ChangeThis RSS

"Since the Industrial Revolution, new counting and communications technologies have altered the structure and management of business. ... Yet the guiding metric of management for decades has remained the same: finance. With improvements in communications and computing, financial performance can be measured faster and in greater detail than before. But it is still a fairly blunt, crude measurement—counting money, one factor of production and output of the enterprise. It is still financial capitalism. But big data promises to usher in a new phase in the practice of management."

"Want your employees to buy a new management goal? You have to know how to sell it to them. This doesn't mean selling to your employees; it means selling to your employee culture, which is a whole different proposition. 'Culture' is the most overused yet least understood concept in business. The difference between understanding your employees and understanding your employee culture is the difference between whether your performance goals succeed or fail. When they form a relationship with a company, employees become a culture. A culture is a separate organism living within your company. It has its own purpose and the power to make or break any management plan – and any manager right along with it. Neither business logic nor management authority nor any compelling competitive urgency will convince an employee culture to adopt a corporate cause as if it were its own. In the killing field between company concept and employee commitment lay many a failed strategic plan."

"When you experience pressure anxiety—the feeling that you have to produce all the time—your emotional landscape changes for the worse. Small annoyances like picking up your dry-cleaning, for example, begin to interfere with your need to 'produce.' Going to your daughter's play becomes an intrusion. Going on vacation can increase your anxiety, because it takes you away from what you should be doing: achieving results. Important conversations with your spouse may go south because of the subtle pressure of always being 'on.' Worse, your decisions may become distorted by your need to produce. And if your focus shifts solely to winning, at any cost, you may find yourself compromising your ethics. Pressure anxiety may seem irrational—a mediocre presentation to a client is not akin to physical death—and probably, in and of itself, will not lead to the end of a professional relationship. Similarly, your daughter being turned down from her first choice college will not end her life, although she may feel that way at the time. We often tell ourselves and our kids not to overreact to these kinds of temporary set-backs—to be rational. However, pressure anxiety makes it hard to hold that thought in mind."