Corporate social responsibility isn’t just good for people and the planet: CSR helps shareholders, too, according to a direct comparison of similar companies. Researchers at the Harvard and London business schools carefully paired 90 companies that followed CSR practices with 90 similar firms that did not. For example, their journal article says, “the two groups …
“One bad apple spoils the barrel.” So says an English proverb going back to the 1300s, and literally true: As an apple spoils, it releases gases that speed the process in adjacent ones.[1] Using that as a metaphor for business ethics, three researchers wondered, to what degree do the apple (individual), barrel (organization), or the …
One of the many business myths I have been fighting for two decades is that results from (often unscientific) personality tests are valid for someone’s entire career. On average, personality changes about 25% over one’s lifetime. New evidence shows environmental factors can speed up those changes. An international team of researchers analyzed data on 7,109 …
One of the great mysteries from my 35 years of working life is why workers who “everyone knows” is trouble not only keep their jobs, but sometimes get promoted. Their bad behavior is talked about all the time by line workers and other managers, yet they stay employed. I wrote years ago about one answer. …
Anyone who, as part of their job, tries to get individual workers or managers to cooperate, has dealt with people who feel they can accomplish more on their own. Sometimes openly, more often without admitting it, they follow their own agendas. The science in this post may or may not be useful in persuading them …
At diversity conferences, I sometimes hear statistics like, “in the United States, a woman earns roughly 77 dollars for every 100 dollars earned by a man.” As someone trying to be an ally on diversity, I cringe. In my head, I hear all the objections male executives use to ignore fair pay issues. The gap …
My cousin recently joined a health care startup, only to learn the business model that sold him on the job was still under debate. An in-person meeting was planned to hash it out, so I asked a simple question: Would there be a facilitator? He knew I meant, in this case, someone skilled at guiding …
No, the “Great Resignation” was not just about COVID-19. In fact, four of the biggest reasons people quit jobs last year are always around, and almost entirely within a manager’s control, which means there are solutions within a manager’s control. I’ve read a lot of articles by people claiming to know what caused the Great …
During the pandemic lock-downs, some executives finally learned something scholars have known for a long time: Most people are just as productive at home, if not more so, if the nature of their work allows it. However, a mountain of research shows physically collocated teams outperform similar virtual teams. Put those two points together, and …
In 1999, before I danced away the millennium on New Year’s Eve to Prince while ignoring fears about the Y2K Bug, a major study began changing the way researchers viewed worker motivation. Lead author Edward Deci was the first to propose in 1971 that workers might have internal motivations that had nothing to do with …
A utility meter company I was coaching, part of a large multinational, delayed a customer delivery by a week so it would not book more profits than it had predicted for that quarter. They feared it would hurt their stock prices. Numerous studies have shown that long-term revenues are the primary driver of stock value. …
You wanted proof to give your managers about the need to empower your teams, and here it is: Two major studies prove that if workers have “a sense of control in relation to one’s work,” it improves performance by individuals and teams of all types. These are “meta-analyses,” drawing on data from a total of …
Although I already planned on linking my earlier posts on social power to bias in the workplace, events in the streets reinforce the need. I believe the belated global discussion around racism overlooks an underlying factor that must be addressed if we are ever going to gain the moral, social, and financial benefits of truly …
During dinner a while back with an excellent leader in a large company (when eating out was still allowed), I gave him a challenge. We were talking about social power’s unconscious impacts on people. Before stepping away to release some whiskey, I asked him to think about the common behaviors of bad managers he’d had. …
I support workplace diversity not only on ethical grounds, but because it can be a source of competitive advantage. Diversity enhances communication across a broader customer base, expands the pool of qualified job candidates, and provides access to information that would otherwise be unavailable.[1] But data suggests getting those benefits isn’t easy or guaranteed. After …
Rarely has writing a blog post made me downright angry. The problem isn’t that new evidence has convinced me I was wrong about something—that has never bothered me. No, I am angry because new, high-quality evidence proves I have been right for 25 years. The bile comes because very few managers practice what I taught …
In my previous post, I discussed the origins of Kanban to ensure we understood the needs it was designed to fill, and to emphasize some points often ignored by modern implementors. In this post, I will dive directly into the “Scrum versus Kanban” debate by summarizing my search for objective evidence. I looked for any …
One of the ongoing debates in the Agile blogosphere boils up to, “Scrum vs. Kanban.” I have seen endless discourses, based mostly on the proponents’ personal experiences, as to which is the better way to run a project. As an evidence-based manager, I wanted to know if there were any objective data one way or …
Back when “team building” was the hottest fad in management, no activity garnered as much derision as “trust falls.” The self-proclaimed team builder would have the team gather behind one member and ask that person to fall backwards, trusting their peers to catch them. The ridiculous, and much-ridiculed, idea was that somehow not letting another …
When you and I hear something we don’t want to believe, here’s what happens in our brains, according to my thesis research on persuasion[1]: The emotional centers of our brain are triggered, and we get an unpleasant physical response such as tightness in the chest. Our brain starts searching for reasons to dismiss the offending …
The British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes wrote a book about the famous Battle of Agincourt from a unique perspective: His ancestors were leaders on both sides in the battle, as they had been in the wars between England and France over four centuries. His great-times-30-grandfather commanded the first army to invade the other side, for …
It’s easy for top executives to dismiss us “power to the people” consultants. They think us too “soft” to make the hard decisions needed for business success. People need to be directed and controlled, or they’ll just spend their days shopping online and checking social media, right? Leave aside that no one who knows me—a …
Multiple times a week it happens: No matter how many ways I try to make clear I am only a solo or lead transformation coach, people contact me about joining the team of Agile coaches in some large company. The worst part is not the waste of my time. The worst part is the waste …
I am not the first to point a finger at training as not only a solution to, but a culprit in the Management Knowledge/Practice Gap. That’s the well-documented gulf between techniques proven for decades to create more effective workplaces and the techniques still used by most managers. Researchers of the Gap have noted many problems …
Two seemingly unrelated topics crossed paths while I was researching this post. A common theme in my writings is the questionable nature of statistics bandied about the Internet and presentations. Within the past few months, I heard again the myth that “90% of all communication is nonverbal,” which was thoroughly debunked in the 1980s—by the …
Do you work for an extremely effective organization? No offense, but I doubt it, after writing a paper on the concept. Let’s try a “thought experiment,” though. I will share a high-level summary of the characteristics of an effective organization according to science, footnoted with my sources so you can double-check me. Then I’ll take …
Presenters often extol the value of more communication. At the same time we hear complaints about “information overload” and “too many meetings.” I am among those who have advised managers to err on the side of overcommunicating, and in The Truth about Teambuilding I cover evidence that talking more improves team decision-making. However, I added …
When I was working as a group manager at a mid-sized startup near Seattle years ago, a fellow manager said it was the fifth startup he had worked in. Of the other four, only one survived. That one had stopped work for two months to get its processes in order. Our current startup was a …
Nearly every week, I am contacted by a recruiter wanting me to become a consultant who guides clients in Agile transformation on a traveling basis. It feels like every major IT consulting/staffing agency is getting into the game. Too bad the only evidence this approach works comes from drop-in consultants and their agencies. A look …
Start with the Source In previous posts I talked about attempts to close the management knowledge-practice gap through evidence-based management (EBM), and the problems with the information sources most managers use. Science is only one source in EBM, but it is the least understood, so in this post I will give you the tools to …
Dangers when Doctors Ignore Science In the 1980s, researchers began raising alarms about the lack of current scientific knowledge among practitioners in a business clearly based on science: medicine. Although hundreds of medical studies were published every year to update our understanding of the human body, only a small percentage of doctors were consulting that …
