Movie Theaters Will Have To Change

In past blog posts, I've written about the potential unbundling of cable television, as well as the challenges that the traditional broadcast networks face.   This week, Chris Gayomali has an interesting column at Fast Company about the future of the entertainment business.  He describes five potential developments in the upcoming years.   Naturally, he talks about issues such as the unbundling of cable.  His fifth point is quite interesting though.  Here it is:

MOVIE THEATERS WILL BE FORCED TO FOCUS ON UX

Meanwhile, movie theaters (remember those?) will need new ways to convince customers to change out of their PJs. While local IPAs and grilled asparagus and goat cheese pizza might not be lyrics in "Let’s All Go to the Lobby," they are offerings on the menu of Alamo Drafthouse, an Austin-based movie-theater chain that hopes to expand to 50 locations nationwide by the end of 2017. Goodbye, hermetically sealed nacho cheese!

I think Gayomali is absolutely right.  As content becomes available to us any time we want it, and as the in-home experience keeps getting better, movie theaters will face a tough competitive environment.  They will absolutely have to focus on the user experience.  Not unlike brick-and-mortar stores actually... the in-store experience can help retailers compete against e-commerce players.  Similary, the in-theater experience will be a key competitive weapon.   

Katie Rae, CEO of TechStars Boston

Here's a great brief interview with Katie Rae of TechStars Boston.   She offers a few great tips for entrepreneurs including the three elements of a great pitch. 

CMOE's Top 100 Socially-Shared Leadership Blogs

Thank you to the Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness for recognizing this blog as one of the top 100 socially-shared leadership blogs of 2014!    The blog ranked #50 on the list, with over 5,300 total social shares for the year. Thanks to all the readers who have shared the content via various social media platforms.  For those who wish to follow me on Twitter or want to include my Twitter handle when they share blog content, you can find me at @michaelaroberto.  Thanks!

Finding People Who are "Coachable"

My kids play a variety of sports, as many children do.  As a parent, the highest compliment that my child can receive from a coach is not about their speed, agility, hand-eye coordination, or ability to put the puck in the net.  The highest compliment is:  "Your child is very 'coachable.'"   In other words, they receive feedback well, listen carefully to the suggestions for improvement, and try hard to execute the new strategies and techniques.  They do not complain when criticized constructively, and they do not try to blame others for their mistakes.  Of course, leaders would love to find tons of employees who are highly "coachable" as well. 

In the New York Times Corner Office column a few weeks ago, Andrew Filev - CEO of Wrike - talked about his leadership style.  Filey described how he hires new employees.  Wrike is a project management software company.  As many leaders are now doing, Filey asks prospective employees to demonstrate their abilities during the hiring process by executing several key tasks that will be crucial to their job at the company.   As Filey says, "I’ve learned to test people in action. So you give them some sort of task to see how they think about things. If it’s for a sales job, you ask them to do a presentation. If it’s an engineering job, you ask them to code something. The task shouldn’t take a lot of effort because you don’t want them to do free work for a month. But the answer also shouldn’t be obvious."  

Filey takes it one step further though.  He doesn't just evaluate how well people perform the assigned tasks.  Instead, he expects it to be far from perfect, and he examines how candidates handle the feedback that he provides.  He doesn't simply want the highest performer.  He wants the best learners, the ones who can improve quickly.  He explains, "You also want them to be very coachable. You give them feedback and listen to how they react. Either they’re learning from it and they’re participating and collaborating in the discussion, or they’re arguing with you. Or, just as bad, they’re telling you “yes” because they think that’s what you want to hear, but their ego is so big that they can’t open up and listen to what you’re trying to tell them." 

Prior Hardship Doesn't Make Us Sympathetic to Others?

We have all heard that empathy is an important element of good design and good leadership.  We have to be able to put ourselves in others' shoes at times if we want to innovate effectively and lead others successfully.   However, a new paper offers findings that may surprise you.  Rachel Ruttan, Mary-Hunter McDonnell, and Loran Nordgren have published a paper titled, "Having ‘Been There’ Doesn’t Mean I Care: When Prior Experience Reduces Compassion for Emotional Distress."   What did they find?   The scholars examined sympathy, not empathy... but it's still worth noting their surprising conclusion.  The scholars summarized their findings as follows:

In a series of experiments, people who had previously experienced a hardship—jumping into freezing water, taking an exhausting mental test, unemployment, or bullying—actually had less sympathy for someone else who had trouble enduring the same problem. This appears to be the case both because people tend to forget the distress of their own experience and because they figure others should be able to endure it, too. Nevertheless, most people assume that experience yields sympathy, which may mean we often approach the wrong people for help.

Another Crack in the Cable Bundle: Streaming Showtime?

During CBS' earnings call yesterday, CBS CEO Les Moonves reported that "CBSN" - a streaming service launched in 2014 - had exceeded the firm's expectations.   He went one step further and suggested that the company would launch a streaming service for Showtime in 2015.  Of course, HBO announced a streaming service several months ago, but they indicated that the price would be equivalent to what customers pay when subscribing to HBO through their cable company.  Could Showtime move more aggressively and undercut the price available through the cable providers?   If so, it would represent the boldest step yet to undermine the cable bundle.   

The big question still remains: What will Disney do?   They own a huge amount of content that is very attractive to consumers  - all the Disney-related children's programming plus all the ESPN-related sports programming plus the ABC-related news and entertainment products.  If Disney follows Showtime and HBO, then cable providers will begin to feel a great deal of pressure.  Of course, the key question will still be:  When will someone offer streaming at a price BELOW the fees paid through the cable providers?  Each firm, of course, wants to be careful not to "kill the golden goose" i.e. to cannibalize their own profitable business in partnership with cable providers.  However, at some point, the market will tip. The opportunity available from "cord-cutters" will be attractive enough to convince some firms to move more aggressively.   Which firm will act like Apple did when it launched the iPad and the iPhone?  In those cases, Apple was willing to eat its own lunch rather than allow a rival to eat it (i.e. the iPhone cannibalized the iPod and the iPad cannibalized laptop sales).   Most firms in a wide range of industries resist cannibalization, and for that reason, are often late with regard to reacting to disruptive innovations.  Will entertainment companies be different in this case? 

One Simple Way to Attract More/Better Job Applicants

The Wall Street Journal reported this week on an interesting new study about recruiting top candidates for a job opening.   David Jones, Joseph Schmidt, and Derek Chapman have conducted  a study that focuses on how employers write job ads.  They compared ads that emphasized the skills and abilities required by the organization for the position (employer-centered) vs. ads that focused on what opportunities the organization can provide for the prospective employee (candidate-centered).     They worked with an engineering-consulting firm to test the impact of these two different types of job postings.  What did they find?   The "candidate centered" postings attracted more candidates than the "employer-centered" ads.  Moreover, the applicants to the "candidate-centered" postings tended to be of higher quality.   In sum, the best applicants want to know: "What's in it for me?  What can you do for me?"  If you don't begin to answer that question in the job ad itself, you won't get as many qualified applicants. 

Follow Your Passion: Is it Really Good Advice?

You've all heard the advice:  Discover and follow your passion.  I certainly advise my students to do so.  Is it really good advice though?  Sarah Leary, co-founder and Vice President of marketing and operations at Nextdoor, has an interesting perspective on this topic.   She shared it with Fortune recently.   She explains:  

Many talented businessmen and women advise young people to follow their passions. However, I’ve seen that most are paralyzed by this open-ended advice because they don’t know what they are passionate about in the professional world. And this isn’t entirely their fault. They simply lack the real world experience and feedback to distinguish what they are truly passionate about — yet. In fact, the advice to follow your passion can often work against you as an inexperienced young professional.

What should young people do instead?   Should they not try to discover and follow their passions?  No, she simply argues that one needs to get out there and gain work experience so as to learn what really motivates and inspires you.   Gaining a variety of professional experiences early in your career can help you discover what your passions are and what you enjoy doing.  She recommends pursuing multiple internships while in school.   She advises exploring different industries, companies, and roles.  As Leary states, "Concrete work experience, even as an intern, is illuminating."  Students will not only learn what they enjoy doing... they also will learn what they dislike.   

I would take it one step further.  Internships provide one important way to discover your passions.  There are others.   Take on leadership roles on campus in various organizations.  Shadow alumni  for a day at various companies, if your university has such a program (we do at Bryant University).   Work hard on class projects that involve consulting work for companies and organizations in your region.  Think carefully about the type of campus job that you might like to apply for, particularly in your junior or senior year.  Use independent studies or field study projects to explore an area of interest in more depth.  These techniques, and many more, will help you discover your passions. 

Unconventional Ways to Retain Talented Workers

Chris Ostoich has written an interesting article for Fast Company regarding how to retain talented employees using some rather unconventional approaches.  Ostoich is the founder of a software company named BlackbookHR.   I especially liked this point excerpted below:

Keep An Inventory Of Employees’ Skills And Interests

You may know what your employee Andy does in his job—he’s a front-end web developer and designer—but do you know he’s also a self-taught guitarist, a video editor, a painter, and has a variety of other talents? All employees have skills and interests they don’t use in their day-to-day work. If you can tap into those outside talents, you can benefit your company and better engage your employees. Make a place on your company’s intranet, in a Google doc, or anywhere people can share or search for skills. Look for opportunities to tap into this knowledge network whenever possible.

The Impact of High-Variety CEOs

Craig Crossland, Jinyong Zyung, Nathan J. Hiller, and Donald C. Hambrick have published an interesting new study about what they call "high-variety" CEOs.  In other words, what impact does it have on a firm when you hire a CEO with a wide variety of prior career experiences?  They found that these high-variety CEOs tended to enact more bold strategic change at the companies that hired them.   Moreover, they tended to shift the allocation of resources substantially.   They also tended to buck the conventional wisdom in their industries, creating distinctive strategies.  That's the good news.  These leaders tended to be change agents.   However, they also tended to drive a lot of churn in the executive suite.  It's not clear if that's good or bad.   Despite the churn, the high-variety CEOs did not necessarily assemble more diverse teams at the top.  Finally, what about performance?   The high-variety CEOs did not generate higher profits on average.  What did they create?  Volatility.   The high-variety CEOs tended to preside over periods of extensive fluctuations in performance. 

Could Amazon Become the Costco of the Web?

As many readers know, Amazon has seen its stock price suffer in the past year, as some investors finally are asking the question: Will this company ever make significant profits?   I often ask my customers:  Would it be awesome if Amazon could become the Costco of the web?  Initially, many students are puzzled by the question.  Those who haven't taken a look at Amazon's annual reports initially assume that Amazon is just as successful financially as Costco, if not more so. After all, Amazon is a dominant e-commerce player. Costco is a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer.  When they look more closely, they see that Costco is a very successful, highly profitable retailer.  Amazon would be very successful if it could ever achieve that type of profitability.   

I then ask students:  How is Amazon's business model like Costco's?  An astute student or two notices a key parallel.  Amazon Prime is much like a Costco membership.  I ask:  How much of Costco's profits is accounted for by its membership revenue? Answer: All of it!  The membership revenue is more than the total net income of the firm.  Then, I ask:  How is Amazon Prime different than Costco's membership revenue?  Answer:  Use of Costco does not come with much incremental expense for the firm, beyond the cost of goods sold for the products that are purchased each time a customer visits the store.  However, for Amazon, all that free shipping means significant incremental expense each time a customer orders goods on the site. Hmmm... so Amazon Prime may not ever be the same type of profit driver that Costco's membership fee is.  

With all that in mind, I was intrigued by this recent article on Fortune.com titled "Inside Amazon Prime."  Here's a key excerpt:

Because Amazon does not typically disclose data about Prime, it’s unclear how frequently shoppers use the service. But what is clear is that Prime members spend significantly more than more casual Amazon shoppers, according to RBC Capital Markets. Prime members said they spent an average of $538 annually with Amazon, far more than the $320 by non-Prime members.  Also nearly certain: Prime costs Amazon dearly. Greeley declined to disclose specifics, but he suggested as much in an interview. “When you look back, the program was launched in 2005 at $79,” he said. “You factor in just simple inflation, transportation and fuel costs, the price would be over $100 today, in just 2005 dollars.” Translation: Prime doesn’t pay for itself.  Indeed, Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru estimates that Amazon loses at least $1 billion annually on Prime-related shipping expenses. It’s a staggering cost that pushed Amazon to hike the price for Prime by $20 to $99 in April.  “On the one hand, Prime adds to their bottom line, but it’s like a leech that sucks their blood,” says Mulpuru. “When they throw in things like lending library and streaming, it just gets more and more expensive for them.”

The Great Courses on Virgin America Flights

You can now watch/listen to certain lecture series for free from The Great Courses on all Virgin America flights.   That includes my course on critical decision making.  Read more about this new collaboration between The Great Courses and Virgin America in this article from Forbes. 

Does Working From Home Improve Productivity?

Stanford researchers Nicholas Bloom, James Liang, John Roberts, and Zhichun Jenny Ying have conducted an interesting new study regarding the benefits and costs of working from home.  The scholars conducted an experiment at Ctrip, a Chinese travel agency.  They randomly assigned call center employees to either work from home or work in the office for a nine month period.  What did they find?  Those employees who worked from home experienced a 13% performance increase.  A portion of that increase came from working more minutes per shift (i.e. they took fewer breaks and fewer sick days).  The other portion derived from taking more calls per minute.   The attrition rate for home workers dropped significantly in this study.  These workers also appeared more satisfied with their jobs.   Did quality suffer though?  It did not.  The home workers appeared to be more productive, while not sacrificing the quality of their work. 

Does this mean that home workers always will be more productive?  Not necessarily.   We have to be careful about generalizing these findings.   This study pertained to call center workers.  We may find that other types of work do not experience the same increases in productivity.  For instance, perhaps some forms of work require much more intense coordination among members of a team.  In those instances, home working may bring more challenges and may not lead to productivity increases.  It would be terrific to see a new study examining a different type of work. 

Using Stories to Persuade

Do Treadmill Desks Enhance Job Performance?

Fast Company reports this week on a study by HEC-Montreal postdoctoral researcher Élise Labonté-LeMoyne and her co-authors, published in Computers in Human Behavior.  The scholars examined the impact of treadmill desks on attention and short-term recall.  One should definitely note that the sample size was very, very small.  However, the findings certainly are interesting and encourage further research in this area.  The researchers examined 18 subjects.  One-half of the participants used a treadmill desk and walked at 1.4 miles per hour while working.  The other half of the participants sat a regular desk.  The researchers described the task given to participants:  

The reading task was taken from Leger et al. (2014) and involves reading a lengthy text while periodically receiving emails. Participants were told to picture themselves in a scenario where they would have to report to their superior in 40 min on the content of the text and some of the emails. Some emails were pertinent to the topic at hand while others were irrelevant (e.g., co-worker’s birthday party, cafeteria lunch menu, etc.). Participants had to optimize their use of time and decide whether or not to open and read each email depending on its subject line. The task ended after 40 minutes. 

The people working at the treadmill desk performed significantly better (35% better) on a recall test after the 40 minute period.  Interestingly, the scholars also monitored the research subjects using electroencephalography (EEG testing).   Here are the results:

For the EEG, significant results were found for the recall task, specifically in the first half of the task...  The group differences appear mostly in the right temporo-parietal region. We observed significantly more theta activity in the seated group (p = 0.02–0.05) and more alpha activity in the walking group (p = 0.05). Previous studies had shown that good memory performance is correlated with a decrease in theta power and an increase in alpha power ( Klimesch, 1999). Past work also showed that an increase in gamma power in the parietal region is correlated with attentional processes ( Müller, Gruber, & Keil, 2000) and memory ( Lisman, 2010). Our results are therefore in accordance with improved performance by the walking group on a task that requires memory and attention.

Not everyone has access to a treadmill desk, nor can they secure one for their office.  However, you might want to think about how much time you spend walking or standing during the day.  Do you have to be seated for all your work?  Could you walk or stand at times, and might that affect performance on the job?  I'm curious to see more research with a larger sample size to build upon this interesting study.  

Does Having an Easy Grading Boss Actually Enhance Your Job Performance?

Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman published a thought-provoking piece in Harvard Business Review this month.  Zenger and Folkman run a leadership development consultancy.   They conducted research on supervisor evaluations of subordinates.  They noticed that some managers are much harder graders than others (not surprisingly).   Moreover, they discovered that, "People who work for easy graders are perceived to be more effective leaders by their colleagues than those who work for hard graders."  What did the conclude from these data?  Zenger and Folkman argue that, "perhaps the ratings are in some way self-fulfilling, and the leaders who see the best in their people actually make them better, while those who look more critically make their subordinates worse."  

What do I make of these findings and interpretations of the data?  First, I will acknowledge that prior research does show that this "self-fulfilling prophecy" effect does exist.  However, I would be careful about how these data have been interpreted.  First, Zenger and Folkman examined 360 managers, and then identified 50 easy graders and 31 hard graders. Why not equal amounts of easy and hard graders?  Why these particular breakpoints for looking at the managers at the extremes in their dataset?  They may have a good explanation, but they do not provide it in the HBR article.  Second, they fail to prove that objective differences in performance do not exist among the groups of employees in their study.   Perhaps the hard graders have lower performing units for a variety of reasons.  Third, they do not address the fact that they have simply measured how colleagues perceive the employees in this study.  They do not actually measure performance objectively.  Thus, it could be that easy graders talk about their employees in a very positive way, thereby influencing how colleagues perceive these employees.  The same may occur for hard graders in the opposite direction.  Thus, employees do not become awesome because their managers think they are awesome. Instead, colleagues come to believe employees are awesome because their managers talk so positively about them within the organization.   For these reasons (and others), I would be careful about the conclusions and interpretations being made by these researchers. 

What Happens to Hierarchical Teams in the Himalayas?

On this blizzard day, it only seems appropriate to draft a blog post about mountaineering in the Himalayas.  As many of my blog readers know, I've written in the past about why and how expedition teams behave on Mount Everest.  With regard to the infamous 1996 tragedy involving the Mountain Madness and Adventure Consultants expeditions, I argued that the teams lacked psychological safety.  As a result, people did not speak when they had concerns about the teams' plans, climbers' health, and the mountain conditions.  I explained that the status hierarchy in the teams diminished psychological safety (though other factors also decreased psychological safety).  The failure to speak up contributed to the tragedy on the mountain in May 1996, though it certainly was not the only cause of the deaths that occurred.  

Now, in a new paper, Eric M. Anicich, Roderick I. Swaab, and Adam D. Galinsky have written a paper about expedition teams in the Himalayas.  They find that hierarchy has positive and negative effects on expedition teams.  It may help teams reach the summit, but it may also kill people.  In fact, that's exactly what occurred in 1996.  Many people reached the top, but a number of climbers died.  It reminds me of what mountaineers David Breashears and Ed Viesturs have told me repeatedly: getting to the top is optional; getting back down safely is mandatory.  In fact, many people die coming down the mountain, rather than on the way to the summit.  Thus, while getting to the summit may seem like an accomplishment of these hierarchical teams, I'm not sure that's the case.  Getting to the summit is not a success.   Getting back down safely is the real measure of success.  Here's an excerpt from the abstract of their paper:

Specifically, we offer empirical evidence that hierarchical cultural values affect the outcomes of teams in high-stakes environments through group processes. Experimental data from a sample of expert mountain climbers from 27 countries confirmed that climbers expect that a hierarchical culture leads to improved team coordination among climbing teams, but impaired psychological safety and information sharing compared with an egalitarian culture. An archival analysis of 30,625 Himalayan mountain climbers from 56 countries on 5,104 expeditions found that hierarchy both elevated and killed in the Himalayas: Expeditions from more hierarchical countries had more climbers reach the summit, but also more climbers die along the way.

Pinerest Aims to Target Men

In today's Wall Street Journal, Yoree Koh writes about Pinterest's attempts to target male customers.  According to the article, "About 42% of online U.S. women use Pinterest, according to a Pew Research survey released this month, a coveted audience with enormous spending power."  The articles goes on to say that the company is trying to solve a problem that has plagued it for some time, namely its inability to attract male customers.  Koh writes:

"But Pinterest’s success with women has also created a conundrum for the business. The company has outsize aspirations to become the go-to place for discovery on the Web. And yet the other half of the world’s population has largely stayed away from the site in part because of the stigma that Pinterest is a clubhouse for women.  “We’re really trying to unpack and understand that so we can communicate to [men] that Pinterest is absolutely for you,” said David Rubin, who joined as head of marketing in July from Unilever PLC, where he worked on women’s beauty and helped launch the Axe men’s deodorant brand."

I find this "problem" rather intriguing.  What they see as a problem I see as a great strategy.  Pinterest has been laser focused on the female demographic.  They have done an amazing job of building an integrated system of activities and capabilities that serves that target market.   Why not focus on how to monetize the audience that it has and turn that audience into sustainable profits?  Why not be willing to say that they are not about serving male customers (primarily)?  Why try to be all things to all people?  Perhaps they don't have a male problem.  Perhaps they are about to create a strategy problem for themselves. 

How to Communicate with an Audience

Here's Stanford's J.D. Schramm on how to communicate effectively with an audience.  J.D. was my colleague when I served as a visiting professor at NYU's Stern School of Business.  He's a terrific teacher in the field of business communication.

Tips for Being a Good Boss: Recognize That You Are Now on Stage

In college, two roommates (Brian Gaspardo and Tony Khazen) and I ran the "Leverett House Grille" - a late-night, student-run pizza and burger joint for fellow students.  We sold pizza, burgers, fries, ice cream, milkshakes, and soda from 9pm-1am each weeknight.  We had a ton of fun, and we learned a great deal about how to manage a small business.  One day, a friend named Joanne Chang approached us with an idea.  An applied math and economics double major, Joanne loved to bake in her free time.  She offered to bake chocolate chip cookies that we could sell at the Leverett House Grille.  We split the profits.  

What happened to Joanne after graduation?  After a stint at Monitor Consulting, Joanne has gone on to become one of Boston's finest bakery chefs and a celebrated cookbook author.   Flour Bakery and Cafe, which she founded and manages, has four locations in greater Boston.  She also co-owns Myers + Chang, an Asian restaurant located in downtown Boston.   Her two cookbooks became national bestsellers, and her third book will be released later this year.  In 2013, Joanne was honored as a prestigious James Beard Award nominee.  Joanne is a terrific chef, but she's also proven to be a highly successful entrepreneur and business leader.  This week, Fortune featured a column about Joanne.  In the article, Joanne offers five tips on being a good boss.  They are all great tips.  I especially loved Tip#4: 

4. Recognize that you are now on stage.

As the boss, it’s no longer all about you—your focus is on everyone around you. Everything you say and do is being watched by the staff and seen as having a stamp of approval. Your role is to tackle every single day with optimism, focus, determination and a dedication to providing your team with whatever they need to succeed at their jobs. When I was first a boss, if I had was having a bad day I would get quiet and withdrawn. Bakers would nervously ask me if I was mad at them, and I realized that I couldn’t be in a bad mood and not have them think they had done something wrong. Don’t be insincere or fake…but keeping a game face on as a boss is crucial to ensuring a stable team.

Trying to Look Smart... and Failing!

The Wall Street Journal reports today on research regarding how people try to appear intelligent to others.  One major conclusion:  the techniques and approaches utilized by many people may actually backfire.  They use tactics that do not at all make them look intelligent.  In fact, it may actually harm their credibility and ability to influence others.  The article summarizes a key finding from research by Professor Nora Murphy of Loyola Marymount University:

People who tried to appear intelligent risked exposing what they didn’t know, the research shows. Observers were more accurate in estimating the IQs—including lower IQs—of those instructed to act intelligent than in estimating the IQs of controls who weren’t given any instructions. Apparently, participants’ attempts at impression management actually magnified other cues signaling low intelligence. 

What types of techniques can backfire?   For example, using big words and complex sentences may be counterproductive.  You don't impress people.  Instead, you make yourself the object of ridicule.  I'm sure it's particularly bad if you misuse particular words! 

When the Boss Craves Power, Look Out!

Kellogg Professor Jon Maner and doctoral student Charleen Case have conducted a fascinating new experiment about power.   They gave groups of students a task to perform, with prizes for the teams that performed the best. They created three experimental groups. In the control group, they did not assign a leader, and the members would share the prizes equally upon completion of the task.  In a second scenario, a student was assigned to the leader, and he or she was told that one member of the group was very highly skilled at the task.  The leaders were told that they should supervise the group members and choose how to allot the prizes among the members at the end.  In the third scenario, the leaders were told to supervise and to allot the prizes at the end, but they were told that the hierarchy was malleable (i.e. someone else could step up and become the leader during the course of the work).  What did they find?  According to Kellogg Insights, Maner and Case discovered the following:

Maner and collaborator Charleen Case, a doctoral student at the Kellogg School, found that leaders who were driven by a desire for power (or dominance motivated) were more likely to undermine a group’s communication and cohesion than those who were motivated by a desire for respect (or prestige motivated). Those power-hungry leaders were most inclined to behave this way when they were told that the power hierarchy in the group was unstable and they may lose their position at the top. And they were most likely to undermine group cohesion by isolating the one highly skilled member of the group.

Once again, we find that power corrupts.  Specifically, people who crave power tend to be threatened by the highly skilled subordinate.  They may go so far as to isolate that individual and break down the group's cohesion for the sake of maintaining power.   In so doing, they undermine the group's performance.  

New Simulation Released!

Harvard Business Publishing has released the new simulation that I have been working on over the past two years.  The simulation is titled "Organizational Behavior Simulation: Judgment in a Crisis."  Participants play the role of executives at Matterhorn Health, a fictional medical device manufacturer.   When customers begin reporting major problems immediately after a major new product launch, executives must get to the bottom of the issue.  What is causing the problems reported by users?  How should the company proceed?   Participants must make a series of crucial decisions in the aftermath of the product launch.  The simulation provides powerful lessons in leadership, decision making, and crisis management.  A great team of people worked with me to develop this simulation, including talented content creators at Harvard Business Publishing and the software firm Forio, a specialist in simulation development.  We look forward to seeing educators at universities and chief learning officers at corporations utilize the simulation in various courses and workshops.   Thank you to everyone who helped with beta testing over the past year!   In this short video, I describe why I have developed simulations to enhance my teaching.  

Companies Using Tryouts Before They Hire

The Wall Street Journal reports that more and more companies (such as Sherwin Williams, Wal-Mart, and Starbucks) have begun to use "tryouts" to evaluate job candidates.   According to the Wall Street Journal, 

"By plunging candidates into simulations that mimic the roles they are interested in, hiring managers can get a sense of a candidate’s decision-making process and temperament. The simulation might be an assignment at the company’s offices, a phone call, or a virtual game.  For example, a candidate for a pharmacist role might be asked to complete online tasks that evaluate her knowledge of medications and skills in preparing prescriptions, Mr. Stern said. Or a would-be salesman might have to draft a pitch and make a sales call, Mr. Bissett said." 

I think the notion of a tryout is a major step forward in the hiring process.  The bottom line - some people can perform beautifully in an interview, no matter the format, but they have a much harder time actually getting things done in an organization.   A tryout asks them to showcase their skills and abilities, not just describe them.  I also know of some firms that are conducting "team tryouts" - examining both the skills of their candidates and the abilities of those individuals to work with others in a group on a challenging task.  We should expect to see more of these types of tryouts in the future.  I also will be interested to see if some research emerges about their efficacy.