Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

How to Enact Change in a Bureaucracy

Have you ever tried to drive in Los Angeles?

For those of us who have, changes to the notoriously frustrating transportation infrastructure have been a long time coming, but how do you enact change in a government entity that seems like the very definition of bureaucracy?

Gayla Kraetsch Hartsough and her firm, KH Consulting Group, recently worked with Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel to review the city’s transportation structures and recommend reforms. The ultimate goal was to reduce congestion by building highways, promoting alternative transportation, implementing traffic management technology and facilitating the use of bicycles.

For all of the details on how Gayla's team navigated the bureaucratic waters of LADOT and how you can enact change in your own bureaucracy, check out my Culture Beat column at the AMEX OPEN Forum.

Could a Good Culture Save Your Life?

If you have to get rushed to the hospital, you’d better hope it’s one where everyone is smiling, because according to 2011 research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, hospitals with strong cultures consistently report better patient outcomes.

I thought that care for heart attack victims was pretty standard in this country, but it turns out that’s not the case.  Patient death rates vary considerably, as much as twofold between the highest- and lowest-performing hospitals, and you’re more likely to survive in a hospital that has great team spirit.

For more on the life-saving benefits of good culture, check out my post at the AMEX OPEN Forum.

How to Be an Effective Spy

Increasingly, managers and recruiters are being encouraged to assess cultural fit during the hiring process in order to ensure that candidates will assimilate well.

If you’re a job seeker, though, there are things you can do to determine whether you are a good match and help the company out. After all, it's just as important for you as it is for them; you will not be satisfied or productive in an environment that doesn’t support your values and vice versa.

The best way to do this is to spy...but how?  Check out my post at the AMEX OPEN Forum for the particulars.

A Manager's Guide to Mentoring

I swear by mentoring as one of the best ways to teach your team members what they need to know to be productive and send the message that you think they’re important and care about their growth. Obviously, an official mentoring program is great to have, but what if your company hasn’t gone down this road before? 

The Mentoring Group says that before implementing a formal initiative, you should consider how much support mentoring has from executives and employees, the time and resources people have to spend, and the overall health of the organization.

For other preparation and execution musts, check out my post on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

How to Survive a Scandal

While writing my recent book Blind Spots, I had the opportunity to meet Patrick Rodgers.  Patrick was a lawyer who had been a notable member of his community since he was young, participating in the Kiwanis Club and his local Chamber of Commerce.  But one year, when Patrick’s brothers both passed away from cancer, Patrick neglected some important client paperwork and was disbarred.

It took him four hard years to regain his credibility and return to public service.  Patrick can’t change what happened in the past, but he now strives to remember his mistakes and incorporate the values of honesty and trustworthiness into his job as a mediator every day.  At the end of the day, Patrick is a survivor.

At some point in your career, you may find yourself embroiled in a scandal.  This is obviously not a great thing to have happen, but if it does, all is not lost.  Check out my post on Intuit's Quickbase blog for how to cope productively and come out on top in this situation.

Should You Gamble on the Next Business Fad?

Corporate America as fun and games?  Maybe, now that gamification has come on the scene.

Gamification is defined as the use of game design techniques to engage audiences. Gamification encourages players to engage in desirable behavior by dangling the carrot otherwise known as “winning.”

The reason we like online gambling so much is that apparently, human beings have a psychological predisposition to gaming. And many organizations are jumping on the gamification bandwagon in order to motivate employees and combat disengagement. 

What's gamification all about?  Find out what I uncovered over at the AMEX OPEN Forum.

How to Save Your Culture from a Merger

I recently attended a networking meeting in downtown Chicago, and a mergers & acquisitions attorney told me that his business was booming.  It seems that in 2012, consolidation is king. Given that I write this column, however, I immediately thought about the impact of all of these mergers on organizational cultures.

A merger usually goes through because it looks great on paper.  All of the numbers line up, and it makes sense from a business perspective.  Unfortunately, many M&A teams fail to take into account how well or poorly two companies with legitimate cultural differences will integrate.

How can you save your culture from an impending merger or acquisition?  Check out my advice over at the AMEX OPEN Forum.

How Much Should You Care About Your Employees' Health?

There really is a consulting firm for everything.

Engaged Health Solutions provides health and well-being coaching and education to employee populations. The company engages a client’s employees in their own well-being and keeps them engaged as they set and meet their goals. “Employers investing in innovative, different programs that will impact their employees' health is definitely a 21st century best practice,” says EHS communications manager Libby Lowe.  But is it effective?  That is, should you invest in a similar program for your employees?

Check out my recent Culture Beat column for my take.

Why Hiring a Superstar Won't Improve Your Business

I don’t follow baseball.

So I was surprised when I got sucked into a recent Harvard Business School article by Carmen Noble detailing Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein’s two-year campaign to acquire star performers with extraordinary multimillion-dollar, multiyear contracts.

The piece describes one of the most expensive talent hunts in baseball history, starting with the signing of veteran pitcher John Lackey from the Anaheim Angels. Other high-profile hires followed, and baseball aficionados hailed the 2011 Red Sox as one of the greatest teams of all time.

To say the team didn’t live up to expectations would be an understatement. In September 2011, the Red Sox lost 18 of its last 24 games and lost a shot at the playoffs. The glittering, star-studded team was a failure.

The fall of superstars is common in business too. Just look at the number of CEO departures last year, like Leo Apotheker at HP, Carol Bartz at Yahoo!, Ernest Lieb at Mercedes-Benz and Tom Williams at Reader’s Digest, to name a few.

This year is not looking much better. According to placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, CEO departures are up 17 percent from a year ago, with a total of 227 departures tracked through the first two months of 2012 compared to 187 at the same point in 2011.

The most common reason cited is disappointing performance, which, in most cases, came as a surprise. The star, after all, was hired because he had a track record of extraordinary contributions at previous organizations. Why wasn’t he able to replicate that success here?

Find out in my recent AMEX OPEN Forum Culture Beat column, in which I discuss why hiring a superstar might not improve your business.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Virtual Teams

A virtual team is a group of people who work toward a common goal and are connected by technology though physically separated. Virtual teams scare a lot of people, who have visions of spending their time on all-night conference calls and not being able to trust team members they can’t see.

Nevertheless, the trend is coming at us like a full-speed train. A Google search of “virtual teams” revealed some interesting 2011 research published in Hypergrid Business, a magazine devoted to virtual teaming.

The study, “Virtual Work Environments in a Post-Recession Era,” conducted on behalf of Brandman University by Forrester Consulting, revealed strong adoption of virtual teams. Forty percent of survey respondents said that 40 percent or more of their company’s employees work in virtual teams today, and more than half expect virtual teaming to increase in the next one to three years.

Managerial concerns associated with virtual teaming are many. 57 percent cited earning trust, 49 percent cited communicating effectively, 43 percent cited managing projects and deadlines successfully and 43 percent cited creating consensus during decision making as among the top concerns.

Considering that virtual teams are so pervasive and so many managers are losing sleep over them, my Culture Beat column over at the AMEX OPEN Forum includes some virtual teaming best practices.  Hope you'll check them out!