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Filed Under: Culture

Published on: Thursday, March 01, 2012

When Your Company Has the Urge to Merge

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The economy is already a destabilizing external force, but many employees have added uncertainty when their own companies merge or acquire other businesses, or get sold. What used to be so familiar becomes unknown, and even worse, job security can disappear. When two companies become one, redundant headcount is often reduced; reorganizations occur; leadership can change; and cultures shift.

An ExecuNet member shared the difficulties his organization encountered in assimilating employees after purchasing several smaller businesses, and called upon his peer General Mangers for suggestions about how they coped in similar situations.

 

Published on: Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Road to Employee Engagement is a Journey, Not a Destination

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Given the economic and organizational pressures of today, many human resource leaders are talking about employee engagement, engagement surveys and getting their people back on track.

But it's especially important to recognize that arriving at some improved, future condition of employee engagement is a journey, not a destination.

 

Published on: Tuesday, June 07, 2011

More than Happy Feet

Posted By: Robyn Greenspan
Filed Under: world innovation forum, robyn greenspan, culture, tony hsieh, zappos, amazon, wif, values, happiness
Comments (33)
 
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, has a simple mission: Delivering Happiness. Not only to shoe customers, but to those who buy anything from the company's growing product line, as well as Zappos' employees.

But why stop there? Hsieh wants anyone who has any experience with Zappos to be happy. Even more ambitiously, he wants to create a happiness-inspiring corporate culture that every company will want to model.

 

Published on: Friday, May 20, 2011

First We Kiss

Posted By: Anthony Vlahos
Filed Under: leadership, culture, anthony vlahos, communication, brand, consumer relations
Comments (48)
 
After all, one must start somewhere.

Brands we adore, the remarkable customer service rep who fixes our problem, leaders whom we love to follow: They usually begin the love affair by deep kissing us in advance.

It's so much easier to read lips when they're touching yours.

 

Published on: Friday, April 15, 2011

Breaking Away to Innovate

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I recently went to a reception announcing the release of Breaking Away, a new book on "how great leaders create innovation that drives sustainable growth — and why others fail." There are many books on innovation, but this one is a keeper. It was written by the Jane Stevenson, Chairman, Board and CEO Services at Korn/Ferry International and Bilal Kaafarani, who has been a "serial" innovator at P&G, Kraft, Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

Stevenson's and Kaafarani's main purpose is to clarify what innovation is and how companies can consistently succeed in making the breakthroughs in innovation that lead to transformational change, revolutionizing an industry, a market or a company itself — the payoff being activating profitable and sustainable growth.

 

Published on: Monday, April 04, 2011

Ask a Poet What Makes a Great Leader

Posted By: Anthony Vlahos
Filed Under: leadership, culture, anthony vlahos, vision, leaders, national poetry month
Comments (30)
 
Longfellow and the iFellow seem to be odd bedfellows with very little connection. What do great poets and great leaders have in common? Quite a lot. For example:
  1. Great poets muse on the big questions: "How did we get here?"; "What's important now?"; and "Where do we go next?"

  2. They're great at conjuring different pictures of reality — things as they are and as they ought to be.

  3. They listen more than they invent.

  4. They tear down as much as they create. They violate the meter, break the status quo, point at frauds and flawed models, take sides, start arguments, name the unnameable and say the unsayable.

  5. They leverage their talent for simplicity to shape the world around them, transform culture and create change.

 

 
While organizations should expect an estimated 45 percent of their workforce to participate in March Madness office pools and as many as 8.4 million hours watching the tournament unfold during working hours, senior executives won't be draining productivity, neglecting responsibilities or missing deadlines.

Senior-level corporate leaders have become accustomed, particularly as they've had to stretch resources during the recession, to blurring the distinction between home time and work time. In ExecuNet's forthcoming 19th annual Executive Job Market Intelligence Report, "work/life balance" dropped out of the top five reasons executives stay with their employers and slipped a notch for the factors in accepting a new job.

 

Published on: Wednesday, March 16, 2011

The Power of Innovation and Passion

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Can someone who pushed teams to great achievements through a demanding leadership style reform and get the same high-quality results? Filmmaker James Cameron confessed to delegates at the 2010 World Business Forum, where ExecuNet exclusively reported, he had to adapt his leadership style from dictatorial to one that was more respectful and empowering. "I don't think I was always a good leader where I worked with people to get the best out of them," said the creator of Avatar, adding that these skills weren't innate for him, and he had to be open to learning so he wouldn't seem phony.

Now, when conflict arises, Cameron's inclination is to solve the problem, rather than make a recriminating moment out of it, he told Bloomberg anchor Betty Liu during an onstage interview. "I turn it back on myself. Did I hire the right person? Yes. Then maybe I didn't communicate it well or they didn't understand." This new leadership style lent Avatar a sense of fun, authorship and ownership in an environment where people felt like they had permission to make mistakes but were now less likely to do so.

 

 
An impressive GPA and a high IQ certainly can't hurt in today's job market, but they're no guarantee of getting an interview, much less a job. But a high CQ (cultural intelligence quotient) is an increasingly sought-after capability by many employers. In today's competitive job market, candidates who demonstrate cultural intelligence have an edge for landing a job in many businesses. Even if the job doesn't require any international travel, managers and HR departments are realizing the importance of having culturally savvy employees who can dynamically meet the challenges of serving a diverse customer base at home and abroad as well as becoming effective participants of culturally diverse teams.

Cultural intelligence is defined as the capability to function effectively across national, ethnic and organizational cultures. You've heard about IQ and EQ. CQ stems from this same body of research on the various forms of intelligence needed to be a successful in today's workforce. CQ is a set of capabilities and skills proven to give employees and their organizations a competitive edge in our shrinking world.

 

Published on: Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Will You Love Your Job?

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A young family member, three weeks into his first job after graduating college, came home exasperated that he wasn't fitting into his new position. His boss hadn't established a formal training program; the culture wasn't conducive to his learning style; and his colleagues were products of this disorganized environment and, therefore, not helpful.

His lack of career experience led him to a common mistake that even well-seasoned professionals often make: accepting a job without also interviewing the company. His eagerness to work took precedence, and he neglected to conduct research that would enable him to assess leadership, management style, culture and the workplace.

 

Published on: Friday, October 22, 2010

Lost Without Leadership

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"This but not that." "Someday." These are the last five words in a recent Op Ed piece by David Brooks of the New York Times. The title of the piece was "The Paralysis of the State" and essentially deals with why government at all levels is so broken. Not something that comes as news to anyone.

What Brooks was pointing out with these last five words was simply to remind readers of the enormous price we all pay if we are part of something where there is a lack of leadership. Of the many examples cited in the article, perhaps the epidemic of unfunded public pension programs is as good as any in demonstrating what happens when the political will is not there to say this but not that.

 

 
Report from World Business Forum, New York

Adrian Gostick remembers asking his father, who engineered small component parts for large aircraft engines, what motivated him to work for Rolls Royce for more than 20 years. "Every day," his father replied, "I felt praised and listened to."

For the younger Gostick, co-author of The Carrot Principal, and also co-author, with his business partner, Chester Elton, of The Orange Revolution: How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization, those words were both personally illuminating and professionally reinvigorating.

 

Published on: Monday, October 04, 2010

Follow the Leader: Seth Godin

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Business leaders create value for organizations either through obedience or risk, and one is at a surplus and no longer needed, said author and marketing expert Seth Godin at the 2010 World Innovation Forum, where ExecuNet exclusively reported for attendees.

Those who generate ideas and "work without a map" are the real high-value leaders, according to Godin, but many companies don't encourage employee innovation nor do they build a culture that fosters creative thinking for fear of failing.

But failure acts as a double-edge sword: "Doing what you're told is a sure way to failure," said Godin of obedience; however, corporate innovation is guaranteed in a culture of failure.

 

Published on: Tuesday, August 03, 2010

When Failure Means Success

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In baseball, if a player averages three hits every 10 chances he's good player; if he averages four hits per 10 chances he's a first ballot Hall of Famer and the stuff of legend. Many call baseball the ultimate failure activity, but the pharmaceutical industry is much more challenging where else is a 1-in-10,000 success rate is considered acceptable?

One would think it's a challenge simply to get out of bed every morning knowing more failures surely await you in the office, but not so, said Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler at the 2010 World Innovation Forum, where ExecuNet exclusively reported for attendees.

 

 
Lots of very smart people talk about the critical nature of organizational culture as an indicator of future business performance. An equal number of business leaders talk about the importance of recruiting and developing superior executive talent to gain a competitive edge.

Yet the challenge of filtering the wrong people out of an organization when they poison the cultural well, so to speak, and keeping them out of your company in the first place, is so often overlooked.

 

Published on: Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Xerox CEO Ursula Burns on What it Takes to Drive Innovation

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Xerox CEO Ursula Burns on What it Takes to Drive InnovationWhen the very name of your company is expressed as a verb, there are lofty expectations to meet and a requirement to continually innovate. For Ursula M Burns, CEO of Xerox, the nearly $17 billion company that is issued an average of 10 new patents per day, innovation is essential for business growth and meeting the ever-increasing demands of customers.

Burns, who shared her thoughts on innovating during the World Innovation Forum, says the global economic crisis forced Xerox to cut $1 billion out of its expense base to maintain its competitive edge and reposition.

 

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