Global design firm IDEO is known for its innovation. In fact, many clients approach the firm specifically because they want to learn its secrets. In a research initiative meant to get at the heart at what makes innovative companies tick, IDEO studied its 26-year archive of projects that focused on clients’ internal team dynamics, as well as external sources focused on innovation (including Fast Company‘s annual...

The MIT Sloan Expert Series recently presented a webcast with Andrew McAfee ?and ?Erik Brynjolfsson, co-authors of the new book Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing our Digital Future, Beth Comstock, vice chair of GE, and Sandy Pentland, MIT professor and expert of group dynamics in a digital world. A crucial theme of the new book is that unsettling, disruptive change is becoming the status quo. Suddenly, companies we th...

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, a world-renowned thought leader on Project Management and Strategy Implementation, recently penned an article for CIO around PM fundamentals for mergers and acquisitions. As he wrote: “Last year, some 40,000 companies changed ownership, for a total deal value of some $5 trillion, according to Thomson Reuters. That means people are managing 40,000 massive transformation projects – but...

On a SilkRoad webinar with HR Daily Advisor last week, we talked about how advances in people analytics are augmenting the business and HR operations of modern organizations. The event, called, The Next Frontier of People Analytics, explored how HR can up its game to become a strategic partner and essential source of analytical guidance. As our hour concluded, there were many terrific questions, but very honest one in parti...

Over the past five years, many organizations have moved their HR systems into cloud platforms and are looking for add-on tools that allow them to access/integrate – or build their own – mobile apps. This has led to the rise of what we call citizen development. According to Gartner’s IT Glossary, a citizen developer is a user who creates new business applications using development environments sanctioned...

Last week, SilkRoad presented a webinar, Employee as Consumer: Building a Differentiated Experience Through the Lifecycle, with HR Daily Advisor. We talked about the consumerization of HR, the creation of a meaningful employee experience throughout the lifecycle, and how design thinking, talent activation, and employer branding play into it. At the end of the session, Jennifer asked: How do you create an experience that...

Does giving employees the freedom to do tasks in their own way actually decrease their productivity? Harvard Business School investigates. In the interest of productivity, some organizations have a predetermined scheduling policy, requiring that tasks be completed in a particular order. For example, we’ve talked about citizen development a lot on the Fast Track, and low code application development may indeed be on...

Want to be more productive tomorrow? Zero in on your organization’s time, its talent, and its energy. In their new book, TIME | TALENT | ENERGY: Overcome Organizational Drag and Unleash Your Team’s Productive Power, Bain & Company partner Michael Mankins and his co-author Eric Garton identify the specific causes of organizational drag – otherwise known as the collection of institutional factors that slo...

In an increasingly agile world, how can we make the best decisions with limited information? Leaders do not always have the luxury of time when making a critical business decision, yet research shows that quick decisions are often remarkably solid despite time pressures. Here are six strategies for coming to the best conclusion in a non-ideal situation. Strategy 1: Define Your Result Consider why you must make a pr...

Gallup’s annual State of the American Workplace report is one of the largest treasure troves of employee satisfaction data in the world. I like going hunting, so I broke down some of the essential findings for you. Gallup asked nearly 200,000 US employees their opinions on a variety of topics current transforming our workforces, including flextime, agile performance management, and matrixed teaming. Exactly how cr...