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Truth or lie? Negotiating 101
On 23, Dec 2003 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
Harvard Business School professor Michael Wheeler offers some smart strategies for negotiating the best deals possible. Most importantly, by observing your opponent carefully you can often gain the upper hand, so you must “listen with all your senses.” This includes keeping an eye out for “micro-expressions”—those fleeting, involuntary facial movements that indicate what your counterpart is *really* thinking. These unintended signals are what poker players look for to detect bluffing. Look for anomalies—nonverbal cues that don’t match up with the conversation. Ask the right questions—don’t ever ask “Is that your best offer?” “A better strategy is to give the other party an out,” says Wheeler. “If someone says, ‘Take it or leave it,’ simply treat …
Boot camp for aspiring CEOs
On 23, Dec 2003 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
Fast-track executives pay $27,500 to attend a five-day program called Top Talent, put on by management consultant RHR International. They learn that the promotion to chief executive is nothing like their many previous promotions. The top job is complex, lonely and laden with land mines that could blow up if they lean on the very skills that took them to the top. The CEO title “isn’t an award, it’s the beginning,” says Ram Charan, a management consultant and CEO trainer. “Anyone who says ‘I’ve arrived,’ had better watch their ego.” Among the differences: Executives on their way up like to brainstorm, talk over ideas before a decision is made. But CEOs have to worry about …
Building blocks of organizational success
On 23, Dec 2003 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
Employees don’t function in a vacuum, responding solely to their own agendas. Rather, they act on a broad range of conditions within the company—what they see and understand and how they’re rewarded (financially and otherwise); objectives, incentives and career alternatives; and what they’re encouraged to care about. Strategists and organizational experts from Booz Allen Hamilton say one way to bring employees’ activities in line with each other—and with the company’s goals—is to implement market-based motivational systems and multiple profit-and-loss statements that send managers accurate signals about cost and value of certain activities. Such “motivators” are part of the key underpinnings of a company’s ability to execute critical strategies, say the experts, who liken the elements …
Why isn’t there a keeper of statistics?
On 23, Dec 2003 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
In his interview with journalist Michael Schrage, Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman says that he’s really very impressed by the combination of curiosity and resistance that he finds when he talks to business leaders, but adds: “The thing that astonishes me when I talk to business people in the context of decision analysis is that you have an organization that’s making lots of decisions and they’re not keeping track. They’re not trying to learn from their own mistakes; they’re not investing the smallest amount in trying to actually figure out what they’ve done wrong. And that’s not an accident: They don’t want to know. So there is a lot of curiosity, and I get invited …
Where fear rules, ideas go underground
On 23, Dec 2003 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
Every CEO wants their industry’s next big idea to emerge from their own company—but few today are willing to take the risks that would enable that to happen. The out-of-the-box thinking that was so popular during the ‘90s boom has been replaced by layoffs, cutbacks and shelved expansion plans. What many executives are calling “austerity” is nothing more than fear. And fear doesn’t create an environment friendly to new ideas. ‘‘The ‘wildflowers’ in many companies have gone underground,’’ says Lawrence Halpern, a professor of strategic positioning and competitive strategy at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. He refers to nontraditional thinkers as wildflowers and yearns for them to start sprouting again amid the current economic …
