A Six-Pack For Sara

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Good Short Reads for the Busy Employee

Competencies: resilience, achievement orientation, customer service, strategic planning, conflict management, decision-making, judgment

Who benefits: anyone

Consultant Usage: possible background in your areas of interest

What’s it about? I want to thank reader Sara Canaday for today’s post. She found a previous post useful when I listed several different articles with brief descriptions. On that occasion, my medley came from a single source. Today I offer a potpourri of articles that I have recently uncovered that offer interesting, unique and important insights, but not quite enough to warrant a full post. So today, pick the one that most interests you … or take two and write me in the morning.

Surprises Are the New Normal; Resilience Is the New Skill, by Rosabeth Moss Kanter – “The difference between winners and losers is how they handle losing…. the real skill is the resilience to climb out of the hole and bounce back.” So begins an article by one of my favorite authors. Professor Kanter goes on to say it’s not enough to just bounce back, “you have to learn from your errors. Those with resilience build on the cornerstones of confidence — accountability (taking responsibility and showing remorse), collaboration (supporting others in reaching a common goal), and initiative (focusing on positive steps and improvements).” If you are in the mood for more, you can also examine how these ideas are related to self-fulfilling tendencies in her book Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End.

We Appreciate Your Business. Please Stay on the Line, by (the other) Robert Plant – The author lambasts and lectures big companies on their failure to secure and build customer satisfaction or loyalty. Go get ‘um Professor Plant!

Insourcing at GE: The Real Story, by Brad Powers – GE brings manufacturing back to the USA with a new way of thinking, a new way of teaming and creating a more cooperative and sustainable culture.

How Criticism Creates Innovative Teams, by David Burkus – If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen … at least that’s what I do. But there is a better way. What innovative teams need, and what many of us try to avoid, is dissent. The article makes a compelling case for constructive criticism.

This is a rather often quoted story, but it is a good one and sets the tone for the article: Alfred P. Sloan, General Motors czar, during a meeting in which GM’s top management team was considering a weighty decision, “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here?” Sloan then waited as each member of the assembled committee nodded in agreement. Sloan continued, “Then, I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what this decision is about.”

How to Escape From Bad Decisions, by Adam Grant – Do you know when to cut your loses? Made a bad decision but still hanging on? New hire not working out? Colleague let you down? Personal investment mired in muck? Adam Grant, the youngest tenured professor and highest-rated teacher at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, explains the “escalation to commitment” – why we invest more in losing propositions. Why did Polaroid invest more in film as the world turned to the digital age? Why do NBA teams hang on to bad draft choices? These and more are explained along with four practical steps to improve individual and organizational decision-making. Consider also his well-written, highly praised and recently published book Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success.

Adapting to the New Era of On-the-Job Learning, by Amy Titus and Jamie Breshears from Deloitte Consulting’s Human Capital practice, offers a primer on the need to move talent development toward experience based learning and away from traditional formal training programs. Included in this short article are links to more comprehensive reports issued by Deloitte.

Well there is your six-pack. Drink up.

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.