Michele Zanini

Beyond Either/Or: building organizations that can walk and chew gum at the same time

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Beyond Either/Or: building organizations that can walk and chew gum at the same time

Several years ago years ago, the penalties for clumsily managed trade-offs might have been tolerable, but no longer. Today, a business must be a paragon of penny-pinching efficiency on one hand and a champion of rule-busting innovation on the other.

Automation anxiety is largely misplaced

Empowerment Featured

Automation anxiety is largely misplaced

The experience of companies like Nucor is that we have little to fear from automation -- provided we stop treating people as semi-programmable robots, and instead give workers the incentives, discretion, skills, and safety to be creative in their jobs.

Dee Hock - a true management maverick

Learning from the Vanguard Featured

Dee Hock - a true management maverick

Dee Hock, the visionary entrepreneur and executive who founded and ran Visa in its formative years, passed away on July 20, 2022. He was also one of the world's greatest management mavericks of the 20th century. Hock's experience building and scaling Visa as a wildly successful for-profit membership corporation-in which

Thinking Bigger about Social Accountability with Brian Moynihan (Ep. 9)

Brian is the Chair of the Board and CEO of Bank of America, one of the world’s largest financial institutions. He's also a prominent proponent of shared and streamlined metrics to hold companies accountable for their stakeholder impact, and recently led an effort to World Economic Forum effort to

The organizational secrets of the Large Hadron Collider

Learning from the Vanguard Featured

The organizational secrets of the Large Hadron Collider

Solving complex problems at scale requires plenty of leadership and management. What it doesn't require is a top-down structure.

Building Fearless Organizations with Amy Edmondson (Ep. 8)

Building Fearless Organizations with Amy Edmondson (Ep. 8)

Mistrust demoralizes, fear paralyzes. Question is, how to we wring these out of our organizations? There's no better person to answer this than Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School and the world's leading expert on psychological safety and collaboration at work.

Busting Bureaucracy with Bill Anderson (Ep. 7)

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Busting Bureaucracy with Bill Anderson (Ep. 7)

Over the last five years, Roche Pharmaceuticals CEO Bill Anderson has been leading a crusade to create a more empowering and entrepreneurial organization. We recently sat down with Bill to learn about Roche's journey to vanquish bureaucracy.

Leading from the Heart with Angela Ahrendts (Ep. 6)

Leadership Featured

Leading from the Heart with Angela Ahrendts (Ep. 6)

What does it mean to be a “leader?” In most organizations, the term is applied, indiscriminately, to anybody in a management role. But, as you may have noticed, having direct reports doesn’t make you a leader. Gallup data shows that the single biggest predictor of engagement scores is the

Making a Bigger Difference Than You Thought Possible, with Frances Westley (Ep. 5)

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Making a Bigger Difference Than You Thought Possible, with Frances Westley (Ep. 5)

As any CEO will tell you, changing an organization, particularly a large one, is an immensely complex undertaking. Research by Bain & Company suggests that only 12% of transformation [https://www.bain.com/insights/achieving-breakthrough-results-in-sustainability/] programs meet or exceed their objectives—and most of these programs are incremental, not ground-breaking. What

JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon on "combating the enemy within."

bureaucratic drag

JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon on "combating the enemy within."

The new JP Morgan annual report is out, and with comes Jamie Dimon's always compelling letter to shareholders. This year's missive covers a number of notable trends, including the rising competitive threat to banks from alternative providers of financial services like Wal-Mart, Apple, and Fintechs, as well as the decline

Most people don't hate their jobs, but they definitely hate how they're managed

Management Data Featured

Most people don't hate their jobs, but they definitely hate how they're managed

The engagement deficit isn’t about what people do at work, but how they’re managed.

Everyone a Creator with Tim Brown (Ep. 4)

Everyone a Creator with Tim Brown (Ep. 4)

In the fourth episode of the New Human Movement [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm4Dn_e0l31Pm2JE50pm96w] series, Gary and I spoke to Tim Brown, the chair of IDEO, the iconic Palo Alto-based design firm. Having led hundreds of innovation projects in the private and public sector, Tim knows more about

Building a Business With a Higher Calling with Paul Polman (Ep. 3)

new human movement Featured

Building a Business With a Higher Calling with Paul Polman (Ep. 3)

In our third episode of our New Human Movement series, Gary and I spoke to Paul Polman, the former CEO of Unilever (one the one of the world‘s biggest food and personal care companies.

Why Good Jobs Matter with Zeynep Ton (Ep. 2)

new human movement Featured

Why Good Jobs Matter with Zeynep Ton (Ep. 2)

In our second episode of our New Human Movement [humanocracy.com/conversations] series, Gary and I spoke to Zeynep Ton, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and one of the pre-eminent experts on crating good jobs. [https://hbr.org/2017/11/the-case-for-good-jobs] Here are some of the topics

Entrepreneurs Everywhere with Eric Ries (Ep. 1)

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Entrepreneurs Everywhere with Eric Ries (Ep. 1)

For the first episode of our New Human Movement [humanocracy.com/conversations] series, Gary and I sat down with Eric Ries--a serial entrepreneur, the bestselling author of the Lean Startup [http://theleanstartup.com], and founder of the Long Term Stock Exchange. [https://ltse.com] We covered a lot of topics,

Welcome to the New Human Movement

new human movement

Welcome to the New Human Movement

Given the unprecedented challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, we need institutions … … that can reinvent themselves on the fly, … that are infused with the spirit of entrepreneurship, … and that give every employee the chance to learn, grow and innovate. At present, few organizations measure up. When confronted with disruptive

Friday Links, Jan 14

Friday Links, Jan 14

1. The damage done by rampant credentialism. Using educational accomplishment as a proxy for skills and problem-solving ability is a deeply elitist and flawed approach. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Selling ideas "up the chain of command." This HBR piece has some useful advice, but the whole argument is premised on the notion

Friday Links, December 10

Friday Links, December 10

1. The ESG mirage. A great Businessweek piece on how popular ESG ratings driving trillions into sustainable investing have little connection with a company’s impact on the planet. Sustainable Investing Is Mostly About Sustaining CorporationsWall Street uses ESG ratings to boost “sustainable” labels on stock and bond funds—but

What's really behind the "Great Resignation"

What's really behind the "Great Resignation"

I recently recorded a video on the "Great Resignation." There are so many bad takes in the business media about this phenomenon, which imply it's mostly about white collar workers contemplating their corporate existence in between zoom calls, that I felt I should try share some facts. I also try

Friday links, December 3

Friday links, December 3

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Domineering leaders reinforce domineering behaviors across the organization. This is hardly surprising. Advancement in organizations is almost invariably a product of zero-sum “promotion tournaments.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory] In such a system, domineering, cutthroat behaviors are the norm, not the exception. Unless we make structural

Bachelor in Bureaucratic Bloat

bureaucratic drag

Bachelor in Bureaucratic Bloat

The relentless rise of management and administration in U.S. universities has become a real drag on faculty and students alike, as Yale's experience suggests.

The great pharmacist rebellion against crappy work

Empowerment Featured

The great pharmacist rebellion against crappy work

You know things are bad if even pharmacists are revolting against poor working conditions.

De-biasing the performance review, once and for all.

Meritocracy Featured

De-biasing the performance review, once and for all.

Ideally, judgments about human capability would be comprehensive and impersonal—the product of standardized, data-driven performance systems. In practice is seldom achieved, as new study (and several others) suggest.

Can we manage without managers?

Can we manage without managers?

The management column (Bartebly) in this week's The Economist makes the case that managerial hierarchies are valuable & inevitable, and flat organizations represent a "false utopia:" Why companies need middle managersOrganisations embrace flat hierarchies at their perilThe EconomistThe Economist [https://amp.economist.com/business/2021/10/02/why-companies-need-middle-managers] The article is

Warren Buffet on why the institution matters more than individuals

Among all of Warren Buffet's legendary shareholder letters, the 1989 edition is among my favorites. In it, he makes a powerful argument that, when it comes to firm performance, institutional design is far more important that the talents of individual executives. Here's the key passage, drawn from the section where