Desinging effective organization exam 2

What is dispersion and when is it most and least effectively used?

good when outcomes are clear and there is minimal interdependence. Evidence shows lowers performance when interdependence is required.

The brain vacuum syndrome?

hire really smart people then all of a sudden are dumb

What is the war for talent and do the assumptions it is based on make sense? Why or why not?

is a model that say that talent is scarce. The assumptions are - individual ability is fixed and not variable. There are better and worse people. - People can be reliably sorted based on their abilities and competence. - organizational performance is the simple aggregation of all of the individual performances. What matters most is what each individual does, not the context or system in which they do it.

What are evidence-based recommendations to integrate work life with the rest of life?

no issues with no permitted behaviors, recognize needs of person

What is wisdom?

reflected in the attitude people have toward what they know, not in how much or how little they know.

What is evidence-based management? What characterizes it?

seeing the world and thinking deeply about it // better, deeper logic and facts

Why aren't effective management innovations copied and adopted more quickly?

tactic knowledge // implementation skills // power of precedent // power of ideology

What is the smart-talk trap?

talk of creativity but no implementation

What are the six guidelines for evaluating management ideas and knowledge?

· Emphasize both virtues and drawbacks · Use success and failure stories to illustrate sound practices, not as a valid research method · Take neutral, dispassionate approach to ideologies and theories. · Treat old ideas as if they are old ideas · Be suspicious of breakthrough ideas and studies · Celebrate and develop collective brilliance, not lone geniuses or gurus.

What are the evidence based recommendations regarding strategy?

· Listen to your customers, do what they tell you · Don't confuse operational problems with the need for changing strategy · Keep it simple · Learn as you go · Balance attention to strategy with attention to the details of implementation

What is best predictor of future employee performance? How much of variability in performance is explained by this predictor?

• (IQ) in the best-case correlations only explains about 16% of the difference

What are the things to watch out for to make sure that sound logic and analysis are used in making decisions and evaluating data?

▫ Is this relationship cause and effect or merely a correlation? ▫ Does the timing of the data collection make sense? ▫ Is data collected by sampling only successful companies? Or, are unsuccessful failures also studied?

What company wasted millions of dollars on a customer service initiative rather than testing it first?

Seven eleven

Benefits of integrating the two are

- Builds commitment through inclusion - recruitment of family and friends, employees, customers, consultants.

What can be done to prevent problems caused by decisions based on unexamined ideologies?

- Is your preference for a particular management practice mostly because it fits with your intuition? - Do you require the same amount of proof and data whether or not the issue is one that you believe in? - Are your beliefs clouding your willingness to gather and consider all data pertinent to your choices?

What are the three ways (effects) that financial incentives help or hurt an organization?

- Motivational effect - inspire more effort if it uses incorrectly it could cause turnover, holding back of best ideas, and resentment. - Informational effect - makes clear what the organization values and what it does not value. it only clear if management's thinking and evaluate all possible negative unintended consequences. - selection effect - attract the right kind of people and repel the wrong kind. incentive systems do attract talent. Often however, it may be the wrong kind.

What are the 4 guidelines for the use of financial incentives?

- don't try to solve every problem with financial incentives - sometimes less is more effective - Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it - Worry about comparisons and distributions, not only individuals or levels

Benefits of keeping work separate from non-work life are

- reduction of role conflict - objective decision making - control and maintenance of organizational boundaries

What are the poor decision practices that managers engage in? Why?

-Casual Benchmarking - doing what (seems to have) worked in the past. Thinking all past experience applies to all future problem is stupid. - following deeply held yet unexamined ideologies

What are the obstacles to implementing evidence based management (EBM)?

-Not a quick fix, this Is a journey rather than a destination -Using data changes the power dynamics -People often don't want to hear the truth -The marketplace for business ideas is messy and inefficient

What are the two costs of strategic planning?

-the resources consumed throughout the organization in planning and budgeting - leadership attention spent on strategy that is not spent fixing operational problems.

What is the law of crappy people? What is the law of crappy systems? Which trumps which? Why?

Law of crappy systems trumps law of crappy people // law of crappy people - bad managers will hire even worse employees because they are threatened by employees that are better

What is the evidence regarding merit pay for teachers based on student test scores? What is the evidence regarding "social promotion" in schools?

does not work in achieving objections // promoting with group rather than mastering skills

What questions should be asked before trying a business idea or practice?

assumptions about people or organization // what has to be true for it to work // tests run // reasonable and correct, wrong

What company discussed has been most successful in integrating acquisitions?

Cisco

What were the results of United's benchmarking of Southwest Airlines in the California shuttle market?

Failed

How do managers compare to doctors?

If doctors practiced medicine the way many companies practice management. There would be far more sick and dead patients, and many more doctors would be in jail.

What % of U.S. companies have financial incentive programs?

More than 80%

What are the advantages to a company of letting people be themselves?

No false emotions, creativity, authentic leadership.

What did Einstein say about things that could and could not be counted?

Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted

What was learned from the nursing home studies?

One nursing home was had a lower mistake and one had a higher mistake but everything else they were better. How is that possible? This is because the one with the lower mistake had an environment that don't encourage people to be noisy and nosy. The worker is more than likely not telling the truth. Whereas the one with more mistake, they encourage their worker to tell the truth.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of benchmarking? What can be done to prevent problems caused by casual benchmarking?

Past experience and performance to set standards// Copy visible/obvious// performance improvement

What can be done to prevent bad decisions made because it is the way things have been done successfully in the past?

Practice, similar situation analysis, logic behind success.

What were the results of the garbage truck driver program?

The garbage truck driver tries to finish their job faster but this mean that the quality of work went down and some of them miss the hold entire block of street. It did reduce the number of over but it did not reduce cost.

Which of the poor decision practices is the most difficult for managers to change?

Unexamined ideologies or beliefs

What is benchmarking?

Using other company's performance and experience to set standards for own company

The extrinsic incentive biases?

overestimate the value of extrinsic job feature such as pay and not care about intrinsic values such as being able to make decisions

What is a "half-truth?"

partly right and apply at certain times but not all the times. It also more difficult to debunk b/c arguments can always be made about the time and places when they are correct and then generalized to the wrong setting and times. Managers also need to have greater knowledge to determine when these ideas are right and when they are inappropriate.

Why does it sometimes take two to lie?

person who tells the lie // person who signals they want to be lied to