrow thinking and neglect of other important organizational actions. Performance targets or key performance indicators (KPIs) are often misused by organizations and lead to problems. But I don’t think that an organization can function without goals. However, the organization can make decisions around how broadly or narrowly defined its goals are, and it can set up norms or a culture that will determine how people will pursue them.”
Fall 2018 issue 90
Repeating the same mistakes
Article: Beyond Best Practices for Corporate and Executive Success
Sample quote from Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldbach:
“We’ve worked with some of the world’s biggest and most successful companies, and we’ve seen organizations making the same mistakes over and over again. To test our hypotheses around the behaviors that most often prevent progress, we surveyed others for their input on the usual suspects. Generally, we found that what may have worked previously in terms of “playbooks” and “rules of the road” are actually getting in the way of what will likely be a recipe for success both in the immediate term and in the future.”
A personalized, constructive interaction
Article: The Effectiveness of Coaching in the Workplace
Sample quote from Ray Tak-yin Hui and Christina Sue-Chan:
“Coaching is a cross-industry and cross-disciplinary developmental practice which helps recipients to enhance their performance and adapt to different task situations. There is a core set of behaviors, which we differentiate into guidance and facilitation coaching, that is performed by manager/leaders who coach to improve performance. Ultimately, however, coaching is a personalized, constructive interaction between the coach and the recipient with specific purposes. The purpose of the coaching interaction is probably what defines the type of coaching that occurs—employee, life, executive. The skills and techniques of coaching that we identify are applicable across different industries, contexts, and to achieve different purposes. Our view is that everyone can be an effective coach, once he or she grasps and enacts the basic behaviors of guidance and facilitation coaching. Viewed from this perspective, the field is not saturated; it is tiny. Clearly there is room for expansion.”
Summer 2018 issue 89
Committing to nurturing new initiatives
Article: A Different Perspective on Corporate Strategy
Sample quote from Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit:
“Corporate leaders need to be seeking out signals amidst the noise—early signs of significant new trends or shifts. That kind of foresight is hard, because it’s difficult to tell what’s real and what’s hype. And it takes real courage to act in the early days of an emerging trend, when you feel barely any impact on your core business. Once a trend is clear, it’s essential for established companies to commit to nurturing new initiatives that will enable them to establish footholds in the new arena. More important, they need to ensure that new ventures have autonomy from the core business, even if the goals of the two operations conflict. The temptation is to dabble and protect the core business. Instead, they need to push those investments early, because as the core business starts to suffer from the changing industry dynamics, it becomes that much more difficult to free up resources for the new bets.”
Identity and hierarchy inside/outside the workplace
Article: Professional Identity and Multiple Roles in the Workplace
Sample quote from Theresa M. Welbourne:
“The same ideas about identity and hierarchy apply outside of the workplace, and there is a lot of theory and research to that point. Because in this paper we wanted to create a survey tool for use at work, we did not tackle potential non-work roles. However, in additional research we have studied an overall non-work role, and in some of our work on employee resource groups (ERG), we also have measured the ERG identity and roles. I often give the example of the parent role; if the parent (mother or father) identity is very high, then that individual is going to seek a job that allows time to do the parent role well.”
Spring 2018 issue 88
Considering technical and emotional perspectives
Article: What Does Wise Management Decision-Making Really Mean?
Sample quote from Ali Intezari and David J. Pauleen:
“To be practically wise… a manager needs to have appropriate knowledge and expertise, as well as the ability to apply their experience and expertise to accurately analyze the decision situation from both technical and emotional perspectives… These principles are not independent of each other. That is, applying one principle, by and of itself, does not mean that one can make a wise management decision. Moreover, the principles underlie one another, and applying one principle requires the incorporation of the others. For instance, it would be impossible for a manager to be both logical and emotional at the same time if s/he does not have an accurate picture of self.”
High standards of performance and professionalism
Article: Public Relations and Brand Activation in the Digital Age
Sample quote from Mary Gendron:
“Journalism and public relations are based on high standards of performance and professionalism. The two disciplines work more closely together today than ever before. Due to downsizing, journalists are working from smaller newsrooms, yet are charged with generating volumes of content for outlets that are immediate and insatiable. PR professionals tailor content to media outlets and platforms, providing a service not only to their clients but to the media and influencers with whom they communicate. Many of the finest colleges and universities have developed esteemed programs in communications, public relations, media studies, and allied marketing disciplines. This bodes well for the future—and reputation—of the industry.”
Winter 2018 issue 87
Making economics more human and realistic
Article: Reading Economics For Lessons on Prosperity
Sample quote from Tom Butler-Bowdon:
“Each generation believes that some fundamental change has occurred in the economy such that manias, panics, and crashes won’t happen again—and yet they do. And this tells us that our models of reality are wrong. Behavioral economics, with its insertion of psychology into the field, has helped to make it more human and realistic. One of John Maynard Keynes’s great observations was that economics is all about expectations, not rationality. Economies are not about ‘goods and services,’ but involve millions of minds. Economics should not just be for economists, any more than philosophy is just for philosophers. However, the book also looks at all the good that free trade and markets have done, highlighting the massive increase in wealth and living standards over the last 200 years.”
Driving significant competitive advantage to companies
Article: Suman Sarkar and the Supply Chain Revolution
Sample quote from Suman Sarkar:
“Most companies have separate supply chain and sourcing functions. However, if you think logically, they do the same thing for different parts of the organization. Sourcing gets products and services from suppliers to the manufacturing facilities, and then supply chain takes it from manufacturing to the customers. Thinking about them together would streamline the supply function and could drive significant competitive advantage to companies.”