Check Out The Real Reason People Won't Change (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) for $6.50

The Real Reason People Won't Change (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Review

The Real Reason People Won't Change (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Overview

This is an enhanced edition of the HBR reprint R0110E, originally published in November 2001. HBR OnPoint articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. Every manager is familiar with the employee who just won't change. Sometimes it's easy to see why--the employee fears a shift in power or the need to learn new skills. Other times, such resistance is far more puzzling. An employee has the skills and smarts to make a change with ease and is genuinely enthusiastic--yet, inexplicably, does nothing. What's going on? In this article, two organizational psychologists present a surprising conclusion. Resistance to change does not necessarily reflect opposition nor is it merely a result of inertia. Instead, even as they hold a sincere commitment to change, many people unwittingly apply productive energy toward a hidden competing commitment. The resulting internal conflict stalls the effort in what looks like resistance but is in fact a kind of personal immunity to change. An employee who's dragging his feet on a project, for example, may have an unrecognized competing commitment to avoid the even tougher assignment--one he fears he can't handle--that might follow if he delivers too successfully on the task at hand. Without an understanding of competing commitments, attempts to change employee behavior are virtually futile. The authors outline a process for helping employees uncover their competing commitments, identify and challenge the underlying assumptions driving these commitments, and begin to change their behavior so that, ultimately, they can accomplish their goals.

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Check Out Harnessing the Science of Persuasion (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) for $6.50

Harnessing the Science of Persuasion (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Review

Harnessing the Science of Persuasion (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Overview

This is an enhanced edition of the HBR reprint R0109D, originally published in September 2001. HBR OnPoint articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. If leadership, at its most basic, consists of getting things done through others, then persuasion is one of the leader's essential tools. Over the past several decades, experimental psychologists have learned which methods reliably lead people to concede, comply, or change. Their research shows that persuasion is governed by several principles that can be taught and applied. The first principle is that people are more likely to follow someone who is similar to them than someone who is not. Second, people are more willing to cooperate with those who are not only like them but who like them, as well. Third, experiments confirm the intuitive truth that people tend to treat you the way you treat them. Fourth, individuals are more likely to keep promises they make voluntarily and explicitly. Fifth, studies show that people really do defer to experts. Finally, people want more of a commodity when it's scarce; it follows, then, that exclusive information is more persuasive than widely available data.

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Check Out What You Don't Know About Making Decisions (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) for $6.50

What You Don't Know About Making Decisions (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Review

What You Don't Know About Making Decisions (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Overview

This is an enhanced edition of HBR article R0108G, originally published in September 2001. HBR OnPoint articles include the full-text HBR article plus a summary of key ideas and company examples to help you quickly absorb and apply the concepts. Most executives think of decision making as a singular event that occurs at a particular point in time. In reality, though, decision making is a process fraught with power plays, politics, personal nuances, and institutional history. Leaders who recognize this make far better decisions than those who persevere in the fantasy that decisions are events they alone control. That said, some decision-making processes are far more effective than others. Most often, participants use an advocacy process, possibly the least productive way to get things done. They view decision making as a contest, arguing passionately for their preferred solutions, presenting information selectively, withholding relevant conflicting data so they can make a convincing case, and standing firm against opposition. Much more powerful is an inquiry process, in which people consider a variety of options and work together to discover the best solution. Moving from advocacy to inquiry requires careful attention to three critical factors: fostering constructive, rather than personal, conflict; making sure everyone knows that their viewpoints are given serious consideration even if they are not ultimately accepted; and knowing when to bring deliberations to a close. The authors discuss in detail strategies for moving from an advocacy to an inquiry process, as well as for fostering productive conflict, true consideration, and timely closure. And they offer a framework for assessing the effectiveness of your process while you're still in the middle of it. Decision making is a job that lies at the very heart of leadership and one that requires a genius for balance: the ability to embrace the divergence that may characterize early discussions and to forge the unity needed for effective implementation.

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Check Out Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) for $6.50

Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Review

Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Overview

This is an enhanced edition of the HBR reprint 99609, originally published in November/December 1999. HBR OnPoint articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. Many managers feel overwhelmed. They have too many problems--too many monkeys--on their backs. All too often, they say, they find themselves running out of time while their subordinates are running out of work. Such is the common phenomenon described by the late William Oncken, Jr., and Donald L. Wass in this 1974 HBR classic. They tell the engaging story of an overburdened manager who has unwittingly taken on all of his subordinates' problems. If, for example, an employee has a problem and the manager says, "Let me think about that and get back to you," the monkey has just leaped from the subordinate's back to the manager's. This article describes how the manager can delegate effectively to keep most monkeys on the subordinate's back. It offers suggestions on the care and feeding of monkeys and on how managers can transfer initiative. In his accompanying commentary, Stephen R. Covey discusses both the enduring power of this message and how theories of time management have progressed beyond these ideas. Management thinkers and executives alike now realize that bosses cannot just give a monkey back to their subordinates. Subordinates must first be empowered, and that's hard and complicated work. It means bosses have to develop their subordinates and establish trust. Perhaps even more important and relevant than it was 25 years ago, Covey says, this article is a powerful wake-up call for managers at risk for carrying too many monkeys.

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Nov 28, 2010 02:18:04

Check Out The Necessary Art of Persuasion (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) for $6.50

The Necessary Art of Persuasion (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Review

The Necessary Art of Persuasion (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Overview

This is an enhanced edition of HBR article 98304, originally published in May/June 1998. HBR OnPoint articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. This article defines and explains the four essential elements of persuasion. Business today is largely run by teams and populated by authority-averse baby boomers and Generation Xers. That makes persuasion more important than ever as a managerial tool. But contrary to popular belief, author Jay Conger (director of the University of Southern California's Marshall Business School's Leadership Institute) asserts, persuasion is not the same as selling an idea or convincing opponents to see things your way. It is instead a process of learning from others and negotiating a shared solution. To that end, persuasion consists of these essential elements: establishing credibility, framing to find common ground, providing vivid evidence, and connecting emotionally. Persuasion can be a force for enormous good in an organization, but people must understand it for what it is: an often painstaking process that requires insight, planning, and compromise.

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Check Out Teaching Smart People How to Learn (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) for $6.50

Teaching Smart People How to Learn (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Review

The title is very interesting and so is the article. The article walks through the reason why smart people can't (won't) learn and describes an approach for breaking through this mode of thinking.

The basic premise is that people with high levels of education have learned to play the learning game. They can't or won't admit they don't know something because in essence they would have to admit failure. They often become defensive in the face of failure and displace (rationalize) the blame for failure rather then looking for the root cause and examining their own involvement in the failure.

Teaching Smart People How to Learn (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Overview

HBR OnPoint Articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. Competitive success depends on learning, but most people, including professionals in leadership positions, are not very good at it. Learning is a function of how people reason about their own behavior. Yet most people engage in defensive reasoning when confronted with problems. They blame others and avoid examining critically the way they have contributed to problems. Companies need to make managers' and employees' reasoning patterns a focus of continuous improvement efforts.

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Sep 08, 2010 18:21:04

Check Out What Effective General Managers Really Do (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) for $6.50

What Effective General Managers Really Do (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Review

John Kotter is Professor of Leadership at the Harvard Business School. He is the author of several books and articles into leadership and general management. This article was originally published in the November-December 1982 issue of the Harvard Business Review; this On-Point version contains a March-April 1999 retrospective commentary by the author.

This article reports on the author's study, between 1976 and 1981, into 15 successful general managers in nine corporations. He does this by a describing a typical day in the life of a successful executive. On the basis of his research into the daily behavior of general managers Kotter identifies 12 typical patterns. Kotter concludes that it is hard to fit the general manager's behavior into categories like planning, organizing, controlling, directing, or staffing. In order to understand the general managers' behavior it is fundamental to recognize the two fundamental challenges and dilemmas in their jobs: (1) Figuring out what to do despite uncertainty and an enormous amount of potentially relevant information; (2) Getting things done through a large and diverse group of people despite having little direct control over most of them. General managers use agenda setting and network building to tackle those two challenges. Kotter discusses both these tools in detail. He also explains how general managers use their entire network of relationships to implement their agendas. Kotter then continues to discuss the 12 patterns found in his study and what the implications of these patterns are. "First and foremost, putting someone in a general manager's job who does not already know the business or the people involved ... is risky. Second, management training courses ... probably overemphasize formal tools, unambiguous problems, and situations that deal simplistically with human relationships. Third, people who are new in general management positions can probably be gotten up to speed more effectively than is the norm today." Kotter complements this On-Point version with a short commentary, written in 1999.

Great, surprising article on the inconsistency between the textbook's definition of management and the actual behavior of general managers. He provides practical insights and advise on managerial effectiveness. This article is recommended to people moving into management and MBA-students. For readers who like this article I recommend John Kotter's 1999-book 'On What Leaders Really Do'. The article is written in simple US-English.

What Effective General Managers Really Do (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) Overview

This is an enhanced edition of HBR article 99208, originally published in March/April 1999. HBR OnPoint articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. A gap has existed between the conventional wisdom about how managers work and the actual behavior of effective managers. Business textbooks suggest that managers operate best when they carefully control their time and work within highly structured environments, but observations of real managers indicate that those who spend their days that way may be undermining their effectiveness. In this HBR Classic, John Kotter explains that managers who limit their interactions to orderly, focused meetings actually shut themselves off from vital information and relationships. He shows how seemingly wasteful activities like chatting in hallways and having impromptu meetings are, in fact, quite efficient. General managers face two fundamental challenges: figuring out what to do despite an enormous amount of potentially relevant information, and getting things done through a large and diverse set of people despite having little direct control over most of them. To tackle these challenges, effective general managers develop flexible agendas and broad networks of relationships. Their agendas enable them to react opportunistically to the flow of events around them because a common framework guides their decisions about where and when to intervene. And their networks allow them to have quick and pointed conversations that give the general managers influence well beyond their formal chain of command. Originally published in 1982, the article's ideas about time management are all the more useful for today's hard-pressed executives. Kotter has added a retrospective commentary highlighting the article's relevance to current concepts of leadership.

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