What is the 10,000 Hour Rule? – a 2 minute video from Randy Mayeux
This is possibly the first in a series. Ultimately, I plan to post the videos together on a separate site.
Yes, the production values are low. They are made on iMovie on my iMac. I am not an expert!
My intention is keep each video about 2 minutes in length (this one is 2:02). It is intended to be a a simple, quick definiton of a key business concept.
Please let me know what you think. And, let me know what other concepts you would like me to tackle.
Thanks.
A Management Problem Should Be Easy To Fix, Right? – Reflecting On BP’s Failure
Management: Organization and coordination of the activities of an enterprise in accordance with certain policies and in achievement of clearly defined objectives.
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It is hard to escape news about the BP Oil Disaster. It is omnipresent, as it should be. But part of this week’s news has to do with the judge’s decision to block the Obama ordered 6-month moratorium on drilling.
In a Christian Science Monitor article on the decision, we find this note:
“This is not an engineering problem, it’s a management problem, and it’s BP’s management that screwed up,” says Bruce Johnson, a professor emeritus of oceanic engineering at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. The moratorium “penalizes the whole industry for the mistakes of” BP management, he adds.
Here’s my thought: since it’s a “management problem,” then the solution should be that we make sure there are no more management problems. How confident do we feel about this actually happening?
In fact, I spoke to a group of 200-300 hundred at a conference this week, and asked this question: “how many of you have ever seen a management failure that created problems for your organization? Practically every hand went up.
In other words, we have not yet learned how to manage with enough precision and effectiveness to insure all desirable outcomes – to assure “achievement of clearly defined objectives.”
Thus we know that management failure does not have an easy fix. And we know that there have been many major problems caused by management failures in major corporations/companies/organizations over the last few years.
Gary Hamel points out part of the problem in his book The Future of Management. Here’s an excerpt:
Unlike the laws of physics, the laws of management are neither foreordained nor eternal… Whiplash change, fleeting advantages, technological disruptions, rebellious shareholders – these 21st- century challenges are testing the design limitations of organizations around the world and are exposing the limitations of a management model that has failed to keep pace with the times.
Part of the problem of “these times” is the difficulty of managing all of the complexity (like drilling down nearly 5 miles below the surface of the ocean). The challenges of such complexity require near flawless management practices. And we have attained nothing like such near-flawlessness.
When the problem is small, management failure is survivable. When the problem is massive, like the BP management failure, the consequences can be almost more than we can bear.
Anne E. Herman’s helpful guidelines for effective on-boarding
Anne E. Herman
Here is an excerpt from article written by Anne E. Herman for Talent Management magazine. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to the magazine, please visit here.
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To protect the investment made in new hires and increase engagement and retention, companies need to recognize that getting new employees acclimated to the company culture and positioning them for success is more than just provisioning and paperwork. A positive on-boarding experience must include a range of learning opportunities and specialized training programs that help new hires gain confidence and be productive in their new roles right from the start.
Imagine leaving a job you’ve held for a while. The transition from being someone who is an expert in the informal details to starting over with a new employer can be quite stressful. By guiding new employees through this transition, organizations can build confidence, foster engagement and improve performance.
Industry researchers at Aberdeen Group Inc. surveyed nearly 800 HR and line managers globally, and 86 percent of respondents said that new employees make their decision to stay within the first six months on the job.
Strategic on-boarding should provide the foundation for learning and development to ensure employees get off to a great start.
Feedback about performance and clear communication on expectations will help new employees make continual improvements as they get up to speed. However, performance goals during the on-boarding period — at least through the first six to 12 months — should be based on achieving specific learning milestones.
Defining learning objectives, such as the skills, knowledge and abilities required for success, should be interwoven with creating a timeline that helps determine at what stage the employee should accomplish these milestones. New employees also should be rewarded for achieving relevant learning outcomes. It’s important to recognize that learning means change, and for many individuals, this creates fear of failure or embarrassment. A learning-based new-hire on-boarding program that includes necessary training as well as rewards for accomplishments will help new employees conquer the fear of learning and increase their willingness to be bold and take risks.
Because on-boarding is also a critical period for establishing an employee’s potential career path and success with the company, organizations need to examine their on-boarding processes and identify areas of improvement.
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To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to the magazine, please visit here.
Anne E. Herman serves as a research consultant for the Kenexa Research Institute. She has extensive consulting experience in performance management, organizational assessment and change, creativity and innovation, employee selection and promotion, organizational strategy, program evaluation and statistical methodology. She can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com.
Four Economic Benchmarks We Need Now
Umair Hague
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Should governments accept the dictates of markets? It’s the question raging across the econoverse in the wake of demands for austerity from bondholders.
But it’s the wrong question. The right question is: are organizations and markets making decisions that help make people, communities, and society better off in the long run, by allocating their scarce resources to the most productive uses? The correct role of governance is to shape the decisions of markets, by breathing life into social preferences and expectations. Here’s what I mean by that. Once upon a time, markets “wanted” indentured servitude, debtors prisons, and child labor. But those decisions were unacceptable to society, and so governments took on the challenge of shaping them, reforming markets by preventing them from choosing those options.
The key word is reform. It’s shorthand for “macro institutional innovation” — creating new institutions that govern countries, economies, and regions.
Today, its increasingly clear that markets and companies aren’t making the right decisions — and that without reform, they won’t. Markets have been misallocating resources for decades, minimizing welfare gains. Consider the trillions spent on bailing out banks in just the latest housing bubble, for example. And those are a drop in the bucket compared to how inefficiently markets allocate, say, oil. The eventuality that oil will run out isn’t priced into the market, just the marginal cost of producing the next drop.
What happened? How did our most basic economic tools become so blunted? There’s much hand-wringing amongst macroeconomists about the failures of theory and models. I think the real failure is elsewhere: in real-world innovation. Though economists and management thinkers extolled the virtues of innovation repeatedly, firms were just mastering low-level product, service, and technological innovation. Ironically, it was the most powerful kind of innovation that was left ignored, and so simply stopped happening: institutional innovation.
The first half of the 20th century was a golden age, a period of intense institutional innovation. Simon Kuznets laid down the foundations of GDP. At Bretton Woods, world leaders built a global exchange rate regime. The idea of global governance and justice was formalized in international codes of law and tribunals. The groundwork was dug for new kinds of organizations, like 501c’s, formalized in the 50s.
But the latter half of the 20th century was a relative dark age, a period of institutional disinnovation. The global exchange rate regime laid down at Bretton Woods simply fell apart. GDP, built for a world of factories, consumer goods, and superhighways, was never updated to measure the costs and benefits of a radically interdependent, post-industrial, information-based economy. New kinds of organizations languished, and the idea that the “corporation” was the terminus of organizational evolution became dogma. Therein lies the problem: our economy’s trying desperately to shift past the industrial era, but our macro institutions are a rusting, creaking iron cage, trapping us in it.
Today, new reformers can kickstart radical macro institutional innovation. And It’s not just for policy makers. In the 21st century, governance is no longer just about governments. What’s different, now, is that smart entrepreneurs, investors, and companies can DIY it. Here are four areas where it’s needed most, fastest:
[Here are two.]
New measures of national income. GDP is outdated; inaccurate, invalid, and unreliable. Better measures of national income that count real costs (like pollution) and benefits (like health) are what will shape better behavior from organizations and markets.
Measures of well-being. GDP is a measure of income. What’s missing from that picture? Well-being, of course. More income doesn’t automatically make everyone better off all the time, in the same ways. Without measures of well being to live up to, no better behavior is likely to ever flow from organizations and markets.
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Want to be a radical innovator? Be a reformer. Today’s great challenge is reshaping the macro institutions of the global economy. That is what the transition to the 21st century demands. Right now, what we’ve got is a set of macro institutions left over from the industrial era. They’re obsolete and out of touch. They are what let firms and markets to behave exactly the same way as a century ago. What it means to transition to a post-industrial economy is to have built macro institutions that matter to people — not just machines.
It is the countries, companies, and people that can build them who, I think, will reap tomorrow’s greatest rewards. Why? Because they will be shaping and molding the next tomorrow’s high ground. And there’s no source of advantage greater than that.
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To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please visit http://blogs.hbr.org/.
Umair Haque is Director of the Havas Media Lab. He also founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that shaped strategies across media and consumer industries.
You are invited
Dave Ulrich
They will discuss their recently published book, The Why of Work.
There will be no charge,
Please visit https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/695685256.
Details:
Friday, June 25th
10 – 11 AM (MST)
Reserve your place now and receive a confirmation email and additional information.
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Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP, 2003 Server or 2000
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Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer
You are welcome to extend this invitation to as many other people as you wish.
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