DDI Research center : Recommended Readings and Book Summaries
Catch Up on the Latest Industry News from DDI Resource Center by Krista Ford, Resource Center Manager
Recent Articles:
Gilt Groupe's CEO on Building a Team of A Players.
By: Ryan, Kevin. Harvard Business Review, Jan/Feb2012, Vol. 90 Issue 1, p43-46.
Ryan believes that a CEO should spend more time on recruiting and managing people than on any other activity, and that the head of HR is one of the most important people in the company. He insists on his freedom to bypass managers and speak with any employee at any time. And he espouses certain talent-management principles, such as that your best people are usually underpaid (reward them with performance pay) and that people leave jobs mainly because they don't like their managers. Recruiting at Gilt Groupe focuses on references more than on résumés and interviews because, Ryan says, résumés only establish basic qualifications for a job, and interviewers can't help being influenced by wellspoken or attractive people. But reference checks need to go beyond the names supplied by a candidate: Employers should dig up people in their networks who are willing to speak candidly.
The Economics Of Well-Being.(cover story)
By: Fox, Justin. Harvard Business Review, Jan/Feb2012, Vol. 90 Issue 1, p78-83.
Gross domestic product has long been the chief measure of national success. But there's been a lot of talk lately about changing that, from economists and world leaders alike. GDP is under siege for three main reasons. First, it is flawed even on its own terms: It misses lots of economic activity (unpaid household work, for example) and, as a single-number representation of vast, complex systems, is inevitably skewed. Second, it fails to account for economic and environmental sustainability. And third, readily available alternative measures may reflect well-being far better, by taking into account factors such as educational achievement, health, and life expectancy. HBR's Justin Fox surveys historical and current views on how to assess national progress, from Jeremy Bentham to Robert Kennedy to Nicolas Sarkozy. He also looks at where we may be headed. The biggest success so far in the campaign to supplant or at least supplement GDP, he finds, is the UN's Human Development Index--on which the United States has never claimed the top spot.
Creating Sustainable Performance. (cover story)
By: Spreitzer, Gretchen; Porath, Christine. Harvard Business Review, Jan/Feb2012, Vol. 90 Issue 1, p92-99.
What makes for sustainable individual and organizational performance? Employees who are thriving--not just satisfied and productive but also engaged in creating the future. The authors found that people who fit this description demonstrated 16% better overall performance, 125% less burnout, 32% more commitment to the organization, and 46% more job satisfaction than their peers. Thriving has two components: vitality, or the sense of being alive and excited, and learning, or the growth that comes from gaining knowledge and skills. Some people naturally build vitality and learning into their jobs, but most employees are influenced by their environment. Four mechanisms, none of which requires heroic effort or major resources, create the conditions for thriving: providing decision-making discretion, sharing information about the organization and its strategy, minimizing incivility, and offering performance feedback. Organizations such as Alaska Airlines, Zingerman's, Quicken Loans, and Caiman Consulting have found that helping people grow and remain energized at work is valiant on its own merits--but it can also boost performance in a sustainable way.
Who Wants To Be A Manager?
By: DAVENPORT, THOMAS O.. Conference Board Review, Fall2011, Vol. 48 Issue 4, p18-25.
The article discusses the job and role of managers, focusing on the rewards and downsides of the position as seen and felt by both employees and managers. It explores the realities in the workplace and the various emotional, psychological, and physical elements that affect the relationship between workers and their leaders. Also included are guidelines for assessing potential managerial candidates and identifying the most suitable aspirant.
Wal-Mart's Makeover.
By: COLVIN, GEOFF. Fortune, 12/26/2011, Vol. 164 Issue 10, p50-55, 5p, 2 Color Photographs; Abstract: An interview is presented with Stephen Quinn, the chief marketing officer of chain store Wal-Mart. Topics discussed include attitudes of U.S. customers regarding saving money, how to market to customers in different income brackets by expanding product assortment, and Wal-Mart's move to launch social media site Facebook pages for its individual local stores. He also insists on the importance of customer focus.
Overachiever.
By: Smits, Jill Coody. Psychology Today, Nov/Dec2011, Vol. 44 Issue 6, p33-34.
The article offers facts about the overachieving personality. According to psychologist Andrew Elliot, people driven to overachieve have an underlying fear of failure or a self-worth contingent upon competence. Some types of goals that affect performance include approach-mastery goals and performance-approach goals. A key feature of an overachiever is perfectionism.
Developing executive leaders : The relative contribution of cognitive ability, personality, and the accumulation of work experience in predicting strategic thinking competency.
By: DRAGONI, LISA; IN-SUE OH; VANKATWYK, PAUL; TESLUK, PAUL E.. Personnel Psychology, Winter2011, Vol. 64 Issue 4, p829-864.
We conceptually define and empirically investigate the accumulation of work experience-a concept that refers to the extent to which executives have amassed varied levels of roles and responsibilities (i.e., contributor, manager, lead strategist) in each of the key work activities that they have encountered over the course of their careers. In studying executives' work experience accumulation, we consider key antecedents such as executives' cognitive ability and personality traits, namely Extraversion and Openness to Experience, and examine the value of work experience accumulation on executives' strategic thinking competency. Analyses of multisource data from 703 executives revealed 3 key findings: (a) accumulated work experience positively relates to executives' strategic thinking competency after controlling for individual characteristics and other measures of work experience; (b) executives' cognitive ability demonstrates the strongest and most positive relationship to executives' strategic thinking competency; and (c) extraverted executives tend to achieve higher levels of work experience accumulation. Relative weight analyses also indicated that cognitive ability and accumulated work experience are the 2 most important predictors for executives' strategic thinking competency among the other predictors. These findings are discussed in light of their practical implications.
Book Summaries:
Manager Redefined.
By: Davenport, Thomas O.; Harding, Stephen D.. Manager Redefined - Business Book Summaries, 12/29/2011, p1, 10p; Abstract: Management positions are a staple of corporate organizational charts, but the role itself is not always well defined. It is often an assortment of pieces and parts designed to do too many things, and thus accomplish none of them well. As a result, people in the organizational hierarchy question its value. In Manager Redefined, Tom Davenport and Stephen Harding take a different view, and argue that managers and supervisors are essentially the center of insight and influence, and endowed with the potential to make dramatic contributions to overall enterprise success. The authors provide a performance model for managers reflecting on today’s workplace reality.
The Innovator’s Way.
By: Denning, Peter J.; Dunham, Robert. Innovator's Way, 12/28/2011, p1, 12p; Abstract: Innovation is critical for personal, business, and economic success. Although thousands of books have been printed on meeting the challenges of innovation, the August 2005 issue of Businessweek reports an innovation success rate of only four percent. In The Innovator’s Way, Peter J. Denning and Robert Dunham propose the development of personal skills as a new way of improving the innovation success rate. They offer the eight innovation practices—sensing, envisioning, offering, adopting, sustaining, executing, leading, and embodying—as key skills innovators must possess in order to ensure their innovation becomes successful.
Telling Ain’t Training.
By: Stolovitch, Harold D.; Keeps,, Erica J.; Rosenberg, Marc J.. Telling Ain't Training - Business Book Summaries, 12/22/2011, p1, 13p; Abstract: Telling Ain’t Training presents an in-depth look at workplace training, adult learners, and the most effective tools for conveying and absorbing knowledge. By switching the focus from the information to be learned to the needs of the learners, the instructor can optimize the transfer of knowledge. By engaging students through activities that reinforce course objectives, the instructor can communicate knowledge that learners will store and retain. By offering rewards for learning achievements and constructive feedback throughout the training session, the instructor will keep students on course and open to new knowledge. Paying particular attention to training techniques for teaching adults effectively, the Harold D. Stolovitch and Erica J. Keeps offer trainers a five-step formula for planning successful workplace training. They also explore the contemporary trend of online and e-learning training programs and suggest the best approaches for integrating these instructional methods with hands-on learning.
The Next Generation of Women Leaders.
By: Rezvani, Selena. Next Generation of Women Leaders, 12/20/2011, p1, 9p; Abstract: As a first year MBA student and aspiring leader, Selena Rezvani decided to find out how current women executives did overcome the barriers to leadership and attained the positions they have today. In The Next Generation of Women Leaders, Rezvani interviewed 30 women CEOs, CFOs, COOs, chairs, presidents, and executive vice presidents to learn specifically what they wished they had known early in their careers and what was most instrumental in their advancement to their current positions. Based on their responses, she found seven themes and accompanying tools available for Generation X and Y women to use in their pursuit of career advancement, and eventually the attainment of an executive role.
