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"It has come like a thunderbolt. Some of our most esteemed companies in the new economy woke up and discovered that their workforce was overwhelmingly male (70% at Google, for example) and it was difficult to find more than a handful of women at the top. These companies recognize this is a big problem, and they plan to do something serious to change it, at least if we go by the amount of resources devoted to remedying the imbalance. [...]
These biases are not intentional, but instead arise from cultural assumptions and organizational practices that can inadvertently put women at a disadvantage. Since they are unintentional and often invisible, these biases can be hard to address. The first task is to identify them in your organization. There are certain places to look –unconscious bias in hiring and promotion, opportunity structures that channel women and men into different functions, conceptions that an ideal worker is available 24/7, among others. Once we've identified them, the next challenge how can we alter them. When individuals negotiate a change in practice they create what we call small wins. These small wins for individuals can aggregate and begin to chip away at institutional barriers."
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"Since the Industrial Revolution, new counting and communications technologies have altered the structure and management of business. ... Yet the guiding metric of management for decades has remained the same: finance. With improvements in communications and computing, financial performance can be measured faster and in greater detail than before. But it is still a fairly blunt, crude measurement—counting money, one factor of production and output of the enterprise. It is still financial capitalism. But big data promises to usher in a new phase in the practice of management."
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"Your breakthrough opportunity, your big idea and your team's top tier are much closer than you think. The only problem is, for every opportunity you have hundreds of choices you could make with each one leading you to a slightly different version of your full potential.
So, how do you know if you are making the right choices?
What if you could make just a handful of better ones faster?
You'd be more successful at almost anything."
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"Want your employees to buy a new management goal? You have to know how to sell it to them. This doesn't mean selling to your employees; it means selling to your employee culture, which is a whole different proposition. 'Culture' is the most overused yet least understood concept in business. The difference between understanding your employees and understanding your employee culture is the difference between whether your performance goals succeed or fail.
When they form a relationship with a company, employees become a culture. A culture is a separate organism living within your company. It has its own purpose and the power to make or break any management plan – and any manager right along with it. Neither business logic nor management authority nor any compelling competitive urgency will convince an employee culture to adopt a corporate cause as if it were its own. In the killing field between company concept and employee commitment lay many a failed strategic plan."
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"We need a shift in perception that empowers us to be the drivers of our digital tools and our new resources. This doesn't just mean executives or traditional gatekeepers. This means anyone. This means you."
