What Leadership Needs to Know about Changing Organizational Culture

SAY you have a manufacturing location with problems — three plant managers in two years, unusual variation in quality and/or safety, seemingly unpredictable swings in productivity. The options senior leadership considers may be to sell it, give it a defined period to show or go, or take on the task of rehabilitation. Leadership may wonder…

For A Positive Workplace Culture, Make Words Match Decisions and Actions

If organizational values on paper don’t match up with employee’s day-to-day experience, culture suffers. Here’s how to back them up with action. How often do organizations go through the motions of defining their company value statements, only to leave them to languish like just another exercise checked off the list? When organizational values such as…

How Leaders Can Prevent Disasters:  Learnings from NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia Failure

CNN’s four-part series, “Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight,” tells the story of how a series of decisions made by competent, dedicated, and well-intentioned leaders set the stage for a safety exposure that brought down the Space Shuttle Columbia — an exposure that was not understood at the time. As an organizational psychologist, I’ve studied decision-making…