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I always though that this type of evaluation was a little too brutal, but this article changed my mind. One of the speakers said that it helps companies keep a competitive edge, especially with tech companies like Google. I can understand this method for these types of companies because they always need to be innovating and moving forward at a pace that keeps consumers interested in their products. Also many agree that this isn't a practice that should be kept up indefinitely or consistently.

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Longtime General Electric CEO and management icon Jack Welch popularized a management style in the 1980s that critics dubbed "rank and yank." The system ranks employees - with under-performers getting yanked from their jobs or the company. This old practice is in the news again. Microsoft recently did away with it. But other companies are embracing it.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Let's talk next about a business-management style, one that is familiar to workers in many companies. It's a way of grading employees in relations to one another. Your performance is measured based on a competition of sorts, with the person at the next desk. This system was called "rank and rank" when Jack Welch popularized it at General Electric in the '80s. As the name suggested, the system ranks employees, with those deemed poor performers yanked from their jobs.

This old practice is in the news again. Microsoft recently did away with it; other companies are embracing it. NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports on why it inspires such sharply differing opinions.

YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: The practice goes by many different names - forced ranking, stack ranking or vitality curve. Sometimes, managers assess who's up or out; and sometimes, employees review each other. Either way, the result is a bell curve that compares workers.

The practice elicits lots of passion. On one side you find defenders like Robert Simons, a professor at Harvard Business School.

ROBERT SIMONS: It's merely a way of identifying people who are excelling and at the bottom end, people who need some help.

NOGUCHI: Simons argues stack rankings help companies in competitive sectors like technology keep their edge, allowing them to weed out their hiring mistakes, and making sure their people are a good fit. Google and gaming company Zynga declined to discuss stack ranking, but Simons says both use it to good effect.

SIMONS: The purpose of this technique is to try make every employee in the business feel like a winning competitor.

NOGUCHI: And then there are fierce critics, including technology analyst Rob Enderle.

ROB ENDERLE: It really does cause you to do incredibly stupid things.

NOGUCHI: For example, Enderle says, managers will hire people they know they can fire in order to protect the rest of their team from mandatory elimination. He says it may keep employees on their toes but for the wrong reasons.

ENDERLE: The downside of stacked ranking is the fact that it pits employee against employee and pretty much ensures you won't have collaboration. And innovation becomes difficult because employees don't want somebody else to be successful. So it creates a culture of shutting down ideas.

NOGUCHI: Enderle says employees roundly criticized the system at Microsoft, which ended the practice last month. GE, which championed it for years, abandoned it as well. Enderle says stack ranking leads to a mercenary culture. He says it can sometimes work with an ailing business that has gotten too fat. But as an ongoing management style, it's lethal.

ENDERLE: You have surgery to cut the cancer out. But you don't go in every year and have surgery unless there's more stuff to cut out.

NOGUCHI: Harvard's Simons says critics of ranking evaluations systems focus on the fate of the bottom performers. In fact, Simons says, most businesses use it to keep track of their top people. And he says it doesn't make sense that businesses should treat their workers with kid gloves.

SIMONS: As we face international competitors - who are very much interested in working harder, faster, smarter - trying to say that we shouldn't identify the best in our organization and do everything we can to support them, motivate them, ensure they're the next generation of leadership - are we doing a disservice to our businesses?

NOGUCHI: So is there a forced ranking among professors at Harvard Business School?

(LAUGHTER)

SIMONS: Certainly we have an up or out system. And those who are not promoted are asked to leave the school.

NOGUCHI: So is that it's own kind of forced ranking, would you say?

SIMONS: I guess you'd have to say yes.

NOGUCHI: Unless, like Simons, you are tenured.

Deb Keary is vice president at the Society for Human Resource Management. She says forced ranking is falling out of favor. She says it's good for managers to have a sense of their best and worst performers in their head, just in case it comes time for layoffs or for promotions.

DEB KEARY: So having that ranking in your head, that really helps you make decisions. Now, I wouldn't share it with a soul. I think it would be too destructive.

NOGUCHI: Keary says nowadays the buzzword isn't ranking, it's engagement.

KEARY: Employees like to hear that their opinion matters. They like to hear that their manager cares what they think. Spending a little quality time with each employee that you manage really ups the engagement.

NOGUCHI: It almost turns the forced ranking idea on its head, she says. Companies believe that if employees like what they do and who they work with, they will be more productive.

Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.

Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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Companies Revisit 'Rank And Yank' of 1980s

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Longtime General Electric CEO and management icon Jack Welch popularized a management style in the 1980s that critics dubbed "rank and yank." The system ranks employees - with under-performers getting yanked from their jobs or the company. This old practice is in the news again. Microsoft recently did away with it.

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Performance reviews are often nerve wracking, but a necessity. The three steps in the controlling process are measuring performance, comparing measured performance to standards, and taking corrective action. I think that as a manger its important to have regular performance reviews but not base everything off of these reports. Some people don't perform well when they know how heavily employee reviews are rated. It can be counterintuitive to their work performance. For example General Electric's former CEO was a fan of the 'rank and yank'. For such a large scale and high functioning company this method may have been effective, but definitely not for small businesses.

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In many of Amazon's warehouses they have robots called Kiva that help fulfill orders. It has saved time as well as money for Amazon. Fulfilling one order used to take an hour and a half if a human employee were to do it. With the Kiva robot it only takes 15 minutes. Being able to fulfill and ship orders faster is extremely beneficial to Amazon especially during busy seasons. But it does raise the question of how many more jobs robots can and will do faster than humans in the future.

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TRACY, Calif. -- Amazon employee Rejinaldo Rosales used to wander stacks of shelves to pick up merchandise for orders before finally returning to his station to place them in bins and send them to their next stop.

But this summer, squat orange robots, called Kiva, began zooming around the shelves instead, picking up goods and carrying them to Rosales at his station. The result? What used to take hours of walking can happen in mere minutes instead.

Rosales, 34, who works at an Amazon fulfillment center in this Central Valley city about an hour and a half away from San Francisco, said he likes his new robotic coworkers. While walking the aisles was "good cardio," the new system lets him get through more orders since he stands in one place, he said.

"We don't socialize as much, but it's more efficient," Rosales said as the bots zipped around behind him on the eve of Cyber Monday, when Amazon showed off its latest generation of Kiva robots to a group of journalists.

The fleet of machines -- installed in 10 of Amazon's US warehouses in California, Texas, New Jersey, Washington and Florida -- enable the company to deliver millions of items to customers. Along with many other retailers, the online shopping giant started its Black Friday sales a week early, building up to one of its busiest days of the year -- Cyber Monday. Last year, customers ordered more than 36.8 million items globally, or 426 items per second, according to Amazon.

Amazon expects that number to go up this year but wouldn't say by how much. ChannelAdvisor, an e-commerce company that services and advises retailers, reported that Amazon's holiday sales were already up by 24 percent on Black Friday and up 45 percent on Saturday.

Amazon isn't alone; online shopping is mainstream. Customers who used to line up at cashiers' stands are buying items from their couches instead. They're also using apps while in stores and mixing orders between the real world and the virtual one as they seek out the best deals and most convenient deliveries. Companies like Amazon have ridden this wave from $71 billion in sales 10 years ago to $4.5 trillion last year. Forrester expects this year's holiday sales to hit $89 billion, an increase of 13 percent from last year.

Part of the way Amazon is keeping up are these Kiva robots. Originally made by a company Amazon bought in 2012, the devices have since been integrated with its warehouse technology. There are 15,000 Kiva robots spread across the 10 warehouses in the company's network, which has more than 50 facilities in the US.

"Robots are essential for meeting that kind of demand," said Ken Goldberg, a robotics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Humans just can't work as fast.

Take me to your employer

As the Kiva robots speed up the pace of Amazon's warehouses, they raise a looming question that's being asked across the modern world: how much of what a human does can be done by a machine instead? The automotive manufacturing industry already knows the answer, as do various technology makers. Foxconn, one of the world's largest electronics manufacturers and a key supplier for Apple, was reported to be replacing workers with robots a couple years ago. And take a ride across San Francisco's famous Golden Gate Bridge and there won't be a toll taker in sight -- the process is entirely automated.

The trend doesn't appear to be stopping, and experts say robots will take over half of all human jobs within 10 to 20 years. A Pew Report in August said a vast majority of people it surveyed said they expect robots to "permeate wide segments of daily life by 2025, with huge implications for a range of industries such as health care, transport and logistics, customer service and home maintenance."

So far, Amazon said it hasn't eliminated any jobs with the introduction of Kiva. In fact, the company says it's hired more people in that time. Amazon wouldn't say how many jobs it's added after incorporating Kiva, but overall it's hired 61,110 employees since 2011, the year before it bought Kiva. That's roughly doubling its employee base over the past two years, though the company saw a decline in that growth last year.

"People play a crucial role in fulfillment for Amazon," said Dave Clark, Amazon's senior vice president of worldwide operations and customer service. "Take gift wrapping. Can we do it by machine? Yes. Does it look the same? Could you still have the same personal touch? No."

Still, Amazon is working on robots that can grasp items, bringing them one step closer to being able to replace the role of human pickers like Rosales.

In the meantime, Amazon encourages cooperation by writing some of its most enthusiastic employees' names on the Kiva robot's exterior shell. In Tracy, 87 robots are named after employees in the building, thanks to contests the company holds.

From a robot to your doorstep

The way Kiva robots work in Amazon's warehouses may seem limited, but the company says the work they do shaves more than an hour off an average order. At Amazon's fulfillment center in Tracy, people could be seen alongside various machines.

A product begins its life in an Amazon warehouse as employees unload packages from a truck onto a conveyer belt. A line of about 25 people stand near one conveyor belt, unloading boxes and cutting them open.

Employees then unpack the boxes and place them in carts that are brought to other workers who sort the items into the shelves.

The items appear to be shelved randomly, but they're actually organized based upon a computer algorithm. The result: one shelf in the Tracy warehouse had a My Little Pony toy, a roll of fluorescent tape and copies of Hamlet, smushed up next to one another.

Tracy's 3,000 Kiva robots pick up shelves of products from the warehouse floor and bring them to a human employee who picks items and then packs them for shipping. This saves Amazon time and presumably money as well, though the company declined to say how much. Amazon's Clark said the average amount of time it takes to grab an item from a shelf and stuff it in a box is now about 15 minutes per order, down from an hour and a half. Amazon has steadily improved the robots since Kiva's acquisition, as well. The latest Kiva robot can move 50 percent more inventory out of the center than its predecessor could.

As Kiva's robots zoom around Amazon's warehouse floors, they avoid running into each other by using sensors that talk to one another. This technology makes Kiva one of the most advanced robotics systems being used today, according to Goldberg, the UC Berkeley robotics professor.

"It's more expensive than just having a bunch of static shelves, but it pays off if it has that much volume," Goldberg said.

So what happens if a robot fails? Amazon has human engineers, who can usually fix a robot within a couple hours. Amazon tries to makes sure no more than 10 robots per floor are out of commission at one time.

When they're working just right, they arrive at Rosales' station in a line. A computer screen above a set of conveyor belts tells him which item to grab and where on the shelf it's located. He grabs the items and throws them in a yellow bin on a conveyer belt to his right. Once he's done, he hits a button and the conveyor takes the bin away to be packaged and shipped.

He doesn't have a robot named after him yet, but he hopes that will change.

"I'm looking into it," he said. "That'd be cool, huh?"

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Meet Amazon's busiest employee -- the Kiva robot

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TRACY, Calif. -- Amazon employee Rejinaldo Rosales used to wander stacks of shelves to pick up merchandise for orders before finally returning to his station to place them in bins and send them to their next stop. But this summer, squat orange robots, called Kiva, began zooming around the shelves instead, picking up goods and carrying them to Rosales at his station.

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Honestly, I'm not sure if they can recover. Toyota has built a successful company since 1937 and for most of that time people realized they built quality automobiles. I want to say that  doesn't just disappear over night. But just this week Toyota has recalled a few hundred thousand Prius' because of faulty brakes. Unlike the other recalls these brakes issues have actually resulted in injuries and deaths. I think Toyota is at a cross roads here and if they can't maintain transparency through all of their recall and quality issues sales will definitely continue to fall as people loose faith in them as a reliable automotive brand. I'm wondering if Toyota is relying too heavily on automation without having actual employees survey operations and making sure the machines are performing properly. There needs to be more quality control checks and possible an increase in machinery maintenance.

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Toyota recalls 340,000 Prius hybrid cars for faulty brakes

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Toyota Motor Corp. recalled 340,000 gas-electric hybrid Prius cars around the world Wednesday, 212,000 of them in Japan and 94,000 in North America, for a defect in their parking brakes.

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This article explains the power motivation can have on employees. Lipman who has spent almost his entire career in management says that motivation is highly personal. So getting to know your employees individually lets you know as a manger what motivates them. An example that he used from learning over the years was that many employees value flexibility in their work schedule. Many of whom had kids and wanted to attend either their sports games or other functions. He would say to them “As long as you can manage your work flow and your time is made up, it’s absolutely fine with me".

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It's that simple. Say it straight: The best managers motivate. If you're a manager and you're not motivating your people, you're not doing your job. At least not as well as it should be done.

Over the years numerous advances have been made in the science of understanding human motivation. From Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs to David McClelland's achievement-oriented, needs-based theory, to Daniel Pink's excellent best-seller Drive (focusing on what Pink describes as autonomy, mastery and purpose), there are a variety of models that from a macro perspective help explain and order human motivational behavior. They all provide deeply valuable insight into why people act and work the way they do.

From a micro perspective, though, if there's one piece of practical tactical motivation-related counsel I have for managers, it's the power and value of taking the time to get to know your employees individually. One thing I came to believe after a long career in management is that motivation is highly personal. And often idiosyncratic.

Theories are great and legitimately useful, but at an operational shop-floor level there's little substitute for personal understanding.

The best managers recognize this and work to understand their employees.

Following are some of the more memorable motivational examples I've witnessed.

Beer: Many decades ago, before I was in management when I was young truck loader for a national trucking company, we had chronic problem with "miss-sorts" - packages loaded inadvertently onto the wrong trucks. I won't go into all the industrial details here, (I describe the case more thoroughly in a 2012 Forbes post, How To Motivate Employees With 'Outside The Box' Thinking), but to make a long story short the problem continued unabated until one day an enterprising supervisor thought to offer us young blue collar worker cases of beer for a full week of mistake-free loading. The incentive worked brilliantly - it was perfectly targeted for our age, job and thirst. Loaders' collective behavior changed immediately. Life was good. I was 23 and had cases of Molson Beer (I well remember the brand) stacked high all around my small apartment.

Office Space: One outstanding employee I managed for years was motivated by nothing so much as the prospect of her own office (which she did ultimately and most deservedly get). Surprisingly, her desire had little to do with status and everything to do with silence. We worked in a largely open area, and she found the noise distracting and bothersome, and craved a quieter setting.

Flexibility: Numerous employees I managed over the years were focused keenly on arranging their schedules to attend their kids' athletic events. Recognizing how much it meant to them, over time I came to always give the same answer: "As long as you can manage your work flow and your time is made up, it's absolutely fine with me. Enjoy the game." I felt the flexibility was greatly appreciated and was rewarded with diligent employee performance.

Title: I well recall one talented employee who was intensely motivated by nothing so much as the possibility of becoming an assistant vice president. I suspect he might willingly have traded a lesser body part for the privilege.

Motivations Can Change Over Time: We're not hard-wired to always be motivated by exactly the same things. Changing circumstances beget changing motivations. This I can say with 100% certainty. Why? My own life. When I was in my 20s, shortly after the truck loading days, I was a magazine journalist for a number of years, made relatively little money but didn't care; I was highly motivated by the work/the intrinsic satisfaction of the job itself/the by-lined written product. (What Daniel Pink would call, I believe, purpose.) A few years later I had a young family to support, many bills to pay, went into the business world, and was motivated relatively little by the work itself but greatly by the compensation it offered. (I might add that this phase of being highly money-motivated lasted for several decades!)

Simply put, things change: Same person, different circumstances, different motivating factors.

As a manager, the better you know your employees - their hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes, fears and aspirations - the better chance you'll be able to successfully motivate them.

It's a cliche but still accurate: different strokes for different folks.

The best managers are closely attuned to this reality and use it thoughtfully.

* * *
Victor is author of The Type B Manager: Leading Successfully in a Type A World (Prentice Hall Press).

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It's that simple. Say it straight: The best managers motivate. If you're a manager and you're not motivating your people, you're not doing your job. At least not as well as it should be done. Over the years numerous advances have been made in the science of understanding human motivation.

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Motivation in the Retail Industry- mod 7

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Motivation in the Retail Industry- mod 7

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What I found most interesting about this video was that it revealed during the recent recession that a select few employers hired more workers instead of less. The reason being was because that these retailers realized that having more employees hat are treated well created a better shopping experience for the customers and a better work environment for the employees. The retailers that practiced this were actually more profitable than the ones who didn't.

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Theories of Motivation in the Retail Industry

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Theories of motivation in the retail industry include those dealing with incentives, among others. Find out about theories of motivation in the retail industry with help from a senior financial analyst in this free video clip.

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Daniel Henderson is the CEO of Iconic LED and his elements to success is to emphasize servant leadership. He says that even though he's the boss it doesn't mean that he has the best ideas. Which is why in their weekly meetings he allows other employees to step up and speak out if they disagree with any of his methods. Henderson says that by doing this it allows his employees to grow as well as the company itself.

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There's no one "right" way to lead a business. Today's leaders have a lot of wisdom to impart about managing the modern workforce, because each one approaches leadership in his or her own unique way. Every week, Business News Daily will share a leadership lesson from a successful business owner or executive.

The leader: Daniel Henderson, founder and CEO of Iconic LED

Time in current position: 2 years

Daniel's philosophy: "By emphasizing servant leadership, customer service and design thinking, you can keep costs and turnover low, and growth high."

I started Iconic LED with my team because we had a different vision of what a company could be. We believed through hard work, communication and sharing of ideas together we could build something to compete with our much larger and better-financed competitors.

By emphasizing servant leadership, customer service and design thinking, our Lousiana-based LED lighting firm is keeping its costs and turnover low and our growth high. This keeps our team motivated, fresh and ready to tackle whatever issue arises.

I model my relationship with my employees around the basic premise that even though I'm in charge, my ideas aren't the only ones that matter. And when others step up to the plate, it allows me to put intelligent, hard-working individuals in positions to influence and grow the company. This, in turn, allows me to keep a macro view of the company and build relationships with our customers.

At weekly meetings I invite my employees to challenge my ideas and present their own solutions. They can call me out if I'm doing something they don't agree with. A big part of servant leadership is realizing we all have different strengths and weaknesses - being CEO doesn't mean I always have the best ideas.

At Iconic LED, we focus on keeping our customers happy so they continue to do business with us. We don't sell more than our customers need and we provide the best experience for our clients, instead of prioritizing our own bottom line. As a result, our clients give us more business and refer us to others.

Sometimes providing the best service means changing the way you do business. For example, we wanted to be able to give our clients 30 to 90-day payment terms, just like our much-larger competitors, but we didn't have the cash flow to do it ourselves. We partnered with a small business factoring company, BlueVine, so that we could offer our clients the payment terms they needed.
Editor's note: BlueVine is Business News Daily's pick for the best B2B factoring service. Read our full review here.
Invoice factoring adds a cost, but that is outweighed by the value of our happy clients. That's the foundation of our business model: keep clients happy so they keep ordering, maintain the inventory levels our clients need so we don't lose sales, and watch our bottom line improve as sales increase over time. It all starts with customer service.

I'm a big believer in design thinking, which puts customers - either internal or external - at the center of problem-solving. The five-step process is to empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test.

When a situation arises, we already know how to deal with it: We understand who the problem affects, we define how the problem affects the user, we think about possible solutions, we create a variety of solutions and finally, we test the solutions. Our employees feel empowered to take action on what comes out of the design thinking process so we deliver the best experience to our clients.

I'm glad I took some risks, both in my business model and in the leadership and problem-solving approaches I emphasized from the beginning. As a result, Iconic is a tight-knit team where everyone is proud of what we have accomplished together - and what we will continue to accomplish together.
Edited for length and clarity by Nicole Taylor.

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Leadership Lessons: Put Your Team and Your Customers First

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There's no one "right" way to lead a business. Today's leaders have a lot of wisdom to impart about managing the modern workforce, because each one approaches leadership in his or her own unique way. Every week, Business News Daily will share a leadership lesson from a successful business owner or executive.

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When applying the Life Cycle Theory of Leadership to this situation, it seems like Mr. Apotheker didn't know when or how to apply different levels of task and relationship behavior with his employees. In the article it said that some of his staffers though that Mr. Apotheker was not "articulating clearly" what his strategy was. To me this says that either he really didn't know what he was doing or he just assumed that all his employees were very mature and they were okay with a low task/low relationship approach. Which would have been fine if he had a clear message from the start. But since Mr. Apotheker was not clear on his strategy this combined with the wrong maturity level approach led to very poor leadership.

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Meg Whitman (left) will replace Leo Apotheker as Hewlett-Packard's CEO.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Hewlett-Packard's board on Thursday ousted CEO Leo Apotheker after just 11 months on the job, replacing him with Meg Whitman.

"I am honored and excited to lead HP," Whitman said in a prepared statement. "I believe HP matters -- it matters to Silicon Valley, California, the country and the world."

HP's board said the company needed a change at the top. The company cut its financial outlook three times in Apotheker's tenure, and on Thursday, HP said it was not confident it would be able to meet its sales targets for the current quarter.

Shareholders sent the stock down more than 40% this year before Fortune and other outlets broke the news this week that the board was considering letting Apotheker go.

"We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement our strategy and take advantage of the market opportunities ahead," said Ray Lane, who on Thursday was named executive chairman of HP's board.

Lane was formerly an independent, non-executive chair. The company said it will look for someone to fill that independent role on its board.

The chairman said on a conference call Thursday that the board considered many candidates and decided together that Whitman was the right fit.

"I can't think of a name out there I would select as CEO over Meg," said Lane.

As the former head of European software giant SAP (), Apotheker was a curious choice to lead HP (, Fortune 500) -- the largest U.S. technology company by sales -- since it is predominantly a hardware company. HP's software business makes up around 2% of the company's annual revenue, which hit $125 billion last year.

Apotheker stuck to what he knows best and decided to refocus HP on higher-margin businesses like cloud computing and software. He was particularly bullish on HP's acquisition of Palm, which was made prior to his arrival at the company. He planned to let Palm's webOS software permeate the company's various hardware lines, including PCs, phones and the much-publicized TouchPad tablet.

But the TouchPad was a failure, HP's phones weren't selling, and PC sales slumped globally. Last month, Apotheker announced yet another hard left turn: He opted to end the webOS experiment and said HP would get out of the PC business entirely -- a market that it leads both in the United States and globally.

The problem with Apotheker wasn't lack of vision as much as a lack of execution and communication, Lane said.

Whitman said Thursday that the company under her leadership would stay the course and continue to transition to an enterprise software business.

"The only thing we can do to regain investors' and customers' confidence is to execute, and that's what I intend to do," she said.

The ousting of its third straight CEO marks yet another dramatic crisis in a decade of turmoil for one of Silicon Valley's original pioneers. A year earlier, Mark Hurd was fired as HP's CEO after submitting false expense reports in what appeared to be an effort to conceal a relationship with a former employee.

In 2006, HP's chairwoman Pattie Dunn was shown the door after it was revealed that she had spearheaded a secret probe to spy on fellow board members and journalists, in an attempt to find the source of board-level media leaks.

A year before that, in 2005, then-CEO Carly Fiorina was booted out (she technically resigned, but, the move wasn't especially voluntary) after spearheading HP's the failed merger with Compaq. The company's stock price was cut in half during her tenure.

The CEO revolving door has cost the company more than $83 million in severance pay, including more than $25 million that will be owed to Apotheker.

Fending off criticism from analysts that the board is dysfunctional, Lane argued that the board is very different than the ones of the past, comprised of 8 new directors since the company ousted Hurd.

"I tell you this right from my heart," he said. "That's not this board. They work really well together."

Whitman, who is also an HP board member, was formerly the CEO of eBay (, Fortune 500). She headed the online auction site for 10 years, taking over the company in 1998 when it was in its infancy. By the time she left in 2008, the company had grown to an $8.5 billion e-commerce behemoth.

She was the Republican nominee in the 2010 California gubernatorial race, spending much of her fortune in her unsuccessful campaign. She then resurfaced several months later, when she was named to HP's board in January.

Lane, HP's chairman, praised Whitman, saying her experience gives her the right set of skills to steer HP back on course.

"Meg is a technology visionary with a proven track record of execution," he said. "She is a strong communicator who is customer focused with deep leadership capabilities. Furthermore, as a member of HP's board of directors for the past eight months, Meg has a solid understanding of our products and markets."

Still, many analysts were scratching their heads about the choice.

"I'm not really convinced she's the best fit -- HP needs to regain the confidence of its enterprise customers, and her expertise resides in the consumer retail market," said Ron Gruia, principal consultant at Frost & Sullivan.

"She's on the board, so she's a logical interim choice, but not a person who's going to be driver for HP as it transitions to a software and services kind of model," Gruia added.

Some believe that HP is making a fatal decision.

"As if HP didn't make a mistake on bringing in Leo Apotheker, now they are making an even bigger mistake by bringing in Meg Whitman, someone with very little experience in the core areas of HP," said Vanessa Alvarez, analyst at Forrester Research.

"This is plain carelessness by the board of directors, and quite frankly, hammering the last nail in the coffin for HP. Its leadership is in the gutter. I'm appalled," she added.

But other analysts believe Whitman is capable of doing the job, albeit a very difficult one.

"She's a great communicator; a great marketer; and, an excellent manager, but she'll need to put a strategic stamp on HP," said Joel Achramowicz, senior vice president of research at Blaylock Robert Van.

"There are even more questions and concerns regarding HP exigent from both the Street and from customers. She'll have to work expediently."

First Published: September 22, 2011: 4:08 PM ET

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HP CEO Apotheker fired, replaced by Meg Whitman

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Meg Whitman (left) will replace Leo Apotheker as Hewlett-Packard's CEO. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Hewlett-Packard's board on Thursday ousted CEO Leo Apotheker after just 11 months on the job, replacing him with Meg Whitman. "I am honored and excited to lead HP," Whitman said in a prepared statement.

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Stages of Team Development Case Study- mod 6

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Stages of Team Development Case Study- mod 6

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This case study gave background information on all the team members relating to how many years of experience they had in their field and what they brought to the table in terms of experience. After reading the case study I learned that even though the forming stage is very successful the storming stage is inevitable even to the smallest degree. In the case study it showed that having a strong leader can bring a team back from all the conflict ignored to function as a high performing team.

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Informal Organizational Communication- mod 6

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Informal Organizational Communication- mod 6

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It seems that grapevine communication in the workplace has mixed opinions. Since it often travels faster and is more direct than formal communication channels it could be a useful supplement to formal communication channels. However, in the wrong context grapevines tend to create rumors that can harm an organizations success. In my opinion I do think that they can be used effectively, but should be used scarcely and only as a supplement to other formal channels. Even in an informal work place setting, the grapevine could have detrimental effects.

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I'm not sure how many employers still use aptitude tests or if they do how heavy the score influences their decision, but never the less I still find them interesting. This article explains that aptitude tests are typically used to test fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the ability to think abstractly so this is like creative problem solving. Crystallized is the ability to learn from past experiences and apply that to future work situations.

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How to prepare for Aptitude tests, Aptitude test questions examples and important information offered by Australian test developers to ensure you are fully prepared for your aptitude tests (abstract reasoning, verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, logical reasoning tests)

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In House v External Recruiting Services- mod 6

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In House v External Recruiting Services- mod 6

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This article brought up some good points about recruiting services. I think companies that use in house recruiting instead of external agencies are just as capable at finding quality executives and managers, maybe even in some cases, more so. I say this because companies that recruit their own members know what qualities and attributes they are looking for. They don't have to convey this information to an outsider, where a lot of times things can get lost in translation. Also the people doing the in house recruiting are more familiar with the organization's culture, so it may be easier to recruit someone based on intuition. According to the article it seems like companies will save money in the long run if they  do in house recruiting. In house searches take less time compared to external, which is a money saver. There aren't any unnecessary fees tacked on with in house. One company in the article was said to have saved close to 100 million in one year in search firm fees. The article also said that executive positions that were filled at Coca Cola using an external service, those executives were twice as likely to leave. And if they did that would require yet another search and possibly more fees.

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Heidrick & Struggles Chief Executive Officer Kevin Kelly made his name raiding corporate America's ranks on behalf of his clients. These days a lot of them are turning the tables and hiring his employees to do the work themselves. Companies such as General Electric, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Microsoft, and Nike are increasingly using their own executives-many lured from outfits like Heidrick-to recruit talent and avoid fees that can run as high as 40 percent of a new hire's first-year compensation. Heidrick is "seeing a trend of individuals going to work at clients" to do in-house recruiting, Kelly told analysts on a July 31 conference call. "That's something new that we've seen over the last 12 to 18 months." Three months later he told the same analysts that the talent drain to clients was continuing.

Heidrick, Korn/Ferry International, Spencer Stuart, and other executive search firms still dominate the work of replacing CEOs and board members. Yet they face increasing competition for searches in the lower senior- and middle-management ranks, where candidates are plentiful and technology and social networking sites make it easier to find talent. "Clients are looking at executive search, just like legal and other services, and saying they want it faster, cheaper, and better," says Bob Benson, a former Spencer Stuart partner who now heads RL Benson & Associates, a New Canaan (Conn.)-based consultant to search firms. "There's a dramatic shift in who's doing the work, with a lot of recruiting moving in-house, especially at levels below top C-suite jobs. That's the work that keeps the lights and heat on."

New searches undertaken by the $9 billion search industry fell 7.6 percent in last year's third quarter, according to the Association of Executive Search Consultants, which tracks 1,430 senior executive recruiters in 46 countries. Third-quarter revenue in the industry fell 9.7 percent, following declines of 6 percent and 7 percent in the second and first quarters, respectively, the AESC found.

GE has built an internal recruiting staff of about 500 in the last six years. In 2012 the team, helped by LinkedIn and BranchOut, filled most of GE's 25,000 openings, about 10 percent of which were executive and senior professional positions. They completed most searches in about 73 days, compared with the average 170 days it takes outside firms. "We still use outside recruiters but only when they're absolutely required-for confidential searches or very specialized jobs," says Steven Knox, who heads recruiting at GE for markets outside the U.S. and Europe.

The company's cost savings have been substantial-close to $100 million last year in search firm fees alone, according to a person familiar with the matter who wasn't authorized to discuss it publicly. Even more important, Knox says, GE is able to keep attractive candidates on its radar for future searches and find hires who better fit its culture. Explains Knox: "Our recruiters know what it takes to work here."

Coca-Cola does about 95 percent of its global executive recruiting in-house, with recent placements including the company's chief technology officer, the CEO of its Indian bottling operations, and a senior vice president of finance in Japan, says John Goldberg, the company's executive recruiting director. As recently as 2004, recruiting at the world's largest soft-drink maker was virtually all done by outside firms, says Goldberg, whose team includes former search executives from Russell Reynolds Associates, Korn/Ferry, and Heidrick.

Executives hired at Coca-Cola by outside recruiters are twice as likely to leave, and the diversity of candidates is about twice as high for candidates hired by the inside team, the company says. The searches are also completed in about a third less time.

The trend has intensified competition among search firms and triggered pricing wars. Instead of charging the traditional one-third of a candidate's first-year salary, some outside recruiters are taking 25 percent or less, dropping extra administrative charges they once commanded, or accepting fixed payments. "Fees are being negotiated all over the place," says Caroline McClure, who runs ScoutRock, a Baltimore consulting firm for in-house recruiters. She started her career at Korn/Ferry and later was head of executive recruiting at Lockheed Martin, where search firm fees averaged 40 percent of new hires' salaries, spurring her to build an internal recruiting team.

"The executive recruiting industry is going to get smaller," and costs to companies that use headhunters will go down, says McClure, whose seminars for companies considering in-house recruiting also attract search-firm employees who want jobs at those companies. "Search firms will see fewer and only the most difficult searches, and they'll require more partner involvement-which means thinner margins for each assignment," she says.

That's one reason big firms are diversifying beyond executive recruiting. Spencer Stuart, which conducts more than half of all searches for directors at U.S. companies, advises boards on succession planning. Korn/Ferry since 2006 has acquired four consulting businesses, including PDI Ninth House, a talent assessment and coaching firm it agreed to buy in 2012 for $80 million. Now Korn/Ferry gets more than 35 percent of its revenue from leadership consulting. "The search business enables us to forge relationships with CEOs, and that gives us permission to talk about how we can help companies in a much broader way," says Robert Damon, Korn/Ferry's president North America.

Heidrick, which posted an 18 percent drop in third-quarter revenue and a 19 percent decline in the second quarter, earlier this month announced its $53.5 million acquisition of Senn-Delaney Leadership Consulting Group, a "culture shaping" and executive assessment consultant. Now Heidrick will get 15 percent of its revenue from nonrecruiting services. None of this may be enough to offset the shift to in-house talent hunting or to diminish recruiters' angst. As Heidrick's chief financial officer, Richard Pehlke, told analysts in July: The changes under way across the industry "are driving some people that are trying to be in this business a little crazy, frankly."

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Executive Headhunters Squeezed by In-House Recruiters

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Heidrick & Struggles Chief Executive Officer Kevin Kelly made his name raiding corporate America's ranks on behalf of his clients. These days a lot of them are turning the tables and hiring his employees to do the work themselves.

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According to this article the three steps to maintaining a high performance culture in an organization is first to establish a common understanding of culture and a way to measure its growth. Second is focus on the few changes that matter most. The third and last tip is to integrate culture change efforts with business improvement initiatives. These are just a guideline, of course every organization is different and they may need to be modified.

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Senior executives tend to think about corporate culture as a topic that's hard to measure and hard to change. As a result, many choose not to invest in it despite all the evidence that, when skillfully managed, culture can be a powerful and enduring source of competitive advantage.

ANZ Bank offers an example: a decade ago, the bank embarked on an effort described as a "unique plan of eschewing traditional growth strategies and recasting the culture of the bank to lift efficiency and earnings." In the initial two years, the share of employees having the sense that ANZ "lived its values" went from 20 to 80 percent, and the share seeing "productivity in meetings" from 61 to 91 percent, with similar rises in the shares seeing "openness and honesty" and a "can-do culture." In parallel, revenue per employee increased 89 percent and the bank overtook its peers in total returns to shareholders and customer satisfaction. A full ten years after those initial efforts, ANZ has sustained its results: its profit after tax has grown at a cumulative average growth rate of 15 percent, putting it well ahead of its industry.

What does it take to get results like these? In the work described in Beyond Performance we found a reliable formula leaders can use to create a distinctive performance culture in their organizations.

Step 1: Establish a common understanding of culture and metrics for it. Ask the top team of any company what their highest priority business goals are and you will likely hear answers like "increase market share by 10 percent" or "reduce costs by 15 percent." Ask the same question about their highest priority cultural goals and you're likely to hear a broad range of platitudes with few, if any, numbers. Our research indicates that high-performing cultures are characterized by an ability to align (gain clarity on vision, strategy, and shared employee behaviors), execute (move in the agreed-upon direction with minimal friction), and renew (continuously improve at a pace that exceeds competitors) ̬three factors we also refer to as 'organizational health.' Companies that use this definition of culture to find the specifics that matter to them, and the right tools to measure those specifics, find - much the way ANZ did - that culture is no longer something that is hard to measure and manage just as rigorously as business performance.

Step 2: Focus on the few changes that matter most. We have found that it's possible to meaningfully change no more than five aspects of an organization's culture in a 12- to 18-month period. Concentrating on a short list has the additional value of forcing everyone to focus on the changes most important to reaching the desired end state. ANZ's senior team, for example, started with establishing the basics: agreeing on a shared direction, creating a baseline of openness and honesty, and developing a "can do" sense of personal accountability. After 18 months, leaders felt that these cultural elements were sufficiently improved, and moved on to creating a culture of innovation, people development, and customer focus for the next 18 months. Attempting to tackle all of these themes at once would likely have fragmented the effort and weakened its impact.

Step 3: Integrate culture change efforts with business improvement initiatives. Few employees have too little to do. This means that culture change efforts run as stand-alone programs typically are last on the list and rarely succeed. Successful efforts, we've found, are fully integrated into the business initiatives you're pursuing - easy once you've defined the culture effectively. For example, during the second 18 months of its cultural program, ANZ included in its sales stimulation program peer coaching from high performers across its organization, which helped to build a culture of developing people. In addition, the bank's leaders made sure that the end-of-day team meetings for branch sales staff included not just numbers, but also stories of how individual reps had interacted with customers to build relationships, highlighting the goal of improving customer focus. The quality of coaching and customer focus at each branch was also incorporated into evaluations of branch managers, and salesforce incentive payments were expanded to include assessments of these behaviors as well as financial results. Executed well, culture change programs using these three steps not only deliver better bottom-line results, but also provide a more fulfilling environment for employees. And for many executives, leading a successful culture-change program is the most rewarding work of their career, because doing so allows them to integrate the human factors that matter to everyone with business concerns.

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Three Steps to a High-Performance Culture

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Senior executives tend to think about corporate culture as a topic that's hard to measure and hard to change. As a result, many choose not to invest in it despite all the evidence that, when skillfully managed, culture can be a powerful and enduring source of competitive advantage.

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I though that it was important as a new manger at Zappos to evaluate employees values and see what they needed/wanted to achieve either individually or collectively. Then building a reward system that correlates to their values will encourage employees and make them happier employees and in turn customer satisfaction will also go up. It has been shown many times over that when employees are treated well, they treat customers better as well. I also thought that a clan culture was a good fit for Zappos because when reading the challenge case at the beginning of the chapter it seemed that Hsieh wanted to build a company that was fun and close knit but still highly capable of reaching organizational goals while also bulding off of each other in order to learn and grow. Hsieh went with a holacracy approach when starting at Zappos, which is about self organization and self management. He did loose 50 employees because of the new system because it "isn't right for everyone" as Hsieh says.

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Mike Nudelman/Business Insider
A few days into the new year, 50 employees quit their jobs at Zappos. That was OK with CEO Tony Hsieh. It was the deadline for the 150 employees working on an intensive tech project to decide if they wanted to take a severance package or begin working under the self-management system known as Holacracy. Under it, there are no traditional bosses or job titles, and the standard hierarchy is eliminated. Hsieh made the offer last March to this team and the greater body of 1,500 Zappos employees with separate deadlines, and ultimately 260 employees - 18% of the company - took some form of it. It's a big year for Hsieh (pronounced "shay"). His e-commerce site, known for its wide variety of shoes and headache-free customer service, is rebounding from this radical shakeup and now moving toward becoming a mobile-first company with significant profit growth. Additionally, 2016 is the year that Hsieh's other focus, the four-year-old Downtown Project movement to revitalize Zappos' Las Vegas neighborhood, is supposed to finally bring back a return on the $350 million that Hsieh personally invested into it. We recently sat down with Hsieh in Zappos' Vegas headquarters to discuss his ambitions for the year, why he decided to reinvent the way his company operates, and why he thinks it will ultimately prove to be worth the struggle. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Richard Feloni: So here we are, January 2016. Looking back at 2015, what do you think? How did the year go?

Tony Hsieh: It was definitely an eventful year. There were a lot of changes both internally and externally here at Zappos. We went all in with Holacracy, which is really about self-organization, self-management, having employees really think about how to self-direct their work, rather than managers telling them what to do.

And then externally, on the customer side, we really made a strategy change and decided to focus on what we're internally referring to as our "best customers" - really focusing on the brands they want, elevating the level of service, the amount of personal contact. So it's been a pretty interesting and exciting transition on both of those ends.

Feloni: Let's talk about Holacracy. You first heard about it at the 2012 Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit, and you then approached its creator, Brian Robertson, after his presentation on Holacracy. How did you decide the system was right for Zappos?

Hsieh: Holacracy happens to be the tool we're using today, but the bigger theme is about self-organization and self-management.

Many years prior to meeting Brian, I had a nagging sensation that as we kept getting bigger, we kept getting more bureaucracy built into the corporate structure. Because I wanted to stop this trend, I was spending a lot of time thinking about how we could avoid losing a startup edge and how we could empower every employee to act like an entrepreneur.

I was looking at the weaknesses of the typical corporate structure and how it's not been resilient. If you look at the Fortune 500 companies from 1955, 88% of them didn't make it to 2014. Then you look at what structures do work in nature, like the human body, and they're all structures that are self-organized. Frederic Laloux captures this best in his book " Reinventing Organizations," where he refers to these as "Teal" organizations.

Feloni: Another book that has influenced you in this area is Harvard professor Edward Glaeser's " Triumph of the City."

Hsieh: The easiest example of self-organization for people to wrap their minds around is a city. The mayor of a city doesn't tell its residents what to do or where to live, and when people and businesses act in their own self-interests, that creates opportunities for growth.

An interesting thing about cities is that Glaeser's research has shown every time the population of a city doubles, innovation or productivity per resident increases by 15%, but the opposite happens when companies double in size.

Over the years at Zappos, I've done a lot of research into how we can prevent the default future for most companies: death. And not only how do we avoid that, but how do we become more innovative as we grow, in the same way that cities do? That's why we pursued self-management.

Feloni: What do you think is the biggest misconception people have of Holacracy in particular, or self-management in general?

Hsieh: The biggest misconception is that it's just total chaos and there's no structure. It's interesting, because there actually is more structure in some cases and more explicit documentation on what people's different roles are, what their account abilities are. It's easy, though, to just read the headline of "No managers" and assume that that means no hierarchy. It's actually a hierarchy of purpose.

Instead of a pyramid, power is distributed across different circles dedicated to specific functions - we have about 500 circles at Zappos, and they fit in a hierarchy relative to one another.

A problem with Holacracy is that it's hard to explain very succinctly. Our training process takes awhile, and then even after you've gone through that, it still takes several months to really understand how to operate inside of it.

Another thing to remember whenever you hear someone explain how they either love or hate Holacracy at Zappos is that we're in the super early days of it. It's like this: If you got handed the latest iPhone running on the latest iOS, but there were no apps on it, then you would think that it was probably useless. Part of what we're going through right now at Zappos is that we're creating those apps for the Holacracy operating system. Since it's the first time we're doing it, some of those apps turn out to be great and some may be false starts, but it's all an evolutionary discovery process and we share our findings with the world.

Hopefully, there are other companies out there that can borrow or modify our apps and then over time, there can be a whole ecosystem of companies that are thinking about "How can we move beyond the traditional command and control type of structure?" It makes the difficulties worth it.
Samantha Lee/Business Insider

Feloni: What were you seeing at Zappos that prompted you to offer a severance package to employees last March if they didn't want to go all-in with Holacracy?

Hsieh: At that time, only 85% of the company had made the transition to the system. And what we found was that it was really hard for people to be half in one world and half in the other because, if under Holacracy they had certain authority to do something but their manager still functioned as if it were the old world, then conflict could arise. The default became falling back on habits, and so it hindered the whole adoption process. That's why I set a hard deadline of moving to full implementation on May 1, so that we could just "rip the Band-Aid off."

Feloni: About 14% of your employees left by May 1, and then by January 4, 50 more employees working on the Super Cloud outsourcing of the website's basic functions to Amazon's servers took an offer, for a total of 18% of the company. Did that hurt at all, to see that reaction?

Hsieh: So we put out a super generous offer, which we've done in the past anytime there were big transitions, like when we moved from San Francisco to Las Vegas in 2004. The offer then and the offer last year was they could either stay or take three months' pay or one month's pay for every year they worked, whichever was greater.

There were some employees that had been with us for over 12 years and basically they had the option to take a year's severance.

This new environment isn't right for everyone, because some employees just want to know what steps one to 10 are and be told by a manager that they've done a good job when they finish. In this new self-managed world, employees sign up for a role or a circle, and each of those has a purpose associated with it that employees have to figure out how to make come alive. And so it gives them a lot of freedom, but I understand at the same time that amount of freedom can be super scary for some people.

What we found, though, was, at least anecdotally, that about half of those who took the offer did so not because of Holacracy, but because they really had wanted to actually go out and do something else they were passionate about, like start their own business. Because now, with a year's severance, for example, they had the funds to try it out and they also knew that they could, 12 months later, come back to Zappos, which we allowed them to do.

I heard a story about someone who took the offer because she considered it a good opportunity to take care of a sick family member in Texas.

Feloni: So do you feel like giving this offer was a necessary decision that you had to make?

Hsieh: It's just more in line with how we've always done things at Zappos. We could have just as easily not given any offer and then just said, "This is what we're doing." But we've always prioritized company culture and how we treat employees. We actually still do this for all our new hires: They go through a five-week training program and at the end of the five weeks, they can take $2,000 and quit.

We want to make sure that employees aren't here just for paychecks and truly believe this is the right place for them.

Feloni: And if your vision is realized, what will success look like under this new self-managed Zappos?

Hsieh: I want employees to operate in the intersection between what they're passionate about and what's going to help move the company forward. I want them to be able to come up with an idea and then, rather than having to go through a bureaucratic approval process, they can run with the idea and find people who'd like to join them.

And from the overall company's perspective, I want to add more innovation and productivity as we add more employees. It goes back to the city analogy.

Another layer to that is that different mayors of different quality can come and go through the city, but the city stands throughout the change. In the same way the city isn't dependent on a mayor, I'd ultimately like for Zappos' future to not be dependent on me as its CEO.

I'd ultimately like for Zappos' future to not be dependent on me as its CEO.

Feloni: Last year I spoke to John Bunch, head of the Holacracy implementation, and he essentially said that even if the company had to abandon Holacracy because it wasn't working, the transitions that already were put in place would have been worth it. Is that something that you agree with?

Hsieh: Yeah, although I wouldn't really think of trying something instead of Holacracy as abandoning it. I would think of it as we're learning that there are some things about Holacracy that are great and then some things that maybe aren't the best fit for our culture.

It would be like if I asked you, "Did Apple abandon the first iPhone?" You can either say they abandoned it or you can say they improved upon it over time.

Feloni: You told me last year that fewer decisions require your approval now at the company. Now that Zappos is fully functioning as a self-managed organization with distributed power, how has your role as CEO changed?

Samantha Lee/Business Insider

Hsieh: I would say in general, both historically and with Holacracy, I've always viewed my role as just kind of jumping around to wherever the organization needed me the most. And so over the past year and probably this year, as well, a lot of that is really focused on either Holacracy education or helping come up with systems or processes in this new world.

Feloni: You invested $350 million of your own money into Downtown Project in 2012, with the goal of revitalizing 50 acres of downtown Vegas. How was that an outgrowth of the ideas that you were exploring for Zappos?

Hsieh: When we first moved to downtown Vegas, we took over the former City Hall, which we're sitting in right now, about two and a half years ago. And at the time this whole area was a lot more dangerous than it is today, and we wanted employees to be able to live, work, and play within walking distance of work. So the Downtown Project team and I wanted to help fund small businesses, tech startups, and a school and health clinic.

Though Zappos and Downtown Project are entirely separate, I wanted to encourage Zappos employees to go out into the community and to encourage people in the community to come onto Zappos' campus, to have more of those innovation-driving "collisions" with other people, businesses, and industries.

Feloni: How do you feel about where Downtown Project is today?

Hsieh: When we started, the goal was that by the end of year five, which is the end of this year, was to make a profit. Right now, we're pretty close to being on track for that goal.

The more interesting thing for me outside of the numbers is really, "Are small businesses and people not affiliated with us moving on their own to the area?" And the answer is, "Yes." One of our intentions was to get to the tipping point where they came here because they like the vibe we created.

Feloni: You tried implementing Holacracy with the Downtown Project managing team, but they abandoned it in the fall of 2014. Were there lessons that you learned about implementing Holacracy and how it functioned that you were able to bring over to Zappos after trying it at Downtown Project?

Hsieh: In that case the timing wasn't right for Downtown Project. The team was trying to build something significant from the ground up while also trying to learn Holacracy.

Whereas at Zappos, we have an existing business that, while we're always trying to improve and so on, we're not trying to figure out the entire business from scratch. We have more resources to figure out Holacracy.

Feloni: What do you think it is about your personality or your experience that drives this constant need for experimentation and trying new things?

Hsieh: There's the creativity aspect of it, but it's also rewarding for me to remove roadblocks to someone's idea so that it can become reality.

Feloni: Do you ever doubt yourself as you're going through the ambitious projects you take on?

Hsieh: I always doubt individual ideas, but I know that if you just do more of them, then statistically some of them are going to work. The ones that do work are the ones that you double down on.

In some ways it's analogous to playing poker, where if you only play hands that you're absolutely sure you're going to win, you're not going to be the best poker player or win the most money at the table. On the flip side, that doesn't mean you play every hand, because you're not going to make money.

I've always played, in poker and in business, for the highest expected value, and so even if there's a 20% chance that something might work out, if the payoff's going to be 10 times as much as you put in, then you should make that bet every single time.

If the payoff's going to be 10 times as much as you put in, then you should make that bet every single time.

A lot of companies, especially bigger corporations, instead think, "Oh, 20% chance of success means 80% chance of failure - we should kill that project." I'd rather say we should do 10 similar projects and then two of those will work out. Those could be the two that completely change the company.

Feloni: Was your decision to move from a spacious apartment into an Airstream trailer in the fall of 2014 one of those instances where you wanted to push yourself creatively?

Hsieh: I did it because I wanted to maximize serendipity and randomness in my life. If you lived in a house in the suburbs, your neighbors and friends don't randomly walk into your house, in the same way that everyone in the Airstream park interacts with each other.

For example, two nights ago we had a bunch of musicians stop by, and Dan Reynolds, the lead singer of Imagine Dragons, starts a rap battle with another performer. That's the type of situation you can't plan for, but it happens all the time at the Airstream Park and generally happens a lot more in downtown Vegas than any other city I've been in.

Feloni: At this point, you've been a public figure long enough for people to either consider you a genius or crazy. How do you see yourself?

Hsieh: Probably neither. I don't know. I just enjoy learning new things and then forming my own perspective of the world. By definition, because something I pursue is new or different, then it's going to resonate with some people and not with others.

Feloni: You've said in other interviews that Zappos was never to you just about selling shoes or clothes, but that it's been about building a culture internally and with customers. What do you want Zappos to become?

Hsieh: I would like it to be a whole new way of working and living that infects other companies. We like being at the forefront of newer things.

There are so many people working at bureaucratic, big corporations who are unhappy. Hopefully, we can help change that.

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Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh reveals what it was like losing 18% of his employees in a radical management experiment - and why it was worth it

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A few days into the new year, 50 employees quit their jobs at Zappos. That was OK with CEO Tony Hsieh. It was the deadline for the 150 employees working on an intensive tech project to decide if they wanted to take a severance package or begin working under the self-management system known as Holacracy.

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Like the business structure this was another concept that I realized was important to study. When someone of authority asks me to do something like a teacher or a boss I do it, but I never considered why I do. One of the first conditions that Bernard studied was that the individual can understand the order being communicated and is compatible with their personal interests. This is so basic, but makes so much sense. If a boss tells their employee to do something and  it doesn't have anything to do with their job description then of course the employee isn't going to obey their boss regardless of the authoritative position.

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This article talks about the differences between informal business structure and formal business structure. I thought this was very interesting in the book because I never considered there to be an 'informal' business structure and didn't know that it was something that was actually studied. One thing I thought that was particularly interesting in the article was that the informal structure can be more efficient if the formal one was set out poorly. So I think its important for a manger to become familiar with both the formal and informal structure in their organization and make it work to their advantage.

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The formal and informal organisation structure Business organisation business studies and business english | Business Case Studies

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All of the organisations that appear in the Times 100 will have some form of formal structure which is usually set out in organisation charts (for example see the Coca-Cola structures in Edition 10). However, these organisations also benefit from informal structures based on friendship groups.

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I thought this was a very interesting article because I have never been a fan of brainstorming. I feel like a lot of times it just doesn't work. People are either being competitive or people just say whatever they're thinking even if the idea is nonsensical just so they have contributed in some way, albeit unhelpful. This article highlights some of the brainstorming rules that have developed over the years and challenges each idea. For example, the article says that one of the brainstorming techniques is "There are no dumb ideas, so encourage wild and exaggerated thinking". It goes on to say that there are definitely dumb ideas and when encouraging this kind of thinking you end up with ideas that are impractical and irrelevant. Which I tend to agree with.

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Brainstorming doesn't work - four exercises to flex your creativity

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It's still the go-to tool for coming up with ideas, but solo thinking is far more effective

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I thought this cartoon was amusing and not that far from the truth even if it is exaggerated. The technology today is constantly changing and what's popular one week may not be the next week and may plummet in sales. I think more than ever now its important to monitor sales very closely and forecast future sales to keep a business/product relevant and profitable.

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After doing the SWOT analysis for In-n-Out I realized what an awesome company they are. I personally really like how they are family owned and they don't franchise. I feel like this way they can keep and maintain the quality of their food and customer service that has made them so popular. I was reading articles about them and there was literally nothing negative about them unlike some of their competitors.They just seem like a really good company to work for. I also liked how slowly they have expanded. I think it says a lot about their business model and their priorities.

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On the heels of mounting cynicism generated by Wall Street bailouts and the perception that corporate leaders are gaming the system to make a profit, at least one American company is proving that businesses can survive and even thrive while sticking to traditional values.

In-N-Out Burger, the iconic West Coast hamburger chain frequented by celebrities, is not slashing jobs or making major cutbacks during this recession. In fact, the regional chain, which has 232 locations in California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah, took in an estimated $420 million in revenues in 2008, and claims per-store sales of about $1.94 million. So how is this mom-and-pop burger joint pumping out per-store sales numbers that are better than Burger King and a host of other competitors?

BusinessWeek writer Stacy Perman has penned a book (In-N-Out Burger: A Behind the Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules) that chronicles how In-N-Out Burger founders Esther and Harry Snyder built the foundation for a business that has performed well since it debuted in 1948. Here are the six principles she says have made In-N-Out Berger an out-and-out success:

Keep a Relentless Focus on Quality -- Perman says that the Snyders were "micro-managers" from the beginning, insisting on only using the highest quality beef, produce and other ingredients at their stores.

"Harry would go to the meat purveyors, and stand over the butcher's shoulder to make sure that he got the meat that he paid for," she says, adding, "In the 60s, at a time when the fast food industry had turned to using frozen beef patties and French fries, [Harry] began hiring butchers so that he could maintain the quality of his beef. His own butchers would prepare the beef patties, and that continues to this day, but on a much larger scale."

Listen to Your Customers -- One of the company's mottos is "Our customer is everything." Applying that belief led to the company policy of preparing burgers just the way customers asked for them. Some of the customer favorites became popular and were eventually adopted as the restaurant chain's "secret menu." By listening to their customers, In-N-Out created menu choices other stores couldn't duplicate.

"So now you have three or four generations of people who grew up on In-and-Out Burger who have this very special relation ship to the chain," says Perman. "It's very authentic -- you can't buy that. It's very organic and they've been very careful never to commercialize that."

Treat Employees Well -- The Snyders always held their employees in high esteem, paying them higher wages than competitors and calling them associates to make them feel more connected to the franchise.

"They believed in sharing their success with their employees," says Perman, noting that In-N-Out associates make $10 an hour working part-time and starting store managers make $100,000, plus bonuses tied to store performance. The company benefits package is also generous. Such treatment engenders loyalty from workers.

"They have the lowest turnover rate in the fast food industry, which is notorious for turnover," says Perman. "They say that the average manager's tenure is 14 years, but they have managers who have been there 30 or 40 years."

Keep Things Simple and Consistent -- Another of Harry Snyder's mottos was, "Keep it real simple, do one thing and do it the best you can." That theme runs throughout the business.

"People get cynical about changes at different companies, but they always know that In-N-Out doesn't change," says Perman. "In and out stands for something and they've stuck to it and their customers really see that."

Expand Slowly and Only Under the Right Conditions - In-N-Out has strict guidelines that limit the growth of stores, but ensure each store's success.

"They don't open a store outside of a 500-mile radius of the commissaries where they get their fresh beef patties, their buns and other products because they want to maintain freshness," says Perman. "They make deliveries daily or near daily."

She also points out that, "They never open a new store unless they have management strength in place. They have very rigorous training procedures."

Define Your Own Level of Success - In corporate America, where success is sometimes defined as rapid growth at any cost, In-N-Out has, as the title suggests, made its own rules.

"If the customers and the employees were happy and they were making the best product they could, they were successful," she says, "and they have maintained that philosophy."

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In-N-Out Burger's six secrets for out-and-out success

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On the heels of mounting cynicism generated by Wall Street bailouts and the perception that corporate leaders are gaming the system to make a profit, at least one American company is proving that businesses can survive and even thrive while sticking to traditional values.

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Apple recently came out with its iPhone 7 and iPhone 7s. Right now this puts the iPhone at a competitive advantage over the Android smart phones. The release of the new Apple iPhones are all over the media talking about its new features, trying to entice consumers. Especially with Android's recent recall over one of its smartphones, the new release of Apple's iPhone 7 and 7s just maybe be enough to get Apple a few new iPhone consumers.

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This article touches on many different countries and how they relate to Hofstede's five dimensions of culture. The country that stood out to me was Sweden. As a whole they seem very laid back because of their low masculinity ranking, but still driven.

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Features tips and expert insights on human resources, talent management, performance management, leadership and employee engagement best practices

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This article states that Greece has the highest uncertainty avoidance in comparison to most countries. They scored 100 out of 100. Since many Greeks don't like uncertainty it has impacted the country as a whole in mainly two ways. Without taking risks Greece isn't known for inventing new products, processes, and business models. Which is why they have the lowest license and patent revenues compared to other countries. Second the laws in Greece help make life more structured and continues to enable their high uncertainty avoidance. This article written by a citizen of Greece encourages the country and its citizens to break out of their structured way of life and embrace uncertainty so that innovation may follow.

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No matter what happens with the Greek bailout, all parties agree that the Greek economy will have to become more competitive. Many politicians and commentators mention two critical factors in accomplishing this: increasing innovative capacity and reducing bureaucracy. Both are important, but they are far more difficult to achieve than many understand because they are, to a significant extent, influenced by culture.

"Culture" can sound like a catchall, a convenient way to place the blame outside the realm of policy, but I am talking about one specific dimension of culture: avoiding uncertainty.

Different societies deal differently with the fact that the future can never be known, and there is a well-known index to measure the extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations. High uncertainty-avoidance cultures try to minimize the occurrence of unknown circumstances and proceed by implementing rules, laws, and regulations. In contrast, low uncertainty-avoidance cultures accept and feel comfortable in unstructured situations or volatile environments, try to have as few rules as possible, and tend to be more tolerant of change.

The uncertainty-avoidance measure was originally created by Geert Hofstede through a cultural survey of more than 100,000 IBM employees around the world and subsequently confirmed in additional global surveys. The cultural dimensions identified by Hofstede have been used by more than a 1,000 academic studies.

Greece tops this index of uncertainty-avoidance across all countries, scoring 100 out of 100. Greeks' high level of discomfort in ambiguous situations creates at least two effects. First, they are less likely to take risks - which means they are unlikely to invent new products, processes, or business models. This helps to explain why Greece has one of the lowest license and patent revenues from abroad as a percentage of its GDP, as well as one of the lowest contributions from high-tech product exports to its trade balance. Second, bureaucracy, laws, and rules exert particular influence in Greece because they help make life more structured and less uncertain. In Greece, acquiring construction permits, registering property, and enforcing contracts in courts require vast amounts of paperwork and time.

The data in the graph above demonstrate the link between innovation, bureaucracy, and uncertainty. Countries that score high on uncertainty avoidance score low on innovation (as measured in the innovation union scoreboard of the European Commission) and high on bureaucracy (as measured on the easiness to do business ranking of the World Bank). Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, the UK, and Finland all have low uncertainty avoidance, high innovation, and low bureaucracy. These countries have excellent research systems with a high number of influential scientific publications, relatively high levels of government and business R&D expenditure and venture capital financing, strong public-private collaborations, and a wealth of intellectual assets in patent applications and community trademarks. At the same time the citizens in these countries spend less time dealing with procedures to start a business, get electricity, register a property, pay taxes, enforce contracts in courts, and trade across borders. Their cultures' comfort with uncertainty helps to make all of this possible.

This suggests that in addition to short-term policy changes, Greece needs a longer-term cultural shift. We Greeks must learn to accept and tolerate more risk and uncertainty about the future. And it all starts in school. We need to teach children to be courageous enough to take risks throughout their careers and to deal with the failures that unavoidably occur. To do this we must learn from the successes of other countries. Closer collaboration between schools, research institutes, and companies would enable the incubation of new ideas. Inventors' competitions for young people held every few years could also stimulate new ideas and inspire a new generation of inventors and innovators. Mentorship of small companies by larger corporations and the public sector would also assist the training and professional growth of young entrepreneurs. Finally, the development of venture capital funds would provide the necessary financing for the development of new ideas since such ideas are typically too risky to receive bank financing.

Of course, in the near term, political stability and sound economic policies are necessary to avert crisis. But Greece cannot stop there. In the long term the goal must be broader: to create an economy built around innovation, one that embraces uncertainty.

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If Greece Embraces Uncertainty, Innovation Will Follow

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No matter what happens with the Greek bailout, all parties agree that the Greek economy will have to become more competitive. Many politicians and commentators mention two critical factors in accomplishing this: increasing innovative capacity and reducing bureaucracy. Both are important, but they are far more difficult to achieve than many understand because they are, to a significant extent, influenced by culture.

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Domestic vs Internatonal Management-mod 3

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Domestic vs Internatonal Management-mod 3

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When managing multinational corporations many more factors come into play. They operate in different national sovereignties, operate under different economic conditions, employ people in different cultures, operate over many geographical locations, operate in places that are experiencing the industrial revolution at different times, and national markets differ in population and area.

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One of the core values of Marriott is offering quality services and products to its customers. Keeping it about the people from the start of their business helped make the company global, successfully. Marriott has hotels in 78 countries, that's 78 cultures and maybe more subcultures. Knowing what each group of people needs is important considering they're mostly likely the ones being employed by Marriott. Even though Marriott is 78 countries people from all over the world stay in their hotels. Learning to catering to the customers needs keeps this hotel chain relevant and profitable even at a global level.

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Marriott is making it easier for its guests to access TED Talks while they're on the road.

Today, the company announced it was partnering with nonprofit TED, the organization behind the popular TED Conference in Vancouver and TEDx events, to bring TED Talks, blogs, and content to its guests worldwide.

TED will work with Marriott to curate content around the themes of "curiosity, innovation, travel, and entrepreneurship," with themes changing on a quarterly basis. Guests can access the content during their stays via in-room entertainment when they log onto Wi-Fi, and Marriott-exclusive videos will also appear on Marriott's social-media channels.

"Through our partnership with Marriott Hotels, we hope to further expand our mission to a community of global travelers who are curious and engaged," said Lisa Choi Owens, chief revenue officer and head of partnerships for TED. "Marriott will be a supporter of our TED Fellows initiative by spotlighting individuals within the program at salon-style events at Marriott Hotels throughout the year."

The partnership also includes a series of five TED Talks Fellows salons at Marriott properties in Bellevue, Wash. (near Seattle), London, Dubai, Bangkok, and Santiago, beginning this year and continuing through 2017. During these events, guests have an opportunity to attend a live TED event with TED Fellows. The first will be held at the Marriott Bellevue in Seattle.

Marriott Hotels' vice president and global brand leader, Matthew Carroll, said this partnership was developed as a way to "evolve and elevate the hotel experience to meet the changing needs of our guests - a unique group of frequent global travelers who succeed in their personal and professional lives through creative, inventive thinking. They truly appreciate that travel gives them a chance to step outside their normal routines and encounter new people and places."

He added, "When you're on the road, that's when the best ideas come to you, or you start to see a new angle to an existing problem. This is a unique benefit of travel that our target consumer really value. Together with TED, we hope to offer our guests fun and engaging moments of fresh inspiration that inspire new perspectives."

More for Meetings

An added benefit of this new partnership is that meeting planners organizing events at Marriott Hotels will also have access to what Marriott called an "inspirational menu" of TED assets that they can use for their corporate groups.

"Curated TED Talks playlists will be developed for our brand's meeting planners to leverage when building out agendas or work as inspiration for corporate groups," Carroll said. "The ultimate goal is to offer a great tool that will enhance the event experience for our guests."

Marriott said there is no additional fee for meeting planners to have access to this content for their meetings at Marriott Hotels.

Thought Leadership: A Continuing Hotel Trend

Marriott Hotels isn't the first hotel company to rely on thought leadership-driven activations or programming to stir up interest among its guests and designate its hotels as platforms for knowledge sharing.

Since 2010, Omni Hotels & Resorts, a chain that specializes in group business, has hosted TED-like talks to build up brand loyalty with meeting and event planners who bring meetings to its properties.

Andaz Hotels also brings together local emerging artists with locals and guests with its Andaz Salon series, which was modeled after classic 18th- and 19th- century Paris Salons for literary circles.

The newest brand from Red Lion Hotels Corp., Hotel RL, also relies on TED Talks-style programming in its lobbies, which are designed more like theater/auditorium spaces with stages and tiered seating.

Earlier this year, Marriott also embarked on a partnership with Create & Cultivate, a group that hosts conferences for female entrepreneurs. Working with Create & Cultivate, Marriott launched a new content series called Create & Innovate that highlights female entrepreneurs and includes travel-oriented content geared specifically toward Create & Cultivate's audience.

But will the TED content accessible via Marriott be compelling enough to distinguish it from the content TED already has? Given TED's global popularity and reputation - and the fact that more than 22,000 TED Talks can be easily accessed online - we asked TED what will make this exclusive Marriott content unique.

TED's Owens said, "We'll be developing original videos, customize existing content from blogs and quote that thoughtfully align with Marriott's mission through our curated lens aimed at inspiring travelers. Additionally, we'll be organizing playlists of thematic content aimed at inspiring travelers through the Marriott network."

The more intimate salon-style events will also add another more personal dimension for guests and locals alike who may never have experienced a TED Talk in person. That combination of bringing together live, physical events with a virtual network of videos and content is something TED has already successfully executed on its own platform, too.

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Marriott Partners With TED Talks for In-Room, Social Media and Live Programming

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Marriott is making it easier for its guests to access TED Talks while they're on the road. Today, the company announced it was partnering with nonprofit TED, the organization behind the popular TED Conference in Vancouver and TEDx events, to bring TED Talks, blogs, and content to its guests worldwide.

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I thought the idea of reverse mentoring was really interesting, but also I wondered about the challenges associated with this. Mainly seniority issues and whether or not senior employees would even talk take the advice of someone younger and possibly less experienced. Which is why I thought this article was so interesting. I think it's awesome to know that even the CEO of a billion dollar company was willingly to try this strategy. Throughout the mentoring process it seemed that both Hassell and Kirstein cultivated a valuable relationship. He was even willingly to help her with her career goals when she was in a rut.

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Mentoring programs at banks are pretty standard.

Every year, a wide-eyed class of analysts and associates start their graduate and post-graduate programs with goals to change the world (or at least make a lot of money).

They get paired with a mentor, usually a senior executive, who can show them the ropes at the firm.

BNY Mellon, however, does things a little differently. Three years ago, it piloted a program called "reverse mentoring."

Darah Kirstein, an employee at the company, was asked to mentor a senior executive of the firm. Not just any senior executive though - the then 28-year-old was asked to mentor Gerald Hassell, the CEO of the $44 billion company.

"It was a little intimidating," she said. "At the time, 1 Wall Street was our headquarters, which is a very historical building. Bank of New York is also a very historical bank, and here I am walking into the CEO's office."

Kirstein graduated from Penn State with a degree in information sciences and technology and took her first job at BNY Mellon in the technology leadership program, a rotational program with exposure to different areas of the business.

Kirstein and Hassell meet once a quarter, either in person when she is in New York or via Skype when she is in Pittsburgh, where she is based.

Hassell has a "Darah list" and often uses the millennial as a sounding board for ideas. He wanted to downsize the bank's real-estate footprint and asked her opinion on desk sharing. He wanted to know where people her age were investing, how they were investing, and how the next generation consumes information.

One of the biggest challenges for Kirstein was not knowing in advance what questions Hassell would ask.

Her father and sister are engineers, and an aptitude for technology runs in the family. Trips to CompUSA were like field trips for Kirstein, and she remembers growing up tinkering with things, pressing buttons, and trying to figure out how they worked. "That's where a lot of my confidence came from," she said.

Hassell pioneered the program. He specifically wanted a program geared toward mentoring senior executives about technology.

The bank's chief information officer, Suresh Kumar, selected several employees from the firm's technology leadership program for a one-year pilot. Kirstein missed the first meeting among the mentors to assign the mentees, and, as luck would have it, she was paired with the CEO.

That was three years ago. While other relationships have fallen by the wayside, Kirstein and Hassell's relationship has evolved.

Nine years with the company later, Kirstein felt that she hit a crossroads in her career. She had been working part-time after her second child was born and was debating whether to come back to the company full-time.

She liked spending time with her family, but said she didn't want to go down the "mommy track." She emailed Hassell in December to schedule a meeting for career advice, and he responded, "It was about time I helped with you something."

The CEO blocked out an hour and a half out of his schedule to discuss Kirstein's short-term and long-term career objectives and the path she should take.

"It has always been a two-way street," she said. "Every time I step into this office, I learn something. He is a very curious person. A lot of our conversations would be begin with, 'So tell me about ...'"

Kirstein has since returned to the bank full-time and remains positive about her experience. She said she believe that social media has given millennials very high and unrealistic expectations of their future career paths, and so "they constantly bounce around, trying to land that dream job."

"The reality is," Kirstein said, "really cool opportunities can exist just where we are."

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Meet the 31-year-old who mentors the CEO of a $44 billion company

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Mentoring programs at banks are pretty standard. Every year, a wide-eyed class of analysts and associates start their graduate and post-graduate programs with goals to change the world (or at least make a lot of money). They get paired with a mentor, usually a senior executive, who can show them the ropes at the firm.

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American Apparel is a wholesale and retail clothing brand that is mainly known for their diversity from their models to their workers. They do lots of community work with the LGBTQ community. The AA brand was basically founded on equality and diversity which is why I thought it was interesting that only up until quite recently there were no women on the board of directors or in the C-suite. I think it shows that even though many companies are pushing hard for diversity in their organizations, it can be a long road.

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Allan Mayer, an American Apparel board member, says 'diversity will be a very important consideration' as the company looks for a new leader.

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This article investigated why some whistle blowers are more celebrated than others. It revealed that leaders who spoke out about unethical behavior versus peers were viewed more positively. They attribute this to the fact that leaders are expected to be assertive while peers are considered to be just followers and compliant. The study also revealed that peers were not just viewed less positively but were also more likely to be bullied or isolated by fellow peers.

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In a recent whistleblower case, Daniel Donovan, an information manager at Volkswagen, filed a lawsuit claiming he was unlawfully fired because people at the company feared that he was going to report to authorities the destruction of documents related to VW's installation of illegal software on diesel engines in order to cheat on emissions tests. (He later withdrew the case after what some suspect was a private settlement.)

Research on whistleblowing has found that Mr. Donovan's alleged treatment is the rule rather than the exception: Those who speak out about wrongdoing in organizations often suffer retaliation - both at their current organization and in their attempt to find future employment.

Similarly, studies by Benoit Monin and his colleagues on "moral rebels" demonstrate that when an individual witnesses a transgression but fails to speak up and a peer does speak up, that peer tends to be derogated by the individual who witnessed the wrongdoing but said nothing. The reason people often behave this way is their moral sense of self is threatened, and it leads them to attribute negative characteristics to the person who voiced concerns.

Are there contexts when those who speak up about wrongdoing are celebrated rather than disparaged? To answer that question Ned Wellman of Arizona State University, Maddy Ong and Scott DeRue of the University of Michigan, and I conducted three studies to examine whether the whistleblower's level of legitimate power (i.e., whether that person is a formal leader or a peer) influences how others respond to his or her actions.

In the first study, we asked working adults to think about a time when someone in their organization did something unethical and another employee (a peer or a leader) spoke up (or did not speak up) about the wrongdoing. Consistent with our expectations, when peers spoke up they were viewed less positively than when leaders spoke up. The explanation for this finding is that people tend to value behavior in organizations that is in line with expectations for one's role - and we expect leaders to be assertive and followers to be compliant.

In the second study, participants engaged in a hiring task. We provided participants with pictures and brief profiles of the candidates: an African-American male, a white female, and a white male. The white male candidate was always described as the best candidate. All participants chose the white male for the job. After selecting the candidate, they assessed a participant who previously took part in the study. We varied whether this person selected the white male or objected by saying that the experiment was racist and sexist. We also varied whether that individual was a leader or a peer. Once again, when peers spoke up, they were viewed less positively and were more likely to be the targets of various social sanctions (e.g., bullying, being insulted, being isolated) as compared to leaders.

In the third and final study, we used a fictional case about a team that was assigned to provide advice about entering a new market at a company that used inhumane child labor. We varied whether one of the team members went along with the policy or refused to take part because of the unethical actions of the company, and we also varied whether the person who spoke up was the team leader or a team member. We got the same result: Compared to a leader, when a teammate spoke up, participants in the study were more likely to view that person poorly, expressed intentions to sanction that individual in future interactions, and wrote harsh feedback to him or her. Interestingly, participants provided leaders harsher feedback when they didn't speak up than when they did - presumably because they expected leaders to be more assertive.

Although the general perception is that courage has costs, our research suggests that conclusion should be more nuanced. People tend to denigrate their peers for speaking up because it is not viewed as their place, but they celebrate leaders who do so because they expect them to be the moral voice of organizations. An important implication of this research is that leaders have a critical responsibility both to speak up and to create a culture where employees are accountable to one another and the organization to report any wrongdoing.

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Why Are Some Whistleblowers Vilified and Others Celebrated?

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In a recent whistleblower case, Daniel Donovan, an information manager at Volkswagen, filed a lawsuit claiming he was unlawfully fired because people at the company feared that he was going to report to authorities the destruction of documents related to VW's installation of illegal software on diesel engines in order to cheat on emissions tests.

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This article talked about the ethical pitfalls of many fast fashion retailers in the world today, such as Forever21 and H&M. However, the reason why these companies are able to sell such cheap clothing is because of where and how the clothes are being manufactured. Many of the fast fashion retailers contract out to manufactures that have extremely poor working conditions, underpay their workers and make them work excess hours. They know exactly what kind of working conditions that the laborers are enduring, they just choose to ignore it.
Which is another point that the article makes. It's not only the retailers who are at fault, it's the consumers as well. Many people who buy clothes from Zara and Forever21 know that these clothes weren't exactly ethically made. And for many of these consumers, it's not that they don't care, they just choose to ignore it. The clothes are cheap and cute and the underpaid sewers who made what they're wearing doesn't impact the consumer directly, so they just ignore it and forget about it.
The article does end on a slightly positive note. It hints that the unethical side of fashion doesn't have to persist. However, change is in the hands of the consumers. Once people start questioning their shopping choices, if they're ethically made or not and do they want to support that. Maybe then the higher ups in these companies will take notice and change their ethics policy.

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Bright colors, trendy pieces and low prices lure shoppers out of the cold and into the fast fashion temples up and down Michigan Avenue.

Last month, Uniqlo, the wildly popular Japanese casual fashion retailer, opened its first store in the Midwest, joining the ranks of affordable fashion stores like Forever 21, H&M and Zara on the Magnificent Mile. But as the holiday shopping season kicks into high gear this week, there can be drawbacks to the thrill of finding that stylish item of clothing, fashion experts warn.

"It comes back to how delightfully cheap everything is," said Abigail Glaum-Lathbury, assistant professor of fashion design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. "If something is $5 there's no downside, but that is a problem on another level. That kind of mentality, that's not how we treat people and our friends and that's not how we should treat the environment and our limited resources, especially in the face of global warming."

Dieter Kirkwood, assistant professor of fashion studies at Columbia College Chicago said fast fashion - a category that targets young buyers by matching the latest trends with low-priced apparel - is successful because of consumers' perception of fashion.

"I think in general today, society has a very warped sense of the things they purchase and the objects they surround themselves with as it relates to cost," Kirkwood said. "Bad practices have depressed the prices, and people start to value the items based on the prices rather than the production of the object itself."

Julie Kay, 24, of Los Angeles, who was shopping Tuesday on Michigan Avenue, said she shops fast fashion because it's cheap, and she tries not to think about the ramifications.

"Ethically, it's questionable, but all you have to do is not talk about it, and it doesn't really bother you," Kay said. "I don't think you can be mad at fast fashion for taking down a lot of haute couture ideas and bringing them to the masses and giving people an accessible way to be creative. It's good and bad."

Taylor Denman, 19, of Wisconsin, who was shopping for tops, said she is not concerned about the ethics of her clothes.

"Honestly, I don't think about it," Denman said. "It's such a common thing that people just fall into, and if people were more aware about issues like that then there would probably be changes. If people care about it they would (talk about it)."

Glaum-Lathbury argued that buying luxury clothing that is more expensive and high quality is not only environmentally friendly, but the ethical thing to do. She cited poor working conditions in high production factories overseas and excess waste from throwing away poorly constructed clothes from fast fashion stores.

"At the university, we really, really strive to make clothing that is innovative and meaningful, that is contributing in some way, that is artful, that values craft and quality and is ethical," Glaum-Lathbury said. "The trouble I see with H&M is whoever is up against a T-shirt that costs $1.90 is never going to win that fight."

Stories about low pay and appalling working conditions for garment workers are common. In June, police in Bangladesh charged 42 people with murder in the 2013 collapse of a garment factory building that killed more than 1,100 people, the country's deadliest industrial accident. Bangladesh has the second largest garment export industry in the world.

In addition to supporting questionable labor practices, Glaum-Lathbury said the average American throws away 63 pounds of clothing in a year - more than 11 million tons nationwide.

"It's disgusting," Glaum-Lathbury said. "The reason we're throwing it away is we're putting it in the wash once and throwing it away because your clothes are falling apart."

Katie Schuppler, CEO at KS Style Consulting, said that while she typically takes clients to boutiques in the Chicagoland area to teach them about ethically made clothing, their decision still often comes down to price.

"A lot of my clients are 18- to 25-year-olds who don't have a lot of money, and they need fast fashion because for their whole entire wardrobe they only have $500 to spend," Schuppler said.

Denman said she shops at Forever 21 for the prices. "It's cheap," she said. "I needed essentials."

Considered fast fashion by many because of its low prices and quickness to market, Uniqlo could help raise the bar for fast fashion, Kirkwood said.

"Uniqlo steps it up a little bit," Kirkwood said. "They're not a model citizen against all the others, but they would be a prime example."

Schuppler also placed Uniqlo a rung above H&M, which she categorized as half fast fashion, and Forever 21, which she described as all fast fashion. "Uniqlo is good for basics, and it is fast fashion in the sense that it is cheaper and cheaper made, but they have a lot of stuff that could be staple pieces or basics for your wardrobe so that's not really fast fashion."

Justin Kerr, chief merchandising officer and head of marketing for Uniqlo USA, said the company does not identify as fast fashion but rather "lifewear."

"Our goal is to improve people's lives through clothing, and being able to offer the best quality at the best possible prices is our obsession," Kerr said.

Kerr emphasized the company's use of supima cotton, known for higher quality, and its relationship with California farmers who produce that variety of cotton, as well as years devoted to the development of a specialty fabric that didn't necessarily follow trends.

Forever 21 and H&M declined to comment.

Kirkwood said there is hope for the fashion industry if consumers take pointers from the slow food movement, which has increased the popularity of farmers markets and locally grown food. But consumers need to be the ones to create the change, he said.

"The DIY (do-it-yourself) and maker culture is certainly on the rise, and the idea that we can dictate what we wear is growing," Kirkwood said. "The natural flow is that people will start to say, 'I can dictate how I want my clothes made and where I want them made.'"

Kirkwood argued that education is key and when consumers start realizing the "dark sides of the fashion they consume," they will demand better quality clothing made ethically.

"You have makeup that comes from the Wal-Mart or the CVS and you have the makeup from MAC (Cosmetics), and clearly there's such a price difference that there's a quality difference, so there's better quality just because people who wear makeup can recognize that quality difference," Kirkwood said. "The problem with fashion is that people don't understand what quality is. You could put a Jil Sander dress next to an H&M dress, and I don't know if they would know the difference."

Schuppler said shoppers should ask themselves the reasons behind their shopping choices.

"Think about where you're shopping, think about who you're shopping for and think about the purpose of what you're shopping for," Schuppler said. "Is this ethical? Is this a good idea? Is this what I want out of the shopping trip? If it's fashion, maybe go there, but if it's a staple, go somewhere else. Questions are a good way to get people thinking about it."

Glaum-Lathbury challenged shoppers to "invest in their self-image."

"When we put on a trend or a fad, which literally stands for 'For A Day,' does that actually speak to you or is there some other thing that's going on there," Glaum-Lathbury said. "If I'm putting something on for two days, does that actually speak to my self-image? I don't think so. I would argue that people should invest in fewer clothing pieces that are better and high quality and find something that is meaningful to you, whether that be about your self-image or comfort."
@gracewong630

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Fast fashion shopping: It's cute, it's cheap, but should you really buy it?

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Bright colors, trendy pieces and low prices lure shoppers out of the cold and into the fast fashion temples up and down Michigan Avenue. Last month, Uniqlo, the wildly popular Japanese casual fashion retailer, opened its first store in the Midwest, joining the ranks of affordable fashion stores like Forever 21, H&M and Zara on the Magnificent Mile.

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The end of chapter one just lightly touched on this subject, which I found interesting and wanted to learn more. With more women holding more jobs of powerful than ever before, I think it's important to learn how to balance work and social aspects of life, marriage in particular. Which is basically what this article entails. It lists ways that two career couples can still stay happy in their jobs and in their marriage.

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It's more important than ever to know how to balance a marriage and a career. Between 1996 and 2006, the percentage of two-income married couples rose 31% in the US. Now, 47.5% of all American married couples are dual-career couples. In Canada, the percentage of husband-wife families that were dual earners is roughly 70%, and approximately two thirds of two-adult families have two incomes in the UK.

Many marriages fail for work-related reasons. And prominent articles like Anne-Marie Slaughter's recent contribution in The Atlantic, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," and rejoinders like Froma Harrop's "News Flash: No One Can Have It All" have spurred critical conversations about what it means to practice work/life balance and how married people (or those in other long-term, committed relationships) can make their personal and professional lives work.

We're part of that dual-career cohort, and we've had many discussions about what it means to manage a marriage and a career. As a former marriage counselor, Jackie has seen the problems couples face, and we've had challenges of our own, from living in different cities to managing trying travel schedules. But we think that with intentionality, it is possible to manage marriage and a career. While we're still trying to figure things out, we wanted to offer a few thoughts based on research and our own experience.

Actively manage expectations. Unspoken expectations often lead to disappointment and miscommunication in a relationship. And the first step toward navigating a healthy marriage and an active two-career schedule can be managing expectations - everything from daily routines to ways of working. Do you need time to decompress after a long day at the office or do you need to debrief the day's events with someone? Do you prefer frequent, short touch points (e.g., phone calls, emails) throughout the day, or do you prefer longer personal time together in the evenings? What are your expectations about travel, meals together, child care, and money? Clarifying these things up front can help you make conscious trade-offs and decisions, rather than running afoul of each other's unspoken beliefs.

Schedule your spouse. The average person spends 7.6 hours per workday on the job, and for many professionals, that number can double. During your time in the office, you schedule meetings, reviews, and time to complete your own assignments. Other things make the calendar, too: workouts, breakfasts with friends, board meetings, and community service. But how much emphasis do you put on scheduling your spouse? One of the healthiest things you can do is put the same effort into scheduling time together. Many professionals live by their calendars, and if you don't carve out time with your spouse as rigorously as you do with your business partners, your most important relationship can suffer.

Find time to cheat - on your job. What happens when a work meeting conflicts with something you've scheduled at home? And how many weekends and evenings are interrupted when you need "just a few hours" to finish something up for work? Many professionals fall into the habit of "cheating" time with family by slipping in extra work. But you can also find time to cheat on your job with your significant other. When was the last time you slipped away at noon for an impromptu lunch date or left early to make it to one of your spouse's events? How often do you decline another work call or event because you have a date night planned? Be spontaneous above and beyond your scheduled time, and make sure that you're not constantly breaking appointments with your spouse for appointments at work.

Bring your work home and your home to work. Dual careers can be more difficult when your work and your family occupy completely separate spheres. When your spouse doesn't know the people in your office, he or she can feel alienated. But finding opportunities for your spouse to meet your colleagues can create work environments that are more sensitive to your personal priorities and an atmosphere of trust and understanding at home. Bring your spouse to company events, and if you run a company or a division, find opportunities to get people's families together. As noted in Passion & Purpose, in a world dominated by email, smartphones, and flexible work schedules, the walls between work and a personal life are falling. Finding ways to integrate them thoughtfully can be a professional and personal boon.

Balance your compromises. In 2011, only 3.4% of stay-at-home parents were men. And while studies show the average childless woman between 22 and 30 years old out-earns her male counterparts in 147 of 150 major U.S. cities, the overall female-to-male earnings ratio in 2010 was 0.81 (PDF). There are a variety of complex biological, cultural, and personal issues at play, but it's quite common for one partner in a relationship (often the woman) to compromise on his or her career ambitions while the other partner compromises time with family. There is no-one-size-fits-all solution here, but couples need to have open and honest discussions about their ambitions for their careers and their roles in the family, and assure that one partner isn't making all the sacrifice.

Setting up expectations and clearly defining a plan to balance your job and your relationship is an important part of making your marriage work. But it's also important to check back in from time to time to assess what could be improved. Keep the lines of communication open, and adapt your plan as needed. The very act of asking a spouse for feedback can show you care about the relationship.

For many of us, our marriages and careers are two of the most important parts of our lives, and making both work (in parallel) is a huge priority.

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It's more important than ever to know how to balance a marriage and a career. Between 1996 and 2006, the percentage of two-income married couples rose 31% in the US. Now, 47.5% of all American married couples are dual-career couples.

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I had a vague idea idea of this concept before, but reading and learning more about it cleared up some of my confusion. Top managers may get paid the big money because they have to look way ahead into the future and see how everything works together based on certain situations. But I feel like a middle manager's job is just as tough. They have to be equipped with technical, human, and conceptual skills.

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Managerial Effectiveness and Efficiency-mod 1

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Managerial Effectiveness and Efficiency-mod 1

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Before reading chapter one my view of a manger was very limited. Basically I thought it was just telling people what to do and making sure they do it. Chapter one helped me understand that there is so much more to holding a managerial position, which includes planning, organizing, influencing, and controlling. What I found most interesting was that a manger can be effective while still being inefficient.

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What I took away from Jobs' life and career was the importance of design and the willingness to fail. I like how he took the meaning of design to a whole new level. For me design has always been about how something looks, but I only work with products that aren't multi functional. I didn't realize that when developing technology, how smooth something functions is part of its design, a rather large part too. Another take away I had is the willingness to fail, which is some what cliche. However, it's something that is very important but can be easy to forget in my case. I know when I experience that moment of failure it's devastating. But as a result it does make me rethink everything and I come out better for it eventually.