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17 Rules for Developing and Keeping Devoted Employees is a must read on how to foster commitment, respect, trust, honesty, fun and above all performance.

Why people choose to work for you and why they stay. It’s not about money, not even now. Don’t just demand alignment: nurture it: Create powerful opportunities for employees to link with vision, values, and mission. Applaud effort, but reward contribution, recognize the crucial difference between behavior and outcomes. 

The Beyond Bureaucracy Challenge, Part Two of the Harvard Business Review/McKindsey M-Prize for Management Innovation, seeks to advance progress on making organizations genuinely fit for human beings—more inspiring, open, and free. Management innovators from around the world in every realm of endeavor were invited to share the most progressive practices and disruptive ideas around. After receiving an abundance of big ideas and game-changing initiatives and experiences from management innovators in all kinds of organizations worldwide, seven finalists were selected. We are proud to announce that

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. It’s a popular cliché I’ve seen tossed around a lot.  And I get the premise – strong cultures can make or break your organizational strategy.  It’s true. But where does culture start? Well, Steve Boese recently wrote a post titled, “If culture eats strategy, then what eats culture?” answering that exact question.

Without giving Steve’s post away, it got me thinking about talent.  And, who “owns”…

Achieving milestones within a department or an organization is a process that involves a clear strategy, research, team members, and the flexibility to change and adapt along the way.  Just like leaders, a company’s culture or environment doesn’t just happen.  Great cultures are made from the top down and the down up.   The key in creating a corporate culture focused on high achievement doesn’t come from the learning curve employees and their teammates face but in how they learn and work together during their failures.  It’s the low…

It is 9 am.  The secretary reports to her desk.  Waiting for her is a sealed card.   The secretary opens the envelope and it is a Valentine's card from her manager.  Having undergone sensitivity training, the manager signs it "fondly" as opposed to "lovingly."   The employee is creeped out and goes to HR.  HR talks with the manager based on a script we had prepared together.   HR asks the manager if he knows why the card is inappropriate.  He responds "no."   HR asks the manager to whom else he gave a…

Did you talk to a customer today?   Simple yes or no answer.     According to Frank Pacetta (a hero of mine) and his Blueprint for Success a “no” gets the leader or manager (CEO especially) an immediate failing grade.   {click through and take the rest of Frank’s Blueprint for Success Management Test}   Today’s leader is charged with navigating through chaotic and disruptive times.  Employees are anxious, overwhelmed, exhausted, uncertain and have far less trust in senior leadership. …

During the past decade, much of work/life research has been dedicated to identifying and measuring the bottom-line benefits of workplace flexibility to an organization and its employees. Unfortunately, far less attention has been paid to the challenges that managers face when integrating flexibility into their work groups.   A 2010 survey report, Alternative Workplace Strategies in the Current Economy: Results from New Ways of Working’s Benchmarking Study, cited executive buy-in…

Between now and New Year’s Eve, just about everyone — from late-night comedy show hosts and newspaper editorial boards, to individual families — will be compiling their Top 10 lists for 2011. SHRM’s Government Affairs Team has taken a slightly different approach and compiled its Top 8 list of HR public policy accomplishments for this past year.

As Thomas Jefferson once said, “America is not governed by the majority, but by the majority of those who participate.…