What Great Companies Know About Culture - Deidre H. Campbell - Harvard Business Review

Even in this unprecedented business environment, great leaders know they should invest in their people. Those companies who are committed to a strong workplace culture tend to perform well, and now they are featured prominently in a new ranking recently released by Great Place to Work Institute. Among the top performers on the 2011 World's Best Multinational Companies list are culturally-strong technology companies such as Microsoft, NetApp, SAS, and Google. But is there a direct correlation between employee investment and the balance sheet? As Prof. James L. Heskett wrote in his latest book The Culture Cycle, effective culture can account for 20-30 percent of the differential in corporate performance when compared with "culturally unremarkable" competitors.

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Systems Thinking Fuels High-Velocity Organizations - Steven Spear, MIT Engineering

Companies that are in the same industry, use the same basic technology, and address the same market needs can nevertheless exhibit huge disparities in performance. Consider Honda vs. Chrysler, for example, or Intel vs. Advanced Micro Devices. Through a combination of low cost, efficiency, timeliness, and responsiveness, some companies just perform more efficiently. In the course Creating High-Velocity Organizations, an elective offered in MIT's System Design and Management (SDM) program, students examine how and why some companies succeed while others fail through written and video case studies, lectures, and in-class simulations. Examples center on heavy and high-tech manufacturing, new product development and manufacturing, healthcare, and the military.

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The Four Strands: Creating Companies Aligned With Human DNA - Dr Henry Cloud, Change This

“There are universal developmental issues and milestones in the construction of all people, which like gravity, must be obeyed. They are like the laws of physics, non-negotiable. Break these laws and dysfunction occurs. But, obey these laws and people thrive. They will be what we call “healthy.”

So, when a company is designed and operates in ways that are aligned with how people are constructed, it will be like an airplane aligned with the laws of physics that govern force or torque. It will reach the altitude, speed and course that its horsepower allows. But if its design is not aligned, it will fly in circles, stall out, crash, or break apart.”

Click here to download and read the full manifesto

About Henry Cloud, Ph.D | Dr. Cloud is a psychologist, communicator and leadership coach. As the author of many best-selling books, his writing reflects experience not only in the clinical world, but the arenas of business, leadership consulting, and live audience interactions. For over twenty years, his practice has focused on working with leaders in a wide range of organizations and corporations, from family held firms to Fortune 25 and Fortune 500 companies. Dr. Cloud is the co-host of the nationally syndicated radio program New Life Live heard in over 150 markets with a weekly audience estimated at 2,000,000 listeners. He serves on the board of the Los Angeles Mission, a rescue mission on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, and lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Tori, and their two daughters, Olivia and Lucy.

How Do We Recognize, Measure and Value Creativity In Organizations - Notes from A World Cafe

Here is a summary of answers to three questions - How to Recognise Creativity In Organizations? How To Value Creativity In Organizations? and How To Measure Creativity in Organizations? that surfaced in a World Cafe session run at the Hargraves Institute Conference March 2011. The purpose of the World Cafe session was to surface and revalidate the thinking behind the survey and statistical design at the core of the Management Innovation Index through using a public audience (approximately 30 delegates participated).

The results couldn't have been better!! Download the full report here.

Design as A Framework for Organizational Strategy

The Webster Dictionary Definition of Emergence ...to come forth into view or notice, as from concealment or obscurity... Here is a description of emergence compiled from social media content using the Storify platform.

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