How to Keep Envy from Poisoning Your Team’s Culture
Harvard Business
SEPTEMBER 17, 2019
Create a culture of compassion, not comparison.
How to Successfully Work Across Countries, Languages, and Cultures
Harvard Business
AUGUST 29, 2017
Rather than assuming we’ll work in one location, in our native culture, we will need new skills, attitudes, and behaviors that help us work across cultures. What’s more, the subsidiaries operated more or less autonomously, each with separate organizational cultures and norms. Seeking commonality between cultures.
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TikTok Refugees: How RedNote Is Thriving Amid Global Shifts
Tom Spencer
JANUARY 31, 2025
The phenomenon of “ TikTok Refugees ” is not just about shifting to another platform its an emerging cultural moment that is blending social media, e-commerce, and cultural exchange in unique ways. Casey Ma is an MBA and MPH student at Yale University, specializing in Healthcare Management.
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88 People Don’t Want to Be Compared with Others in Performance Reviews. They Want to Be Compared with Themselves
Harvard Business
MARCH 22, 2018
We call those temporal comparison evaluations. We call those social comparison evaluations. Our findings demonstrate that employees consider temporal comparison evaluations to be fairer than social comparison evaluations. Another reference point is other employees’ performance during the same period.
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3 Ways Senior Leaders Create a Toxic Culture
Harvard Business
MAY 1, 2018
division was known for underperforming against revenue plans in comparison to its central and western division counterparts. The implications for an organization whose leadership team is poorly focused are serious: Wasted resources, wasted effort, and widespread confusion become the norm.
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How to make valuable values
People Business Psychology
DECEMBER 5, 2024
A comparison between the values that companies list on their home page seems to suggest that they are all much of a muchness. The impact of stated values From a psychological perspective, the question is to what extent these stated values actually determine behaviours and culture within the organisation. References: 1. Turconi, S.
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When Competition Between Coworkers Leads to Unethical Behavior
Harvard Business
DECEMBER 12, 2018
In our research, recently published in the journal Human Resource Management, we found that performance evaluation schemes based on peer comparison can encourage unethical behavior. We deliberately kept the monetary incentives close to zero in order to study the effects of evaluation and comparisons instead of money and rewards.
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Measuring the Long-Term Impact of L&D Initiatives on Business Performance
Clarity Consultants
FEBRUARY 9, 2025
Moreover, a strong L&D program enriches company culture by fostering a growth mindset and encouraging innovation. Ensure data collection methods are consistent and repeatable for future comparisons. Staying ahead of the competition requires a skilled and knowledgeable workforce in today’s fast-paced business environment.
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5 Signs Your Organization Might Be Headed for an Ethics Scandal
Harvard Business
DECEMBER 18, 2017
Their answers fell into a clear pattern, identifying five traits of organizational culture that correlate with ethical scandals: Urgency and fear : Following corruption scandals, leaders tend to describe events in terms of pressure, necessity, and what the company needed to do to ”survive.”
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Saving RadioShack
Tom Spencer
SEPTEMBER 14, 2014
By comparison, rivals Amazon and Wal-Mart have continuously adapted and maintain a significant competitive advantage in pricing these products due to scale. I believe the most applicable actions for Radio Shack involve a thorough examination of current product offerings as well as a transition in company culture.
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Quote Your Consulting Billing Rate with Confidence
Successful Independent Consulting
SEPTEMBER 16, 2017
Remember, even your higher rate will be cheaper in comparison.) If you have worked with that company before, you are worth a lot more to them than someone who is unfamiliar with the players, culture, structure, and politics. Ask if the budget has already been approved. What’s been done in this area so far?
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When One Person’s High Performance Creates Resentment in Your Team
Harvard Business
APRIL 21, 2017
That’s partly because high performance is relative and based on social comparison. In communities with frequent interaction, opportunities for such comparison increase. Managers should pay particular attention to these issues in workplace cultures that emphasize harmony and cooperation.
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136 Oliver Wyman interview preparation: the inside story
Management Consulted
AUGUST 1, 2013
In comparison to many strategy consulting firms, Oliver Wyman consultants tend to specialize earlier in their career. This fits hand in hand with their culture of treating new hires as potential Partners, offering them opportunities early on to engage in important projects. OLIVER WYMAN CULTURE. Public Policy.
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201 Can 10 Minutes of Meditation Make You More Creative?
Harvard Business
AUGUST 29, 2017
Leading a Brainstorming Session with a Cross-Cultural Team. Similar to the exercise with the students, these executives meditated for 12 minutes and then generated ideas individually on how to create a more inclusive culture in an organization. You and Your Team Series. Thinking Creatively. Emma Seppala. David Livermore.
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Why Being a Middle Manager Is So Exhausting
Harvard Business
MARCH 22, 2017
In a forthcoming paper in the Academy of Management Review , we present a theory of power that moves beyond a static comparison of high and low power actors to consider the full spectrum of organizational power dynamics. It may be especially challenging to negotiate vertical role transitions in hierarchical organizational cultures.
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Leaders, Stop Avoiding Hard Decisions
Harvard Business
APRIL 13, 2018
As an executive, how you make hard calls shapes your organization’s decision-making culture over time. Whatever temporary pain you might incur from making a tough call should pale in comparison to the precedent you set that it’s important to put the organization’s success first.
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4 Self-Improvement Myths That May Be Holding You Back
Harvard Business
FEBRUARY 2, 2018
In other cases, often in a subconscious effort to preserve our self-esteem , we rate ourselves against people who are less successful—a “downward comparison” that is obviously anathema to personal development. This is not just advice for your own improvement; it’s a way to lead others.
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IBM Consulting Interviews: Navigating the IBM GBS Maze
Management Consulted
OCTOBER 18, 2013
Although it started as a tiny group, paling in comparison to the bohemoth revenues of the firm’s hardware sales, this group is now known as IBM Global Services (IGS) which is responsible for 50% of IBM’s revenue globally. IBM GBS CULTURE. The core values of the IBM Global Business Services culture include: Environment.
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Perfectionism Is Increasing, and That’s Not Good News
Harvard Business
JANUARY 26, 2018
Broadly, we consider our findings to raise important questions about how we are structuring society and whether our society’s heavy emphasis on social comparison, and the sorting, sifting and ranking that follows, is benefitting young people. Note that we are not clinical psychologists.
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LSA Global Adds New Director and Senior Director Assessment Center
LSA Global
NOVEMBER 1, 2023
Receive Assessment Results Certified professional assessors and smart technology score participants’ behaviors against research-backed and client aligned leadership competencies required for success in your unique workplace culture. Individual and group comparisons are available. Learn more about getting aligned.
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Outsiders
Seth Godin Blog
NOVEMBER 15, 2017
All it means is that when people begin to measure themselves only in comparison to others ("How did I rank?") But in a culture based on scarcity, it's often easier to award or deduct points and to keep a scoreboard instead. That doesn't mean that you're required to create insiders and winners.
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53 Compared to what?
Seth Godin Blog
APRIL 17, 2017
Thanks to marketing, the media and our culture, we spend a lot of our time comparing before we decide whether or not we're happy. Comparison leads to frustration which sometimes leads to innovation. If a comparison isn't helping you get to where you're going, it's okay to ignore it. it's better than the alternatives.
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When Corporate Philanthropy Makes the Recipient Look Bad
Harvard Business
AUGUST 24, 2016
And yet for cultural organizations such as the Royal Opera and for most NGOs or foundations, having access to and receiving corporate financial support is often a blessing. At the same time, as the BP example makes clear, for some of these cultural organizations, corporate benefaction comes with a cost.
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Comparison, escalation and the golf clap
Seth Godin Blog
JULY 6, 2015
Comparison and escalation are at the heart of what makes our culture work. This is risk-free, enthusiasm-free and easier to do than not. Okay, what does level two sound like? Can you take it up a notch?". And within a minute, she's created a level-ten tsunami of sound.
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Launching a Consulting Career in the Developing World
Tom Spencer
MARCH 14, 2021
Although attending a top college will help you stand out in the screening process, your academic prowess should be exemplary in comparison to your peers. Typically, this means having at least an A- average for your academic performance. Participate in Extra-curricular Activities.
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What Does an Aspiring Founder Need to Know?
Harvard Business
JUNE 21, 2017
The second sample’s small size meant that comparisons were suggestive rather than statistically significant, but the survey responses of non-MBA founders were quite similar to those of MBA alumni founders. ” Could these findings be skewed by the fact that we surveyed MBA alumni? Cofounders are crucial.
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Focus Client Communications on Value, Not Rate
Women in Consulting
APRIL 23, 2018
My formal education focused on critical thinking and the social sciences — hello, Bachelors in Anthropology and Masters in Cultural Studies! But these formulas (and their many peers) pale in comparison to the real-life experience of asking clients for feedback about how my work had improved their businesses.
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The pleasure/happiness gap
Seth Godin Blog
OCTOBER 1, 2017
Both are cultural constructs. Both respond not only to direct, physical inputs (chemicals, illness) but more and more, to cultural ones, to the noise of comparisons and narratives. Instead, they are things that are possible to get confused about in the short run, but in the long run, they couldn't be more different.
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Consulting or Banking
Tom Spencer
MAY 8, 2016
This post provides you with a high level comparison of management consulting and investment banking. Work culture: Consulting firms typically have a professional and collegial atmosphere where an intense client focus is combined with networking and professional development opportunities. Nature of the job.
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60 Research: The Gender Gap in Startup Success Disappears When Women Fund Women
Harvard Business
JULY 19, 2016
There are some clues to answering these questions in my comparisons of venture capital financing rounds. Or is there something about the culture of VCs with female GPs that improves performance? This is based on a comparison of rounds financed by a single VC firm as opposed to multiple ones. The big question is why?
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The tyranny of lowest price
Seth Godin Blog
MAY 30, 2014
To cut the price a dollar on that ebook or ten dollars on that plane ticket (discounts that few, in the absence of comparison, would notice very much) you have to slash the way things are edited, or people are trained or safety is ensured. You have to scrimp on the culture, on how people are treated.
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55 How Banks Can Compete Against an Army of Fintech Startups
Harvard Business
APRIL 26, 2017
By comparison, online lenders face capital costs that can be higher than 10%, sourced from potentially fickle institutional investors like hedge funds. The design and user experience aspect is especially out of sync with bank culture, and many banks struggle with internal resistance.
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Why We Need to Stop Obsessing Over CEO Pay Ratios
Harvard Business
FEBRUARY 23, 2017
For example, if the CEO improves corporate culture, it can be rolled out firm-wide, and thus has a larger effect in a larger firm. In addition to creating misleading comparisons between firms of different size, the pay ratio is not comparable across different industries. The same argument does not apply to average workers.
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Interviews with Asian Leaders – what did we find?
Ben de Haldevang
MARCH 21, 2017
My friend Ben de Haldevang and I spent a fair bit of time over the spring and summer of 2016 talking to a number of Asian senior executives, across several sectors, about their views on how Asian business practices, decisionmaking, and organizations worked in comparison to those in the west.
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Stop Comparing Management to Sports
Harvard Business
JUNE 2, 2016
A more useful comparison is that of a builder of communities, with investors, suppliers, partners and, most of all, your employees. The conclusion of this stream of research is that these resources are usually intangible and community based, such as relationships , trust , culture , identity , or knowledge sharing.
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70 Research: For Better Brainstorming, Tell an Embarrassing Story
Harvard Business
OCTOBER 2, 2017
Leading a Brainstorming Session with a Cross-Cultural Team. We suspected that the effects might be magnified if the recounting of accomplishments caused people to worry more about hierarchy and social comparisons, quelling creativity and if a discussion of foibles helped people to open up and take more risks, boosting brainstorming efficacy.
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Are Executive Assessments the Missing Link to Unlock Your True Potential?
Organizational Talent Consulting
SEPTEMBER 2, 2024
They may or may not provide norm comparisons versus self-reporting. Type 2 Assessments: Diagnostics These tools typically have less reliability, validity, or fairness and do not require specialized interpretation training. Normally, you only need to read a book or whitepaper to make sense of the evaluation.
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Variety and the long tail
Seth Godin Blog
JANUARY 16, 2024
In a We Are All Weird universe, there are two sorts of cultural disappointments. There’s no comparison in the reach of M*A*S*H and the Crown. (In There are so many pockets of culture, it can’t help but feel a bit more lonely from a certain angle. In fact, it’s about 25:1).
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Want a Successful Agile Project? Start with Why Before How
Johanna Rothman
FEBRUARY 25, 2021
Which is how these teams get to insufficient numbers of Scrum Masters, no product owners, and team comparison based on velocity. (See Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization for this and related problems and my recommendations.). That's not even cargo cult Scrum—that's not Scrum at all. What can you do?
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How a Fast-Growing Startup Built Its Sales Team for Long-Term Success
Harvard Business
DECEMBER 4, 2017
And to do that, you must make recruitment and hiring an ongoing part of the management culture, not only an HR responsibility. Fanelli notes, “We believe both types of screening criteria—skills are applicable to the specific job and culturally-compatible behaviors that we seek in all of our people—are equally important.
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71 How a Fast-Growing Startup Built Its Sales Team for Long-Term Success
Harvard Business
DECEMBER 4, 2017
And to do that, you must make recruitment and hiring an ongoing part of the management culture, not only an HR responsibility. Fanelli notes, “We believe both types of screening criteria—skills are applicable to the specific job and culturally-compatible behaviors that we seek in all of our people—are equally important.
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What a Study of French Auditors Shows About Homophobia at Work
Harvard Business
MARCH 29, 2017
Previous psychology research has shown that in comparison to workers who are not out, employees who are open about their sexuality tend to experience higher job satisfaction and better relationships with their managers. Rethinking those firms’ culture should be first on the agenda.
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How China’s Government Helps — and Hinders — Innovation
Harvard Business
NOVEMBER 16, 2016
Part also lies in aspects of the Chinese socio-cultural context such as the legacy of rote learning and respect for hierarchy. Importantly, however, China’s innovation challenges go well beyond time lags and cultural factors. A comparison between China and India provides a stark contrast.
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LSA Global Adds New Frontline Manager Assessment Center
LSA Global
MAY 26, 2023
Receive Assessment Results Certified professional assessors and smart technology score participants’ behaviors against research-backed and client aligned managerial competencies required for success in your unique workplace culture. Individual and group comparisons are available. Learn more about getting aligned.
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