As a reverse fairy tale for the CEO set, the reality television program Undercover Boss is fascinating, not so much in the witness-to-a-train- wreck mode of the rest of the genre, but because it is so revealing of our conflicted relationship with "the boss." The premise of the show—that the only way to get a clue about what's really going on in his (or her) organization, is for the boss to go undercover on the front lines—is all too often the actual reality in organizations of any size. Yet, at the same time, the view of the boss as the ultimate authority with the heroic power to swoop in and save the day—whether that means paying down a mortgage, granting an instant promotion, or banishing a reviled policy—holds sway in real life as well as on "reality" TV.
Most managers manage by telling their workforce what to do, without realising that telling them what to do actually destroys their ability to do it.Telling people what to do creates the resistance tha
When Kraft Foods embarked on an important program to re-define its corporate purpose, vision and values, they decided not do it in a closed meeting room in Chicago but instead open up the process and
In an era when recruiting and training more closely resemble “speed dating” than traditional apprenticeship, world-leading ophthalmic lenses manufacturer Essilor International pioneered th
Given the evolving global water scarcity situation, the world’s largest beverage company created a new dynamic with its bottlers and external partners, one focused on conserving local watersheds, ther
