On foxholes and corporate silos
The existence of silos in large companies is fairly common. Employees frequently bemoan the misalignment that exists across functional teams and organizational entities whose primary connection seems...
View Article[Plexxi Rewind] Don’t be the “We already” guy
For folks accustomed to the original blogs we post daily, our industry is in the throes of VMworld bliss, so we will be running the Best of Plexxi this week. Of course, if you haven’t read this one...
View ArticleOn building teams: experience or talent?
Obviously when you hire, you want to find a good mix of experience and talent. But a perfectly balanced straddle between the two is impossible. So when forced to choose between them, which do you...
View ArticlePlaying politics and self-defeating behavior
If you take an informal survey about the characteristics of dysfunctional organizations, you will probably hear the word politics rise to the top of most peoples’ lists. In fact, many large companies...
View ArticleOn choice-supportive bias and the need for paranoid optimism
In cognitive science, choice-supportive bias is the tendency to view decisions you have made in the most favorable light. Essentially, we are all hardwired to subconsciously reinforce decisions we have...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Theory of Constraints and common staffing mistakes
In many companies—both large and small—getting staffing right is a challenge. Critical teams are always starved for resources, and the common peanut butter approach to distributing headcount rarely...
View ArticleOutcome bias and the psychology that prevents sustained success
In psychology, there is a phenomenon called Outcome Bias, which basically means that we tend to judge the efficacy of a decision based primarily on how things turn out. After a decision is made, we...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Conformity as an inhibitor to strategy
Early in life, we are all made acutely aware of the power of peer pressure. Most of us probably attribute it to a deep need for belonging. But what if that deep sense of belonging is less about social...
View ArticleThe power of Clustering Illusion when managing image
As humans, we are predisposed to finding order out of otherwise random data. When we look at clouds or even a mountain ridge, we find shapes that are familiar to us. When we see data, we instinctively...
View ArticleDealing with vs. Celebrating failure
There’s a meme that has been making the rounds through leadership circles for some time around celebrating failure. If you aren’t failing, you aren’t pushing the boundaries. The original premise of...
View Article
