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Writing the New Rules of Engagement

Archive for the ‘Leadership & Management’ Category

Proper Job Placement: Methods from HR

dilbert200711295245The HR process simplified (with tongue firmly in cheek):
1. Put 400 bricks in a closed room.
2. Put your new hires in the room and close the door.
3. Leave them alone and come back after 6 hours.
4. Analyze the resulting situation:
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The Flip Side: Bad Bosses, Miserable Jobs

51LAnujvQ0L._SS500_The Google-sifting for this post started innocently enough by turning over the web rocks of a relatively benign topic, “employee disengagement.” My intent was to present counterpoint to my post about the business model and employee-centric culture at Southwest Airlines, but my searching quickly devolved into a torrent of depressing content about concepts like “bully bosses” and “desk rage.”
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Southwest Airlines: “Put Your Employees First”

51CFHQ96VFL._SS500_My favorite, and perhaps the most famous concept from Jim CollinsGood To Great is the Hedgehog Concept:

Are you a hedgehog or a fox? In his famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin divided the world into hedgehogs and foxes, based upon an ancient Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

The gist of this parable is that the fox, with all of his cleverness, speed, and agility, has no tactical advantage over the dowdy hedgehog, whose “one big thing” is knowing how to curl up into a needlish ball when the craftier fox tries to eat him for lunch.

The hedgehog’s advantage is that he knows his one big thing, and stays true to this innate gift rather than trying to outfox a fox.
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