Mgmt 2950 Study Guide PDF

Feel free to add whatever you want! Please write in a different color text to help keep track of what’s new :) and if anything looks wrong lmk! Week 1: Aligning Decisions Reading: Abilene Paradox People / groups often conceal or misc...

Feel free to add whatever you want! Please write in a different color text to help keep track of what’s new :) and if anything looks wrong lmk! Week 1: Aligning Decisions Reading: Abilene Paradox People / groups often conceal or miscommunicate their true intentions and end up taking contradictory action, leading to frustration and discontent tendency of individuals in groups to either withdraw from actively participating or limit their contributions to the group's decision-making efforts What causes these self-limiting behaviors? 1. The presence of someone with expertise 2. The presentation of a compelling argument 3. Lacking confidence in one's ability to contribute 4. An unimportant or meaningless decision 5. Pressure from others to conform to the team's decision. 6. A dysfunctional decision-making climate How can leaders solve this problem? ○ Encourages all of the members to express their views, and creates a climate where everyone is given adequate non-judgemental air space → teams that are most successful often use self-managed teams that have a noticeable lack of status symbols. ○ Find the right # of people in the room → self-limiting behavior is likely to increase with group size ○ Providing clear, consistent, and specific goals → better understanding of the decision’s importance Common Knowledge Effect Definition: People tend to discuss what everyone knows rather than pooling unique info ○ Why: availability, validation, credibility ○ Availability: common info more salient ○ Validation: makes you and others feel competent ○ Credibility: others can vouch for common info ○ Effect: more influenced by widely shared views rather than unique views Avoiding the CKE: roles, structure, advocacy, inquiry ○ What doesn’t work More info, time, larger group ○ Aligning on criteria before vetting; of both the options and the credibility of a source ○ Structuring the process (rank order, pros and cons before sharing, assigning info manager role) ○ Engage in authentic advocacy, giving the unpopular opinion the floor ○ Engage in inquiry; direct attention to unshared knowledge, pay attention to people with lower status Jury trial example All jurors have all the info and hears all 12 hours → advocate Each juror hears a different hour → inquiry → exercise: picking the right job candidate  ○ Important to align on criteria that we were looking for and pool unique information ○ Easier to anchor on one big negative versus seeing all of the unique positives ○ Objective table weighs different criteria we were looking for would be best way to figure out unique information ○ KTA: terry had less overall flaws compared to the other candidates Escalation of Commitment Adwaith and Shayan bidding example ○ Both losing money Definition: the tendency to allocate more resources to failing projects (continuing to invest after expected value turns negative) ○ Why: ego threat; sunk costs; FOMO, completion ○ Who: maximizers, more than satisficers Maximizers only feel happy when they feel like they’ve beaten everyone else or got the best possible outcome compared to everyone else – Adam’s podcase? ○ When: high potential gains, high confidence, high cost of failure/success, accountability Avoiding ○ Separating initial decision makers from evaluators, or List of nonstarters for a role / team (objective metrics to determine failure) Banks making problem loans Someone with a cold eye–wants best decision for the group ○ Rewarding good decision processes Don't make the right decision make the decision right ○ Shifting focus of attention towards the consequences for a group Detach your own ego from the decision Hopes and aspirations, not only costs and loss (making sure the project follows your long term goals, not just worrying about the losses) ○ Give positive feedback judiciously ○ Focus on others and growth ○ Affirm decision-irrelevant skills and values ○ Encouraging and incentivizing people in quitting failed projects Google, X, Tesla? Moonshot factory ○ 2x2: process (deep vs. shallow), outcome (- and +) ○ Top level goal: persistence and grit. Many ways to get there. (i.e. frequently quit in your paths and in your sub goals) ○ 111 practice in maximizers and satisficers Maximizers vs. Satisficers Maximizers: focusing on the objective best option. (really broad search with high expectations of themselves) Satisficers: focusing on your own standards (satisficer is not complacent because complacent means you are ok with suboptimal. Satisficer is just once you find an optimal solution you stop searching) ○ Maximizers are less happy → as accomplishments ↑, expectations increase faster ○ Maximizers: high standards and broad search ○ Maximizers: more prone to escalation of commitment (b/c of high potential gains) ○ Example: olympics gold versus silver Happiness as a maximizer  ○ Choose when to choose If options are not very different from each other, waste of time to maximize If others have expertise in areas you don’t have or if you have a friend that knows more about a specific area → friend may be able to focus on the more important parts of the decision for you Solomon’s paradox= better at giving advice to a friend than yourself If a decision is not important or inconsequential ○ Happiness = reality - expectations Satisficers = okay with the gap (and more likely to be a smaller gap) Maximers = have a bigger gap Consequences (is this decision actually important?) Options (how different are they really?) Expertise (can someone more informed help me make this decision?) ○ Make the decision right, not the right decision FOMO vs. JOMO JOMO = all the parties you didn’t go to! (all the papers that didn’t get published!) Know the benefit of saying no, opportunity costs Reversible vs. irreversible decisions (so you can’t think “what else”) Mental time travel — what would younger / future me think? Objective best is not always the best for you → self reflections Rethinking a bad decision ○ Neutral party ○ Kill signals = reward people who end their baby projects → when you begin the initial process, you say that if my revenue falls below X, if that result happens, then you have to stop ○ Reward good decision processes ○ Disentangle ego ○ Job-crafting: shape your job description to make it more conducive to you Apartment hunting example ○ Set a time limit for how long you can explore and then after that commit to the immediate option that satisfies your requirements Week 2: Interpersonal Synchrony Individual Generosity: Givers & Takers CEO narcissism ○ Use I more than we ○ Larger photos of themselves ○ 7x higher pay than their #2 vp ○ Sign their signature with bigger letters ○ High turnover of people close to them TED talk: are you a giver or a taker? ○ Givers / Takers / Matchers Givers give without expectation of return  ○ Givers represent an outsize proportion of both extremes (worst and best performers) Takers perform better in the short run, givers excel in the long run More giving behavior = better organization performance on almost every metric ○ Strategies to help givers Prevent burnout (5-min favor) Encourage help-seeking in your org Weed out takers, not necessarily attract givers (even one taker on a team can discourage givers from helping) → matchers follow the norm ○ Undervalued: disagreeable givers. Beware: agreeable takers Hedge fund managers: The effect of taking ○ Experiment: watching 2 min-videos, looking for signs of narcissism ○ Finding: Key indicators of taking: superficial charm, lack of empathy, schadenfreude (delighting in others’ failures) ○ Results: takers perform worse overall (lower returns) Other ways of identifying takers: ○ Takers anticipate others to be takers: ask them how common it is for someone to steal and why? ○ CEO Large photo of them in the reports Turnover of people below them Compensation: typically should be 2.5x annual pay, but 7x for narcissist Bigger signature Risk-taking and over confidence Failed vs. successful givers ○ Key image: 2x2, self-interest vs. other-interest. Takers, successful givers, failed givers Self-interest and other-interest are independent, not opposites ○ How to help as a giver → find ways of giving that align with your interests, expertise, learning goals Be a specialist, not a generalist → expert, coach, mentor, helper, volunteer, connector → figure out where you add the most value and focus on it Pick your helping moments carefully → chunking, FAQ, triage. → not everything requires your help. Think about where you can make the biggest difference. Chunking: into time (Day of Kindness) ○ Who to help as a giver Gauge others’ taking behavior. Be cautious and self-protective with takers  How to work with takers: appeal to self-interest, or identify patterns behind moments of generosity → key example: Kornig: required to be the author of a huge patent but also co-author of many ○ schadenfreude = smile when people talk about their failures ○ Over 10 years, those scoring 1 ○ Takers focus on what will get them ahead in the short run rather than missing out on long term benefits ○ Triage = screen people before referring them to others ○ Takers think that other people are more selfish and justify it by saying that they are possibly threatened ○ Building a help-seeking culture!! ○ 5 minute giving = connecting people together ○ 1 rotten apple spoils the bunch → weed out takers If you flood an org with givers that might not be good because takers are still there Takers don't get better if givers are around Matchers just follow the norm of the culture (tit for tat) Removing takers is positive because there’s less of a taking influence on matchers (example of Adam selecting class and why he didn’t accept takers) Disagreeable givers + agreeable givers Collective Generosity: Direct vs. Generalized Reciprocity Direct: pure matching, trading favors Generalized: establishing a culture of more giving. Paying it forward. Confident expectation of future repayment. Operates on gratitude, not reputation ○ Requires a mix of givers and matchers. Deal with takers via tit-for-tat ○ More effective if visible 3 main requirements of a good request ○ Meaningful, challenging, specific ○ 75-90% of helping starts with a request but people hesitate to ask because of emotion risks, image risks, interpersonal risks ○ Many people underestimate the cost of saying no ○ People have their own benefits of saying yes that you might not see? ****Reciprocity Ring ○ Key insight: people are hesitant to ask for things Because of risks: emotional, image, interpersonal Meaningful requests: asking for something only THEY can give. Challenging. specific Finding: strangers are much more giving than you expect them to be (e.g. asking people to walk you somewhere, let you use their phone — sometimes more than twice as willing as predicted) Connections High quality connection ○ Features  Connectivity Emotionality Tensility Effects ○ Energy: feeling alive ○ Positive: respected and understood ○ Mutuality: both people are actively participating; not one sided What drives people to make contributions in generalized reciprocity? ○ Sustained gratitude ○ Key insight: Strong ties = trust and accessibility. Weak ties = more efficient access to new information. Dormant ties = mixture of both ○ Key insight: people are looking for high-quality connections Activity: the Fast Friends Procedure Description Features of high-quality connections: connectivity, emotionality, tensility Psychological experience: energy, positive regard, mutuality (both people are participating and engaging in the relationship, not one sided) Effects of connections: influence, support, identity, learning Drivers Communal norms, not exchange norms — not keeping score ○ Giving without keeping score ○ Help down the line ○ Approaching giving as a culture, not a score Uncommon commonalities ○ Finding someone from your hometown in a foreign country ○ Turn to the person behind you and find something you have in common Self-disclosure (vulnerability) ○ Being careful about exposing too much and not getting that response back If you ask dormant ties for help, they can give you more advice because they cared about you at some point – not as caught up in day-to-day complications of life ○ Objective view ○ Your fundamental traits and values are unchanging so if you ask a dormant tie, they are anchoring on unchanging values about you and not as caught up on the day to day things, they can see what is consistent with your fundament identity ○ You tend to be around people you are similar to for friends, dormant ties can bring a more diverse perspective Week 3: Emotions Emotion Regulation Dan Harris  ○ Practicing self-compassion. Recognizing your own demons, and how they are trying to protect you ○ Becoming your own inner coach Emotions podcast ○ Emotions are regulators — they help us make sense of physical sensations / stimuli we experience in the world ○ Interoception: how we make sense of the physical sensations in our body to respond to emotional states Emotions are interpreters to help us figure out what’s going on in the world ○ Her research challenges traditional views on emotions, suggesting that they are not hardwired or universal, but rather constructed by our brains based on past experiences and cultural context. Goals: regulate your emotions to achieve your objectives. Regulate others’ to achieve shared objectives Why are emotions important? ○ Drive thinking When kids got candy during a break during SAT, they would score higher on the math portion because of a more positive mindset ○ Motivators → recall: CEO video from Sony ○ Communicate your values → microexpressions. Recall: Duchene smile / real vs. Fake smiles. Predictor of divorce through microexpressions. Duschene smile: muscles in your eyes that you can’t control and contract when you are genuinely smiling Universality: facial expressions shared across cultures, interpretations are culture-specific. More languages in an area = more expressive region Surprise, fear, disgust, contempt, pride, hanger, happiness, sadness In group advantages if you’re a part of the same culture and understanding microexpressions Recall: congenitally blind Olympians still raise their arms Surface acting (fake it, modify outward expression) vs deep acting (modify what you feel) Common vocal bursts across cultures (aww when we saw the baby, ew when we saw something gross) Better regulate your emotions by having more specific words of what you’re feeling ○ Shame vs guilt Shame: i am a bad person Guilt: i did a bad thing ○ Self compassion: show yourself kindness and understanding you would to a friend ○ Fundamental attribution error ○ Flooding approach vs systematic desensitization Systematic desensitization  Relax your fears through gradual exposure, may gradually decrease your emotional response Flooding You immediate flood them with the stimulant Spider example, writing yourself a script about a situation that challenges you emotionally and how you would respond the next time you face that situation Risks ○ Amygdala hijacking: losing control, flying off the handle ○ Results from our threat detection center — a rapid response that bypasses rational thought ○ System 1 rapid response, fight or flight Example is soccer player who’s opponent insulted his mom and he headbutted him ○ Cognitive reappraisal: analyzing your triggers, practicing a script to make it your instinctual reaction Event → thoughts → emotions → behaviors Athletes – practice under extreme circumstances where you may be placed Take the moments where you have failed on your script and make the motivation to improve next time ○ Relational / task triggers Task: violations of ambition, professionalism, competence, efficiency Relational: violations of benevolence, integrity, humility, politeness Strategies ○ Label it → use more descriptive language ○ Triggers → understand your relational and task triggers ○ Reflection → exercise self-compassion “You” instead of “I”; speaking out loud and writing as though you’re talking to someone else ○ Dominance complimentarity Understand Briefing Upbeat speech Celebrate successes Week 4: Personality; Feedback & Conflict Resolution Personality TED: Brian Little, the Puzzle of Personality ○ Molding your behaviors, not the underlying traits, in line with your values There is an ability component of personality → e.g. him acting more like an extrovert in order to teach / public speak  We can’t modify our traits but we can train ourselves to act more of one trait in certain situations to act more in line with your values All personality traits can be contradicted in work – not always beneficial to be on the extreme side of the spectrum ○ Personality has biogenic, sociogenic, idiogenic factors → 3 natures Sociogenic, the cultural and social aspects Idiogenic–thats what makes us unique The aspects where we can’t measure biologically What are your core projects and what are things you care about The Adaptable Leader — how to use emotions to achieve team goals. How to use these strategies to modify personality ○ Critical skills: crafting, stretching, selecting. Crafting = changing situations — shaping teams / orgs that match your behavioral style Stretching = changing yourself for the benefit of the team Selecting = picking situations ○ Leaders can be transactional and/or transformational These traits can be learned by anyone ○ We are set apart by adaptable mindset, ability to shape your leadership role Self-monitoring: to what degree do you change your behavior based on the situation (salting the steak) Aspects of personality: OCEAN: habitual patterns of thought and behavior ○ Openness E.g. aesthetic chills ○ Conscientiousness ○ Extraversion Zone of optimal engagement ○ Agreeableness ○ Neuroticism ○ Habitual patterns of thought, feeling, action. Best representation of core dimensions of personality. Very predictive of adulthood traits. Relatively stable across lifespan These are your comfort zone. Continuum, people generally lie in the middle. Infant + childhood traits predict adult traits (you are relatively stable across the lifespan) ○ Extraversion: tendency toward sociability and seeking stimulation Different threshold of stimulation ○ Agreeableness: tendency to accommodate vs. challenge others ○ Conscientiousness: tendency to be focused and structured vs. carefree and playful ○ Neuroticism (Emotional Reactivity): Relaxation and composure vs. attention to threats / punishment cues ○ Openness: tendency to seek out novelty vs. familiarity Feedback & Conflict Resolution Think Again ch. 4: resistance & collaboration ○ Task conflict vs. relationship conflict High performing groups start off with low relationship conflict and kept it low throughout their work together When we have relationship conflict, we become self righteous of our own views Task conflicts bring diversity of thought and encourage rethinking Having a challenge network is beneficial → peer review process is like that (it’s reviewed blindly by independent experts) Framing disputes as a debate rather than disagreement ○ Children are more creative when parents argue well ○ Propellers (Wright brothers — heated but not hot) Spinning in opposite directions but essential to help the plane fly Instead of arguing about why, they should argue about how → forces them to rethink ○ Focus on broader goals Recall: feedback exercise. Clear is kind. Cooperative discussion ○ Similar to persuasiveness: involving people in conversation Why feedback is important / What makes feedback difficult ○ Orgs: ⅓ of feedback interventions ↓ performance In both directions — negative and positive feedback (can cause complacency or make people feel threatened) ○ Ladder of inference → conversations about someone turning off their zoom cameras during a meeting because they didn’t want to distract the team → Adhwaith boss conversation Mistake: arguing only about conclusions rather than observable data Practices for giving feedback ○ Feedback sandwich ineffective (dread → recency effect) Instead, clearly separate out the feedback ○ Frame the conversation → what are your motivations for giving this feedback ○ Ask if the person wants feedback ○ Take yourself off a pedestal ○ Walk down ladder of inference Receiving feedback ○ Second score ○ Learning and growth, not image ○ Proactiveness — Emma meeting rhythm ○ Building a challenge network Feedback giving can be a collaborative process ○ Here is the probability that you will be promoted, here’s what we can do to help you get to 100%  ○ Sam and burke exercise Week 5: Opening Closed Minds Think Again Chapter 6: group polarization Tying group polarization to the idea of pitchers/catchers, showrunners/artists/neophytes: does the importance of your perceived stereotype wane when presenting to multiple people? There are likely many differing perspectives on the same person, which would impact conduct during the interview, and perceived persuasion. —> Implications: benefits of group pitching vs. individual pitching? Individuals can be more malleable and flexible, but groups may cut through inauthenticity Hypotheses for how to get people to rethink their stereotypes: ○ 1) common identity → example of Red Sox vs. Yankees fans didn’t end up working; their shared love for baseball had no effect on their opinions on the fans of the opposing team ○ 2) humanizing the other side → didn’t end up working → when we meet group members who defy the stereotypes, our first instinct isn’t to see them as exemplars and rethink stereotypes; it’s to see them as exceptions and cling to our existing beliefs ○ 3) thinking about the arbitrariness of their animosity WORKS ○ Just thinking about arbitrariness vs. binaries can be enough to prompt rethinking —> less motivating to think “I want to be a creative person” than to think “My decision processes are arbitrary, maybe I should modify them” Think Again Chapter 8: having difficult convos Binary bias —> this can help us in navigating polarizing issues but also in evaluating jobs…less of “is this the RIGHT” job for me (a binary choice), more of “What about this job is appealing vs. unappealing to me” Black and white: it can be helpful to think of every conversation and persuasion as a negotiation, a cooperative task ○ Seeing the opinions of the other side is not enough People are more inclined to think again if we present these topics through the lenses of a prism: it takes a multitude of views to help people realize they too have multitudes Example in the book about abortion and gun control laws ○ For people who are on the fence, when forced to choose a side, they tilt in favor of disengaging the the problem ○ How to solve this: highlighting nuances, caveats and contingencies in your arguments Social scientists don’t see holes in their research as pitfalls — they see them as pathways to future research. So it is with the holes in our knowledge Dilemma of a writer: neglecting complexity of an issue to avoid confusing the reader. Can you expand on this? How will you keep your books so concise and readable while venturing into more dense, complex nuances? How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea Key insight: people are constantly stereotyping you as you attempt to persuade them  ○ Showrunner: got it all together, know what you’re doing ○ Artist: creative and free ○ Neophyte: naive → persuasiveness: involve the person you’re trying to convince. Help them feel like they’re problem-solving with you Beware for catchers ○ Killing your own pitch ○ Pushover ○ Robot ○ Used-car salesman ○ Charity case Opening Minds Cialdini’s persuasion principles (6) ○ Liking: uncover real similarities, offer genuine praise ○ Reciprocity: give what you want to receive ○ Consistency: ask for active, public, voluntary commitments ○ Social proof: people follow the lead of similar others. Use peer power ○ Authority: people defer to experts ○ Scarcity: people want more of what’s less → highlight uniqueness, rarity of opportunity → Tony Little, if the lines are busy call again Aspects to appeal to ○ Identity (St. Lucia parrot) ○ Authenticity, scarcity (Tiger Woods) ○ Familiarity (“It’s like Uber”) Risks of strong influence attempts ○ Internal / external locus of control: internal tends to resist Internal: life is under your control External: events are controlled by fate ○ Intention questions: can reduce resistance How to engage the audience: advice-seeking, motivational interviewing ○ Questions bypass defense / resistance, trigger contemplation Week 6: Getting Buy-in for Change Change Model Understand Enlist Envisage Motivate Communicate  Act Consolidate Common Mistakes Incomplete understanding of problem Creating complacency, not urgency → need motivation ○ Core change team ○ Speech communications Under-communicating the vision Failing to carefully analyze forces for / against change ○ Manage through: education, participation, negotiation, coercion Competitive and financial - good for motivation; more quantitative Optimum number of people that you need - 1 from each group to get the team size => 5 people in GlobalTech; represented by both who are bought in for change or also people who can be brought in Communicate: Act: develop training info, teams training Consolidate: fire an individual; team mentoring; review structure; celebrate successes Counterproductive actions: CEO gives upbeat speech Reassuring announcement Downsize company Reengineer company Why do people resist change? 1. Motivation → inherent dislike of the new direction 2. Opportunity→ bureaucracy, red tape 3. Ability → meaning of the change is not understood, too little time or energy is not understood 4. Change itself → fear of the unknown, apathy or self interest Methods of managing resistance 1. Education → providing training 2. Participation → involvement in implementation 3. Facilitation → providing resources and removing obstacles 4. Negotiation → emphasize / increase gains 5. Manipulation → partial information, listening without acting 6. Coercion → direct or indirect threats / punishments Week 7: Aligning Culture Reading: Leading by Leveraging Culture Cultures are helpful when they are:  ○ Strategically relevant → e.g. Southwest, Nordstrom ○ Strong → agreement and intensity about values ○ Emphasize innovation and change → i.e. innovation is not just about the creative people on your team. It’s also about the environment that fosters their ideas Key insight: norms are different from rules. Norms are a key component of culture — help employees internalize expectations rather than blindly abiding by rules Culture should be consistent, comprehensive, clear ○ Employees are highly attentive to their boss’s behavior → hypocrisy attribution dynamic, attribution bias Competing values model of culture → flexibility vs control, internal vs external Three tools to manage and change organizational culture ○ 1. Recruit & select people for culture fit ○ 2. Socialization & training ○ 3. Reward system Podcast: Is it safe to speak up at work? → Key examples: Boeing, Admiral William McRaven Indicators of psychological danger ○ Public humiliation / unhelpful debate ○ How openly do people share ideas? ○ How are mistakes framed? Benefits of psychological safety ○ Enhanced creativity and innovation ○ Preventing errors — people are more likely to report mistakes and near misses ○ Inclusion How to create a psychologically safe environment ○ Take yourself off a pedestal — acknowledge your fallibility and celebrate those who challenge you ○ Explicitly, repeatedly tell people to raise concerns — E.g. problem box: allow people to report whatever is going wrong McRaven ○ “It’s your duty to keep me accountable” Stories differentiate cultures on three key questions: ○ Justice: is it fair? ○ Safety: will I be protected? ○ Control: can I shape my destiny and have an impact?