Toby Elwin

Change agents are your organization’s real leaders

Market change, economy change, technology change, workforce change, communication change, today change riddles stress cracks in organization foundations. Whether 80-year-old companies, Fortune 500 stalwarts, or new-technology dynamos, change is as much an on-going assault on organizations as rust is an on-going assault on metal and your change agents are your organization’s saviors. You see tomorrow’s relevance [...]

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Tagged as: change, change management, innovation, leadership, strategy

3 performance review politics that always trump merit

When performance reviews were created the goal was to collect and share observed performance feedback that would sustain good performance or the observed feedback needed to improve performance. The performance review would then inform merit increase in salary or bonus based on performance feedback. The goal: a pay increase or bonus based on merit. Transparent for all [...]

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Tagged as: leadership, manage, motivation, performance management, performance review, workforce performance

New clichés for organization development

Jargon, clichés, rhetoric – talking while saying nothing. Companies develop their own language or accepted terms. Professions develop their own lingo. People use stock phrases or go-to frameworks. All of these are an attempt to communicate, to create a common understanding, to fit in, to prove what you know, and to make sense of [...]

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Tagged as: change management, facilitate, facilitation, meeting, organization development, strategy

Top 10 blog posts for 2011, 5 to 1

Top blog posts from 2011, from number 5 to number 1, a follow-up from Top 10 blog posts for 2011, 10 to 6 5. The cost of culture, a 50% turnover of the Fortune 500 — This blog came about to reiterate that change is constant and the things that may have gotten a company [...]

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Tagged as: change, change management, culture, Fortune 500, impact analysis, mergers and acquisitions, scope, scope management, social media, strategy

Top 10 blog posts for 2011, 10 to 6

Closing out 2011 I look back at the year’s most viewed posts as a chance to reflect on differences of what I topics I blog about and what people view most. Why were some viewed over others: topic, time-of-year, day-of-week? In descending order: 10. Competing values drives your organization out of business — A 2009 [...]

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Tagged as: Appreciative Inquiry, change management, Competing Values Framework, culture, project, project management, stakeholder, stakeholder analysis, strategy, Twitter

Why 70% is a key metric for learning and development

The 70-20-10 rule represents, by percentage, how people actually learn and develop: 70% from job experiences, 20% from feedback and collaboration, and only 10% from courses and from reading. If 70% of learning happens on-the-job, what the employee can take back and use after the actual learning remains the most critical reinforcing loop for both the [...]

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Tagged as: ability, CLO, development, knowledge, learning, organization development, skills

Controlling bosses cause poor work

A boss gets things done through others. An ability to influence others to meet a goal is critical to get things accomplished. Some call management influence, others call management coercion. Influence or coercion, controlling bosses cause employees to strive towards goals that are opposite to the boss. Bosses are managers, bosses manage resources: time, money, and [...]

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Tagged as: management, motivation, motivation to work

Project management is not a process, but a promise

A project introduces something new. New requires change from what was to a promise of what will. The project deliverable, or promise, undertaken without process is a leap in the dark. No sane person will take a leap in the dark without some promise or rational premise of: what will be, what it will cost [...]

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Tagged as: change management, emotional, process, project, project management, risk, systems, systems theory

Stop giving advice people ignore

At work do you ever say, “let me give you some advice”? If so, do people lean forward with anticipation to hear what you have for advice? When reviewing a draft ever heard someone tell you, “well, here’s my advice”? If so, do you take a deep breath so as not to lose your cool? [...]

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Tagged as: communication, competence, leadership, skils

People, process, and technology … divided by behavior

People, process, and technology. Announce a policy, full adoption. Map a process, cycle time guaranteed. Buy a server, flip the switch. Seems so simple. Interconnections, systems, are never simple. The intent of keeping people, process, and technology in mind is to think through the impact change has on the 3. Identify that impact and then [...]

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Tagged as: goal, information, information technology, IT, people, process, risk, technology

Organization innovation dies when industry myopia prevails

Industry myopia is business risk. People who grow in one industry or cycle through only one industry may seem safe to hire, because they may slot in quicker or bring competitive advantage, but industry myopia rarely meets innovation’s need to break things to start over or to view things from a new angle. Innovation depends on [...]

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Tagged as: diversity, hiring, human capital assessment, innovation, recruit, recruiting, risk

Fistful of beans 09/21/2011

4 of things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Why being wrong is good for you — CNN.com Most of us go through life assuming we are right, almost all the time, about pretty much everything: our political, our values, our tastes, our religious beliefs, our view of other people, our memory, our [...]

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Tagged as: diversity, innovation, Kathryn Schulz, patent, The Economist, Wall Street Journal

4 questions leaders need to ask … themselves

Leaders at the top of the organization are accountable to deliver results. Some leaders believe results come from questioning others. Here are 4 questions leaders need to ask themselves, before they begin to ask anything of others: When’s the last time someone disagreed with me in a meeting? What am I teaching? Am I getting [...]

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Tagged as: leader, leadership, motivation, strategy

What Steve Jobs reminds those in technology

Steve Jobs retired last week. Steve Jobs had incredible impact as Apple CEO as well as a cultural icon whose products re-shaped and re-defined our relationship with technology. Steve Jobs’ retirement reminds those in technology that a liberal arts view to their work could serve them better. It might be a stretch to say Apple is [...]

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Tagged as: Apple, Bill Gates, Brian Solis, Deidre Breakenridge, human resources, information technology, liberal arts, Microsoft, Steve Jobs, strategy, technology

Engagement needs both context and perspective

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet … “, iambic pentameter aside, I appreciate Mr. Shakespeare’s point. However, when I look at a word that is recently trending in a lot of companies and organizations, like the word engagement is, it seems context, perspective, and the value proposition truly defines how sweet the [...]

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Tagged as: communication, engagement, health care, leadership, market, motivation

Fistful of beans 08/24/2011

3 of things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Bored People Quit — Rands in Response blog People who quit say: “I don’t believe in this company.” Bored people quit. The author of this post is neither an HR professional nor an organization development/behavior professional, this author simply manages people. I say [...]

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Tagged as: bias, boss, engagement, human resources, manage, management, Mercer, motivation, New York Times, SlideShare, social media

Root cause and critical path, that’s organization development

What is organization development? Yes organization development is training and leadership development and coaching and performance management and change management and communications and organization design and competency models and strategic planning and really so much, it is almost more confusing than helpful to really say what organization development is. This challenge spills over when I am [...]

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Tagged as: change management, leadership, organization development, systems theory, training

Who knows?

In collaboration, there is a notion that we share thoughts and perspectives of what we know to make better decisions. What we know and share is important for context to any decision and you may have seen some or heard something similar to this: What you know you know, What you know you don’t know, [...]

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Tagged as: coaching, communication, decision, information, leadership, strategic planning, strategy

Social metrics that matter to your boss

A business case usually relies on numbers. Numbers to justify the investment, numbers to project the return on investment, and numbers to compare against other investment opportunities. Numbers that matter, matter differently dependent on the view of the person you talk to. Certainly social media, or social software, numbers rely on us to know our [...]

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Tagged as: ChiefExecutive.net, Deloitte Consulting, executive, finance, John Hagel, John Seely Brown, risk, social, social media, software

Influence of The Modern Firm

The Modern Firm: Organizational Design for Performance and Growth by John Roberts Brief: The most fundamental responsibility of a general manager is to craft strategy and design an organization where the strategy can succeed within the economic, political, legal, regulatory, social, and the technological environment the firm operates. A direct challenge to the design is finding alignment within the [...]

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Tagged as: economics, influen, influence, innovation, leadership, management, organization design, strategy

Your company social media strategy reflects organization culture, part 1

If you want an idea of your organization’s culture there is no simpler place for this insight than your organization’s social media strategy. Companies who view social media only as a marketing vehicle miss far more than an opportunity to engage. It is as likely these companies have lost their employee’s motivation in similar fashion [...]

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Tagged as: communication, culture, marketing 2.0, organization development, policy, social media, strategy, web 2.0

The best meeting icebreaker to break the ice

Meeting icebreakers can be as painful as a bucket of ice down your shorts. The icebreaker’s intent? Loosen things up, meet people, set the stage for effective work. The challenge, if you are going to use an icebreaker, is to understand the difference between hokey and intentional. Know your audience is a constant refrain. But sometimes, [...]

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Tagged as: facilitation, ice-breaker, icebreaker, meeting, strategy, team, teams

Getting it done versus getting it accomplished

Some people, and some organizations, can confuse very elemental operational concepts. The confusion is tough to trace to a culture issue or a perception issue between getting it done versus getting it accomplished. Getting it done means you care more about finishing than about quality. Very different terms. Very different concepts. An alternative way to [...]

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Tagged as: goal, leadership, management, milestone, project, strategy, task

The final frontier of competitive advantage

Competitive advantage: the final frontier. Today only 2 areas remain for competitive advantage: talent management and project management Put another way, an organization has 2 ways to beat their competition: their ability to motivate people and their ability to reliably deliver projects. Talent as a hard asset Hiring the right talent and keeping that talent [...]

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Tagged as: competition, hiring, motivation, organization development, organization performance, project management, strategy, talent

The bureaucracy option to manage risk

Does organization culture benefit with bureaucracy? Bureacracy may, indeed, provide organizations a strong case to manage risk. Policy, procedure, and bureaucracy tend to creep as an organization grows in size: revenues, market share, employees. While a small organization may have flexibility and ad hoc procedures based on 1-on-1 interactions, as an organization adds people the [...]

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Tagged as: bureaucracy, bureaucrat, business process reengineering, culture, policy, procedure, process, risk, strategy

Fistful of beans 05/11/2011

4 of things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Think About Diversity of Thought — Diversity Executive Magazine Organizations have cultural norms that employees are expected to work within. Ideas presented by employees need become judged on value, not judged on the different perspectives they represent. Thought diversity introduces not only different viewpoints, but also differences [...]

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Tagged as: CFO, change, change management, collaboration, diversity, Diversity Executive, health care, innovation, invention, magazine, Wall Street Journal

Fistful of beans 05/04/2011

4 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. How Genius Works — The Atlantic Great art or innovation begins with an idea. Sometimes the idea is vague or even simply a bad idea. In this brief, The Atlantic looks into 17 of America’s foremost artists to discuss and find out about how genius [...]

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Tagged as: David Blei, Human Resource Executive, innovation, magazine, retention, Sean Gerrish, Talent Management, The Atlantic, The Economist

Fistful of beans 04/27/2011

3 of things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Too Big to Succeed? — CFO Magazine Citigroup, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase are the clear winners of the consolidation game. Each of these, individually, have more than 2 times the assets of 4th-place Wachovia. These 3 banks have bet cross-selling and their [...]

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Tagged as: bank, Bank of America, CFO, Citigroup, Facebook, fistful of beans, Girls Scouts, JPMorgan Chase, magazine, pr, public relations, social media, social media marketing, Talent Management, Wachovia

Fistful of beans 04/20/2011

5 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Scrap Learning and Manager Engagement — CLO Magazine Most organizations overlook an important aspect of development that often makes it many times more effective — manager engagement. Training tends to lose its power with time. Employees forget what they’ve learned or let their newly acquired skills [...]

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Tagged as: Asia, Barbara Cairns PhD, Bloomberg Businessweek, CFO, Charlie Rose, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Learning Officer, China, CLO, economy, fistful of beans, learning, Lee Kwan Yew, M&A, magazine, Make Training Stick, mergers and acquisitions, motivation, Talent Management

Project management is useless without scale

Project management is a profession. Project management is a discipline. Project management is a skill. Project management is a function. Project management is a knowledge Project management is useless without scale and project management helps no one if it is not scaleable. Compare an accounting function of a Fortune 50 company to an accounting function in a 60-person organization. The [...]

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Tagged as: accountant, accounting, management, manager, project, project management, project work, risk, strategy

Fistful of beans 04/13/2011

4 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Managing the Motivation Equation — Chief Learning Officer Leveraging motivation theory can reduce intention-action gap. What is the intention-action gap? Outside work the intention-action gap can be saying you will call you mother every Sunday, but rarely do. At work the intention-action gap can be saying [...]

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Tagged as: accounting, AIG, Bloomberg Businessweek, Chief Learning Officer, Chrysler, Fannie Mae, Federal Reserve, Freddie Mac, General Motors, magazine, management, Mortgage-Backed Security, motivation, Talent Management, Treasury, Trouble Asset Relief Program

Fistful of beans 04/06/2011

3 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Learning Fosters Psychologically Healthy Workplaces — CLO Magazine The American Psychological Association (APA) recently awarded 8 companies with their Psychologically Healthy Workplace Awards (PHWA). The companies were rated on five different criteria: employee involvement, health and safety, work-life balance, employee recognition, and employee growth and development. [...]

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Tagged as: Booz & Company, Chief Learning Officer, CLO, EBay, innovation, learning, magazine, morale, process, research and development, Talent Management

Communication, change, and your mission – if you choose to accept it

Change is fun for some: the energy of the unknown, the passion instilled in people looking forward to a new adventure. Some embrace the unknown as an opportunity to both learn, grow, and stretch their current perspectives. Change is pain for some: the feigned excitement for heading into unknown, the new roles and responsibilities to [...]

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Tagged as: actions, change, change management, communication, goals, objectives, strategy, vision

Fistful of beans 03/30/2011

4 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Still too big to fail — CFO Magazine Too-big-to-fail is defined as the government using taxpayer dollars to rescue “systemically important” banks. Few debate that the expectation of bailouts provides banks little incentive to guard against excessive risk. Today the solutions being debated may elevate overall [...]

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Tagged as: CFO, coaching, innovation, magazine, mission, strategy, Talent Management, The Economist, vision

An organization intervention is not an organization inquisition

Proposals for organization intervention, from business process reengineering to Lean initiatives, typically focus on problems to be solved. Many of these organization interventions for change, however, soon look like organization inquisition. As once a problem is identified, the problem is the focus to diagnos soon both the organization and the people involved pointed out as [...]

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Tagged as: AI, Appreciative Inquiry, change, change management, intervention, organization development, strategy

Fistful of beans 03/23/2011

4 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Talent Does Not Live by Technology Alone — WriteforHR Globalized competition and the current economic climate should have revealed the realization of the right talent, in the right location, at the right cost as one of the biggest competitive advantages to organization performance. A talent management software [...]

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Tagged as: Bloomberg Businessweek, Chief Learning Officer, choice, fistfl, Inc., magazine, motivation, The Economist

Fistful of beans 03/16/2011

4 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Screening for Resiliency Adaptability and Resilience — Talent Management Magazine Change is constant, whether we, as individuals, our team, or our organization like this reality, change demands resilience from people, teams, and organization. Change also causes constant challenges to some more than others. Those who adapt thrive, [...]

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Tagged as: adaptability, Boston Globe, CFO, diversity, Diversity Executive, Emotional Intelligence, fistful of beans, guilt, Ideas, magazine, resilience, Talent Management

The communication obstacle course

A successful message retains the oomph of intent. For this to happen communication must travel an obstacle course to reach each person. Some of the bulwarks against communication’s smooth path to understanding include: values, bias, mood, culture, agenda, and emotion. These force communication through filters that affect both the intent and the impact of the [...]

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Tagged as: change, change management, communication, culture, emotional

Fistful of beans 03/09/2011

5 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Keeping CEOs in Check — Human Resource Executive A recent study, “Dominant CEO, Deviant Strategy and Extreme Performance: The Moderating Role of a Powerful Board,” published in the February edition of the Journal of Management Studies finds: strong CEO at the helm shouldn’t underestimate the [...]

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Tagged as: Alan Mulally, Bloom, Bloomberg Businessweek, Boeing, Charlie Sheen, Deloitte Consulting, fistful, Ford, Human Resource Executive, Jack Welch, John Galliano, magazine, Mel Gibson, talent, The Economist

Fistful of beans 03/02/2011

4 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Implementing Planned Change: An Empirical Comparison of Theoretical Perspectives — American Journal of Business Planned change has been viewed from a variety of conceptual perspectives, but few models of planned change we’ve all been part of have been studied using empirical research designs. With a study [...]

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Tagged as: age, American Journal of Business, Bloomberg Businessweek, change management, compensation, diversity, fistful of beans, IBM, Inc., magazine, The Economist

Organization change, the frame retains the name

The success, or failure, of organization change may have more to do with the frame of change you and your leadership view your organization culture through than any other challenge to change. Adopting and sustaining organization change rarely succeeds if you can not frame communication to emotionally and rationally resonate throughout the organization. For change [...]

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Tagged as: change, change management, communication, culture, leading change, organization change

Fistful of beans 02/23/2011

4 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed result 1. Talent Management vs Talent Analytics: The Difference is More than Just Semantics — Talent Analytics blog In the 1990s talent management emerged as a management practice to shift responsibility of employees an exclusive role for human resource departments to managers throughout the organization. The past 20 [...]

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Tagged as: Booz & Company, DNA of Human Capital, fistful of beans, Global Organization Design Society, M&A, magazine, mergers and acquisitions, Talent Analytics blog, The Economist

Fistful of beans 02/16/2011

5 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. They’re Human Capital, Not Cattle — Talent Management Magazine This article was the best I’ve read in years. Each paragraph provides a contrarian alternative to challenge the command/control leaders and managers driving efficiency insanity. Though the terms “knowledge worker”, “knowledge economy”, and “human capital” have [...]

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Tagged as: Apple, Fast Company, human capital assessment, knowledge worker, M&A, magazine, YouTube

Business strategy failures are project management failures

The essence of strategic change is not a new direction, but a series of directives on what to start, what to stop, and what to continue. After all, a strategic plan really acts as a roadmap or charter for change. A plan not carried out is a project failure. The difficulty of strategy implementation is a [...]

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Tagged as: culture, executive plan, management, plan, project, risk, scope, strategic planning, strategy

Fistful of beans 02/09/2011

5 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Apple, With or Without Steve Jobs — Bloomberg Businessweek Perhaps there is a coincidence last week’s Fistful of Beans presented an article to divine Google’s possible transformation through their leadership queue, but it looks like Apple is heading into their own multiple-choice risk scenario. Now [...]

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Tagged as: Apple, Bloomberg Businessweek, Chief Learning Officer, CLO, diversity, Diversity Executive, fistful of beans, magazine, positive deviance, risk, scenario planning, strategy, The Atlantic

Marketing: trying to rekindle the old days

Though coming for a while, there was no sign of bitterness from the advertiser when his consumer finally walks out and abandons the clearly, lopsided relationship: Which side of the table is your seat? In a prior blog Marketing 2.0 — You Better Free Your Mind Instead I recapped: Lose control, provide content, make it easy [...]

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Tagged as: advertising, communication, consumer, marketing 2.0, social media, social media marketing

Fistful of beans 02/02/2011

5 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Social-Media Frenzy — CFO When CFOs talk social media results that matter for top line growth, you know the message is clear. This looks at some of the tangible results from big companies that CFOs can really wrap their spreadsheets around. 2. Larry Page’s Google 3.0 [...]

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Tagged as: Bloomberg Businessweek, CFO, Chief Learning Officer, CLO, fistful of beans, Google, intelligence, magazine, The Atlantic, Wired

Crowdsourcing your organization strategy, what’s to appreciate?

Crowdsourcing relies on people to participate in a meaningful process as potential partners. In crowdsourcing people who were formally known as the customer now become the collaborator. The power of collective collaboration can not only drive product innovation, but has been leveraged for decades to build organization strategy. Where most organization strategy process finds more [...]

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Tagged as: AI, Amanda Trosten-Bloom, Appreciative Inquiry, Bernard Mohr, change, change management, crowdsourcing, David Cooperrider, Diana Whitney, inquiry, Jane Magruder Watkins, Jeff Howe, Robyn Stratton-Berkessel, strategy

In review: Motivation management is resource management

January 2011 in review. A roundup of blogs from the previous month: Motivation management is resource management — Leaders, managers, and coworkers are all under intense pressure to manage their motivation to, firstly, show up at work and, secondly, deliver to their expectations and, yes, and to their organization’s expectations. Juggling our own professional motivation [...]

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Tagged as: ability, assessments, development, evaluation, information, motivation, resource, risk

Fistful of beans 01/26/2011

5 things I’ve seen, read, or thought might seed results: 1. Capabilities-Driven Mergers & Acquisitions — Booz & Company A video conversation on the role that capabilities can have to drive successful, strategic mergers. This 18-minute, question and answer, interview-style video is broken down in 5 chapters: The New Meaning of Scale; The Path to Coherence; Capabilities Roadmapping; Integrating [...]

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Tagged as: Bloomberg Businessweek, Booz & Company, Chief Learning Officer, CLO, culture, engagement, fistful of beans, Gerald Adolph, Glock, HR Capitalist, innovation, magazine, mergers and acquisitions, Paul Leinwand, rewards

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Quick Bio

Toby Elwin has lived around the world and worked globally with, and for, some of the most highly-respected leaders and organizations in their fields.

This site, and thoughts, are rooted in the role leadership and talent have on an organization's motivation to influence, achieve, and sustain.

Toby's work combines systems theory, organization development, marketing, and portfolio and project management from more than 15 years in post-merger integration.
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Blog Archives
Biggest Influences – So Far

See Influence page for more detail:

The Modern Firm: Organizational Design for Performance and Growth by John Roberts

The Workforce Scorecard by Mark A. Huselid, Brian E. Becker, and Richard W. Beatty

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein

The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig

The Truth About Thriving in Change by William S. Kane

The Motivation to Work by Frederick Herzberg, Bernard Mausner, and Barbara Bloch Snyderman

The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott

Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

The HR Value Proposition by Dave Ulrich

The Strategy Paradox by Michael Raynor
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