Organization Behavior

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The value of information and the link to development

Information is not competitive advantage, knowledge is competitive advantage. What you know is information, only when you socialize your information does it then have potential to become knowledge. An organization’s socialized knowledge is really their competitive advantage and information and knowledge are both human capital issues. Enterprise knowledge management is a critical strategic need and [...]

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Tagged as: actions, communication, competitive advantage, development, goals, information, knowledge, knowledge management, linkage, objectives, socialize, strategy

Motivation management is resource management

In this age of cheaper, faster, better, resource management is critical to organization survival. The resource that is the biggest organization challenge to manage is motivation. To drive organization health both internal, employee, motivation as well as external, customer, motivation need alignment. Each day when the closing bell chimes, whether that bell chimes in your [...]

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Tagged as: customer, employee, knowledge, market, motivation, project management, resource

The pain with change

Bill Hybels, on stirring change, says, “Leaders move people from here to there… The first play is not to make ‘there’ sound wonderful. The first play is to make ‘here’ sound awful.” Though this is a quote on leadership, the key to so many change mantras is that change only comes about when the level [...]

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Tagged as: AI, Appreciative Inquiry, Bernard Mohr, Bill Hybels, change, change management, community, Jane Magruder Watkins, leadership, organization development, strategic planning, strategy

Hiring the right person is more cultural than technical

As mentioned in the post Hiring is more emotional than rational technical skill rarely assures success in an organization. There are just too many elements that impact someone’s success that are more important than technical fit. Many times when you plant an individual into a team, business unit, or client site there is potential damage that no [...]

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Tagged as: Competing Values Framework, cost of culture, Emotional Intelligence, hiring, onboarding, recruiting, return on talent, talent

The key to change is circular reasoning

Innovation is based on circular reasoning and the key to innovation is change, but change relies on community, but what does community rely on? Let’s try to break into this circle [stay with me, further down the list reveals why I started on 2.]: 2. Can’t have community without transparency 3. Can’t have transparency without [...]

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Tagged as: change, change management, community, innovation, Likert scale, motivation, Peter Block, risk

When a small business should fear growth

A small company is a dynamic, creative place where it is necessary for people to take risks to build a new organization. Leaders of small companies are visionaries and there are strong demands for innovation to do more with less and to bite off grand goals. The people that work in small companies work around an assumed [...]

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Tagged as: change, Competing Values Framework, cost of culture, human capital assessment, human capital development, human capital strategy, organization, organization sabotage, risk, skills

The bureaucrat and bureaucracy revisited

Max Weber (1864 – 1920) was a German sociologist, political scientist, and economist and was an admirer of forms of organizations found in German government circles. His views on bureaucracy, when revisited, provide an interesting set of implications, my comments, if any, are in brackets: Each office has fixed duties Impersonal rules and regulations apply [...]

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Tagged as: bureaucracy, bureaucrat, governance, management, management science, management theory, Max Weber, theory

2 priorities for competitive advantage

In addition to sales and finance, there are 2 complimentary organization priorities that leaders should focus on to achieve and sustain excellence: understand motivation deliver projects in a routine manner Organizations can stake out a competitive advantage by doing things cheaper or doing things better. Motivation and project management are 2 ways an organization can [...]

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Tagged as: competition, competitive advantage, involvement strategy, motivation, project, project management

The intervention as organizational rehab

When organizations promote star talent, I’ve never once heard about their star’s organization development technical skills as key to their promotion. When I read a press release for a C-level hiring, promotion, or bonus being paid out, I’ve never once seen organization development highlighted as a key to their success. When building job roles, descriptions, [...]

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Tagged as: Edgar Schein, human resources, intervention, od, organization development, organization performance, Richard Arvid Johnson, Richard Beckhard, talent

Business as a foreign language for HR professionals

Today in Human Resource Executive Online I eagerly read a post titled Is Business a Foreign Language for HR? Anyone who has seen or read my blogs knows, I’m pretty insistent that HR (organization development, organization behavior, training, diversity, compensation) does not deserve a place at the table until HR understands the essentials of business: finance [...]

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Tagged as: finance, HR, human resources, od, organization development, sales

Organizations don’t change, people change

Organizations are, quite simply, made up of social interactions: groups of people. Organizations will not change if people do not change. There is no such thing as organization change, they don’t change, people change. All change: transformation, business process reengineering, technology implementation, mergers & acquisitions, Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, strategic planning or, if you [...]

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Tagged as: change, change management, Charles Darwin, leading change, organization development, project management, strategy

Organization development is business growth

Organization development has yet to earn a role in all organizations. Only the most progressive companies even have an organization development role, staff, department, or group. The challenge to organization development success is that it is hard to find a linear trajectory for success. Organization development may have clear goals, but the reality, there is rarely [...]

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Tagged as: Boston, Fortune 500, Massachusetts, MassBayODLG, network, networking, new england, new york, od, ODNNY, organization development, organization performance, SBODN, silicon valley, strategy

Organization sabotage and the butterfly effect

An intervention. Interventions are principal learning processes in the “action” stage of organization development (OD)*. An intervention is what people outside organization development [the majority of professionals are distinctly NOT part of, or aware of, organization development] might call a project, change, or transformation. The reason a professional might call for an organization intervention, or project, [...]

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Tagged as: butterfly effect, change management, manage expectation, organization development, project, risk, sabotage, stakeholder

All hail the solution to the micromanager

How to handle the micromanager? Raise your hand if you love working for a micromanager? Are you a micromanager? You can raise your hand if you are, no one else knows, actually everyone already knows. Micromanagers grind work to a halt. If there is no confidence in work getting done, the fish rots from the [...]

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Tagged as: Deloitte Consulting, management, Michael Raynor, micromanager, operations, organization development, Requisite Organization, requisite uncertainty, strategy

Human capital assessments – the symptom or the disease

The drive to evaluate operations and to contain costs is mistakenly applied as an operational issue across the board. Too often human capital assessments are lumped into the systems theory world of process and become a technical asset for management’s diagnostic view for cuts. The result becomes an assessment or evaluation process that is really [...]

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Tagged as: human capital assessment, intangible, organization performance, private equity, strategy, tangible, valuation, VC

Change management bottom up or top down

Classic change theory: leadership drives change; leadership must be committed for change to work. Seems to make sense, but in reality leadership is irrelevant. The organization’s ability to change is dictated by the operational units and employees, not leadership. The reality: culture eats strategy for lunch. Your workers dictate change and strategy. Leadership doesn’t drive [...]

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Tagged as: change, change management, cost of culture, John Kotter, leadership, management, strategy

The cost of culture, a 50% turnover of the Fortune 500

What is the cost of culture? Why is it even worth identifying corporate culture? Let’s start with what is culture. Culture is the values, norms, assumptions, expectations, and definitions that characterize organizations or affectionately known as: how things are done around here Culture is often a holdover from the founder(s) actions; sometimes developed consciously by [...]

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Tagged as: Built to Last, business process reengineering, change, cost of culture, Fortune 500, Jim Collins, Peter Senge, process, transformation, turnover

5 tips to manage better meetings

Meetings, meetings, and more meetings. We have meetings to clear up confusion, to communicate, to interact, to make decisions, to listen, and to collaborate. Too many meetings end without clear decisions and too often it is not until after the meeting is finished when the real conversations begin when people: complain about not being heard, [...]

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Tagged as: body language, communication, leadership, manage, meeting

Innovation, the technical risk to IQ

I see and read so much about offers to teach or facilitate innovation, but what is innovation? Innovation is risk Innovation is dialogue Innovation is opportunity (also known as diversity) Are you innovative: Do you ask good questions or do you listen without judgment or without looking to interrupt? Do you allow yourself and people [...]

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Tagged as: creativity, diversity, Emotional Intelligence, EQ, innovation, IQ, risk

Change management stormtroopers and system theory

When did systems theory get hijacked by process engineers and change management stormtroopers? When did we allow our organizations to be built and led by analytical, causal, deductive, drones and an over-adherence of frameworks to analyze past events? Frameworks and theories that rely on past events ignore all opportunity for organizations to interact in an [...]

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Tagged as: business process reengineering, goals, organization development, process, systems, systems theory

Change management, project management, and the intervention

Change Management is the Illness Overwhelmingly, organizations rely on process analysis to identify opportunity for savings. Process analysis is most commonly identified as change management. Change Management: Analyze and diagnose business and operations processes with a focus on the greatest areas of improvement in cost, schedule, and quality. Very few enjoy having themselves and their [...]

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Tagged as: change, management, od, organization development, project, project management, Project Management Institute

Organization strategy and development – party like it’s 1969

How do organizations survive? The only way an organization survives is to grow. Like people, an organization grows and develops by developing new skills, knowledge, and abilities. An organization’s strategy is nothing without an organization’s development. Most professionals have an image of what marketing, sales, accounting, or human resource professionals do, but fewer are naturally [...]

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Tagged as: adapt, change, cost of culture, Edgar Schein, motivation, od, organization development, Richard Beckhard, strategy, Warren Bennis

Why Startups Should ALWAYS Compromise When Hiring? — Never!

Reading a blog on the venture capital website Start Up Hire called: Should Startups Compromise When Hiring? I found a reference to a blog Dharmesh Shah, Chief Technology Officer & Founder of Hubspot* and Onstartups.com, wrote, “Why Startups Should ALWAYS Compromise When Hiring?”. I posted a comment to the blog as I felt Start Up [...]

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Tagged as: cost of culture, Dharmesh Shah, hire, HubSpot, recruiting, skills, stat up, VC, venture capital

The bully in the corner office

I challenge myself to write blogs that might start a conversation either leading to change or to sustain what is working. I want to present an idea to provide a spark for action or follow-through. Anyone can come up with an idea, that’s easy, the hard part is to take an idea into implementation. My [...]

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Tagged as: bully, communication, cost of culture, diversity, fear, leaders, leadership, motivation, organization development, political correctness

Diversity facade, part 2: diversity hijacked

On 2 earlier blog posts I write 1) that motivation is the bottom-line success and 2) diversity is about opportunity. In this blog I want to dig into how diversity can negatively affect motivation. First, let’s look at 2 definitions*: Of, relating to, or supporting broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical [...]

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Tagged as: diversity, fear, HR culture, motivation, political correctness, strategy

The most difficult industry to work in

I admit each organization is unique. Each handles and manages industry and firm-specific stress and demand differently. I do not admit that organizations are anything more than a system of human interrelations. The organization is a product of human interaction and social construction. Organizations do not follow ordained, industry-driven culture. There is no set of [...]

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Tagged as: change management, cost of culture, diversity, industry, learned helplessness, social construction, sociology

The bottom line: motivation

Your organization is only effective when they feel like it. Have you coached your management and executive team on how to motivate people around your vision? The bottom line is motivation, their motivation, not yours. A leader holds management accountable to understand, commit, and own their role to translate your vision to their team. Your [...]

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Tagged as: ability, bottom line, executive, Frederick Herzberg, goal, Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory, Herzberg's Two Factor theory, leadership, manage, motivation, plan, profit, vision

Emotion versus intelligence – the tortoise and the hare

In a prior post I advocate emotional intelligence as a more important quality job interview criteria than a corporate or team culture fit. What is emotional intelligence or EI? And what does the EI vs. IQ debate mean? Where IQ intends to measure the ability to reason deductively or inductively. Much has come to light [...]

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Tagged as: Boston Globe, cost of culture, Drake Bennett, Emotional Intelligence, EQ, fear, IQ, leadership, recruiting, team

Buy in

In organization change I always avoid the term buy in. You may hear the term in some variation of the following: now we need to get [insert stakeholder here] to buy in. I have never been comfortable asking anyone to “buy in” to a strategic plan, a new product launch, or an organization change. ‘Buy [...]

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Tagged as: buy in, communication, development, leadership, motivation, organization development, stakeholder, values

Leading and managing

Managers manage. Leaders lead. Are these roles so different? A manager is charged to manage their resources against a budget. Does this allow a manager to maximizing their talent, to cultivate creativity in their team, or to take risks? The manager needs to deliver to their budget and align their resources to successfully enable their [...]

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Tagged as: change, communication, leader, leadership, manager, motivation, skills, vision

Culture war

Does your company have a hiring philosophy to find people who fit into the company culture? Do you interview people to fit into the culture of your division? Do you interview people to fit into the culture of your team? Why do we look for people who will fit in when what your business needs [...]

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Tagged as: cost of culture, diversity, Emotional Intelligence, EQ, fear, Fortune 500, IQ, risk, Russell 2000, S&P 500

What can a 5 year old teach you about leadership?

When an organization’s words do not match action, who is to blame? How many companies have you seen or worked with that have literature, speeches, employee handbooks, or marketing that just does not match the actions or culture inside the organization? Ever been around a company with printed materials that talk of putting people first, [...]

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Tagged as: blame, customers, integrity, leader, leaders, leadership, Mahatma Gandhi, organization, organizations, values

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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