Innehållsförteckning för Fall 2018 från Rotman Management

A best-selling author unlocks the scientific secrets of ‘perfect timing’, showing that timing really is everything. For those of us who thought Twin Peaks was just a weird TV show, tell us a bit about the hidden patterns of everyday life. Behavioural researchers have found that we experience a consistent and strong bimodal pattern — ‘twin peaks’ — during the day. Our positive affect — when we feel active, engaged and hopeful — climbs during the morning hours until it reaches an optimal point around midday. Then our mood and energy plummet and stay low throughout the afternoon, only to rise again in the early evening. Put simply, we move through the day in three stages: peak, trough and recovery, and this sequence is true for most people. One important…

LEADERSHIP PIONEER PETER DRUCKER once said, “You cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first.” If this is true, most leadership education programs have it backwards. They tend to start with skills like strategy, people management and finance, but from Drucker’s point of view, this approach starts at the end and misses the beginning. It’s like building a house by starting with the roof. Like Drucker, we believe leadership begins with yourself. More specifically, it starts with your mind. Here are a few facts that every leader should know about their mind: • You do not control your mind.• You are not rational.• Your mind creates your reality.• You are not your thoughts. Let’s take a closer look at each point. YOU PROBABLY DON’T CONTROL YOUR MIND AS MUCH…

IN OUR WORK WITH CLIENTS IN RECENT YEARS, my colleagues and I have noted considerable confusion and stress around the role of strategy and the effectiveness of the annual planning process. So much so that we decided to take a serious look at ‘the state of strategy’ in an ever-changing world. When we looked at the literature, we found several views. One was that ‘strategy has been eclipsed by technology’; another was that ‘the possibility of even having a strategic plan is killed by the velocity of the modern world’. Many practitioners were also asserting that what makes the difference between a mediocre company and a great one is not strategy at all, but execution. We began to wonder: Is strategy still relevant? We set out to analyze 135,000 U.S.…

Karen Christensen: Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I knew that, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” What is involved in determining ‘the proper question’? Tom Puthiyamadam: The right question to ask is one that will allow you to gain more insight and break through issues that are hidden beneath the surface. In a disruptive business environment, there are four questions we recommend business leaders ask regularly: 1. What are the big trends that will reshape the business environment?2. How will these trends disrupt our industry and business?3. What are the highest-impact, most uncertain issues these disruptions bring…

IN 1952, the Boston Symphony Orchestra famously introduced ‘blind auditions’ to test for gender bias in hiring, by having musicians audition behind a screen. At first, the screen made no difference in who made it past the first round of auditions. Then, suspecting that a click-clack of high heels from female musicians as they entered the room rendered the screen ineffective, the hiring committee had the musicians remove their shoes when they entered. In the absence of gendered footfalls, the judges trained their acute ears on the music itself. Other orchestras began adopting the Boston Symphony’s approach in the 1970s, and by the 1990s, many saw increases in the number of female players. The New York Philharmonic, for example, reached 35 per cent female musicians by 1997 — a dramatic…

Self-awareness is not standard material in MBA programs — and yet you teach it here at rotman. Why is it such an important attribute? When we go out into the world and try to solve a problem, we create a model in our mind of what the problem ‘looks like’ — the issues involved, the context, the stakeholders, etc. Most people don’t think about it much, but each of us is a sort of ‘modeling machine’, constantly trying to make sense of the world and figure out what’s happening. The problem is, if we don’t model ourselves very well, it’s like having a map and knowing what you’re looking for, but not knowing where you are on the map; you’re never going to find it. Self-awareness provides a map of…

THOSE WHO KNOW ME WELL know that I have a love/hate relationship with all things strategic. On the one hand, I hate ‘strategic planning’ and traditional strategic plans; but on the other, I absolutely love strategy. At heart, I’m a ‘strategy guy’, but the practices involved in strategic planning leave me cold — and the reason is, the typical strategic plan isn’t terribly useful. Most strategic plans have three sections. The first is some lofty vision or mission statement, and the middle section tends to be a list of initiatives: ‘Here are a bunch of things we’re going to do’. Sometimes that’s good, because it is action-orientated, but if you look at most strategic plans — at least the ones I’ve seen — you can almost see how the list…

You have attributed leaders’ personalities to some major corporate catastrophes, including the downfall of AIG and issues at Apple. How does this happen? The actions and interactions between individuals have a huge impact on outcomes in the workplace, and this is played out every day, in every profession—sometimes with extraordinary results and other times with disastrous results. We have found that personality style has a greater impact on leadership effectiveness than IQ or educational achievement. It’s never about one individual trait; it’s about combinations of personality traits. We have identified the 13 most important traits, and it is the different combinations of them that can be wonderful or dangerous. Tell us what happened at AIG. The AIG story is consistent with what we know about ‘why planes crash’ and ‘why…

“I myself am made entirely of flaws stitched together with good intentions”.-Augusten Burroughs WE INVITE THE READER TO PAUSE FOR A MOMENT and think of instances in which you set out to accomplish a particular goal or task, but failed. We suspect that it would not be difficult for most people to identify more than one such instance. Indeed, our research and work with organizations in business, government and welfare domains has convinced us that failing to adhere to our good intentions is a hallmark of being human. Setting and accomplishing goals has always been a fundamental driver of human behaviour. Goals can run the gamut from running a marathon to learning a new language to completing an exercise or weight loss regimen. They can even be as relatively mundane…

DATA ANALYSIS can be an effective way to sort through complexity and assist our judgment when it comes to making decisions. But even with impressively large data sets and the best analytics tools, we are still vulnerable to a range of decision-making pitfalls — especially when information overload leads us to take shortcuts in reasoning. As a result, in some instances, data and analytics actually make matters worse. Psychologists, behavioural economists and other scholars have identified several common decision-making traps, many of which stem from the fact that people don’t carefully process every piece of information in every decision. Instead, we rely on heuristics — simplified procedures that allow us to make decisions in the face of uncertainty or when extensive analysis is too costly or time-consuming. These mental shortcuts…

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHY some careers flourish, while others stall? ‘Career derailment’ occurs when an individual previously deemed to have strong potential is fired, demoted or plateaus below expected levels of success. According to statistics, somewhere between 30 and 67 per cent of leaders involuntarily derail at some point in their career. Not surprisingly, career derailment carries high costs: The direct and indirect cost to organizations can be more than 20 times the derailed employees’ salaries. Given the stakes involved for individuals and organizations alike, I recently set out to pinpoint the major causes of career derailment. In this article I will share key findings from the research, lay out the behaviours that can stall a career and offer remedies to help people avoid derailment. Career Derailment 101 First…

AT SOME POINT IN THEIR CAREERS, most — if not all — executives aspire to become the CEO of their organization. And why not? These individuals tend to be highly ambitious, not just for themselves but for their business — and increasingly, for society. However, as with most things in life, aspiration is one thing, and execution is another. To increase your odds of becoming a viable candidate, you will need to evolve yourself in some dramatic ways. You might well be a successful CFO, Chief Marketing Officer or head of an important operating division with a solid track record of achievement. But such experience — while likely necessary to be considered — is not sufficient to make you ‘CEO material’. Based on my 40 years of experience working closely…

WAY BACK IN 1948, W.H. Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for a book-length poem titled ‘The Age of Anxiety’. Little did he know how pervasive anxiety would become in the next century. This topic has never resonated more strongly with respect to the workforce. Workplace anxiety — defined as ‘feelings of nervousness, uneasiness and tension about job-related performance’ — is influenced by both individual differences and contextual factors, and therefore it appears at both dispositional and situational levels. Research indicates that 40 per cent of Americans report feeling anxious during the work day, and 72 per cent of people who experience daily anxiety report that it interferes with their work and personal lives. These statistics raise serious concerns, as general levels of workplace anxiety have substantial implications for employees and…

Adam Grant: People who know your story are amazed by how you have managed to thrive in the face of adversity. What has been the key for you? Sheryl Sandberg: The fact is, I got through [the sudden death of my husband] because you and others in my life have been unbelievable friends. You were right there for me emotionally, processing it all with me in real time. As a result of this experience, I know for a fact that we can build resilience in each other. This is not just about me and my experience. We can also help to build ‘collective resilience’ in our organizations and in our communities. We have a deep responsibility to help prevent hardship, because it is not evenly distributed. People who face poverty…

LESLIE E. WOO Chief Planning Officer, METROLINX Alumnae of The Judy Project What is your greatest challenge in your current role? Developing a seamless and effective transit and transportation system is ultimately about enabling residents to live, work and play well. Meeting the needs of many people from all walks of life requires making complex choices in a constrained fiscal environment under conditions of high public expectations. This is a significant challenge that requires systemic, interconnected solutions. Navigating this complexity is what energizes and excites me about my work. What unique combination of skills got you here? My early professional work as a practising architect provided foundational skills that bridge between creative vision and practical delivery. My career has extended amongst public, not for profit and private sectors, and as…

In your work with senior leaders you have found that success often leaves people feeling empty. Why is that? In many cases, what people thought was a ‘meaningful purpose’ was merely their pursuit of success — and these are two very different things. Once we reach a career milestone, the gap between what we expect to feel and what we actually feel can come as a surprise. Emerging leaders often make basic assumptions early in their careers about what is driving them, but these drivers aren’t well defined and they are often prescriptive in nature: ‘land that job’; ‘snag a promotion’; ‘make a name for myself’, etc. As a result, milestones achieved along the way — which you assumed would be intrinsically valuable and personally motivating — turn out to…

The boundaries between work life and family life are blurring for many people. Are we working more than ever—or does it just feel like it? I do think many people are working more than ever because with today’s tools, they can. Communication technology has made it possible to work from anywhere, anytime. But even for those of us who are not actually working more, it feels like we are. That’s because work can just ‘pop up’ at any time of the day or night on our smartphones. This blurring of boundaries is great in some ways. For instance, it means that you can go to your kid’s soccer game and still be reachable if something arises at the office. But it also makes us more preoccupied with our work at…

“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” As Shakespeare indicates in this quote from Hamlet, being true to oneself — being authentic — is a pre-condition of being true to others, and has been a sign of moral authority throughout history. One of the most pressing issues we face today is a lack of trust in our leaders. People are increasingly unlikely to trust a person just because they hold a senior position. Leadership scholars agree that authenticity—or a lack thereof—lies near the heart of the crisis of confidence in contemporary leadership. In my work I have identified three characteristics that set authentic leaders apart. HEART. Emotional authenticity includes ways to increase your…

EVERY LEADER, regardless of industry, needs to possess the ability to build a great team and support it. But as teams go, innovation teams are unique. Research shows that innovation benefits from a high degree of diversity, technical depth and people with complementary mindsets and process tendencies. Leaders don’t always get to choose their team members from the start, so they often need to nudge people to find new ways to work, even as they actively bring people in or move people out of the group. Following are five principles for leaders of innovation teams to keep in mind. EMBRACE THE ‘BUILDERS’. These are people with a track record of getting things into the world in some way, shape or form — hopefully within your organization and hopefully in different…

If you’re struggling with a decision, the following six questions can provide a useful jolt to your thinking. All of them rely on a sudden impact — a quick shift in perspective or a forced re-framing of a dilemma. 1. Imagine that the option you are currently leaning towards simply vanished as a feasible alternative. What else could you do? WHY THIS QUESTION WORKS: A very common decision-making trap is “narrow framing”, which means we get stuck in one way of thinking about our dilemma, or that we fail to consider other options that are available to us. By forcing ourselves to generate a second alternative, we can often surface a new insight. 2. Imagine that the alternative you are currently considering will actually turn out to be a terrible…

FOR SEVERAL YEARS, ABRAHAM HEIFETS had worked on applying recent advancements in artificial intelligence to drug discovery. Developing a new medicine takes an average of 15 years, and Heifets had devised a way to shrink the process to a fraction of that time using advanced machine-learning algorithms running on a supercomputer. He enthusiastically pitched his idea to all the top venture capital firms in his hometown of Toronto, but the reaction was always the same: Potential investors liked the idea, but weren’t willing to commit their capital. They requested more evidence, wanted more-detailed business plans and demonstrated no sense of urgency. As his funds wore thin, Heifets became increasingly anxious, and eventually realized that he had to relocate his business to Silicon Valley, where investors would understand the potential of…

WHAT MAKES A LEADER INSPIRING? According to research we recently conducted with the Economist Intelligence Unit, companies that can answer this question have a powerful tool to increase their competitive edge. We found that inspired employees are more than twice as productive as satisfied employees. The power of a company with leaders who inspire at every level up and down the organization is hard to overstate. These are the companies that consistently pull off innovative or heroic feats in business because so many of the people who work there are motivated to make them happen. Companies spend billions of dollars on leadership training to reinforce and enhance the soft skills that inspire, motivate and create engagement, but most have found that it is deceptively hard to do these things. Few…

Are there any coaches or teachers in your background that you cherish and think of often? If so, I’d be willing to bet that they are from your youth—and not supervisors or managers from your work life. Even in companies that pride themselves on making coaching an essential part of each manager’s job, the quality and impact of corporate coaching seldom compares to our formative coaching experiences. Great coaches—the ones who shape lives—share some common characteristics. They provide continuous, on-site observation. Great coaches go and see first-hand how an athlete performs at practice and in games, so they have up-to-date knowledge of each individual’s current situation. They use these direct observations to provide continuous feedback and to address specific shortcomings. They have a structured, long-range plan for each individual. It’s…

In the workplace, most people believe that by taking on more, they will accomplish more—but your research indicates otherwise. Please explain. We studied 5,000 managers and employees—across corporate America, seeking to answer a fundamental question: Why do top performers perform better in their job than others? What we found surprised us: The top performers across organizations actually worked less hours. We identified seven characteristics of their approach to work, and they all relate to being highly selective as to what they engage in. Top performers very carefully select assignments, tasks, projects and collaborative activities, and as a result, they do a fewer total number of things, but they totally obsess about doing an amazing job on the things they do focus on. They go all in and provide targeted, intense…

No one wants to experience disruptive behaviour at work, and the vast majority of people don’t want to cause it. So why is it so pervasive? I think it’s ubiquitous because conflict comes in a million shapes and sizes, and whenever you put two or more people together, you have an opportunity for conflict. Each of us moves through the world differently and behaves in whatever ways are most comfortable. Sometimes, we just don’t mix well, and this gets particularly accentuated under stress. Talk a bit about the difference between personality traits and personality disorders. A personality disorder is a series of traits and symptoms that interfere with an individual’s social or occupational functioning. We don’t actually see many severe personality disorders in the workplace, because in general, the disorders…

OVER THE PAST 15 YEARS, design thinking has had an explosive impact on innovation and commercialization, especially within established firms. The Rotman School’s former Dean, Roger Martin, has contributed mightily to these advances, notably through his book, The Design of Business. Other authors, including David Kelley, founder of IDEO, have developed and popularized the approach both in principle and in practice. The methods and approaches of this discipline are varied, yet they generally boil down to unleashing creativity through an iterative series of steps: 1. UNDERSTAND AND EMPATHIZE WITH END USERS. In a typical design-thinking approach, practitioners get out of the organization and into the field to better understand their customers, employing ethnographic research techniques such as user observation and open-ended inquiry to identify unmet needs.2. DEFINE THE PROBLEM(S) TO…

Your course, Design Your Life, helps MBA students do just that, with a focus on their careers. Which aspects of this are related to innovation? Many of them are, but to understand this, one has to develop ‘innovation literacy’. Innovation literacy is the knowledge and competence required to bring something new and useful into existence, and it is a skillset that can benefit us in just about every aspect of life. There are two key parts to it: conceptualizing the thing you want to accomplish or create, and then taking effective actions to bring it to life. This can play out at the level of the individual, a team, an organization or at a societal level. Of course, professional designers have been conceptualizing things and bringing them to life for…

What does it take to be happy at work? It boils down to three things. First, people need a sense of purpose. They need to feel that they are contributing in an impactful way and that their work is meaningful. Second, people need to feel hopeful about the future. They need to feel that work fits into life and that overall, work is helping them progress towards their life vision. Finally, people need great, warm relationships with colleagues — they need friends. What role do workplace friends play? In the best cases, we have more than one friend at work — people who we trust and who trust us, who care about us and whom we care about in return. There is even a phrase for this kind of relationship:…