Forestalling Change Fatigue

It is a given that organizational change affects people. It is people, not processes or technology, who embrace or not a situation and carry out or neglect corresponding actions. People will help build what they create. (No. 97 | December 2010)

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Enriching Knowledge Management Coordination

With decreasing bureaucracy and decentralization of operations, the span of knowledge coordination should be as close as possible to relevant knowledge domains. Coordinating mediums, or knowledge managers, have key roles to play. (No. 96 | December 2010)

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E-learning and the Workplace

Many work arrangements discourage learning. In organizations, classroom instruction is obviously not the most efficient method. However, if e-learning is to justify the publicity that surrounds it, there is a great need to understand its organizational environment and to evolve design principles. structures. (No. 95 | November 2010)

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Leading Top Talent in the Workplace

Organizations once distinguished themselves by their systems and procedures. They now need distinctive ideas about their objectives, their clients, what their clients value, their results, and their plans. For that, they need top talent.(No. 94 | November 2010)

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Engaging Staff in the Workplace

Surveys present clear and mounting evidence that staff engagement correlates closely with individual, collective, and corporate performance. It denotes the extent to which organizations gain commitment from personnel. (No. 93 | October 2010)

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Seeking Feedback on Learning for Change

Feedback underpins organizational learning. To find the highest level of success in learning for change, feedback should be invited, analyzed in the most positive manner possible, and used to impact decision making.(No. 92 | October 2010)

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Taxonomies for Development

Organizations spend millions of dollars on management systems without commensurate investments in the categorization needed to organize the information they rest on. Taxonomy work is strategic work: it enables efficient and interoperable retrieval and sharing of data, information, and knowledge by building needs and natural workflows in intuitive structures. (No. 91 | September 2010)

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Informal Authority in the Workplace

In most types of organizations, formal authority is located at the top as part of an exchange against fairly explicit expectations. In networked, pluralistic organizations that must rapidly formulate adaptive solutions in an increasingly complex world, its power is eroding as its functions become less clear. In the 21st century, the requirements of organizational speed demand investments in informal authority. (No. 90 | August 2010)

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A Primer on Social Neuroscience

The human mind is driven by an emergent array of biological, cognitive, and social properties. Unconscious processes perform feats we thought required intention, deliberation, and conscious awareness. The breakthroughs of social neuroscience are fostering more comprehensive theories of the mechanisms that underlie human behavior. (No. 89 | August 2010)

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Bridging Organizational Silos

To develop and deliver products and services, large organizations rely on teams. Yet, the defining characteristics of these often hamper collaboration among different parts of the organization. The root cause is conflict: it must be accepted then actively managed. Promoting effective cross-functional teams demands that an enabling environment be built for that. (No. 88 | July 2010)

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A Primer on Corporate Values

Corporate values articulate what guides an organization's behavior and decision making. They can boost innovation, productivity, and credibility, and help deliver thereby sustainable competitive advantage. However, a look at typical statements of corporate values suggests much work remains to be done before organizations draw real benefits from them. (No. 87 | June 2010)

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The Critical Incident Technique

Organizations are often challenged to identify and resolve workplace problems. The Critical Incident technique gives them a starting point and a process for advancing organizational development through learning experiences. It helps them study "what people do" in various situations. (No. 86 | May 2010)

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Enriching Policy with Research

The failure of researchers to link evidence to policy and practice produces evidence that no one uses, impedes innovation, and leads to mediocre or even detrimental development policies. To help improve the definition, design, and implementation of policy research, researchers should adopt a strategic outcome-oriented approach. (No. 85 | May 2010)

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The Perils of Performance Measurement

Interest in performance measurement grows daily but the state of the art leaves much to be desired. To promote performance leadership, one must examine both its shortcomings and its pernicious effects. (No. 84 | May 2010)

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Social Media and the Public Sector

Social media is revolutionizing the way we live, learn, work, and play. Elements of the private sector have begun to thrive on opportunities to forge, build, and deepen relationships. Some are transforming their organizational structures and opening their corporate ecosystems in consequence. The public sector is a relative newcomer. It too can drive stakeholder involvement and satisfaction. (No. 83 | April 2010)

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Seeding Knowledge Solutions Before, During, and After

In the age of competence, one must learn before, during, and after the event. Knowledge solutions lie in the areas of strategy development, management techniques, collaboration mechanisms, knowledge sharing and learning, and knowledge capture and storage. (No. 82 | April 2010)

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Harvesting Knowledge

If 80% of knowledge is unwritten and largely unspoken, we first need to elicit that before we can articulate, share, and make wider use of it. Knowledge harvesting is one way to draw out and package tacit knowledge to help others adapt, personalize, and apply it; build organizational capacity; and preserve institutional memory. (No. 81 | April 2010)

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Crafting a Knowledge Management Results Framework

Managing for results requires a coherent framework for strategic planning, management, and communications based on continuous learning and accountability. Results frameworks improve management effectiveness by defining realistic expected results, monitoring progress toward their achievement, integrating lessons into decisions, and reporting on performance. (No. 80 | March 2010)

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Sparking Social Innovations

Necessity is the mother of invention. The demand for good ideas, put into practice, that meet pressing unmet needs and improve people's lives is growing on a par with the agenda of the 21st century. In a shrinking world, social innovation at requisite institutional levels can do much to foster smart, sustainable globalization. (No. 79 | March 2010)

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Design Thinking

The need for 21st century mindsets and protocols has sparked interest in design thinking. That is a human-centered, prototype-driven process for the exploration of new ideas that can be applied to operations, products, services, strategies, and even management. (No. 78 | March 2010)

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Sparking Innovations in Management

Gary Hamel defines management innovation as a marked departure from traditional management principles, processes, and practices (or a departure from customary organizational forms that significantly alters the way the work of management is performed). He deems it the prime driver of sustainable competitive advantage in the 21st century. (No. 77 | March 2010)

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A Primer on Talent Management

Talent is not a rare commodity—people are talented in many ways: it is simply rarely released. To make talent happen organizations must give it strategic and holistic attention. (No. 76 | February 2010)

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Embracing Failure

Success is a process and failure on the way is an opportunity. Successful individuals, groups, and organizations fail well. (No. 75 | February 2010)

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Showcasing Knowledge

Information has become ubiquitous because producing, manipulating, and disseminating it is now cheap and easy. But perceptions of information overload have less to do with quantity than with the qualities by which knowledge is presented. (No. 74 | February 2010)

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The Future of Social Marketing

Social marketing is the use of marketing principles and techniques to effect behavioral change. It is a concept, process, and application for understanding who people are, what they desire, and then organizing the creation, communication, and delivery of products and services to meet their desires as well as the needs of society, and solve serious social problems. (No. 73 | January 2010)

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Marketing in the Public Sector

Marketing in the public sector may be the final frontier. Agencies operating in the public domain can use a custom blend of the four Ps—product (or service), place, price, and promotion—as well as other marketing techniques to transform their communications with stakeholders, improve their performance, and demonstrate a positive return on the resources they are endowed with. (No. 72 | January 2010)

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New-Age Branding and the Public Sector

Branding is a means to identify a company's products or services, differentiate them from those of others, and create and maintain an image that encourages confidence among clients, customers, and audiences. Until the mid-1990s, brand management—based on the 4Ps of product (or service), place, price, and promotion—aimed to engineer additional value from single brands. The idea of organizational branding has since developed, with implications for behavior and behavioral change, and is making inroads into the public sector too. (No. 71 | January 2010)

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