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This article talks about the differences between data and information and it also explains their roles in the organization and benefit to the manager. This helped me reflect on what we learned in this module.

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When discussing data quality, we need to understand exactly what we mean by the word data. Often, the words information and data are used interchangeably, yet they are not the same thing.

Data is, or are (depending on your knowledge of Latin), fundamental to business intelligence. But how do we recognise data as data - and why is bad data such a pernicious entity?

First Things First: Data vs Information

There's a really simple way to understand the difference between data and information. When we understand the primary function of the item we are looking at, we quickly see the distinction between the two.

Here's a simple way to tell one from the other:

Computers need data. Humans need information.

Data is a building block. Information gives meaning and context.

In essence, data is raw. It has not been shaped, processed or interpreted. It is a series of 1s and zeros that humans would not be able to read (and nor would they want to). It is disorganised and unfriendly.

Once data has been processed and turned into information, it becomes palatable to human readers. It takes on context and structure. It becomes useful for businesses to make decisions, and it forms the basis of progress.

While the bigger picture is slightly more complex, this gets us part way towards understanding what data means.

The Bigger Picture

When we look at the relationship between data and information, we can establish a larger chain. This is the DIKW Pyramid.

Why DIKW? It stands for Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom, and describes the hierarchy between all four.

The DIKW Pyramid describes the acquisition of data, its processing, retention and interpretation, and it's as applicable to businesses as it is to the human brain.

To see the DIKW Pyramid in action, consider the following example.

Data: I have one item. The data displays a 1, not a zero.

Information: It's a tomato. Now, we understand the item and its characteristics.

Knowledge: A tomato is a fruit. We can identify patterns in the information and apply them to the item.

Wisdom: Tomato is never added to a fruit salad. There is an underlying, commonly understood principle that governs the item's purpose.

Data Quality: The Building Block

In this article, we have truly put data in context. We now understand its position as the foundation. It is the base of a pyramid; the beginning of a continuum.

If data is flawed, the DIKW Pyramid breaks down. The information we derive from the data is not accurate. We cannot make reliable judgments or develop reliable knowledge from the information. And that knowledge simply cannot become wisdom, since cracks will appear as soon as it is tested.

Bad data costs time and effort, gives false impressions, results in poor forecasts and devalues everything else in the continuum.

Data quality software addresses problems with data to avoid these kinds of problems. It ensures that data processing results in reliable information that improves response and retention. This information unlocks the potential of marketing campaigns, increases sales, improves accuracy and adds value.

That's why data quality is so vital to us all.

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What is the Difference Between Data and Information?

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When discussing data quality, we need to understand exactly what we mean by the word data. Often, the words information and data are used interchangeably, yet they are not the same thing. Data is, or are (depending on your knowledge of Latin), fundamental to business intelligence.

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This article gives us another inside about power in an organisation being a big influence to some managers and this helped me reflect about what we studied in class on control and power.

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The Idea in Brief

In order to motivate others, managers must be motivated themselves. The key issue here is the source of the motivation-the way the manager defines success. Some equate success with personal achievement; some see it as being liked by others. In order to succeed in a complex organization, a manager needs to have a power motivation, which is not a dictatorial impulse but rather the desire to have impact, to be strong and influential. This power must be disciplined and channeled in ways that benefit the organization, not the manager himself.

The Idea in Practice

In terms of motivation, there are three types of managers:

1. Affiliative managers score high in inhibition-that is, they are very capable of curbing their own impulses and using power for the benefit of the organization. But they need to be liked more than they need to have power; thus, instead of using their self-control to benefit the organization, affiliative managers often use it to ensure that they're liked. Such managers tend to have direct reports who have little pride in their work group, and who feel that they have little responsibility and that organizational procedures are unclear. The reasons are easy to understand: affiliative managers tend to disregard procedures in favor of ad hoc decisions, which enable them to act based on how they anticipate people will feel about the decision.

2. Personal power managers are those for whom the need for power outweighs the need to be liked. These managers score low in inhibition: lacking self-control, they tend to act impulsively or arbitrarily. Personal power managers are usually more effective than affiliative managers, better able to generate team spirit and a sense of responsibility in their direct reports. But they are not good institution builders; their lack of self-control translates into direct reports who are loyal to them instead of the organization. Thus, when a personal power manager leaves the organization, the team spirit and sense of organization rapidly dissipate.

3. Institutional managers, like personal power managers, need to have power and to be able to influence others more than they need to be liked. But they differ from personal power managers in one key respect: they score high in inhibition. Institutional managers care more about using power for the benefit of the organization than for their own aggrandizement. As a result, they are the most successful of the three types at creating an effective work environment-one in which employees have high morale and feel a strong sense of responsibility and organizational clarity. Two additional characteristics of institutional managers: they tend to have a more democratic leadership style, one that emphasizes coaching rather than commanding, and they possess greater emotional maturity than the other types.

In a retrospective commentary written in 1995, coauthor David McClelland notes that the need for achievement takes on greater importance in small companies, and that the need to influence others can even be a handicap. The reason, he explains, is that "a constant concern for improvement, for growing the business in a cost-efficient way," is more crucial to the work of small-company managers.

Most HBR articles on motivation speak to managers about the people whose work they oversee. Curiously, the writers assume that the motivation of managers themselves-that is to say, of our readers-is so well aligned with organizational goals that it needs no examination. David McClelland and his colleague David Burnham knew better.

They found that managers fall into three motivational groups. Those in the first, affiliative managers, need to be liked more than they need to get things done. Their decisions are aimed at increasing their own popularity rather than promoting the goals of the organization. Managers motivated by the need to achieve-the second group-aren't worried about what people think of them. They focus on setting goals and reaching them, but they put their own achievement and recognition first. Those in the third group-institutional managers-are interested above all in power. Recognizing that you get things done inside organizations only if you can influence the people around you, they focus on building power through influence rather than through their own individual achievement. People in this third group are the most effective, and their direct reports have a greater sense of responsibility, see organizational goals more clearly, and exhibit more team spirit.

What makes or motivates a good manager? The question is enormous in scope. Some people might say that a good manager is one who is successful-and by now most business researchers and businesspeople know what motivates people who successfully run their own small businesses. The key to their success has turned out to be what psychologists call the need for achievement, the desire to do something better or more efficiently than it has been done before. Any number of books and articles summarize research studies explaining how the achievement motive is necessary for a person to attain success.

But what has achievement motivation got to do with good management? There is no reason on theoretical grounds why a person who has a strong need to be more efficient should make a good manager. While it sounds as if everyone ought to have the need to achieve, in fact, as psychologists define and measure achievement motivation, the need to achieve leads people to behave in ways that do not necessarily engender good management.

For one thing, because they focus on personal improvement, achievement-motivated people want to do things themselves. For another, they want concrete short-term feedback on their performance so that they can tell how well they are doing. Yet managers, particularly in large, complex organizations, cannot perform by themselves all the tasks necessary for success. They must manage others to perform for the organization. And they must be willing to do without immediate and personal feedback since tasks are spread among many people.

The manager's job seems to call more for someone who can influence people than for someone who does things better alone. In motivational terms, then, we might expect the successful manager to have a greater need for power than a need to achieve. But there must be other qualities besides the need for power that go into the makeup of a good manager. We will discuss here just what these qualities are and how they interrelate.

To measure the motivations of managers, we studied a number of individuals in different large U.S. corporations who were participating in management workshops designed to improve their managerial effectiveness. (See the sidebar "Workshop Techniques.") We concluded that the top manager of a company must possess a high need for power-that is, a concern for influencing people. However, this need must be disciplined and controlled so that it is directed toward the benefit of the institution as a whole and not toward the manager's personal aggrandizement. Moreover, the top manager's need for power ought to be greater than his or her need to be liked.

We derived the case studies and data used in this article from a number of workshops we conducted, during which executives learned about their managerial styles and abilities, as well as how to change them. The workshops also provided an opportunity for us to study which motivation patterns in people make for the best managers.

At the workshops and in this article, we use the technical terms "need for achievement," "need for affiliation," and "need for power." The terms refer to measurable factors indicating motivation in groups and individuals. Briefly, those characteristics are measured by coding managers' spontaneous responses relating to how often they think about doing something better or more efficiently than before (need for achievement), about establishing or maintaining friendly relations with others (need for affiliation), or about having an impact on others (need for power). When we talk about power, we are not talking about dictatorial power but about the need to be strong and influential.

When the managers first arrived at the workshops, they were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their jobs. Each participant analyzed his or her job, explaining what he or she thought it required. The managers were asked to write a number of stories about pictures of various work situations we showed them. The stories were coded according to how concerned an individual was with achievement, affiliation, or power, as well as for the amount of inhibition or self-control they revealed. We then compared the results against national norms. The differences between a person's job requirements and his or her motivational patterns can often help assess whether the person is in the right job, is a candidate for promotion to another job, or is likely to be able to adjust to fit the present position.

To find out what kind of managerial style the participants had, we then gave them another questionnaire in which they had to choose how they would handle various realistic work situations in office settings. We divided their answers into six management styles, or ways of dealing with work situations. The styles were "democratic," "affiliative," "pacesetting," "coaching," "coercive," and "authoritarian." The managers were asked to comment on the effectiveness of each style and to name the style they preferred.

One way to determine how effective managers are is to ask the people who work for them. Thus, to isolate the characteristics that good managers have, we asked at least three subordinates of each manager at the workshop questions about their work situations that revealed characteristics of their supervisors according to six criteria: 1) the amount of conformity to rules the supervisor requires, 2) the amount of responsibility they feel they are given, 3) the emphasis the department places on standards of performance, 4) the degree to which rewards are given for good work compared with punishment when something goes wrong, 5) the degree of organizational clarity in the office, and 6) its team spirit. ¹ The managers who received the highest morale scores (organizational clarity plus team spirit) from their subordinates were considered to be the best managers, possessing the most desirable motive patterns.

We also surveyed the subordinates six months later to see if morale scores rose after managers completed the workshop.

We measured participants on one other characteristic deemed important for good management: maturity. By coding the stories that the managers wrote, which revealed their attitudes toward authority and the kinds of emotions displayed over specific issues, we were able to pinpoint managers at one of four stages in their progress toward maturity. People in stage 1 are dependent on others for guidance and strength. Those in stage 2 are interested primarily in autonomy. In stage 3, people want to manipulate others. In stage 4, they lose their egotistic desires and wish to serve others selflessly. ²

The conclusions we present in this article are based on workshops attended by more than 500 managers from some 25 U.S. corporations. We drew the examples in the charts from one of those companies.

1. Based on George H. Litwin and Robert A. Stringer's Motivation and Organizational Climate (Harvard University Press, 1968).

2. Based on work by Abigail Stewart, as reported in David C. McClelland's Power: The Inner Experience (Irvington Publishers, 1979).

Measuring Managerial Effectiveness

What does it mean when we say that a good manager has a greater need for power than for achievement? Consider the case of Ken Briggs, a sales manager in a large U.S. corporation who joined one of our managerial workshops. (The names and details of all the cases that follow have been disguised.) About six years ago, Ken Briggs was promoted to a managerial position at headquarters, where he was responsible for sales-people who serviced his company's largest accounts.

In filling out his questionnaire at the workshop, Ken showed that he correctly perceived what his job required of him-namely, that he should influence others' success more than achieve new goals himself or socialize with his subordinates. However, when asked, with other members of the workshop, to write a story depicting a managerial situation, Ken unwittingly revealed through his fiction that he did not share those concerns. Indeed, he discovered that his need for achievement was very high-in fact, higher than the 90th percentile-and his need for power was very low, in about the 15th percentile. Ken's high need to achieve was no surprise-after all, he had been a very successful salesman-but obviously his desire to influence others was much less than his job required. Ken was a little disturbed but thought that perhaps the measuring instruments were not accurate and that the gap between the ideal and his score was not as great as it seemed.

Then came the real shocker. Ken's subordinates confirmed what his stories revealed: He was a poor manager, having little positive impact on those who worked for him. They felt that little responsibility had been delegated to them. He never rewarded them but only criticized them. And the office was poorly organized, confused, and chaotic. On all those scales, his office rated in the tenth to 15th percentile relative to national norms.

As Ken talked the results of the survey over privately with a workshop leader, he became more and more upset. He finally agreed, however, that the results confirmed feelings he had been afraid to admit to himself or others. For years, he had been miserable in his managerial role. He now knew the reason: He simply did not want, and he had not been able, to influence or manage others. As he thought back, he realized he had failed every time he had tried to influence his staff, and he felt worse than ever.

Ken had responded to failure by setting very high standards-his office scored in the 98th percentile on this scale-and by trying to do most things himself, which was close to impossible. His own activity and lack of delegation consequently left his staff demoralized. Ken's experience is typical of those who have a strong need to achieve but little desire for power. They may become very successful salespeople and, as a consequence, may be promoted into managerial jobs for which they, ironically, are unsuited.

If the need to achieve does not make a good manager, what motive does? It is not enough to suspect that power motivation may be important; one needs hard evidence that people who are better managers than Ken Briggs is are in fact more highly motivated by power and perhaps score higher in other characteristics as well. But how does one decide who is the better manager?

Real-world performance measures are hard to come by if one is trying to rate managerial effectiveness in production, marketing, finance, or research and development. In trying to determine who the better managers were in Ken Briggs's company, we did not want to rely only on their superiors. For a variety of reasons, superiors' judgments of their subordinates' real-world performance may be inaccurate. In the absence of some standard measure of performance, we decided that the next best index of a manager's effectiveness would be the climate he or she creates in the office, reflected in the morale subordinates.

Almost by definition, a good manager is one who, among other things, helps subordinates feel strong and responsible, rewards them properly for good performance, and sees that things are organized so that subordinates feel they know what they should be doing. Above all, managers should foster among subordinates a strong sense of team spirit, of pride in working as part of a team. If a manager creates and encourages this spirit, his or her subordinates certainly should perform better.

In the company Ken Briggs works for, we have direct evidence of a connection between morale and performance in the one area where performance measures are easy to find-namely, sales. In April 1973, at least three employees from each of this company's 16 sales districts filled out questionnaires that rated their office for organizational clarity and team spirit. Their scores were averaged and totaled to give an overall morale score for each office. Then, the percentage gains or losses in sales in 1973 were compared with those for 1972 for each district. The difference in sales figures by district ranged from a gain of nearly 30% to a loss of 8%, with a median gain of about 14%. The graph "The Link Between Morale and Sales" shows how, in Ken Briggs's company at least, high morale at the beginning of the year became a good index of how well the sales division would actually perform throughout the year. Moreover, it seems likely that the manager who can create high morale among salespeople can also do the same for employees in other areas (production, design, and so on), which leads to better overall performance. What characteristics, then, does a manager need to create that kind of morale?

The Link Between Morale and Sales

The Power Factor

To find out, we surveyed more than 50 managers in both high- and low-morale units in all sections of a single large company. We found that the power motivation scores for most of the managers-more than 70%-were higher than those of the average person. This finding confirms that power motivation is important to management. (Remember that as we use the term, "power motivation" refers not to dictatorial behavior but to a desire to have an impact, to be strong and influential.) The better managers, as judged by the morale of those working for them, tended to score even higher in power motivation. But the most important determining factor of high morale turned out to be not how their need for power compared with their need to achieve but whether it was higher than their need to be liked. This relationship existed for 80% of the better sales managers but for only 10% of the poorer managers. And the same held true for other managers in nearly every part of the organization.

In the research, product development, and operations divisions, 73% of the better managers had a stronger need for power than need to be liked, as compared with only 22% of the poorer managers, who tended to be what we term "affiliative managers"-whose strongest drive is to be liked. Why should this be so?

Sociologists have long argued that for a bureaucracy to function effectively, those who manage it must apply rules universally: that is, if they make exceptions for the particular needs of individuals, the whole system will break down. The manager with a high need to be liked is precisely the one who wants to stay on good terms with everybody and, therefore, is the one most likely to make exceptions for particular needs. If an employee asks for time off to stay home and look after a sick spouse and the kids, the affiliative manager agrees almost without thinking, out of compassion for the employee's situation. When former President Gerald Ford remarked in pardoning Richard Nixon that Nixon had "suffered enough," he was responding as an affiliative manager would because he was empathizing primarily with Nixon's needs and feelings.

Sociological theory and our findings both argue, however, that the person whose need for affiliation is high does not make a good manager. This kind of person creates low morale because he or she does not understand that other people in the office will tend to regard exceptions to the rules as unfair to themselves, just as many U.S. citizens felt that it was unfair to let Nixon off and punish others who were less involved than he was in the Watergate scandal.

So far, our findings are a little alarming. Do they suggest that the good manager is one who cares for power and is not at all concerned about the needs of other people? Not quite, for the good manager has other characteristics that must still be taken into account. Above all, the good manager's power motivation is not oriented toward personal aggrandizement but toward the institution that he or she serves.

In another major research study, we found that the signs of controlled action, or inhibition, that appear when a person exercises imagination in writing stories tell a great deal about the kind of power that person needs. ¹ We discovered that if a high power motivation score is balanced by high inhibition, stories about power tend to be altruistic. That is, the heroes in the story exercise power on behalf of someone else. This is the socialized face of power, as distinguished from the concern for personal power, which is characteristic of individuals whose stories are loaded with power imagery but show no sign of inhibition or self-control. In our earlier study, we found ample evidence that the latter individuals exercise their power impulsively. They are more often rude to other people, they drink much, they try to exploit others sexually, and they collect symbols of personal prestige such as fancy cars or big offices.

Individuals high in power and in control, on the other hand, are more institution minded; they tend to get elected to more offices, to control their drinking, and to have a desire to serve others. Not surprisingly, we found in the workshops that the better managers in the corporation also tend to score high on both power and inhibition.

Three Kinds of Managers

Let us recapitulate what we have discussed so far and have illustrated with data from one company. The better managers we studied-what we call institutional managers-are high in power motivation, low in affiliation motivation, and high in inhibition. They care about institutional power and use it to stimulate their employees to be more productive. Now let us compare them with affiliative managers (those people for whom the need for affiliation is higher than the need for power) and with the personal-power managers (those in whom the need for power is higher than the need for affiliation but whose inhibition score is low).

In the sales division of the company we chose to use as an illustration, there are managers who match the three types fairly closely. The chart "Which Manager Is Most Effective?" shows how their subordinates rated the offices they worked in on responsibility, organizational clarity, and team spirit. Managers who are concerned about being liked tend to have subordinates who feel that they have little personal responsibility, believe that organizational procedures are not clear, and have little pride in their work group. In short, as we expected, affiliative managers make so many ad hominem and ad hoc decisions that they almost totally abandon orderly procedures. Their disregard for procedure leaves employees feeling weak, irresponsible, and without a sense of what might happen next, of where they stand in relation to their manager, or even of what they ought to be doing. In this company, the group of affiliative managers portrayed in the chart falls below the 40th percentile in all three measures of morale.

Which Manager Is Most Effective?

The managers who are motivated by a need for personal power are somewhat more effective. They are able to engender a greater sense of responsibility in their divisions and, above all, create a greater team spirit. They can be thought of as managerial equivalents of successful tank commanders such as General George Patton, whose own daring inspired admiration in his troops. But notice how in the chart these people are still only around the 40th percentile in the amount of organizational clarity they create, whereas the institutional managers-the high-power, low-affiliation, high-inhibition managers-score much higher.

Managers motivated by personal power are not disciplined enough to be good institution builders, and often their subordinates are loyal to them as individuals rather than to the institution they serve. When a personal-power manager leaves, disorganization often follows. The strong group spirit that the manager has personally inspired deflates. The subordinates do not know what to do by themselves.

Of all the managerial types, the institutional manager is the most successful in creating an effective work climate. Subordinates feel that they have more responsibility. Also, those kinds of managers create high morale because they produce the greatest sense of organizational clarity and team spirit. If such a manager leaves, he or she can be more readily replaced by another because the employees have been encouraged to be loyal to the institution rather than to a particular person.

Since it seems undeniable that a manager with a power orientation creates better morale in subordinates than one with a people orientation, we must consider that a concern for power is essential to good management.

Our findings seem to fly in the face of a long and influential tradition of organizational psychology, which insists that authoritarian management is what is wrong with most businesses in the United States. Let us say frankly that we think the bogeyman of authoritarianism has been wrongly used to downplay the importance of power in management. After all, management is an influence game. Some proponents of democratic management seem to have forgotten this fact, urging managers to be more concerned with people's personal needs than with helping them to get things done.

But much of the apparent conflict between our findings and those of other behavioral scientists in this area stems from the fact that we are talking about motives, and behaviorists are often talking about actions. What we are saying is that managers must be interested in playing the influence game in a controlled way. That does not necessarily mean that they are or should be authoritarian in action. On the contrary, it appears that power-motivated managers make their subordinates feel strong rather than weak. The true authoritarian in action would have the reverse effect, making people feel weak and powerless.

Thus another important ingredient in the profile of a manager is managerial style. In our example, 63% of the better managers (those whose subordinates had higher morale) scored higher on the democratic or coaching styles of management as compared with only 22% of the poorer managers. By contrast, the latter scored higher on authoritarian or coercive management styles. Since the better managers were also higher in power motivation, it seems that in action they express their power motivation in a democratic way, which is more likely to be effective.

To see how motivation and style interact, consider the case of George Prentice, a manager in the sales division another company. George had exactly the right combination of motives to be an institutional manager. He was high in the need for power, low in the need for affiliation, and high in inhibition. He exercised his power in a controlled, organized way. The stories he wrote reflected this fact. In one story, for instance, he wrote, "The men sitting around the table were feeling pretty good; they had just finished plans for reorganizing the company; the company has been beset with a number of organizational problems. This group, headed by a hard-driving, brilliant young executive, has completely reorganized the company structurally with new jobs and responsibilities . . .."

This described how George himself was perceived by the company, and shortly after the workshop, he was promoted to vice president in charge of all sales. But George was also known to his colleagues as a monster, a tough guy who would "walk over his grandmother" if she stood in the way of his advancement. He had the right motive combination and, in fact, was more interested in institutional growth than he was in personal power, but his managerial style was all wrong. Taking his cue from some of the top executives in the corporation, he told people what they had to do, and he threatened them with dire consequences if they did not do it.

When George was confronted with his authoritarianism in a workshop, he recognized that this style was counter-productive-in fact, in another part of the study we found that it was associated with low morale-and he subsequently began to act more like a coach, which was the style for which he scored the lowest, initially. George saw more clearly that his job was not to force other people to do things but rather to help them figure out ways of getting their jobs done better for the company.

Profile of the Institutional Manager

One reason it was easy for George Prentice to change his managerial style was that, as we saw in his imaginative stories, he was already thinking about helping others-a characteristic of people with the institution-building motivational pattern. In further examining institution builders' thoughts and actions, we found they have four major characteristics:

Institutional managers are more organization minded; that is, they tend to join more organizations and to feel responsible for building up those organizations. Furthermore, they believe strongly in the importance of centralized authority.

They report that they like to work. This finding is particularly interesting because our research on achievement motivation has led many commentators to argue that achievement motivation promotes the Protestant work ethic. Al-most the precise opposite is true. People who have a high need to achieve like to reduce their work by becoming more efficient. They would like to see the same result obtained in less time or with less effort. But managers who have a need for institutional power actually seem to like the discipline of work. It satisfies their need for getting things done in an orderly way.

They seem quite willing to sacrifice some of their own self-interest for the welfare of the organization they serve.

They have a keen sense of justice. It is almost as if they feel that people who work hard and sacrifice for the good of the organization should and will get a just reward for their effort.

It is easy to see how each of these four characteristics helps a person become a good manager, concerned about what the institution can achieve.

We discovered one more fact in studying the better managers at George Prentice's company. They were more mature. Mature people can be most simply described as less egotistic. Somehow their positive self-image is not at stake in their jobs. They are less defensive, more willing to seek advice from experts, and have a longer-range view. They accumulate fewer personal possessions and seem older and wiser. It is as if they have awakened to the fact that they are not going to live forever and have lost some of the feeling that their own personal future is all that important.

Many U.S. businesspeople fear this kind of maturity. They suspect that it will make them less hard driving, less expansion minded, and less committed to organizational effectiveness. Our data do not support their fears.

Those fears are exactly the ones George Prentice had before he went to the workshop. Afterward, he was a more effective manager, not despite his loss of some of the sense of his own importance but because of it. The reason is simple: His subordinates believed afterward that he was genuinely more concerned about the company than he was about himself. Whereas once they respected his confidence but feared him, they now trust him. Once, he supported their image of him as a "big man" by talking about the new Porsche and Honda he had bought; when we saw him recently, he said, almost as an aside, "I don't buy things anymore."

Altering Managerial Style

George Prentice was able to change his managerial style after learning more about himself. But does self-knowledge generally improve managerial behavior?

Consider the results shown in the chart "Managers Can Change Their Styles," where employee morale scores are compared before and after their managers attended workshop training. To judge by their subordinates' responses, the managers were clearly more effective after coming to terms with their styles. The subordinates felt that they received more rewards, that the organizational procedures were clearer, and that morale was higher.

Managers Can Change Their Styles

But what do those differences mean in human terms? How did the managers change? Sometimes they decided they should get into another line of work. This happened to Ken Briggs, for example, who found that the reason he was doing so poorly as a manager was because he had almost no interest in influencing others. He understood how he would have to change in order to do well in his present job but in the end decided, with the help of management, that he would prefer to work back into his first love, sales.

Ken Briggs moved into remaindering, helping retail outlets for his company's products get rid of last year's stock so that they could take on each year's new styles. He is very successful in this new role; he has cut costs, increased dollar volume, and in time worked himself into an independent role selling some of the old stock on his own in a way that is quite satisfactory to the business. And he does not have to manage anybody anymore.

In George Prentice's case, less change was needed. He obviously was a very competent manager with the right motive profile for a top company position. When he was promoted, he performed even more successfully than he had previously because he realized that he needed to become more positive in his approach and less coercive in his managerial style.

But what about a person who does not want to change jobs and discovers that he or she does not have the right motive profile to be a manager? The case of Charlie Blake is instructive. Charlie was as low in power motivation as Ken Briggs, his need to achieve was about average, and his affiliation motivation was above average. Thus he had the affiliative manager profile, and, as expected, the morale among his subordinates was very low. When Charlie learned that his subordinates' sense of responsibility and perception of a reward system were in the tenth percentile and that team spirit was in the 30th, he was shocked. When shown a film depicting three managerial climates, Charlie said he preferred what turned out to be the authoritarian climate. He became angry when the workshop trainer and other members in the group pointed out the limitations of this managerial style. He became obstructive to the group process, and he objected strenuously to what was being taught.

In an interview conducted much later, Charlie said, "I blew my cool. When I started yelling at you for being all wrong, I got even madder when you pointed out that, according to my style questionnaire, you bet that that was just what I did to my salespeople. Down underneath, I knew something must be wrong. The sales performance for my division wasn't so good. Most of it was due to me anyway and not to my sales-people. Obviously, their reports that they felt I delegated very little responsibility to them and didn't reward them at all had to mean something. So I finally decided to sit down and try to figure what I could do about it. I knew I had to start being a manager instead of trying to do everything myself and blowing my cool at others because they didn't do what I thought they should. In the end, after I calmed down, on the way back from the workshop, I realized that it is not so bad to make a mistake; it's bad not to learn from it."

After the course, Charlie put his plans into effect. Six months later, his subordinates were asked to rate him again. He attended a second workshop to study the results and reported, "On the way home, I was nervous. I knew I had been working with those guys and not selling so much myself, but I was afraid of what they would say about how things were going in the office. When I found out that the team spirit and some of those other low scores had jumped from around the 30th to the 55th percentile, I was so delighted and relieved that I couldn't say anything all day long."

When he was asked how his behavior had changed, Charlie said, "In previous years when corporate headquarters said we had to make 110% of our original goal, I had called the salespeople in and said, in effect, 'This is ridiculous; we are not going to make it, but you know perfectly well what will happen if we don't. So get out there and work your tails off.' The result was that I worked 20 hours a day, and they did nothing.

"This time I approached the sales-people differently. I told them three things. First, they were going to have to do some sacrificing for the company. Second, working harder is not going to do much good because we are already working about as hard as we can. What will be required are special deals and promotions. You are going to have to figure out some new angles if we are to make it. Third, I'm going to back you up. I'm going to set a realistic goal with each of you. If you make that goal but don't make the company goal, I'll see to it that you are not punished. But if you do make the company goal, I'll see to it that you will get some kind of special rewards."

The salespeople challenged Charlie, saying he did not have enough influence to give them rewards. Rather than becoming angry, Charlie promised rewards that were in his power to give-such as longer vacations.

Note that Charlie has now begun to behave in a number of ways that we found to be characteristic of the good institutional manager. He is, above all, higher in power motivation-the desire to influence his salespeople-and lower in his tendency to try to do everything himself. He asks people to sacrifice for the company. He does not defensively chew them out when they challenge him but tries to figure out what their needs are so that he can influence them. He realizes that his job is more one of strengthening and supporting his subordinates than of criticizing them. And he is keenly interested in giving them just rewards for their efforts.

The changes in his approach to his job have certainly paid off. The sales for his office in 1973 were more than 16% higher than those of the previous year, and they rose still further in 1974. In 1973, his office's gain over the previous year ranked seventh in the nation; in 1974, it ranked third. And he wasn't the only one in his company to change managerial styles. Overall sales at his company were up substantially in 1973, an increase that played a large part in turning the overall company performance around from a $15 million loss in 1972 to a $3 million profit in 1973. The company continued to improve its performance in 1974 with a further 11% gain in sales and a 38% increase in profits.

Of course, everybody can't always be reached by a workshop. Henry Carter managed a sales office for a company that had very low morale (around the 20th percentile) before he went for training. When morale was checked some six months later, it had not proved. Overall sales gains subsequently reflected this fact-only 2% above the previous year's figures.

Oddly enough, Henry's problem was that he was so well liked by everybody he felt little pressure to change. Always the life of the party, he was particularly popular because he supplied other managers with special hard-to-get brands of cigars and wines at a discount. He used his close ties with everyone to bolster his position in the company, even though it was known that his office did not perform as well as others.

His great interpersonal skills became evident at the workshop when he did very poorly at one of the business games. When the discussion turned to why he had done so badly and whether he acted that way on the job, two prestigious participants immediately sprang to his defense, explaining away Henry's failure by arguing that the way he did things was often a real help to others and the company. As a result, Henry did not have to cope with such questions at all. He had so successfully developed his role as a likable, helpful friend to every one in management that, even though his salespeople performed badly, he did not feel under any pressure to change the way he managed people.

What have we learned from Ken Briggs, George Prentice, Charlie Blake, and Henry Carter? We have discovered what motives make an effective manager-and that change is possible if a person has the right combination of qualities.

Oddly enough, the good manager in a large company does not have a high need for achievement, as we define and measure that motive, although there must be plenty of that motive somewhere in his or her organization. The top managers shown here have a need for power greater than their interest in being liked. The manager's concern for power should be socialized-controlled so that the institution as a whole, not only the individual, benefits. People and nations with this motive profile are empire builders; they tend to create high morale and to expand the organizations they head. But there is also danger in this motive profile; as in countries, empire building can lead to imperialism and authoritarianism in companies. The same motive pattern that produces good power management can also lead a company to try to dominate others, ostensibly in the interests of organizational expansion. Thus it is not surprising that big business has had to be regulated periodically by federal agencies.

Similarly, the best managers possess two characteristics that act as regulators-a greater emotional maturity, where there is little egotism, and a democratic, coaching managerial style. If a manager's institutional power motivation is checked by maturity, it does not lead to an aggressive, egotistic expansiveness. That means managers can control their subordinates and influence others around them without having to resort to coercion or to an authoritarian management style.

Summarized in this way, what we have found out through empirical and statistical investigations may sound like good common sense. But it is more than common sense; now we can say objectively what the characteristics of the good manager are. Managers of corporations can select those who are likely to be good managers and train those already in managerial positions to be more effective with more confidence.

A version of this article appeared in the January 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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The Idea in Brief In order to motivate others, managers must be motivated themselves. The key issue here is the source of the motivation-the way the manager defines success. Some equate success with personal achievement; some see it as being liked by others.

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This article talks about the roles of motivation in an organisation and how it can put one a step ahead in achieving their goals. It is a good review to what we learnt in class in this module.

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role of motivation in organizational behavior

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The Role of Motivation in Organizational Behavior

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This article discusses the aspects that motivate employees from the organizational perspective. The key theme in this article is that a number of factors apart from the salary and benefits motivate employees and hence, the HR managers and the senior leadership must consider these when designing policies.

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This article explains the various leadership styles and give an inside on seven steps to a truely effective leadership style

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By Rebecca Hourston

If you've ever been led by a Mushroom (everyone's in the dark), a Seagull (swoops in, squawks and dumps), or a Kipper (two-faced and gutless), you'll be all too aware of the leadership style you don't want to be known for.

Fortunately, the simple fact that you are reading this article instantly places you in an elite minority that is actually thinking about what you do want your leadership style to be known for. The vast majority just go to work and get on with it, in whatever style comes to them by default.

While this isn't necessarily a bad thing (there will always be certain strengths to your default style), failing to actively develop your leadership style will deny you full range and maximum effectiveness. And it means that certain situations will be a lot harder to handle.

Style and Substance

The substance of what you do-the result you deliver-is pretty fundamental in today's economy. But working on the way that you do it is what will launch you into a different sphere of success altogether-even if you already count yourself as pretty successful.

The leadership style you choose to use (and yes, to a great extent, it is an active choice you can make) has a direct impact on the result you achieve. It is what makes you memorable to others and fulfilled within yourself.

Redefining What's "Best"

So what can you do to develop your own leadership style into one that will be highly prized? Here are seven steps to selecting the best leadership style, with tips for putting those steps into action.

1. Be Bold

Boldness is an essential for leading upwards. To grab the attention of your bosses, you need to swallow a bold pill and confidently make your point with as little padding as possible.

Few would describe industrialist Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic Airways among others, as a great communicator. But a great visionary-absolutely. His boldness can be breathtaking. And most of it stems from not giving a damn about what others might think of him.

"Have a bit of personality," advises Karen Bosher, Head of Stores for the Mothercare Group's Southern UK region. "Courage fueled by a high degree of integrity and a dose of good judgment should give you the confidence to stand out."

"Be proud to apologize-I've found that shift in mindset really frees me up to challenge, take risks, and dare to make mistakes," she adds.

Review where you've been holding back in your leadership. What elements of your personality could you allow to shine through more? Where could you be bolder?

For one week, at the end of each day, make a list of 3 to 5 things that worked well about your style of leadership. Actively use them more the following week.

2. Be Strengths-Savvy

Daniel Goleman, the pioneer of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), conducted in-depth research on leadership style across the top two percent of leaders in 500 global firms and identified several broad styles of leadership (visionary, affiliative, coaching, democratic, directive and pace-setting).

Get to know your signature leadership style inside-out. Heighten your awareness of what you're good at, and consciously play to your natural strengths as much as possible.

Ask five colleagues what they consider to be the strengths of your leadership style.

Buy a copy of Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, and take the online StrengthsFinder test it contains to identify your signature leadership themes.

3. Stretch Your Leadership Style

Alongside playing to your strengths, actively work to stretch into the leadership style(s) you find harder.

Goleman's EQ research findings in a nutshell: the most successful leaders can consciously draw on and seamlessly integrate all leadership styles, dependent on the situation. One size definitely does not fit all.

Masculine working environments tend to spawn quite a directive and pace-setting style. If this is not your natural approach, but is required within your job, find ways to blend your natural style with your "stretch style" so you're not putting on an act.

Dr. Samantha Collins, Aspire CEO and Founder, recently trained to be part of the Save The Children emergency relief team, and found that her natural coaching/affiliative style was not enough in moments of crisis.

"I needed to be incredibly directive and punchy-forceful, even," she reflects. "But what worked best for me was to give clear directions in as human and humorous a way as I could, so that the job got done more effectively but I didn't feel I was selling out on myself."

Blend with your team's leadership strengths to best advantage. "The best leaders are not well rounded...[but] the best teams are," says Tom Rath of Gallup, which has surveyed over 3 million people on the topic of leadership style and strengths.

Identify your leadership style stretch areas, and find ways to authentically blend them with your natural style.

Review the blend of strengths in your team or organization. Who on your team has strengths that particularly complement your own leadership style, and how could you use these better?

4. Be "Going Somewhere"

Call it being visionary, call it setting direction, call it having a compelling point-creating hope for the future and helping people see the way forward is one of the top four basic needs of followers, according to Gallup's latest research.

Recent studies by the Hay Group concur that to be a great leader, alongside being trustworthy, you simply must be able to communicate a vision of where you and others need to go. Not only will this inspire confidence downwards, among your team, it will also increase your impact upwards, among your bosses.

Build your external network and read widely. You need a solid grasp of what's happening outside your organization or department in order to create a bigger-picture vision.

Draft and communicate. It doesn't have to be perfectly worded from the start. You won't be considered visionary unless you get the word out.

5. Be Follower-Focused

The best leaders are human and socially conscious. Recognizing the contribution of others and giving the team room to innovate is the best way to lead into a more resilient future.

Consider "Why should my team be led by me?" Notice what you already bring them, and what they need more of from you to bring out their best.

Ask yourself, "What can I give my team today?"

6. Be Balanced

Strive for sustainable thought and action. The "do it and be damned with the consequences" approach may still be going on around you, but great leaders know that it won't wash long term.

Ask yourself, "What might the unintended impact of my/our action be?"

Balance yourself. Prioritize the things outside work that keep you sane by creating "golden time" in your calendar that can't be touched.

7. Be True to You

lists 8.5 million web pages that all claim to have "the best" chocolate cake recipe. Presumably each is somebody's favorite!

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7 Steps To A Truly Effective Leadership Style

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By Rebecca Hourston If you've ever been led by a Mushroom (everyone's in the dark), a Seagull (swoops in, squawks and dumps), or a Kipper (two-faced and gutless), you'll be all too aware of the leadership style you don't want to be known for. Fortunately, the simple fact that you are reading this article [...]

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This piece is an article about informal and formal communication, their differences and the effects on business which is a great article that can be used to relate to what was learned in the chapter.

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Businesses share information with employees through formal and informal channels. Formal communication typically occurs through prescribed reporting channels established by a company's hierarchy structure. Informal communication is commonly known as the grapevine and includes conversations among employees that take place outside of regular work activities.

Vertical

Formal communication typically moves vertically or horizontally through an organization. Vertical communication involves discussions between managers and their subordinates. A supervisor coaching or training an employee on how to complete a task is an example of downward vertical communication. When an employee shares feedback or a product idea with his supervisor or other managers, he engages in upward vertical communication. Leaner organizations with closer relationships between employees and management encourage more vertical communication.

Horizontal

Formal horizontal communication is interaction between colleagues or co-workers on the same level. This includes talks in work teams and the sharing of information between work groups or functional departments. A work team, for instance, may discuss alternatives to resolving a flaw in a new product launch. From an intra-group perspective, a salesperson might call the warehouse manager to ask if an order can be expedited to satisfy a new customer.

Informal Communication

Informal networks of communication have existed in companies for a long time, but they have largely been ignored before the 21st century. Break rooms are common meeting grounds for employees taking a breather from their jobs and engaging in informal conversations about families and hobbies and about the company, their jobs or co-workers.

Managing the Grapevine

Management of the grapevine is a concern for some companies. Some have tried to minimize its effects by limiting employee free time or monitoring break rooms. This can create distrust and a bitterness in employee ranks. Other companies have had better results when encouraging employees to share in informal activities to promote morale. Another strategy is to have front-line managers participate in informal conversations to minimize the division between management and employees and to positively influence grapevine discussions. Dispelling gossip and rumors is one benefit of this approach.

About the Author

Neil Kokemuller has been an active business, finance and education writer and content media website developer since 2007. He has been a college marketing professor since 2004. Kokemuller has additional professional experience in marketing, retail and small business. He holds a Master of Business Administration from Iowa State University.

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Formal & Informal Business Communication

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Businesses share information with employees through formal and informal channels. Formal communication typically occurs through prescribed reporting channels established by a company's hierarchy structure. Informal communication is commonly known as the grapevine and includes conversations among employees that take place outside of regular work activities. Formal communication typically moves vertically or horizontally through an organization.

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This is a a Harvard business review on performance appraisal, it asses it from the employer's and the employee's point of view and talk about what the future hold for it.

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Hated by bosses and subordinates alike, traditional performance appraisals have been abandoned by more than a third of U.S. companies. The annual review's biggest limitation, the authors argue, is its emphasis on holding employees accountable for what they did last year, at the expense of improving performance now and in the future. That's why many organizations are moving to more-frequent, development-focused conversations between managers and employees.

The authors explain how performance management has evolved over the decades and why current thinking has shifted: (1) Today's tight labor market creates pressure to keep employees happy and groom them for advancement. (2) The rapidly changing business environment requires agility, which argues for regular check-ins with employees. (3) Prioritizing improvement over accountability promotes teamwork.

Some companies worry that going numberless may make it harder to align individual and organizational goals, award merit raises, identify poor performers, and counter claims of discrimination-though traditional appraisals haven't solved those problems, either. Other firms are trying hybrid approaches-for example, giving employees performance ratings on multiple dimensions, coupled with regular development feedback.

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Hated by bosses and subordinates alike, traditional performance appraisals have been abandoned by more than a third of U.S. companies. The annual review's biggest limitation, the authors argue, is its emphasis on holding employees accountable for what they did last year, at the expense of improving performance now and in the future.

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This a good article of the organizational culture of Apple by the employees of the company itself, which was a review for me of what we learnt in this module.

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Getty Images News

Apple has a reputation for being extremely secretive in its day-to-day operations. So secretive, in fact, that some employees didn't know they were working on the first iPad until Steve Jobs unveiled it on stage.

That makes us all wonder what it must be like to work for Apple.

We know it can be intense. Alan Dye, Apple's vice president of user-interface design, recently gave a great quote about what it can be like to work for the Cupertino company, which has given him a mild version of imposter syndrome.

"I'm scared to death that at some point I'm going to get found out. You know, Tim [Cook] is going to realize the truth about me, which is I'm terrible."

Apple employees aren't the only ones to feel inadequate at times. Lots of coders at Google feel the same way.

Still, we rarely hear anything from ordinary Apple employees about what the company is like on the inside. Luckily, there are several Quora threads devoted to answering this question. Apple employees have also spoken about their experiences on podcasts, and post some great pictures on Instagram at times too.

We put together some edited quotes from the more interesting answers, Some of their answers date back to the Steve Jobs era, and some of them are more recent.

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What Apple employees really think about the company's internal corporate culture

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Apple has a reputation for being extremely secretive in its day-to-day operations. So secretive, in fact, that some employees didn't know they were working on the first iPad until Steve Jobs unveiled it on stage. That makes us all wonder what it must be like to work for Apple.

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This was an article the gave an inside explanation of a vertical organisational structure which was a good review of one of the types we learnt in this module.

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A vertical organization structure is one that relies on managers to command and control their employees' work. A business owner is typically at the top of a vertical chain of command. There are advantages and disadvantages to a vertical structure. The main benefit is that there are clearly defined roles and responsibilities. The main drawback is that the roles sometimes get so set in stone they can hamper creativity and innovation. A small business owner should be aware of all facets of a vertical organization structure to decide if it's the right model for her company.

Top-Down Management

If an entrepreneur is on top, he gets to transmit his ideas down the chain of command. He relies on managers in the middle to communicate and implement his directives. Vertical structures are characterized by centralized decision-making, which might not include significant input from lower-level managers and workers. Businesses can get around this problem by encouraging workers to send new ideas via email to the business owner.

Rules and Relationships

Rules typically govern the levels of authority in a vertical structure. Employees use an organizational chart to understand the reporting relationships. Managers use organizational rules, often set by the owner, to understand how much authority they have. To some degree, managers are responsible for all employees below them in the vertical structure. At the bottom, line managers supervise the work of their line workers.

Competitive Advantage

Although small businesses do not operate in a context like the military, where vertical control is essential for survival, some businesses find ways to keep a vertical structure and maintain their competitive advantage. Reporting relationships might stay the same, but managers can change their approach to management. They develop a culture in which employees feel respected and included, and where the structural boundaries do not deter the flow of ideas and communication. They set a high value on people, not products. If employees are treated as equals and their ideas are used, they're less likely to feel hampered by their positions in the vertical hierarchy.

Changing

Vertical structures are efficient because of their clear reporting relationships, but they often aren't flexible enough to survive in evolving markets. In these cases, a small business owner should implement an organizational change -- or at least a significant shift in how the company operates -- by getting the initial support of managers and technical experts. If managers and experts support the structural change and contribute their ideas to the planning phase, they can more effectively lead their employees through the process of the change.

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A vertical organization structure is one that relies on managers to command and control their employees' work. A business owner is typically at the top of a vertical chain of command. There are advantages and disadvantages to a vertical structure. The main benefit is that there are clearly defined roles and responsibilities.

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The article bellow is a Harvard business review that helps brings one's mind to assessing how well and effective one's problem solving skill is which is part of what we learned in this module.

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The rigor with which a problem is defined is the most important factor in finding a good solution. Many organizations, however, are not proficient at articulating their problems and identifying which ones are crucial to their strategies.

They may even be trying to solve the wrong problems-missing opportunities and wasting resources in the process. The key is to ask the right questions.

The author describes a process that his firm, InnoCentive, has used to help clients define and articulate business, technical, social, and policy challenges and then present them to an online community of more than 250,000 solvers. The four-step process consists of asking a series of questions and using the answers to create a problem statement that will elicit novel ideas from an array of experts.

Establish the need for a solution. What is the basic need? Who will benefit from a solution?

Justify the need. Why should your organization attempt to solve this problem? Is it aligned with your strategy? If a solution is found, who will implement it?

Contextualize the problem. What have you and others already tried? Are there internal and external constraints to implementing a solution?

Write the problem statement. What requirements must a solution meet? What language should you use to describe the problem? How will you evaluate solutions and measure success?

EnterpriseWorks/VITA, a nonprofit organization, used this process to find a low-cost, lightweight, and convenient product that expands access to clean drinking water in the developing world.

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Reprint: R1209F The rigor with which a problem is defined is the most important factor in finding a good solution. Many organizations, however, are not proficient at articulating their problems and identifying which ones are crucial to their strategies. They may even be trying to solve the wrong problems-missing opportunities and wasting resources in the process.

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This article was great as it talked about the benefits of and how to master the art of effective communication in an organization which we studied in this module.

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If you are part of management in your organization, then you know the importance of effective communication in the workplace. Learning how to lead and communicate is a conscious effort that must be learned consistently. No matter what type of internal communications software you use, there's still plenty to learn about communicating effectively with your employees.

TED Talks is an amazing platform to learn how to improve communication in the workplace. These talks spread the force of good and learning in the world. With over thousands of speakers sharing ideas to improve humanity, it might be tough to sift through all of them to learn how to communicate better. After sifting through tons of talks, we've narrowed the, down based on their potential to help you communicate better at work.

Below are 11 TED talks that can help you master the art of communication and leadership.

1. Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action

Using examples from some of the most popular brands and people, Simon Sinek reveals how great leaders think, act, and communicate. Using "The Golden Circle" Sinek shows why some leaders are able to inspire while others fail to do that.
What drives behavior? Do people buy what you believe or why you believe?
By asking why, how, and what questions, Sinek shows why people buy, accept, and follow ideas.
http://go.ted.com/YxD
2. Seth Godin: How to Get Your Ideas to Spread

People who can spread ideas and know how to do it properly, win. To make this happen, Seth Godin shows how to cause the change you want to see by getting your ideas to spread. With way more choices and too little time, people have learned to ignore all of the marketing and communication messages companies are pushing out into the world.
What determines which idea spread? How do you find a group that truly cares for what you have to say?
Godin answers the above questions in this captivating talk.
http://go.ted.com/YxB
3. Drew Dudley: Everyday Leadership

In this 6-minute talk, Drew Dudley gives a funny talk on what it takes to become an influential leader. Dudley talks of that "lollipop moment" where leaders make a powerful impression on people without knowing it. He admonishes leaders to realize how impactful their role can be.
http://go.ted.com/Yxx
4. Roselinde Torres: What It Takes to be a Great Leader

With her 25 years of experience observing what makes truly great leaders, Roselinde offers her insight into leadership preparations. In this talk she discusses why leadership gaps are widening and what successful leaders are doing today.

Roselinde distills the characteristics of leaders and preparation practices that enable people to grow to their full potential.
http://go.ted.com/Yx4
5. Seth Godin: The Tribes We Lead

Tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big permanent changes. Seth Godin talks about creating and growing an idea. According to Seth, we are living at a time when making a change has changed and it is happening through leadership. He also talks of the importance of true believers in helping create a movement.

Seth Godin argues against mass marketing since it requires average ideas. He advocates for the idea of tribes -- leading and connecting people with ideas.

Using his funny approach in explaining ideas, Seth will keep you glued throughout this 17-minute TED talk.
http://go.ted.com/Yxa
6. Dan Pink: The Puzzle of Motivation

A former speechwriter for Al Gore and trained lawyer, Dan Pink makes an evidence-based case on how organizations should run their businesses. How should businesses motivate people? Do incentives sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity? How should organizations make their decisions about talent and people? How do you get high performance on 21 st Century definitional tasks?

Dan gives examples of how enticing people with a sweeter carrot or threatening them with a sharper stick may motivate or demotivate based on the tasks at hand. He also highlights 3 building blocks for today's businesses.
http://go.ted.com/YxE
7. Itay Talgam - Lead Like the Great Conductors

Italy Talgam demonstrates how to create harmony without saying a word. As an orchestra conductor, Talgam gives an animated funny talk and demonstrates how different orchestra conductors lead their orchestras. He offers a wide selection of conductors each with his different style and approach to leading an orchestra.

Talgam breaks down and breathes life to each conductor's approach to music and beautifully relates it to leadership. Use this as a communication tool. You are going to want to watch this talk again and again to grasp the idea he brings out of ' doing without doing.'
http://go.ted.com/YxV
8. David Logan: Tribal Leadership
What makes tribes different and how can one nudge tribes forward?
Logan reviews different stages of tribes and how a uniting characteristic can create a tribe that is aware of its own existence. He highlights a number of companies and organizations in each of the five stages of leadership and how to move a stage up.

In this captivating talk, David shows how great leaders connect people who don't know each other to something new.
http://go.ted.com/Yx8
9. Fields Wicker-Miurin: Learning from Leadership's Missing Manual
Is there a user's manual for leadership?
Wicker-Miurin tells stories of leadership that are of value to anybody looking to learn how to be an effective leader. Wicker teaches 3 models of leadership by showcasing 3 stories of leaders from across the world.

Her talk is very insightful on what it takes to change the world and how to do it. The awareness that a leader is part of a whole comes up consistently throughout the talk.
http://go.ted.com/YxS
10. Derek Sivers: How to Start a Movement

Using a short clip, Derek Sivers break down the process of how a movement gets started. Having the courage to show others how to follow is the key to being a great leader as it is well demonstrated in this amazing 3-minute TED talk.

It's amazing how many things we can learn about leadership from this short talk.
http://go.ted.com/Yxh
11. Simon Sinek: How Good Leaders Make You Feel Safe
Where do good leaders come from? What role does the environment play in this? How can leaders create a safe environment that that would make their employees trust them?
Simon Sinek gives a captivating talk on the above subject and answers the above questions with a focus on leadership.
http://go.ted.com/Yxq

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11 TED Talks on Effective Communication in the Workplace

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If you are part of management in your organization, then you know the importance of effective communication in the workplace. Learning how to lead and communicate is a conscious effort that must be learned consistently. No matter what type of internal communications software you use, there's still plenty to learn about communicating effectively with your employees.

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This article reflects on the chapter about managerial decisions, it talks about companies that have made bad mistakes in taking certain decisions that turn out bad for the company.

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As I've wandered through the business landscape over the past 4 decades, I've often observed people making business decisions that I was pretty sure were going to end up somewhere between bad and appallingly, astronomically bad. And I've certainly been guilty of making a few of those kinds of decisions myself.

Almost without exception, my bad decisions and those I've seen others make resulted from one of three things. The decision-maker: 1) didn't bother to get all the relevant facts; 2) made invalid assumptions based on ego, wishful thinking, or fear; and/or 3) didn't trust the input of their own advisors.

As you read through the following, feel free to be entertained and feel superior - but I'd suggest you also take them as cautionary tales; great examples of what not to do:

1) How many zeros? In 1977, the senior execs at 20th Century made an astonishingly short-sighted decision. They signed over all product merchandising rights for any and all Star Wars films to George Lucas - in exchange for a mere $20,000 cut in Lucas' studio paycheck. The combined revenue from merchandising is estimated to have exceeded three billion dollars, and continues to grow annually, making it the most lucrative deal ever struck between an individual and a corporate studio in entertainment history. (This one is courtesy of my wonderful reader Dr. Ilona Jerabek, from an article on her website.)

2) And your hair's weird, too. In 1962, the Beatles auditioned at the London office of Decca Records. The executive in charge of talent rejected them: he thought they sounded too much like a currently popular group called The Shadows (who?), and he told Brian Epstein, their manager, "We don't like your boys' sound. Groups are out; four-piece groups with guitars particularly are finished." Well over 2 billion Beatles albums have since sold worldwide.

3) We're a serious business, thank you very much. In 1876, William Orten was President of Western Union, which had a monopoly on the most advanced communications technology available, the telegraph. Orten was offered the patent on a new invention, the telephone, for $100,000 (worth about $2M in current dollars). He considered the whole idea ridiculous, and wrote directly to Alexander Graham Bell, saying, "After careful consideration of your invention, while it is a very interesting novelty, we have come to the conclusion that it has no commercial possibilities... What use could this company make of an electrical toy?" Two years later, after the telephone began to take off, Orten realized the magnitude of his mistake, and spent years (unsuccessfully) challenging Bell's patents.

4) Say cheese! The Eastman Kodak company developed the first digital camera in 1975, then proceeded to sit on it (and the core technology for the cell phone, as well). They decided not to develop it because they were afraid it would cannibalize their film business (at one point they had a 90% share of the US film market.)

5) Say cheese, part II. In the early '80s, Fuji entered the US film marketplace with lower-priced film and supplies, but Kodak management believed that US consumers would never abandon their homegrown brand. In 1984, Kodak passed on the chance to be the official film of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Fuji won the rights, which gave them the strong foothold they needed to catalyze their growth in the US marketplace.

Kodak never fully recovered from these and other poor decisions; in 2012 the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

6) Did anybody phone home? In 1981 Amblin Productions called the Mars Company and offered a simple cross-promotional opportunity: How about if we use M&Ms in our new film, giving you free publicity, and in return, you can promote our film in your packaging? The advertising and marketing folks at Mars said "No." The film was ET the Extra-Terrestrial, and the rest is history. Reeses Pieces, the not-nearly-as-well-known M&M competitor, saw sales jump 65% in the months after the film was released featuring their product.

7) Hot under the collar. In 2000, Gerald Levin, the chairman of Time Warner, was so confident in the deal he had made to merge with America Online, that he decided to forego placing a collar on the transaction. A collar enables the seller-in this case Time Warner-to revisit the terms of the transaction if the buyer's stock falls below a certain price. Almost as soon as the merger was announced, and before it was completed, the Internet bubble burst and AOL shares plunged 50%. Without a collar, Time Warner wouldn't be able to renegotiate the deal. Time Warner execs urged Levin to re-think the deal, but he didn't. The rest is history, and Time Warner shareholders are still paying for his stubbornness.

Of course, it's easy to see the folly of these decisions in retrospect; hindsight is 20/20, and no one can make the right decision all the time. But I suspect if each of these unfortunate executives had approached these decisions with a little more curiosity, a little more open-mindedness, and a little less certainty about the rightness of their position....we might all be using Western Union Kodak smartphones.

_______________

Check out Erika Andersen's latest book, Leading So People Will Follow, and discover how to be a followable leader. Booklist called it "a book to read more than once and to consult many times."

Want to know what Erika and her colleagues at Proteus do? Find out here.

Join our conversation about leadership on LinkedIn.

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It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time: 7 Of The Worst Business Decisions Ever Made

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As I've wandered through the business landscape over the past 4 decades, I've often observed people making business decisions that I was pretty sure were going to end up somewhere between bad and appallingly, astronomically bad. And I've certainly been guilty of making a few of those kinds of decisions myself.

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This article is a reflection of a multinational organisation as we studied in this module. it talks about the fortunes of one of the biggest multinational corporations in America.

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Retail giant Walmart has a new CEO, Doug McMillon. He faces considerable challenges leading the largest company in the world. Fortune's Brian O'Keefe profiled McMillon in the new Fortune 500 issue. Here are nine facts about the retail company that may surprise you:

1. Walmart earned $485.7 billion in revenue in 2014, which outpaced No. 2 Exxon Mobil by $103 billion.

2. If Walmart were a country, its sales would rank it 28th in the world in GDP. That's right behind Norway and ahead of Austria.

3. Walmart's sells 1 billion pounds of bananas each year.
MORE: These are biggest companies in the world
4. The Walton family owns approximately 50% of Walmart's stock. They're one of the richest families in the world.

5. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon says he has a tough challenge ahead of him: "If you want hard, try to take a 52-year-old business that's this size and change it. That's hard."

6. Walmart's biggest businesses over the years include teen sportswear, Halloween candy, and yarn.

7. The company is mentioned over 60,000 times each day on social media.

8. Walmart has about 11,000 stores in 27 countries. It also has 2.2 million employees, or "associates, which makes it the biggest employer in the world after the U.S. Department of Defense and the Chinese army.

9. It hasn't grown nearly as much as Amazon. In the last three years, Walmart's sales grew by a total of 8.6%. Revenue at Amazon, meanwhile, has nearly doubled.

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9 Absolutely Astonishing Facts About Walmart

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Retail giant Walmart has a new CEO, Doug McMillon. He faces considerable challenges leading the largest company in the world. Fortune's Brian O'Keefe profiled McMillon in the new Fortune 500 issue. Here are nine facts about the retail company that may surprise you: 1. Walmart earned $485.7 billion in revenue in 2014, which outpaced No.

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This article talk about the importance of planning withing a small business organization and how product, expansion and financial planning can help build success in an organisation.

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The Importance of Planning in an Organization

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Planning helps an organization chart a course for the achievement of its goals. The process begins with reviewing the current operations of the organization and identifying what needs to be improved ...

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this article bellow talks about how social corporate responsibilities and give give entrepreneurs an edge in the market and also give an added advantage to a company over others. It is a good reflection of the corporate governance we did in module two.

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Corporate social responsibility (CSR), the term given to companies' efforts to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits alongside great products and services, is not always a favorite topic in business meetings.
Related: 4 Steps for Launching Corporate Social Responsibility at Your Business
The idea of "giving back to the community" certainly has its appeal, and there's no doubt that it makes for a great press release. But contributing to society at large is often a much lower priority for companies than turning a profit. Frankly, the idea can even sound kind of hippie-dippy, at first. I know I was skeptical.

But that was before I began implementing elements of CSR into my own business strategy. It didn't take long to realize that, although I did find those elements personally fulfilling, the benefits stretched far beyond making me feel good. They made my company better, stronger and more relevant, too -- and not just from a P.R. standpoint.

CSR might be the last thing on an entrepreneur's mind when he or she sets out to start a successful business, but I'm now convinced it should be part of a company's culture from Day 1. Not just because it's the "right thing to do," though it is, but because it gives you a competitive edge, too. Philosopher Henry David Thoreau said that "Goodness is the only investment that never fails." Here are five reasons why:

1. A healthy society breeds a healthy business.

Guess what? If the communities that you rely upon for your business are struggling, your business is going to struggle, too. After all, a successful world is necessary for your products or services to grow and mature in a healthy economic environment.

Good luck founding a successful startup if the economy is in crisis. You can't engage with customers if they're so worried about paying the bills and societal issues that they don't have time to consider your innovative offerings. Promoting a happier, healthier society makes sense for any business, because a peaceful and prosperous society is a prerequisite for a thriving business.

2. Responsible practices result in cost savings.

Cost-efficiency is one of the first responsibilities of any entrepreneur, and engaging in responsible, sustainable practices can be a great way to cut costs. Using less packaging or slashing energy waste doesn't just help conserve environmental resources -- it helps conserve spending, too.

GE's corporate office achieved an energy savings of 57 percent simply by eliminating all fluorescent bulbs in its headquarters and replacing them with energy-efficient ones. That was an environmentally responsible choice, sure, but the decision also saved the company money. It's what I'd call a win-win.
Related: Corporate Social Responsibility: Planet Fitness Takes a Stand Against Bullying
3. CSR results in brand differentiation.

Giving back in a tangible way can be a terrific way to set your company apart from your competition. A great example is TOMS. For every pair of shoes the footwear company sells, it donates a pair to a child in an impoverished region. TOMS call this its "One For One" business model, which also immediately differentiates the company from its myriad competitors selling slip-on shoes.

The company is doing something good that others in its industry aren't willing to do, and some that has made TOMS a recognized brand.

4. Making your company stand for something creates employee buy-in.

In most industries, competition for the best employees can get fierce. Making your company stand for more than profits gives employees an easy reason to believe in your corporate vision, and when prime job candidates see your business tangibly contributing to society, they're more likely to want to be a part of what you're doing.

I've also found that employees give more of their heart and soul to your business when your business does work that actually touches their hearts and souls.

5. CSR pumps up consumer demand.

More and more, consumers simply expect businesses and corporations to help make the world a better, nicer place. That might seem, to many would-be entrepreneurs, like a strange burden to place on a money-making enterprise, but it's essential to see CSR as an opportunity.

How many marketing dollars are you willing to spend to positively connect with consumers? Often, responsible giving and conservation can help accomplish the same task more effectively for far less cost. Millennials, in particular, are very committed to the idea that businesses should be good citizens, and their age segment now represents about a quarter of the entire U.S. population, with $200 billion in annual buying power. Best to keep them happy!
Related: Why Should Your Business Care About Social Responsibility?
So, if corporate social responsibility makes you feel good and makes your customers feel good, why aren't you making it part of your core company values?

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Corporate Social Responsibility Can Give Entrepreneurs an Edge

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Corporate social responsibility (CSR), the term given to companies' efforts to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits alongside great products and services, is not always a favorite topic in business meetings. Related: 4 Steps for Launching Corporate Social Responsibility at Your Business The idea of "giving back to the community" certainly has its appeal, and there's no doubt that it makes for a great press release.

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MODULE TWO:                                 

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MODULE TWO:                                 

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This article I found on the web is a great article on the world's most ethical companies, from different countries around the world and 48 different industries. It is a good piece the talks about organizational ethics and values , and also how those companies have grown to maintain their various ethics.

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For the past decade the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Ethisphere Institute - an organization focused on gauging ethical business practices - has put out a list of the "World's Most Ethical Companies." This week the firm announced its 2016 honorees-firms it feels represent some of the best the international business world has to offer. (See full list below.)

This year Ethisphere's roster includes 131 companies from 21 countries, representing 45 industries. The list includes 14 10-time honorees and 13 first-time honorees.

The overall goal of Ethisphere's rankings are to reward organizations with good practices and offer a model - and actionable advice - on how corporate entities should conduct themselves, says chief marketing and strategy officer, Tia Smallwood. "The papers are filled with scandals and companies that made judgment errors, that made policy errors or that don't have good practices in place to handle things like non-retaliation or transparency or open reporting, or have had a crisis and handled it poorly," she said. "But there a lot of companies that are really trying to do things the right way."

Ethisphere Institute's annual ranking is made up of companies that have submitted to be vetted for the chance to become an honoree. Submissions also come with a fee attached - $1,000 for companies generating less than $500 million revenue and $1,500 for those making more. Some companies that submit do so not to become honorees but to glean how they might improve their own organizational ethics moving forward.
The Methodology
Companies in the running are asked 180 questions to form Ethisphere's proprietary " Ethics Quotient" score-part of a vetting process that evaluates them in categories including ethics and compliance programs, corporate citizenship and responsibility, culture of ethics, governance, and leadership, innovation and reputation. Answering the many queries and compiling accompanying data to complete the submission can take a month, says Smallwood.

Once all the information is in, Ethisphere's staff - with help from its panel of advisers - verify as much as is possible through research, executive interviews, perusing financial filings and looking through reports from online sources and news reports. Analysts research each company's history of litigation, reputation, and ethical track record. Industry, size, geographic location, and other factors, are all taken into consideration.

Ethisphere rejects companies that have significant legal charges pending and won't consider firms that deal in alcohol, tobacco or firearms.

Notable call-outs this year are firms that have been honored every year of the list's existence. Those include Aflac, Fluor Corporation, GE, Kao Corporation (Japan), Milliken & Company, Starbucks and UPS.
2016's Most Ethical Companies List Follow me on Twitter @KarstenStrauss

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For the past decade the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Ethisphere Institute - an organization focused on gauging ethical business practices - has put out a list of the "World's Most Ethical Companies." This week the firm announced its 2016 honorees-firms it feels represent some of the best the international business world has [...]

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http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/rodney-adkins
The Rodney Atkins IBM success story of module one was also another great article which expanded my knowledge on the different levels of management, and the skills they need in accomplishing their goals.