Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
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I am the Trustee Professor of Management at Bryant University in Smithfield, RI. I joined the faculty after serving for six years on the faculty at Harvard Business School. My research, teaching, and consulting focus on leadership, with a particular emphasis on decision-making and teams.
Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
5d ago
Source: https://www.organimi.com/
The Wall Street Journal's Chip Cutter has written about the transformation underway at Bayer, led by its new CEO, Bill Anderson. The article is titled, "One CEO’s Radical Fix for Corporate Troubles: Purge the Bosses." The 160-year-old company has struggled mightily in recent years, particularly after a problematic acquisition of Monsanto. Anderson's transformation plan calls for the establishment of 5,000 to 6,000 self-directed teams, as well as the elimination of many middle management roles. He has taken aim at the pile of rules and reg ..read more
Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
6d ago
Source: The MSLs' Liaison Newsletter
Some individuals have a strong action orientation. Others have what is described as a state orientation. What's the difference? According to James Diefendorff and his colleagues,
"Individuals with a strong action orientation are able to devote their cognitive resources to the task at hand, thus enabling them to expediently move from a present goal state to some desired future goal state. These individuals flexibly allocate their attention for the purpose of task execution and goal attainment. Persons who are more action orien ..read more
Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
3w ago
Lila Maclellan has written an important story for Fortune titled "The recent debacles at Boeing and Meta highlight the dangers of shrugging off employee concerns." Boeing, of course, has been saddled with product quality and safety troubles for several years, including two fatal crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX, about which I wrote a case study. Meta has had repeated instances of internet safety and privacy issues, for which senior leaders dismissed or downplayed employee concerns.
In this article, Maclellan cites Ann Skeet, senior director at the Markkula Center f ..read more
Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
1M ago
(Shutterstock.com/retrorocket)
Does money serve as a more effective motivator for certain types of work, but not others? That is the fundamental question explored by scholars in a recent working paper. Pamela Osborn Popp, Ben Newell, Daniel Bartels, and Todd Gureckis have written a paper titled, "Can Cognitive Discovery Be Incentivized With Money?" They conducted six experiments. In the first five experiments, they asked research subjects to examine a set of items. The participants had to determine how the items might be categorized sensibly into groups and then assign them appropri ..read more
Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
1M ago
Why do we miss key opportunities at times in our careers? Sometimes, it may have to do with the type of opportunity we encounter. Suppose we have to decide whether to pursue a course of action which could have a positive outcome, but it has a very low probability of a successful result. Harvard's Emily Prinsloo and her co-authors have published an interesting new paper exploring what they call "opportunity neglect." Through a series of studies, they show that individuals systematically fail to take advantage of low-probability opportunities, even when the ..read more
Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
1M ago
Source: https://www.myworldofwork.co.uk
Do we learn more from in-person collaborators than remote teammates? That question has been top of mind for many people over the past few years. Much of the dialogue about this question has not been evidence-based though. It's been highly anecdotal. Recently, however, I read about some fascinating research on the topic.
Frank van der Wouden and Hyejin Youn analyzed more than 17 million academic publications over decades to address the question of whether local collaboration generates more learn ..read more
Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
1M ago
Source: www.cleartouch.com
Leaders love to talk about customer obsession. They often highlight it as a value they cherish. They encourage others to put the customer first. Yet, all too often, they don't walk the talk. Far too many organizations are quite insular in their thinking. People focus an overwhelming amount of their time and attention on internal processes and procedures. Executives become buried in staff meetings, and they become isolated from customers, markets, front-line employees, and external partners.   ..read more
Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
2M ago
Source: https://marketoonist.com/2017/04/corporateapologies.html
CNN's Ramishah Maruf reported this week about the severe backlash that occurred recently for a children's clothing brand with a cult-like following. Kyte Baby is one of several popular brands of bamboo fiber clothing for kids. These brands market their clothing as better for children's skin. According to Kyte Baby's website, "Bamboo is, simply, the Goldilocks of fabrics—not too hot, not too cold. It’s temperature-regulating, and while we’re pretty confident it’s the softest fabric you ..read more
Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
2M ago
Source: https://hrcsuite.com/pioneers/
Alicea Lieberman, On Amir and Ziv Carmon have published an interesting new paper titled, "The entrenchment effect: Why people persist with less-preferred behaviors." The scholars conducted a series of experiments to examine why people become stuck in "behavioral ruts." We can all relate, of course. At times, we find ourselves continuing to engage in undesirable activities even though we could rather easily switch to a more enjoyable or beneficial course of action. The scholars note that many explanation ..read more
Professor Michael Roberto's Blog
2M ago
Source: ESPN
Simple, but powerful, lesson from the Belichick era's closing chapter in New England: Open up your inner circle as you grow older, invite new voices inside, and keep questioning whether the formula for past success continues to apply in a changing environment.  ..read more