In this interview Robert Sutton talks about some of the counterintuitive practices he believes spur innovation. He proposes that companies should adopt eleven practices. Hire slow…
Abstract
In this interview Robert Sutton talks about some of the counterintuitive practices he believes spur innovation. He proposes that companies should adopt eleven practices. Hire slow learners (of the organizational code). Hire people who make you uncomfortable, even those you dislike. Hire people you probably do not need. Use job interviews to get ideas not just to screen candidates. Encourage people to ignore and defy superiors and peers. Find some happy people and get them to fight. Reward success and failure and punish inaction. Decide to do something that will probably fail, and then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain. Think of some ridiculous or impractical things to do, and then plan to do them. Avoid, distract, and bore customers, critics and anyone else who just wants to talk about money. Do not try to learn anything from people who say they have solved the problems you face. Forget the past, especially your company’s successes. In sum, he believes that creative companies and teams are inefficient and annoying places to work.
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This paper aims to present an interview asking Robert I. Sutton how leaders can create or discover wellsprings of excellence and engagement within their organizations and then…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present an interview asking Robert I. Sutton how leaders can create or discover wellsprings of excellence and engagement within their organizations and then scale them successfully to encompass the company as a whole, and then continue to scale them successfully as the business expands.
Design/methodology/approach
Sutton discusses what was learned in the process of researching his book Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More without Settling for Less (Crown Business, 2014), co-authored with fellow Stanford professor, Huggy Rao.
Findings
Scaling depends on having shared beliefs and behaviors that people not only talk about, but they also actually live – and that help guide and motivate people in the pursuit of the local definition of excellence.
Practical implications
To scale excellence the best leaders and teams employ a one-two punch of first arousing collective emotion, especially pride or anger, and then channelling that emotion to propel the desired action.
Originality/value
The paper provides an insightful look at the process of scaling up continuous customer-focused performance and product innovation by a well-known expert.
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This paper broadens and extends the idea of organizational death by arguing that certain organizational site moves, those in which employees hold a strong place attachment to the…
Abstract
This paper broadens and extends the idea of organizational death by arguing that certain organizational site moves, those in which employees hold a strong place attachment to the to be left, are a form of organizational death. It argues for the utility of viewing organizational change as involving loss and including space in studies of everyday organizational experiences. Using ethnographic research (participant‐observation and in‐depth interviews with the employees) of one such organization (the “Coffee House”) and a negotiated‐order perspective, discusses employee beliefs as to how the site move should have been managed as a means to document their understanding of the move as a loss experience and as a form of organizational death.
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States the top reason why managers should take notice of scholarly research is because actions based on sound evidence beat those based on suspect intuition every time. Posits…
Abstract
States the top reason why managers should take notice of scholarly research is because actions based on sound evidence beat those based on suspect intuition every time. Posits that even academic research at its best is perhaps not that much of a better alternative to guru’s fads and fantasies.
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It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who once said that every wall is a door. Unfortunately, this positive outlook on organizational opportunity and creativity is still too rarely adopted…
Abstract
It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who once said that every wall is a door. Unfortunately, this positive outlook on organizational opportunity and creativity is still too rarely adopted. According to Robert I. Sutton, the root of the problem lies in the fact that managers back off when they discover exactly what creativity demands – significantly different practices from routine work which often seem risky and sometimes plain wrong.
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Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the…
Abstract
Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the topic remain disintegrated and because both lack a sophisticated account of how social structure and interdependencies among organizations affect decline. This paper develops a perspective which tries to overcome these problems. The perspective explains decline through an understanding of how social ties and resource dependencies among firms affect market structure and the resulting behavior of firms within it. Evidence is furnished that supports the assumptions of the perspective and provides a basis for specifying propositions about the effect of network structure on organizational survival. I conclude by discussing the perspective’s implications for organizational theory and economic sociology.
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Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the…
Abstract
Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the topic remain disintegrated and because both lack a sophisticated account of how social structure and interdependencies among organizations affect decline. This paper develops a perspective which tries to overcome these problems. The perspective explains decline through an understanding of how social ties and resource dependencies among firms affect market structure and the resulting behavior of firms within it. Evidence is furnished that supports the assumptions of the perspective and provides a basis for specifying propositions about the effect of network structure on organizational survival. I conclude by discussing the perspective's implications for organizational theory and economic sociology.
Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
This article advocates for evidenced‐based management and aims to demonstrate how it works.
Abstract
Purpose
This article advocates for evidenced‐based management and aims to demonstrate how it works.
Design/methodology/approach
The article identifies seven implementation principles to help people and companies that are committed to doing what it takes to profit from evidence‐based management.
Findings
The seven principles are: treat your organization as an unfinished prototype; no brag, just facts; see yourself and your organization as outsiders do; evidence‐based management is not just for senior executives; like everything else, you still need to sell evidenced‐based management; if all else fails, slow the spread of bad practices; and the best diagnostic question: what happens when people fail?
Research limitations/implications
A follow‐up article needs to show results when firms institute evidence‐based management.
Practical implications
A key underpinning of evidence‐based management are three truths: that most so‐called breakthrough ideas are either old, wrong, or both; that effective companies and leaders are more interested in what is true than what is new; and that those that do simple, obvious, and even seemingly trivial things well will dominate competitors who search for silver bullets and instant magic.
Originality/value
The article explains why the implementation of evidenced‐based management promotes competitive advantage.