Intelligent Organizations

In its 2011 annual CEO survey, PricewaterhouseCoopers found that 66% of CEOs reported that a lack of the right skills is their current biggest talent challenge. CEOs also reported that the need for organizational agility is paramount to their future success in the global marketplace.

Neither of these findings is surprising. We are living and working in a world characterized by increasing globalization, complexity and change. A major task for all CEOs, HR directors and CLOs is to facilitate the development of a workforce that is both capable and competent to thrive and work within an emergent environment—every day.

Although on the surface this may appear to be a Sisyphean task, if we think about the challenges of each of these areas, we can identify strategies for leaders to maximize the associated opportunities and minimize the risks. In fact, there are some reasonably straightforward actions that any CEO, HRD or CLO can take to keep their organizations ahead of the curve.

Neither our educational system nor our culture values mistakes. Take politics. Apparently politicians of acceptable “character” are born, not made. For a politician to admit that, as a youth, s/he [experimented with drugs] [protested a war] [tried same-gender sex] [you name it] is career suicide. Unless, of course, that person found God and was cleansed of all youthful indiscretions.

In our society, we tend to view mistakes as indicative of weakness rather than the invaluable, irreplaceable learning tool that they are. We discount what it means to be willing to make mistakes — to take a risk, have the courage to try something that might not work and the integrity to accept the consequences. And we ignore that the best measure of character is the ability to accept and absorb the lessons that mistakes have to offer and, in that fertile context, grow and, when we’re lucky, transcend our limitations.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/the-irreplaceability-of-mistakes.html#ixzz1jGAzEaQg

As we continue to frequently lurch from one crisis to another, forging a sustainable path forward requires business leaders to rethink the very nature of how their organizations conduct business.

The truth is we tell ourselves lies. Lies seem to make life better, they make us feel more useful and in control.

I can always tell when I touch the lies people believe about themselves. They de...

As I watch the Cubs tonight, they are in next to last place in the division, and have lost almost double the amount of games that they’ve won. Yet on paper, they seem like a team that should be winning many more games. In tonight’s game, the first five of their nine hitters had averages above .300, which is a rare feat. But a team is not merely the sum of its members’ abilities. We can’t understand systems by looking at individual elements. We can only understand the team by watching the team.

The importance of formal structure in organizations remains, despite modern communication technologies such as e-mail.

Working overtime doesn't increase your output. It makes you stupid.

The reason sleep is so important is because fatigue isn't simple. When we are tired, our performance doesn't degrade equally. Instead, when you lose a night's sleep, the parietal and occipital lobes in your brain become less active. The parietal lobe integrates information from the senses and is involved in our knowledge of numbers and manipulation of objects. The occipital lobe is involved in visual processing. So the parts of our mind responsible for understanding the world and the data around us start to slow down. This is because the brain is prioritizing the thalamus—the part of your brain responsible for keeping you awake. In evolutionary terms, this makes sense. If you're driven to find food, you need to stay awake and search, not compare recipes.

As more social business environment and the new ways of working are changing the organizations and reforming the entire business landscape – I’ll find it important and very interesting to study how we create and innovate, make decisions, and further how better mutual understanding can be created. We all know that the existing organizational structures needs a refresh, and that we, knowledge workers, should be passionate about helping our organizations to be more open, learning organizations.

In one well-known study, workers who felt unfairly criticized by a boss or felt they had a boss who didn't listen to their concerns had a 30 percent higher rate of coronary disease than those who felt treated fairly and with care.

In the workplace itself, researcher Marcial Losada has found that among high-performing teams, the expression of positive feedback outweighs that of negative feedback by a ratio of 5.6 to 1. By contrast, low-performing teams have a ratio of .36 to 1.

Business ideas are rejected every day. Here are eight embarrassing predictions from some of our top business leaders.