Five readings to shape your management thinking

The spring semester, my first in the MBA program, is over — a rich time of learning. It was also rich in reading material, especially in Management and Organizational Science. I have an almost three-inch-high stack of paper to remember the class, with more than 368 pages of case studies, academic articles and news stories. (Not counting the textbook readings.)

When new (or familiar) management problems arise in my work life, I plan to seek out the wisdom of these readings, so I catalogued this treasure trove in a binder for future reference. I decided to create a Top Five most-useful/most-meaningful/most-interesting list while I was at it. You can find links to the original articles (sometimes for a fee) in the posts:

1. Get Rid of the Performance Review! Samuel A. Culbert, a management professor at UCLA, is on a mission to revamp the performance review, with a book on the subject which came out in April.
2. Case Study: Compensation and Performance Evaluation at Arrow Electronics. I especially loved the case studies. It was really hard to pick only one, but this one really got my ire up.
3. Strategies of Effective New Product Team Leaders. If you need to build or rebuild a team, this article provides practical, concrete strategies.
4. Evidence-Based Management. I titled my blog post My No. 1 Top Hit. It still stands. I’m now a huge Bob Sutton/Jeffrey Pfeffer fan.
5. The Dean’s Disease: How the Darker Side of Power Manifests Itself in the Office of Dean. While this article may appear at first glance to narrowly focus on academia, it’s broadly applicable to any organization.

Five more readings which almost made my list:

1. “To a United Pilot, The Friendly Skies Are a Point of Pride; Capt. Flanagan Goes to Bat For His Harried Passengers; Still, Some Online Skeptics.”
2. Good to Great, or Just Good?
3. “For Lt. Withers, Act of Mercy Has Unexpected Sequel: U.S. Officer Broke the Rules To Let His Men Take In Young Dachau Survivor.”
4. The Men’s Warehouse: Success in a Declining Industry
5. Treadway Tire Company: Job Dissatisfaction and High Turnover at the Lima Plant

How to change your personality

Believe you CAN change your personality. Or your intelligence. Or your work habits. Or your prospects for success.

According to Carol S. Dweck’s research, believing is key. Dweck explored this concept in “Can Personality Be Changed? The Role of Beliefs in Personality and Change” in a keynote address to the 2007 Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science and a corresponding publication. A researcher in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University, Dweck’s work and that of her colleagues states “… much of personality is a flexible and dynamic thing that changes over the life span and is shaped by experience.”

Her research shows that acquired beliefs, such as “I am good at math,” play a critical role in how well people function. Some people’s beliefs in their qualities, such as intelligence or how they do at math, are fixed — that is, they can’t be changed. Other people have malleable beliefs, believing that these qualities can be developed through their efforts and education. In a 1999 paper, Dweck states “Research shows that people with a malleable theory are more open to learning, willing to confront challenges, able to stick to difficult tasks and capable of bouncing back from failures.” Research with college and junior-high students showed that when they thought their brains were nimble, flexible and capable of new learning — lo and behold, their brains were nimble, flexible and capable of new learning.

Bob Sutton boils Dweck’s conclusions down further: “When people believe they can get smarter, they do. But — and this is very important — when people believe that cognitive ability is difficult or impossible to change, they don’t get smarter.”

Our role as managers? Encourage malleability. Help our staff and peers see opportunities for change, growth and learning. Believe in our own abilities to change. If we believe that change can happen, a whole new realm of possibilities will open — personal, professional and societal.