The methods used by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to promote health in a West Virginia city can also be used to raise organizational performance.

The decisions made by powerful people in business and other fields have far-reaching effects on their organizations and employees. But this paper from Kelly E. See, Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison, Naomi B. Rothman, and Jack B. Soll finds a link between having a sense of power and having a propensity to give short shrift to a crucial part of the decision-making process: listening to advice. Power increases confidence, the paper’s authors say, which can lead to an excessive belief in one’s own judgment and ultimately to flawed decisions.

As organizations become increasingly global in scope and complex in structure, decisions that need to be made are often left unresolved. People who should be collaborating instead circle around one another warily. A tool known as a role charter can help ensure both effective decision-making and collaboration.

Here are the 4 key cultural elements all high-performing organizations must have - and how leadership can support them.

All too often, companies unintentionally create their own worst crises. With a little awareness of your organizational DNA, you can avoid that fate — and the headlines that go with it.

The frequency at which the word “engagement” appears in any discussion about employee communication has begun to make me wonder whether we clearly understand what the term means. As communicators we have the opportunity to become creative in how we communicate and engage employees. The ultimate aim in employee communication has to be to create the “Aha!” moment. This is the moment when employees have the necessary information and can say, “Now it makes sense,” “Now I understand, ” “Now I can do something about it.”

If you ask a lot of employees about their organization’s culture, chances are you will get various answers that aren’t exactly precise. One friend described his office environment as insular and isolationist. Another said his company’s culture was “grateful, like Thanksgiving.”

Fortunately, there is a way of formally diagnosing corporate culture so that we can map our organization’s key characteristics to its mission and goals, and ensure that our improvement efforts make sense in our environment.

Recent high-profile scandals at Penn State, MF Global Holdings, Olympus and elsewhere raise questions about why organizations often fail to address significant internal problems that at best impede performance, and at worst could have devastating effects. In hindsight, especially to observers, it is clear what should have been done. But for employees, exposing such problems is more complicated than telling right from wrong, say experts at Wharton and elsewhere.

Workers with new skills will leave if they don’t see a career path ahead.

“What if” is a powerful and emotional question. People often fantasize about how they would handle a tough situation if they got a second chance. At the other extreme, individuals may undergo a life change when someone they care about survives a near-calamity. They ponder, What if he or she had died?
Such counterfactual reflection, as it is called, can elicit intense feelings. People who imagine an alternative history of their company—a concept known as “counterfactual reflection”—tend to feel a greater commitment to their organization, which previous research has shown can affect job turnover, performance, and satisfaction. But the power of counterfactual thinking goes far beyond that. Research by Adam D. Galinsky, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of management, Brayden King, an associate professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, Hal Ersner-Herschfield, an assistant professor of marketing at New York University, and Laura Kray, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, plumbed the depths of counterfactual thinking to see how it influences commitment to people, organizations, and even one’s country.

Tacit interactions are becoming central to economic activity. Making those who undertake them more effective isn't like tweaking a production line.

When evaluating compensation issues, economists often assume that both an employer and an employee make rational, albeit self-interested choices while working toward a goal. The problem, says Assistant Professor Ian Larkin, is that the most powerful workplace motivator is our natural tendency to measure our own performance against the performance of others.

Bad bosses are generally more inept than evil, and often aren't purposefully bad, says Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter. She discusses common bad-boss behaviors, and how good colleagues can mobilize to overcome the roadblocks.

Fundamental change is painful. The intellectual and logistical challenges may be daunting, but the emotional confusion and chaos created during such change can virtually paralyze an organization. In today’s turbulent environment, however, change is not optional. Farsighted leaders endeavor to use times like these to sprint past their less nimble competitors. In order to capitalize on potential new opportunities, such leaders are able to harness the latent power of their organization and their people by following five basic tenets.

or over a decade, Marcus Buckingham has been on a quest to help you hone in on your key strengths in an effort to boost your performance in whatever realm you function. It started with an assessment tool called Strengthsfinder, developed while Buckingham was at Gallup. It continued with bestselling books First, Break All The Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths, followed by a string of others all focused on our insatiable appetite for self-discovery and self-assessment.

The difficulty with Strengthsfinder (and its next iteration, Strengthsfinder 2.0), as Buckingham points out in his new book featuring a new assessment instrument—both called Standout—is that you could "game" the test to produce a desired result, or at least skew the results because of the self-reported, self-rated, self-described nature of the questions. Standout takes a different approach: You react to a hypothetical situation.

Ever noticed that people don’t always do what they are supposed to do?

Whether you recently hired new employees for the first time or have lengthy experience in leading teams comprised of full-time, permanent staff plus contract workers, you may encounter situations in which people don’t do what they’ve been asked to do. Here are common scenarios and suggested fixes.

In their new book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, authors Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer discuss how even seemingly small steps forward on a project can make huge differences in employees' emotional and intellectual well-being. Amabile talks about the main findings of the book. Plus: book excerpt.

The striking similarities between ecological and organizational networks. Based on the Research of Serguei Saavedra, Brian Uzzi And Felix Reed-Tsochas

Nice guys may not finish first, according to research coauthored by Nir Halevy of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In fact, taking care of others in your group and even taking care of outsiders may reduce a nice guy's chance of becoming a leader.

Individuals in roles that possess power but lack status have a tendency to engage in activities that demean others, according to new research from Stanford Graduate School of Business, USC, and the Kellogg School.

With fresh faces in organizations and new interns flooding offices, it's time to really think about what the first steps are for bringing a new employee onto your team.

The need to empower natural leaders isn’t an HR pipe dream, it’s a competitive imperative. But before you can empower them, you have to find them.

The finance chief is often well placed to guard against common decision-making biases.

Apply open-book management to boost employee ownership.

In his new book, Flying without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success, HBS professor Thomas J. DeLong explores the world of "high-need-for-achievement professionals" or HNAPs—those for whom the constant, insatiable need to achieve can lead to anxiety and dysfunction. Plus: book excerpt.