Aberdeen Angus im Gadental an den Steilhängen des Muttawangjoch oder auch Mutterwangjoch genannt. Im Hintegrund die Südflanke des Feuerstein 2271m. (c) Böhringer Friedrich (CC BY-SA 3.0 AT)

Optimists Get Better At Predicting Performance Over Time

Forrest ChristianReviews - Articles 2 Comments

The old research has been pretty consistent: optimists are lousy at predicting what will really happen because they always assume “happy day”. But no one has ever seen how optimists predictions change as they get more information.

Until now.

A recent study (currently a working paper) tracked MBA students performance predictions across semesters…. [Full post]

Winter at Lofoten (2008). By Tackbert. Public Domain.

Vaill on High-performing Systems

Forrest ChristianMotivation, Organizations Leave a Comment

A second kind of evidence to suggest that the evolving success of the system has a powerful developmental effect on the leadership comes from the way members of high-performing systems talk about the early formative period of the system. There are consistent statements such as, “We had no idea things would turn out like this”; “In the early years, we …

The Great Ravenna Boulevard Sinkhole, 1957. Seattle Municipal Archives (CC BY 2.0)

Increasing Rank-and-Yank Makes People More Mediocre

Forrest ChristianOrganizations Leave a Comment

Does rank and yank really work? One of the fundamental needs of rank-and-yank management is identifying weak performers. When top management presses managers to identify more, what group do you think they take from? University of Chicago researcher and social network analysis expert, Ronald S. Burt, discovered who in his network analysis at one firm: In the annual cycle preceding …