Categories

Managers should seek to balance… finding the blend between centralization and decentralization that works best in their situation.

…research suggests that innovativeness declines because of top managers’ cognitive blinders, which make them miss threats in the environment.

…analysis implies that companies should empower middle managers to design and implement innovation programs and processes, while encouraging top managers to adopt a hands-off approach.

Most workers don’t want or need a manager telling them what to do and when to do it. But managers have to design the system in which empowered, autonomous, educated knowledge workers can flourish.

…when managers delegate authority, they need to do so carefully and sincerely if they are to foster the kind of trust that makes a hierarchy work.

Finding just the right level of transparency between units is a key management challenge.

In a modern company, the knowledge crucial to success is dispersed across the employees and cannot all be concentrated at the the top management level.

…managers need to resist the tendency to measure everything, to reward only that which can be measured, and to downplay the role of human judgment.

…digitalization is a double-edged sword. It is easy for managers to become overreliant on digital tools.

Burnout is more an issue of poor energy management and low clarity than of overgiving.