- Adam Grant On Interviewing to Hire Trailblazers, Nonconformists and Originals | First Round Review
“By default, companies are built in the image of their founders, which is why it’s vital to proactively introduce diversity of thought… ‘What happens when startups get successful and grow is that they become more and more vulnerable to the attraction-selection-attrition cycle, where people of the same stripes are increasingly drawn to the organization, chosen by it and retained at it. The way to combat that homogeneity creep is to proactively infuse the culture with originals, who have the will and skill to think differently'”. - How to Hire | eShares
Four principles and six heuristics on hiring. Some of them are counter-intuitive, and all of them turn what we think we know about hiring on its head. - Your Company’s Culture is Who You Hire, Fire, & Promote | @DrSepah
The writer presents a powerful Performance Value Matrix based on the following with the following categories and rules: Incompetent Assholes (Fire Fast); Competent Assholes (Remediate or Separate); Incompetent Nice Guys (Manage or Move); Competent and Outstanding Nice Guys (Praise and Raise).
- The No Asshole Rule: Part 1 | HuffPost
There are myriad costs to keeping employees who engage in demeaning behaviour in an organisation: From how detrimental they are to the mental and physical health of their colleagues, to the overall undermining of learning and organisational effectiveness. - Why I Wrote The No Asshole Rule | Harvard Business Review
“My father always told me to avoid assholes at all costs, no matter how rich or powerful they might be, because I would catch their nastiness and impose it on others. I learned, as an organizational psychologist, that his advice is supported by research on ’emotional contagion’: if you work for a jerk, odds are you will become one”.
Tag - leadership
- 4 Ways to Improve Your Strategic Thinking Skills | Harvard Business Review
Think strategically by looking beyond and looking within. Take time to observe what’s going on around and you, and make time to reflect on this and synthesise your knowledge. - Great Leadership Isn’t About You | Harvard Business Review
“…leading people well isn’t about driving them, directing them, or coercing them; it is about compelling them to join you in pushing into new territory. It is motivating them to share your enthusiasm for pursuing a shared ideal, objective, cause, or mission. In essence, it is to always conduct yourself in ways that communicates to others that you believe people are always more important than things”. - What Great Managers Do Daily | Harvard Business Review
Great managers are engaged at work – in what they do and with others around them – and take the time to engage their teams, through one-on-ones and fair distribution of workloads. - Seven Surprises for New CEOs | Harvard Business Review
These “seven surprises highlight realities about the nature of leadership that are important not just for CEOs but for executives at any level and in any size organization”. An illuminating read. - Why the Best Leaders Want Their Superstar Employees to Leave | The Wall Street Journal
It may seem counter-intuitive, but there are benefits when talent flow is managed well, with allowances made for movement, instead of an insistence on talent-hoarding.
- The pursuit of beauty | The New Yorker
“Pure mathematics, as opposed to applied mathematics, is done with no practical purposes in mind. It is as close to art and philosophy as it is to engineering… The pursuit of beauty in pure mathematics is a tenet. Last year, neuroscientists in Great Britain discovered that the same part of the brain that is activated by art and music was activated in the brains of mathematicians when they looked at math they regarded as beautiful”. - The unconscious allure of grand national narratives | The Straits Times
“There will always be a need for a coherent account of the past in order to function as national communities. But we need to remind ourselves that we can also recognise the limitations of reflexive habits that play such a powerful role in guiding our views”. - Mumbai battles between medieval and modern times | Hindustan Times
Human society will always experience competing tensions between progress and regression, while its people will always spout strange rhetoric to delude themselves – or others – so as to reinforce flawed beliefs. - This free online encyclopedia has achieved what Wikipedia can only dream of | Quartz
How an online repository achieved the “impossible trinity” of authority, expanse and currency when it comes to providing data and information for research and scholarship. - What the British are really laughing about | The Leveller
“…David Cameron’s nasty little scandal speaks to a suspicion many people already have: that in British society, you don’t get to become Prime Minister because you’re talented or because you work hard. You don’t even get there just because you’re rich. You get there by traumatizing the homeless and skull-fucking a dead pig, and that ritual gives you power because you have demonstrated utter, pathetic submission to your fellow oligarchs”.