The cesspool syndrome

I’ve read and re-read the Arthur Bedeian and Achilles Armenakis article, The cesspool syndrome: how dreck floats to the top of declining organizations. In my opinion this article is worth the time to read. At its core it talks about how their research shows that unlike in successful organizations where the cream rises [...]

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Does short-term management pay?

Natalie Mizik and Robert Jacobson wrote an article entitled, The cost of myopic management for the July/August edition of the Harvard Business Review in which they explored the costs paid by the organization (and ultimately investors) when they become too focused on short-term revenue targets and begin inflating their earning by cutting expenditures. During [...]

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The business environment has changed more rapidly than Middle management

Stephanie Armour in her USA Today article, “Who wants to be a middle manager?,” discusses the challenges facing today’s middle manager, and that a growing population of Generation X & Y employees do not view a move into middle management as a desirable career move.  The Gen X or Y managers that she interviewed discussed [...]

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Workplace Stress

Jenna Goudreau wrote an interesting article in the August 6th issue of BusinessWeek on stress in the workplace. I was particularly impressed with the way in which one organization handled an overworked and stressed out manager. Based on the amount of time that he was working, the organization proactively stepped in to offer [...]

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Nasty People Drain Productivity in the Workplace

I recently re-read the Robert Sutton article entitled Nasty People.  This article, which helped lead the way to his recently published book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace, discusses the impact that employees who create a hostile work environment have on others and the organization itself.  I immediately began to reflect on the [...]

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Do companies need a second in command?

  Recently I read an article written by Nathan Bennett and Stephen Miles which was published in the May 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review entitled, “Second in Command” which discusses the relationship between CEOs and COOs.  The authors point out that no two COOs have the same job description – not even two that [...]

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