To Engage or Not to Engage? – A Work Level 1 and 2 Distinction
By Michelle Malay Carter on January 7, 2009
Happy New Year! Let’s start off with a concrete example of work levels and how understanding them can?help you as a manager?with employee engagement.? As we begin to work with clients, it takes a while for managers to fully grasp the distinctions between work levels, like a radiologist learning to distinguish the shades of gray.? […]
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Innovation at Work Level 1 – A Friday Fascinating
By Michelle Malay Carter on December 12, 2008
My post, Innovation Snobbery Is Not Serving Organizations, which started as?my response to Harvard Business online’s question, What’s Management’s Role in Innovation?,?is one of my most visited posts. Biased Expectations = Limited Potential My contention is that all work is creative and all humans are wired to work.? All levels of the organization are accountable […]
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Thanksgiving and Happiness Linked
By Michelle Malay Carter on November 27, 2008
It’s Thanksgiving in the United States, and although the average US standard of living has steadily risen over the last decades, self-reported happiness has declined.? Thanksgiving provides us an opportunity to remind ourselves that things do not make for happiness. Gratitude Research Dr. Robert A. Emmons wrote a book, thanks!,?detailing his research on gratitude.? His […]
Filed Under Corporate Values, Personal Observation | 2 Comments
CEO Leadership – Key Points to Understand
By Michelle Malay Carter on November 23, 2008
Elliott Jaques wrote Social Power and the CEO: Leadership and Trust in a Sustainable Free Enterprise System?in 2002.? It’s worth reading.? If you don’t care to read the whole book, an excellent summary was published by Business Book Review. A reprint of the review was published in Organization Design, Levels of Work & Human Capability […]
Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Work Levels | 2 Comments
What is the Opposite of a Yes Man? A Friday Funny
By Michelle Malay Carter on November 21, 2008
Do You Agree? This week we’ve been talking about emotions.? For most of us, nothing stirs them up more than an opposing viewpoint. My client used a term for?a non-yes woman the other day that was so spot on that I can’t get it out of my head.? I wasn’t sure where the term fell […]
Filed Under Corporate Values, Personal Observation, Strategy | 2 Comments
Don’t Feel that Way. Feel Better?
By Michelle Malay Carter on November 19, 2008
A Common, but Misguided?Strategy Trying?to make a person feel better by telling them not to feel what they are feeling is a strategy doomed to fail.?? How often do we, with the best of intentions,?tell people not to feel the way they do? Don’t be upset.? It’s not that big of a deal. Don’t whine.? […]
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It’s Irrational to be Rational with the Emotional
By Michelle Malay Carter on November 17, 2008
One of the easiest ways to make an emotional situation worse is to offer rationalizations before dealing with the emotional aspects of a situation.? Whether you are a manager, a customer service representative, or a resident of planet earth, my advice to you is ignore others’ emotions at your peril. Emotion Up, Rational Down Picture […]
Filed Under Corporate Values, Employee Engagement | 9 Comments
Requisite Weekend Transformation? How Are You Framing Your Organizational Issues?
By Michelle Malay Carter on November 12, 2008
Folklore has it that Elliott Jaques, the author of the meta model, Requisite Organization, used to say you could transform an organization over the weekend by restructuring an organization to align with the requisite model. Requisite Organization Design Principles That means, among other things,?re-aligning as necessary to meet the three requisite organization design criteria. Conceptually […]
Filed Under Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Felt Fair Compensation, Requisite Organization, Work Levels | 6 Comments
Managerial Accountability Is Not Missing; It’s just MISPLACED
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 29, 2008
Last week I pointed you to an article by Samuel A.?Culbert, Get Rid of the Performance Review.? I thought it was well written, but I’m not in 100% agreement with some of his proposed solutions, particularly around accountability. Culbert says, “The alternative to one-side-accountable, boss-administered/subordinate-received performance reviews is two-side, reciprocally accountable, performance previews.” Performance Previews […]
Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Requisite Organization, Talent Management | 13 Comments
Best Intentions Don’t Equal Best Practices – Ask the Bigger Questions of Your Systems
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 20, 2008
I believe in people.? Their inherent goodness.? Their desire to contribute.? To do well by themselves and others.? But clearly, this does not always translate into best practices.? Sometimes to do right by ourselves, our systems force us to do wrong by others. Whoa!? Where Did?We Go? Many times we start out doing something for […]
Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Executive Leadership, Requisite Organization | 4 Comments
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