There are many similarities between boat racing and managing an organization in a fast-changing environment. In both cases, there are clear goals (to win!), time pressure, and a need for coordinated action that allows the team to quickly react to the changes in the environment and to be faster and better than the competition. Two French researchers analyzed how an experienced skipper handled the coordination task in a fleet race. They observed two general patterns of coordination…

Are you familiar with that situation? You want to change things for the better and launch a new initiative for taking your organization a step ahead. But instead of applause and support from your team, you just earn skepticism and open or passive resistance. Recent research has found a surprisingly simple reason for why people resist to change in organizations. Many reasons for people to be resistant to change have been explored before, for example,…

Things go wrong wherever people work. But is it a good idea to let your followers followers about past failures? A team of researchers from Germany and the UK found a surprising answer to this question. The researchers collaborated with an advertising agency that organized a mailing campaign for a charity. The aim of the campaign was to recruit volunteers for the charity. 12,500 letters were sent out for that purpose. Less than 0.1 percent…