Expectations are mental models that define how we and people around us want things to work out now, in the short- medium- and long-term. Whether expectations are aligned in an organization or not has an immediate impact on individual and organizational performance. In this blogpost we have a look at why expectation management is important and what you should consider in managing expectations effectively.
Year by year consultants and scholars around the world introduce hundreds if not thousands new management tools. One of those tools that has been already around for some years is organizational agility. In this blog post we explore the agility – performance relationship and ask whether striving for agility is worth it.
Organizations such as companies, governmental institutions, NGOs, and hospitals are an important building block of our society. Most of us spend a considerable portion of our (working) life in some sort of organization. Whether we are happy, successful, depressed, or angry depends to a great extend on what we achieve and experience in our organizational life. There is no doubt that organizations have a profound impact on all of us.
Every organization has its rituals and behavioral patterns. While many of those rituals and patterns indeed have a positive impact on the organization and its people, some of them do more harm than good. One of these patterns you have to worry about is casually called the "cover your ass" or CYA phenomenon. Driven by fear and a toxic work environment, it undermines performance and drives away high performers.
Leadership is a phenomenon that has interested people for hundreds of years. One rather outdated explanatory approach still plays a prominent role in practice and the media in particular: The so-called Great Man Theory. In this blog we present what this theory is all about and why it is time to look for alternative approaches.
The aviation industry has reached an unprecedented safety level. This is an outstanding achievement taking into consideration that global air traffic is on the rise and every new aircraft becomes technically more sophisticated. Of course, one of the reasons for this achievement is superior technology. However, without a crew that performs well technology would be useless. A considerable body of evidence indicates that one reason for this strong safety track record in aviation is due to airlines conducting Crew Resource Management trainings as means to improve team performance. Initially inspired by management as a team development intervention, Crew Resource Management has become a de-facto standard in the aviation industry. Is it time for management to re-adapt what the aviation industry has developed to the next level?
Managing change is one of the most fundamental skills you need to succeed in an organization. It doesn’t matter whether you work in a private, a public or a non-governmental organization. Every time you want to launch a new product or service into the market, introduce a new IT system or just convince people to stick to a new process, you need change management skills. This is why in this blog post we summarize the top 12 reasons why change management initiatives fail and provide you some best practices on how to fix them.
Since its first discovery in December 2019 in Hubai, China, the new Coronavirus - now called SARS-CoV-2 - has spread out across the globe. The still increasing number of confirmed COVID-19 (the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2) cases requires governments, business and non-governmental organizations to switch from day to day operations into crisis mode. Leadership is one of the key determinants to succeed in times of crisis (Fred Garcia, 2006). We provide you a practical management guide what to consider when leading your project, team or organization during the coronavirus crisis.
There is a lot of information available on the web about the concept of personality, personality tests and personality development. This is not a big surprise considering the role personality plays in our lives and the size of the market associated with services related to personality testing and development. However, most of the things you will find on the web do not really live up to their promises and end up doing more harm than good. This is why we decided to put together this guideline to shed some light on what personality is and why personality development truly matters for every professional.
Niklas Luhmann, one of the most influential sociologists of the 20th century and father of social systems theory, once stated that organizations are made of decisions (Luhmann 2000). He even went further and argued that every decision taken builds on past decisions which accumulate to an organization’s future. On a more practical level, making the right decision can be a matter of life and death in high-risk environments such as aviation, medicine, or the military. In business, management and organizations, decision-making quality is a key determinant of good performance. We will take a look at the state of decision-making in the business sector and how Evidence-based Management can help managers, professionals and other stakeholders to improve decision-making quality.
