Author Archives: Larry Janis

The unexpected power of making mistakes

 

 

by Peter Hinssen

 

 

My exclusive interview with Amy C. Edmondson, renowned Harvard Business School Professor of Leadership and Management, about psychological safety and the right kind of wrong.

In the Never Normal, where change happens fast and unpredictably, how we work together is just as crucial as what we are working on. And psychological safety, a concept which I love to refer to in my keynotes, lies at the very heart of that “how”. That’s why I was really excited to interview Amy Edmondson who uncovered that groundbreaking concept, almost 25 years ago now. We talked about the seemingly paradoxical relationship between error-making and team effectiveness, the misunderstood aspects of psychological safety, its peculiar dynamics within boardrooms, its popularity in tech companies, Steve Jobs’ ‘toxic’ leadership, remote work and her upcoming book, “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well”.

Amy bumped into the concept of psychological safety by accident. She set out to study organizational learning, as is essential in this fast changing Never Normal world, and she was interested in team dynamics. “Organizations are too complex to learn in any formal sense, but their teams learn”, she explained.

Better teams, more mistakes
And so she embarked as a member of a team conducting a landmark study of medication errors in hospitals. She was asked to measure team effectiveness and to find out whether team effectiveness predicted error rates. Her data found that there was indeed a statistically significant link, … but in the opposite direction than she had expected. Better teams appeared to be making more mistakes, not fewer. After her initial surprise, she suspected that these teams were not actually making more errors, but rather were more open and willing to report and discuss them.

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The forced return to the office is the definition of insanity

 

 

 

BY GLEB TSIPURSKY

 

 

In a world where we’ve seen five consecutive quarters of declining productivity in the U.S. according to a study by EY-Parthenon using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one would think that CEOs and company leaders would question their tactics. After all, over two-thirds of business leaders report they’re under immense pressure to squeeze more productivity out of their workers, according to a new Slack survey of 18,000 knowledge workers.

Yet despite the overwhelming evidence that flexible hybrid work is more productive than forced in-office work for the same roles, top executives are stubbornly herding employees back to the office like lost sheep, expecting productivity to miraculously improve. This, my friends, is the very definition of insanity.

The myth of the magical office

Many CEOs are clinging to the false belief that the office is the secret sauce to productivity. It’s as if they think the office is a productivity vending machine: Insert employees, receive increased output. But the data tells a different story.

Instead of being a productivity wonderland, the office is more like a productivity black hole, where collaboration, socializing, mentoring, and on-the-job training thrive, but focused work gets sucked into oblivion. In fact, research shows that the office is detrimental to productivity.

For instance, a recent study by scholars at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Harvard University, and the University of Iowa found that software engineers located in different buildings on the same campus wrote more computer programs than those who were sitting close to colleagues. However, the engineers who worked in different buildings commented less on others’ code. In other words, they were more productive but that meant that less experienced coders got weaker mentorship.

To put it simply, expecting the office to boost productivity is like expecting a fish to ride a bicycle: The office serves a different, and very important purpose. The EY-Parthenon research shows a direct correlation between the forced return to the office and plummeting productivity. The numbers don’t lie. People are working longer hours and barely putting out more products. It’s high time we stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. (more…)

To improve your work performance, get some exercise.

 

 

by Bonnie Hayden Cheng and Yolanda Na Li

Worldwide, 1.4 billion adults are insufficiently active, with one in three women and one in four men not engaging in adequate physical activity. In fact, there has been no improvement in physical activity levels since 2001, and physical inactivity is twice as bad in high-income countries than in low-income countries.

To combat the negative impact of physical inactivity, in 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a global action plan aimed at reducing physical inactivity by 15% by 2030. By promoting physical activity and encouraging individuals to engage in regular exercise, the WHO seeks to maximize the benefits of physical activity: preventing and managing noncommunicable diseases like cardiovascular diseases (including coronary heart disease and stroke), various types of cancer, improving overall physical and mental well-being, sharpening cognitive capacity, and ensuring healthy growth and development.

Although the benefits of physical activity on general well-being are widely acknowledged, there has been a lack of research on how it impacts outcomes at work, including job performance and health. This is all the more important as various emerging work modes have allowed for greater flexibility and convenience. Yet we’re finding ourselves sitting more and moving less, as many of us no longer have to commute to work or walk from meeting to meeting.

How physical activity affects work performance
Given that most of our waking hours are spent working, in an effort to support the WHO’s initiative to increase physical activity, our recent research points to some important work-related implications of physical activity. (more…)

28 Questions to Ask Your Boss in Your One-on-Ones

 

 

 

by Steven G. Rogelberg, Liana Kreamer, and Cydnei Meredith

 

 

Summary: Good one-on-one meetings between managers and their direct reports address the practical and personal needs of the employee, benefitting their performance, growth, and well-being, as well as the success of their team and the broader organization. However, since managers are typically the ones who run these meetings, the employee’s needs are often forgotten. Then it’s up to the employee to ask questions to get the attention they need. The authors’ research points to twenty-eight questions that can drive the best conversations.

 

When she started a new role, Brianna was told she would be having regular one-on-one meetings (1:1s) with her manager, Jayden. She welcomed this news; she saw it as a great opportunity to get aligned with and supported and mentored by her new boss. But her hopes were quickly dashed. In their initial meeting, Jayden focused only on project updates and then assigned her a few additional tasks. This pattern continued over the weeks and Brianna routinely left their meetings feeling both micro-managed and unsupported in her development.

This story is, sadly, a composite of many we have heard from employees in our research on 1:1s between managers and their direct reports. As one of us (Steve) described in a new book, Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings, a good one-on-one meeting addresses both the practical and personal needs of the employee (practical: information, instruction, alignment; personal: the need to be treated with consideration, respect, trust, and support). As such, these meetings are a critical source of growth and support for the employee and promote the thriving and success of teams and the broader organization.

But these benefits are only realized when the meeting includes frequent conversations that address those employee needs. And as 1:1s are typically facilitated by managers, they often devolve into addressing what is front of mind for them, rather than the employee. That’s especially true because it is very rare for managers to receive training on how to run these meetings well, so they often simply recycle dysfunctional practices they themselves have experienced. (more…)

The Three Things a CEO Needs to Ensure Their CRO’s Success

 

 

 

BY WARREN ZENNA

 

Since emerging over the past 10 years, the Chief Revenue Officer role has evolved into a core executive function within modern B2B businesses.

B2B CEOs in the tech sector now consider CROs to be vital pillars of their leadership structure. It’s the hot new title in the B2B space, and comes with many spoils: prestige, power, credentials, and opportunity.

The appointment, however, also comes with huge expectations and risk. Often, CROs are seen as miracle workers, rainmakers, and movers and shakers coming to the rescue to take the company to the next level of sales revenue growth.

It’s no wonder then that many CEOs have a relatively narrow view on the qualities an effective CRO needs to bring to an organization. Equally, very few organizations prepare themselves properly for their first CRO.

False expectations and under-preparedness can lead to disappointing results, frustrations, and wasted expense, time, and effort. There’s huge risk to appointing the wrong CRO – with huge consequences for the CEO, the organization, and the CRO as well.

At the CRO Collective, we have observed there are many questions about what a CRO’s actual responsibilities are.

  • How does a CRO function, really?
  • Ideally, where should a CRO sit within our organization?
  • To be effective, where should the CRO focus?
  • What are the CRO’s areas of oversight, scope, remit, and accountability?
  • How should CEOs support the success of their CROs?

This lack of clarity can have dire implications for firms currently employing CROs, as well as for those considering adding a CRO to their leadership stack.

Fortunately, while the risks of getting a CRO decision wrong are huge, so are the rewards for getting it right.

To ensure the success of their CRO, CEOs should do three things.

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