Workplace, Teams, & Culture P. 7

The current economic recession has provided managers with a tempting environment for acquiring "star" employees on the cheap. But the track record of such acquisitions of human capital has been mixed, with many companies failing to integrate their new talent. Apparently, an organization can't just hire star employees and then expect those individuals to automatically shine in their new environment. But how, then, can companies ensure that they get the most out of the talent they hire? The authors have found that, to build a top-notch organization of star employees, companies can't simply hire the best and brightest and then turn those individuals loose into a Darwinian competition. Instead, organizations need to provide and maintain the right environment for those employees to flourish. And that means avoiding a number of common pitfalls, such as falling for the "lone-star myth" (companies often mistakenly believe that one individual can single-handedly turn around an entire department or organization), overestimating the importance of pay (businesses frequently overpay for hiring top talent), allowing stars to go solo (high achievers are over-scheduled almost by definition, so managers should never assume that collaboration will "just happen"), focusing too narrowly on a single department or group (stars need top colleagues throughout the organization in order to do their best work) and neglecting homegrown talent.

This article presents frameworks for companies considering a shift to global product development.

While the protection of intellectual property, or IP, seems to be at odds with a company's pursuit of open innovation, or OI--the selective use of research carried out elsewhere--businesses in the know can align these two approaches. An appropriate IP strategy can actually be an enabler of OI activities. In fact, an increasing number of companies, such as International Business Machines Corp., are involved in interconnected "ecosystems"--critically dependent on cooperating with other parties to generate innovations and profits. The authors' research has found that the enabling function of IP depends on the specific circumstances under which companies engage in OI. Two variables in particular have emerged as critical determinants: the technological environment in which the business is active, and the knowledge distribution among potential collaborators. Each variable is presented as having two possible values. The technological environment, for instance, is either calm or turbulent. Concerning the nature of innovative knowledge distribution, external knowledge can be thought of as residing either with the few (in puddles) or with the many (in oceans). By combining these two dimension sets, and thus creating four possible scenarios, we provide a better sense of a firm's most appropriate IP/IO strategy. Depending on the category into which the company falls, IP plays a different role as an enabler of OI.

Recent research explores the interdependencies between various approaches to innovation.

Should external innovators be organized in collaborative communities or competitive markets? The answer depends on three crucial issues.

With appropriate processes, virtual teams can even outperform their colocated counterparts.

For innovation, corporate culture matters more than location.

In their 1998 Sloan Management Review article "Preserving Employee Morale During Downsizing," the authors maintained that strong organizations need to develop resilience so they could take advantage of new opportunities that arise during periods of economic retrenchment. They detailed four stages of downsizing programs: deciding to downsize, planning the program, making the announcement and implementing the program. In this sequel, the authors argue that downsizing programs aren't just about "doing more with less." They also provide opportunities to build a sense of trust and empowerment between managers and employees, which can provide significant benefits going forward. In addition to examining the impacts downsizing has on surviving employees and how survivors can influence whether a program is successful, the article explores three new areas that the authors have come to recognize as important to the success of downsizing efforts: (1) how organizations must become more flexible, (2) how they must become more innovative and creative, and (3) how they must improve their communications with stakeholders who are increasingly skeptical of downsizing efforts.

Companies have long used teams to solve problems: focus groups to explore customer needs, consumer surveys to understand the market and annual meetings to listen to shareholders. But the words “solve,” “explore,” “understand” and “listen” have now taken on a whole new meaning. Thanks to recent technologies, including many Web 2.0 applications, companies can now tap into “the collective” on a greater scale than ever before. Indeed, the increasing use of information markets, wikis, crowdsourcing, “the wisdom of crowds” concepts, social networks, collaborative software and other Web-based tools constitutes a paradigm shift in the way that many companies make decisions. Call it the emerging era of “Decisions 2.0.” But the proliferation of such technologies necessitates a framework for understanding what type of collective intelligence is possible (or not), desirable (or not) and affordable (or not) & #8212; and under what conditions. At a minimum, managers need to consider the following key issues: loss of control, diversity versus expertise, engagement, policing, intellectual property and mechanism design. By understanding such important issues, companies like Affinnova, Google, InnoCentive, Marketocracy and Threadless have successfully implemented Decisions 2.0 applications for a variety of purposes, including research and development, market research, customer service and knowledge management. The bottom line is this: For many problems that a company faces, there could well be a solution out there somewhere, far outside of the traditional places that managers might search, within or outside the organization. The trick, though, is to develop the right tool for locating that source and then tap into it.

Over the past several decades, research has shown how both cognitive biases and small group dynamics can undermine effective decision making in organizations. However, there has been little work on the ways that informal networks impact framing and execution of decisions. In this article, the authors examine the roles decision networks play, both within teams and throughout organizations, in the way decisions are framed and carried out. Although company leaders frequently recognize the importance of such decision networks, they fail to leverage their potential and focus instead on the organization’s formal structure. The authors present two indepth case studies to show how network analysis applied to decision-making interactions within organizations can help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of decision making. The first case demonstrates how a rapidly growing pharmaceuticals company used process mapping and network analysis to streamline decision-making interactions. A team found that decision-making inefficiencies permeated the organization. Decision rights were not clearly delineated or allocated, and even mundane approvals had high collaborative costs. The second case, based on a larger, more established company, shows how network analysis can improve top-team decision making and execution in organizations slowed by bureaucracy and a culture of consensus. The company had sought a technological fix in an effort to rescue itself from organizational gridlock, but the problems persisted. A network analysis helped senior managers identify the underlying network drivers of gridlock, thereby enabling them to take targeted steps to speed up and improve decision making. In both cases, the authors highlight the insights and performance impact that can result when decisions are viewed through a network perspective. Although it is still early, the benefits of understanding how decision-making networks affect the top team appear to be compelling. The number of collaborations required to execute decisions at key points in the network was significantly reduced. This had a positive effect on both company performance and morale.