One hundred and fifty years ago this summer, the Battle of Gettysburg turned from a potential Confederate victory to stunning defeat due to Gen. James Longstreet’s poor negotiating skills.
At the beginning of their classic, “Getting to Yes,” authors Roger Fisher and William Ury note that we are all negotiators, every single day. But most of us lack an actual method for negotiations.
In our daily work lives, we deal with colleagues more than folks on the outside, and it seems downright mercenary to approach our interactions with them as a negotiation. But what happens when we become convinced that a colleague or boss is taking the organization down the wrong path? How do we convince them to change their plan?
To bring this question alive, how might our world today be a different place had Longstreet been able to persuade his boss, Gen. Robert E. Lee, to rethink the attack we call Pickett’s Charge? (read more…)
Common practice has been for recruitment and selection of new board members to be left to the CEO or to a small group of directors on a nominating committee. This committee meets only during that period of the year when the bylaws require that directors be nominated and put before the shareholders for election.
While this approach seems easy and simple, it actually substitutes convenience for the opportunity to establish an important competitive advantage. Over the years, it’s become clear to me that the board of directors can and should be a valuable part of the core competencies of the company and a significant contributor to the company achieving its long-term goals and objectives.
Creating a board that is a key asset begins with making sure that you find the best people to join. Failure to take this process seriously can result in problems relating to oversight of management activities, delays in decision making and legal action by outside shareholders who depend on the directors to look out for their interests. (read more…)
What do Salesforce.com, Foot Locker, Disney, Whole Foods and Knowledge Universe U.S. have in common? A commitment to success through corporate philosophies that emphasize the value of satisfied employees and customers, and the importance of the long term over the short term, according to C-suite leaders on Monday at the Milken Institute Global Conference.
The session, “Value and Values: Building a High-Performance Company,” was a relatively rare showcase for the value of corporate social responsibility, or CSR, from the perspective of the C-suite. Each CEO (and Disney’s CFO) faces different challenges in different industries, but each has been able to bridge the values language of being a good corporate citizen with the strategic language of a strong, growing enterprise.
Notably, these leaders de-emphasized their role in sustaining their companies’ cultures and values, pointing repeatedly to the importance of hiring the right employees, giving them a voice and a chance to shine, and the long-term payoffs this can provide. They appeared to be executing what executive coach Jeff Orr advised this week:
“More often than not, businesses and organizations that don’t foster both character development and competency find themselves falling behind their competition in market share, reputation, employee retention, and profit.”
What drives your company, and what do you value? (read more…)
The recent criminal indictments of 35 Atlanta school administrators and teachers at the root of that district’s test-cheating scandal show just how far some people will go when incentives are so lucrative.
Other school systems — including those in New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, and El Paso, Texas — have experienced similar cheating on standardized tests. “Responsible adults” changed student answers on tests so scores would improve.
I don’t suggest the blame lies with No Child Left Behind or the current Race to the Top efforts. They are well-intended but place emphasis on reading and math test-score improvements, not on learning by students.
With increased scrutiny on test scores, those test scores went up. However, as retesting showed, test-score gains were not due to increased learning on the part of students. The gains were entirely due to test answers being changed so it would look like learning was taking place. (read more…)
If you’re a man leading people in your company, chances are that you feel somewhat stymied in how to address one of the biggest talent-management problems all companies face: How to keep bright, talented women from leaving the company before they make it into the leadership ranks.
McKinsey data shows that in the pipeline, from entry level to vice president, the average company watches about 25% of its best female talent walk out the door. They’re not all leaving the workforce, but they are leaving corporate America. This women’s leadership gap, says Joanna Barsh of McKinsey, is a “canary in the coal mine” for losses of male leadership talent in other socioethnic categories as well.
Most male leaders now understand that women are good for business and that retaining women is more complicated than offering flextime and nursing stations in the bathroom. The male leaders I talk to who want to help address this problem don’t quite know what to do. (read more…)
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