Ann Oliveri

The Warning Signs of Defending the Status Quo

Seth Godin nails the defenders of the status quo today and provides a list of warning signs that you are falling into that camp.  See Seth's blog for the complete list, but here are three that leapt out at me.

"When confronted with a new idea, do you:

• Grab onto the rare thing that could go wrong instead of amplifying the likely thing that will go right?
• Focus on short-term costs instead of long-term benefits, because the short-term is more vivid for you?
• Fight to retain benefits and status earned only through tenure and longevity?"

If you're finding yourself trapped into this way of thinking, apply Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats discipline with your team and expand beyond your default "black hat" thinking.

Bears in the Boardroom

Reminders of childhood--teddy bears, crayons, children's drawings--support ethical behavior at work.  So says Sreedhari Desai in the September Harvard Business Review.

 

 

The finding: Adults are less likely to cheat and more likely to engage in “pro-social” behaviors when reminders of children, such as teddy bears and crayons, are present.

The research: Sreedhari Desai and her research partner Francesca Gino had people play classic psychology games in which the subjects controlled how much money other people earned and could earn more themselves if they lied. Half the participants were either in a room with children’s toys or engaged in children’s activities. Across the board, those participants lied less and were more generous than the control subjects.

Observations in a pysch lab aren't the real world, so the researchers cross-referenced corporate and geographical data to uncover the fact that "if companies have five or more day-care centers, nurseries, or kindergartens within a two-mile radius of their headquarters, their charitable giving increases significantly."

Huh.

I have always relied on my bear as my standard for ethical behavior or at least a stern reminder to be a better person.  Nice to know he could do the same for your association. Better yet, why not ask everyone to bring their bears to work this week?

Permission to Innovate

What drives innovation at nonprofits? Kristina Jaskyte who studies nonprofits says: "It's more about who works for an organization." The human factor is critcal, and "almost as important as the resources an organization has."

Transformational leaders capitalize on employees' creativity, Jaskyte says, "challenging the process, inspiring shared vision, enabling others to act, modeling the way, and encouraging the heart."

How Leaders Encourage Innovation in the fall issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review summarizes her research and findings. The Georgia Center for Nonprofits interviewed Jaskyte on her work and you can read the pdf of that interview thanks to Google!

Are You A Curator?

Just as a modern art museum is clearly a modern art museum, so should a business--or your association--be clear about what it does and doesn't offer.

That's Ray Weaver's idea as vetted on Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge this week. Weaver is an HBS assistant professor in marketing and is looking for comments on his concept.

"Occasionally an organization does a great job of articulating what it does and whom it's good for, and has the courage to acknowledge explicitly the kinds of customers who might genuinely be better off elsewhere," he says. "This combination is rare but very powerful: an acknowledgment that we can't be all things to all people; a clear and unapologetic vision for and articulation of what we do stand for that dictates business practices throughout the organization; and a genuine interest in helping potential customers figure out if what we're selling is right for them."

Are you a curator?  Do you offer members a limited amount of choices with a brief, engaging description of each choice, and easily classified?