I often hear managers saying that youngsters lack self-discipline and a proper work ethic. They have a hard time haranguing them into doing their job more conscientiously. Or I hear managers talking about the need to “incentivise” the jobs people do. Without pay-for-performance and other reward schemes, they claim, employees have no reason to go the extra mile. There may be a place for these domineering and manipulative ways of leading. But too few managers talk about making work inherently meaningful and giving people the autonomy they need to thrive. In other words, they don’t give enough thought to making jobs truly engaging and fulfilling. This information graphic portrays these three mindsets and the different “eras” of personal drive at work. Read more

When growing up, most people are encouraged to enter a lucrative, practical profession instead of dabbling in the arts. When going through university, most people enter a discipline and are funnelled through that stovepipe. When entering the job, most people are placed in some narrowly defined jobs and climb a job ladder. That’s most people. You can’t afford to float through such narrow channels. It’s time to take control of your work and incorporate lessons from a broad range of disciplines. Follow your artistic interests. Broaden your experience with travel. The global economy favours the Renaissance men and women. This information graphic profiles that ideal. Read more

With every recession comes a raft of books about how to cope. These are the lean years. So businesses are told to streamline. Be frugal. Put those expansion plans on the shelf. Consolidate gains. Et cetera. Yawn! This advice is all so predictable. Yet when Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson offer similar advice in their new book Rework, it all seems so minty fresh. How could that be? Well, to start with, they’re advocating that businesses should be small, frugal, and keenly focused during the boom years. And that managers are mostly deadweight. This is an anti-bureaucracy manifesto about steering clear of the “go big or go home” mindset that rules many industries. Read more

How a product performs is difficult to communicate. There is usually a lot of test data and many variables. It may be difficult to draw conclusions about how certain design features relate to performance. Moreover, it is often difficult to imagine how the bigger picture fits together and relates to actual, real-world uses. How does my junky electronic plastic toy compare to other junky electronic plastic toys? No matter what, don’t pull out the spreadsheets and Powerpoint slides. It’s time to draw another information graphic, this time with the guidance of one of the top information designers, Karl Gude. In a day-long workshop, he had students go through an illuminating exercise … involving paper airplanes. Read more

Many of us yearn for workplaces that are more humane. These are places where people are treated with dignity, respect, and care. People feel they belong and can act like themselves. People aren’t bossed around by autocrats but, instead, work through challenges collaboratively with leaders and colleagues. Johann Broodryk wants workplaces to be this way. Broodryk is an advocate of ubuntu, which is folk-wisdom from South Africa that means “humanness”, among many other things. In a recent book, he applies the notion of ubuntu to the workplace to come up with a new philosophy of management. Read review

Errant leaders and celebrities are increasingly resorting to emotional public apologies. Apologies can go a long way towards restoring a personal or organisational reputation, as well as healing interpersonal rifts and rebuilding bonds of trust. They can also reduce the risk that others will ask for excessive compensation for a grievance. Some argue that having the sense to know when and how to apologise is a leadership competency. The challenge is that an effective apology requires courage, a good performance, and very particular messages. That’s where John Kador’s book Effective Apology comes in. Kador provides how-to advice for would-be apologisers. Read review

Great leaders are said to have several characteristics. Chief among them is a curious and nimble mind. Our times are throwing a lot of complex, fuzzy, and intractable challenges at leaders. So, beyond simple smarts, what types of thinking skills should leaders be developing? We all have a stake in this question. Our workplaces and societal institutions will be run better if they are populated by people with keen insight. I review two books about what that means in practice. Read more

How much does a person’s physical appearance determine success at work? I’m thinking about a person’s attractiveness, height, weight, and body shape. According to Gordon Patzer’s new book Looks, physical appearance matters a lot. If you’re a tall and attractive male, for example, your chances of success are far greater than a plain looking person. You’ll earn more money. You’ll get more decision-making power. That doesn’t seem like the workings of an ideal meritocracy, does it? Some of Patzer’s findings are not so straightforward, however. To learn more, read the Review.

Let’s face it, most business autobiography is ego-stroking revisionist history. It’s rare for a famous boss to offer a candid and genuinely insightful account of business struggles. That’s why Yvon Chouinard’s book is so refreshing. Part warts’n'all account, part politico-business manifesto, Let My People Go Surfing helps us understand one of the biggest challenges facing international enterprises: how to balance profitability and environmental responsibility. And Chouinard advocates a model of sceptical management that I happen to agree with. Read more

When an executive is presenting a new business model to you, what do you notice? Slippery terms that you don’t fully grasp? Multi-coloured diagrams that look like Cubist paintings drawn with bright crayons? Oratory that seems more like a sell-job than a persuasive vision? Visual facilitation offers progress. I recently had an opportunity to try my hand at this discipline. It pushed me out of my comfort zone. This commentary and information graphic are the result.Read more

Chris Anderson made a name for himself with his “long tail” theory about how new technologies make it easier for businesses to serve tiny niches. That’s all well and good, but I want to talk about a different type of “long tail” theory. Military logicians have long used the long-tail analogy to describe how military operations are become more resource intensive. I want to float a new theory along those lines. Executives are sprouting long tails: long trains of personnel that help manage tasks and decisions. These tails are getting longer. Few have seriously thought through the implications. This essay is a call for more discussion on the subject. Read more

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the problem of rankism in the workplace. This is the privileged treatment of work and advice based on a person’s stature in a hierarchy, not the merits of the case. The term was originally coined by Douglas Walton. In this commentary, I take issue with Walton’s original notion and fashion something that I think is more precise and relevant. Read more

Traditional forms of workplace training and development have worn out their welcome. It’s time to end the tedious bullet-point presentations, onerous info-dump of documents, and neglectful forms of on-the-job training. That’s all just so … you know … Learning 1.0. What’s Learning 2.0? I’ve created an information graphic that tries to capture the move to a more active, visually oriented, and collectively engaged form of workplace learning. I hope to spark some debate on the subject. Read more

We don’t normally think about the way in which goods we take for granted are shipped throughout the global economy. Yet the humble shipping container is the technology that makes Globalization possible. Before standardized containers, the high costs of shipping undermined the viability of exporting many products. Today, goods pass from ship to truck to train with incredible efficiency. Shipping costs are negligable. And logistics managers are developing new business models to take advantage of diffuse networks of suppliers and vendors. Marc Levinson has now written the history of how all this came to be. Read more

Pop management books abound. Yet most managers have little time to read. And most management writers need some sort of gimmick to stand out from the crowd. This explains the new cottage industry of leadership storybooks. Supposedly, these stories animate ideas in readers’ minds and make reading a more engaging experience. Yet, if the following selection of best-selling books is any indication, these stories are about as beige as the workplaces they’re set in. Read more

Is your workplace a meritocracy? Is it really? A pure meritocracy? A pure meritocracy is a place where talent, hard work, and personal achievement always dictate matters of status and career advancement. Few workplaces measure up because there is always someone playing the political angle, including those who don’t even realize they’re doing so. These people might be talking behind your back, striking side-deals with office rivals, and currying favour with superiors. Or they may be undermining your efforts by defending their turf and taking all the credit. There are snakes in the office, and Kathleen Kelley Reardon’s new book claims that every office is full of them. She even has advice about how to thrive among these venomous and slippery creatures. Read more

Opinion polls are letting down media pundits in the early U.S. Democratic Party primaries. In particular, the strident predictions were far from the mark in New Hampshire. No, Obama didn’t win by a large margin. Clinton did. So what’s causing the predictions to miss so embarrassingly? If the pundits bothered to check the complications of opinion polling they’d be far more tentative and we might actually get some sensible analysis. Read more

When media scandal-mongers decide to publish a “gotcha!” story about you and your organisation, conventional public-relations tactics are not likely to be of much help. The task at hand is damage control, which requires a crisis-management repertoire that goes beyond spin-doctoring and conciliatory gestures. At least that’s what Dezenhall & Weber say in their new book entitled, appropriately enough, Damage Control. The book is part facts-of-life talk and part survival guide. Read on to learn more about the advice Dezenhall & Weber have to dispense. Read more