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Action research and action learning for community and organisational change
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How Your State of Mind Affects Your Performance
Don, a senior vice president for sales at a global manufacturing company, wakes up late, scrambles to get showered and dressed, has an argument with his teenage daughter over breakfast, then gets stuck in traffic on the way to work and realizes he will be late for his first meeting. Donna, a marketing executive, wakes at 6 for a quick spin on the exercise bike, takes a moment to stretch and relax, then quickly gets herself ready, dresses and feeds her two kids before walking them to the bus, then catches the train to the office. Which executive will have a more productive day at work? That depends on whether Don—who’s had the more difficult morning—is able to manage his state of mind. Two years ago our organization launched a long-term global research initiative to provide quantitative data on the topic. Below is a chart that lists the percentage of leaders who reported experiencing each of the 18 states of mind often or regularly: Thoughts and feelings. Physiology. External environment.
How to test your decision-making instincts
One of the most important questions facing leaders is when they should trust their gut instincts—an issue explored in a dialogue between Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and psychologist Gary Klein titled “Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut?” published by McKinsey Quarterly in March 2010. Our work on flawed decisions suggests that leaders cannot prevent gut instinct from influencing their judgments. Our gut intuition accesses our accumulated experiences in a synthesized way, so that we can form judgments and take action without any logical, conscious consideration. The brain appears to work in a similar way when we make more leisurely decisions. Given the powerful influence of positive and negative emotions on our unconscious, it is tempting to argue that leaders should never trust their gut: they should make decisions based solely on objective, logical analysis. The familiarity test: Have we frequently experienced identical or similar situations? About the authors
The best visuals to explain the Singularity to senior executives
Tomorrow morning I’m doing a presentation to the top executive team of a very large organization on the next 20 years. Most of what I will cover will be general societal, business and technological drivers as well as specific strategic issues driving their business. However as part of stretching their thinking I’ll also speak a about the Singularity. As such I’ve been trying to find one good image to introduce my explanation, however I haven’t been able to find one which is quite right for the purpose. Ray Kurzweil’s Six Epochs diagram below is great and the one I’ll probably end up using, however it is a bit too over-the-top for most senior executives. Source: Ray Kurzweil, Applied Abstractions The chart below from Hans Moravec showing how exponential growth of computing power will allow machines to match human intellectual capabilities is excellent, but it is seriously out of date. Source: Hans Moravec, When will computer hardware match the human brain? Source: Ray Kurzweil, Tropophilia
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Is your CEO worth his (her) pay? The Pricing and Valuing of Top Managers!
It is true, as many others have pointed out, that CEO pay has been increasing at rates far higher than pay for those lower in the pay scale, for much of the last three decades. In the graph below, I look at the evolution of average CEO pay since 1992, broken down broadly by sector: Since 1992, the annual compounded increase in CEO pay of 7.64% has been higher than the growth in revenues, earnings or other profitability measures. Of all the drivers of CEO pay changes over time, none seems to be as powerful as stock market performance, as is clear in this graph going back further to 1965: While there has been much talk about the ratio of CEO pay to that of an average employee, and that ratio has indisputably jumped over the last three decades, I found t, for S&P 500 companies, using 2012-2014 data to be a more useful statistic. Determinants of CEO Pay Not only is CEO pay high, but it varies across time and across companies. A Framework for analyzing the value added by a CEO The End Game
Decision Making: The #1 Secret Of Astronauts, Samurai, Navy SEALs, and Psychopaths
We all make a lot of bad decisions. With careers: More than half of teachers quit their jobs within four years. In fact, one study in Philadelphia schools found that a teacher was almost two times more likely to drop out than a student. In our jobs: A study showed that when doctors reckoned themselves “completely certain” about a diagnosis, they were wrong 40% of the time. And in our personal lives: …an estimated 61,535 tattoos were reversed in the United States in 2009. So how can we all make better decisions? It’s “arousal control.” That’s a fancy word for keeping a cool head. In their book, Decisive, Chip and Dan Heath identify short term emotion as one of the primary causes of bad decisions. Astronauts, samurai, Navy SEALs, and psychopaths. 150 Miles Above The Earth Is No Place For Panic It’s the 1960’s and NASA is going to send people to the moon for the first time. How do you make sure astronauts don’t freak out in the cold darkness of space where there’s no help? You’re NASA. No. Nope.
The CEDA Community model Pt.2: ‘Engagement’ & ‘Permission’ in Social Learning
I’ve been developing the CEDA model this week, looking at how we develop vibrant Social Learning communities. It has two purposes: firstly, to be used in strategy, to help shape our organisational approach and, secondly, to diagnose the health of a functioning community, to understand what’s working and what may need support. There are four parts to the model (you can read all about it here), ‘Curation‘, ‘Engagement‘, ‘Debate‘ and ‘Application‘. Four things we need to consider. But there are another four parts of the model to consider: either amplifying or confounding factors. For ‘Curation‘, we look at ‘Technology‘. Over the next few days, we will explore the other factors: for ‘Debate‘, it’s about ‘Trust‘, do individuals believe that they will be treated fairly? These are by far not the only factors at play, but i wanted to gather together (curate) a structured framework that organisations can work around. In the second stage of the CEDA model we explore ‘engagement’ and ‘permission’.
