Business for the Greater Good

According to the video above, productivity goes up by 40% when employees have the feeling they work for something greater than financial results. This study, done by the Notre Dame University, corroborates the idea that financial motivation is sometimes not the most essential part of the package. I would argue that in the majority of cases it is not. No doubt, money is important and there are many, who are primarily driven by the financial gain: a vivid illustration to that would be the recent financial crisis, a Shell reserves overstatement scandal, Parmalat or Enron fairy tales. It is not surprising that the human greed dripping from the top surprisingly quickly permeates the very essence of the companies.

Still, according to research, financial motivation increases employee performance for the period up to 6 months. What then? Then comes the non-tangible part of the rewards package, such as the corporate culture, or access to development opportunities, or the employer image, or an ability to do something that will make this world a better place.

No matter how much money British-American Tobacco are going to put in their employer brand campaign, it will forever bear the stamp of "smoking kills" over its shiny corporate logo. I am not sure how people working for them feel, but I know for sure that I would not enjoy contributing to the success of a company that is (indirectly) responsible for lungs cancer of thousands of people. Conversely, working for a "green" company, for instance, would make me want to achieve more, make an effort, go an extra mile... Call me an incorrigible romantic or a fool, but pay goes beyond the dollar.

Get connected

The buzz around Web 2.0 starts getting unbearable. Everyone is doing it. Last week there was a presentation by Capgemini Consulting on campus, and they were proudly telling about their featured project on culture change at a manufacturing company in Finland through proliferation of Web 2.0 tools (Facebook, Wikis, messengers, etc.). Social Network, the movie, is what everyone is talking about these days. Our lives are changing, but what is more interesting - the perceptions and underlying beliefs are altering as well.

For instance, I grew up believing that bad news travel much faster than good news. Really, the grapevine has always been thriving on chaos, suffering and misery. Nowadays, primarily because of social networks, happiness spreads more robustly than unhappiness, according to Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, authors of the book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives:

Our connections affect every aspect of our daily lives. . . . How we feel, what we know, whom we marry, whether we fall ill, how much money we make, and whether we vote all depend on the ties that bind us. Social networks spread happiness, generosity, and love. They are always there, exerting both subtle and dramatic influence over our choices, actions, thoughts, feelings, even our desires. And our connections do not end with the people we know. Beyond our own social horizons, friends of friends of friends can start chain reactions that eventually reach us, like waves from distant lands that wash up on our shores.

The problem with Web 2.0 at work though is that the news is not always happy for all people. Let's say someone gets promoted - some people will be lining up to attack, and guess what: if there is something negative they have to say about the person, who is getting promoted, a social network is a perfect platform.

What the social networks really bring into the organization is creativity, which can become unleashed. In a recent Gallup article we find that:

Much of creativity is just new combinations put together from different pieces of information and material. That's how networks can really amplify creativity.

Thus, it looks like social networks are winning the battle over the corporate mind, but I guess there is a limit to anything. No matter how conducive they may be for virtual collaboration, knowledge sharing, newcomer integration, etc., too much of anything is bad for you. At least this maxim, which we learnt as kids, still holds water.

Córdoba: Diversity in Action

This is a picture I took this weekend at the Cathedral of Córdoba, one of the most unusual places I have visited so far. Firstly, its very name is Mosque-Cathedral gives an indication that it is odd. It is odd, indeed. The combination of the Arab and Christian influence is so striking and simultaneously organic that I perceived it in its unity and uniqueness. In its long history (begun in the 7th century as a Christian cathedral, converted into a mosque during the Muslim invasion and re-built again into a Christian place of worship in the 13th century) is imprinted in the design and the atmosphere of the building.

Many diversity program do not succeed because their implementers in the heart of hearts do not believe that true inclusiveness is achievable, and doubt begets failure. Cathedral of Córdoba defies such concerns by the mere fact of its existence. Thus, it's about acceptance, belief and passion. Unfortunately, many companies approach the diversity issues from a totally different end. Embracing it as a fad, who gets assigned to oversee the diversity and inclusiveness initiatives? Exactly - someone who is not needed elsewhere.

I think that a field-trip to Córdoba should be included in the mandatory curriculum for all the diversity management practitioners. Aya Sofia should also be on the list. Anything else?

Information overTWEET

The blog of a friend kept showing up in my inbox. I felt guilty not reading it each week, and couldn't get it to go into my junk mail. Then I saw the unsubscribe button. 

Click. No more weekly navel-gazing posts.

How was I to know that my friend would be notified?

____________________________________

This scary personal story was shared by a victim of e-nnoyance: the new peril of information overdose attacking us from the abyss of the internet vastness. Continuous Partial Attention is already a recognized psychological phenomenon, which probably will be beyond grasp of the representatives of my generation, but those in their teens right now have no issues whatsoever texting on their cellphones, browsing the web and watching TV at the same time.

Are we really becoming unable to live without the modern devices of staying in touch. I can't help recalling the character of Drew Barrymore in He's Just Not That Into You complaining how she checks her blackberries, e-mails, cell phones and gets rejected by all those multiple technologies and misses the times when there was just one phone with one answering machine and the answering machine either had a message on it or it did not.

Have you heard of a term "a blackberry prayer"? I was frantic when I heard it for the first time from one of our professors. Respectable-looking ladies and gentlemen looking into their zippers in deep concentration one-on-one with their smart friends, pretending to pay attention to what is going around. Friends on Facebook are not real and the Twitter updates carry less and less informational value. In another Drew Barrymore movie (Ever After), the step-mother said that one should not speak unless it improves the silence. True as ever.

Communicating all the time, snow-balling the information with "sharing" and "retwitting", creating tons of "noise" with own webpage, blogs and livejournals - information has become a commodity. Retaining knowledge in one's head is a faux pas: regarded as something antique - why do you need to learn something when you can just google it? How do we sort through the weeds and divide the ideas from stuff? Unless there is some sort of an algorithm or a magic trick, the rate of hitting the "unsubscribe" button will be soaring soon.

Centered Leadership

In the past years there has been a noticeable surge towards finding what is called "centered leadership" - focusing on yourself and your own strengths to discover the internal resources and capabilities to lead, motivate and manage people. In the light of the recent economically pitiful events this proves to be as important as never, and one of the freshest McKinsey studies concluded:

The best leadership model: Yourself

They have identified five core capabilities that lie at the core of centered leadership:

•  finding meaning in work, 
• converting emotions such as fear or stress into opportunity, 
• leveraging connections and community, 
• acting in the face of risk, and 
• sustaining the energy that is the life force of change.

As always, this is a beautiful model, but commitment and determination must come first. Leadership is never the destination, it is always a journey. As an old Indian saying goes, in order to know another person, you need to walk a thousand miles in his moccasins. Practice proves that most of us are not ready to undertake that trip yet.

Losing IT

If I am becoming addicted to Facebook, is it clinical? Chronic? Curable?

Is losing a cell phone is like losing your life - you cease to exist?

Do you type faster than you write?

What's the difference in time of answering one e-mail and switching a TV channel?

Do you check your e-mail "just in case" more than 10 times a day?

Do you spend more time together with your Blackberry or your significant other(s)? Do you take it to bed with you?

Do you develop a headache if you do not spend enough time at your computer?

Do you remember all your logins and passwords but keep missing birthdays of your close friends?

Do you feel guilty now and make a note in your smart phone to spend less time online?...

Tightening the Bolts

Wow! this is something that has been cooking for a while... I would add that not only a graduation exam is needed, but an entrance exam (something different from GMAT or GRE) as well, testing the abilities to think conceptually and multi-disciplinary, not only being verbal and somewhat number-savvy. I'm up for the change!

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Do MBAs Need a Standardized Exam After Graduation?

Posted on Monday, October 4, 2010 7:52:40 PM GMT

An MBA has long been considered a requirement for C-level positions. By earning the degree, a prospective executive has proven that he/she has the chops to succeed in a senior exec role. However, with the exponential increase in the number of degree programs over the past 10 years, some employers are wondering whether "MBA" holds the same authority it used to.

India, in particular, has experienced a quick uptick in the number of MBA programs available in-country, flooding the job market with MBA graduates. But are these MBAs really qualified? To find out, the All-India Management Association (AIMA) has created an exam, reports BusinessWeek, that will "determine whether business school graduates in India are qualified for jobs." Remind you of something? (Cough, bar exam.) Although we don't know exactly how many employers are going to require the exam, AIMA says there's been significant interest.

Is this something employers really need? Or should GMAT scores and work history be enough? And isn't evaluating business schools the job of the AASCB? I tend to believe that, in the end, employers know which schools are strong and which ones are not. They talk to each other, learn from recruiters and talk with graduates of the schools, making a test unnecessary. What do you think? Should we have a standardized MBA exam?