Top Organisational Thinkers

I have tried to capture the people who have had the biggest impact on my thinking. Below are my top organisational thinkers in terms of management and leadership

Warren Bennis. Awarded 11 honorary degrees, Bennis has also received numerous awards including the Distinguished Service Award of the American Board of Professional Psychologists and the Perry L. Rohrer Consulting Practice Award of the American Psychological Association. He is distinguished professor of business administration and founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. He has advised fours U.S. presidents and more than 150 CEOs and is author or coauthor of more than 20 books on leadership, change, and management, including Organising Genius and his most recent, Co-Leaders.

Nathaniel Branden. The name Nathaniel Branden has become synonymous with the psychology of self-esteem, a field he began pioneering over thirty years ago. In that time, he has done more than any other theorist to advocate the importance of self-esteem to human well-being, a mission which began with his involvement in Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand’s “Inner Circle.” His work has been translated into 18 languages and has sold over 4 million copies, and includes such titles as Taking Responsibility, The Six Pillars of Self Esteem, and My Years with Ayn Rand.

Dr. W. Warner Burke is the Edward Lee Thorndike Professor of Psychology and Education Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York. Dr. Burke is the author of more than 130 articles and book chapters on organization development, training, change and organizational psychology, and conference planning; and author, co-author, editor, and co-editor of 14 books. Dr. Burke has received over 5 distinguished awards for his work including the lifetime achievement award as a scholar- practitioner from the Academy of Management in 2003.

Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall Goldsmith is widely recognised as one of the world's foremost authorities in helping leaders achieve positive, measurable change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams. In 2000, Forbes listed Marshall as one of top five executive coaches and Human Resources rated Marshall as one of the world's leading HR consultants. He has also been ranked by the Wall Street Journal as one of the "Top 10" executive educators. He has written and co–edited over 15 books on leadership development including "The Many Facets of Leadership" and "Coaching for Leadership."

Sally Helgesen. Sally is an authority on the role of work in the New Economy. She is a member of the Harvard Business School Thought Leader Network and a Fellow of the Center for the Digital Future. Helgesen taught seminars at Harvard Graduate School and Smith College, and was a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University. She consults internationally for The United Nations, in which her work created a group of “Centers of Experimentation,” which administered programs in developing countries in a decentralized and inclusive way. Articles in Fortune, Business Week and Fast Company, featured her work and she has appeared on hundreds of television and radio shows, both nationally and abroad.

Jim Kouzes. Not only is Jim a highly regarded leadership scholar and experienced executive but The Wall Street Journal cited him as one of the twelve best executive educators in the U.S. A popular speaker, Jim shares lessons learned about leadership from over 20 years of original research. He leaves his audiences inspired with practical leadership tools and tips to apply at work, at home, and in their communities. Jim has been awarded two gold medals from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and founded the Joint Center for Human Services Development at San Jose State University.

Dr. John Sullivan. As a recognised thought leader on topics ranging from talent management to integrative HR strategy, he has been working to challenge the archaic perceptions that have limited HR’s contribution to the business for more than thirty years. Via his roles as an author, corporate advisor, and educator he challenges the status quo and offers a bold forward thinking look at what it takes to become a smarter more powerful function. His work on e-hr was dubbed “brilliant” by management guru Tom Peters and Fast Company Magazine coined him the “Michael Jordan of Hiring.” Dr. Sullivan has served as a Professor of Management at San Francisco State University for more than 20 years.

Roosevelt Thomas. Over the past 15 years, Dr. R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., has been at the forefront of developing and implementing innovative concepts and strategies for maximizing organizational and individual potential through Diversity Management. He currently serves as CEO of R. Thomas Consulting & Training, Inc., and President of The American Institute for Managing Diversity (AIMD). In 1998, the National Academy of Human Resources elected and Installed Dr. Thomas as a Fellow. He has been recognized by The Wall Street Journal as one of the top ten consultants in the country, and cited by Human Resource Executive as on of HR’s Most Influential People.

David Ulrich. Dave Ulrich has been ranked by Business Week as the #1 management educator. He has also been listed in Forbes as one of the "world's top five" business coaches. And he received the George Petitpas Memorial Award from World Federation of Personnel Management for lifetime contributions to the human resource profession. He has published over 100 articles and book chapters.

Michael Useem. Michael Useem is William and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania one of the top ranked schools in the nation. His university teaching includes MBA and executive-MBA courses on leadership and change management and he offers programs on leadership and change for managers in the U.S., Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He recently published The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All.

Professor Oscar Mink: Professor Mink passed away in August 2004. He was rated as one of the best thinkers and practationers in Action Science and creating open, adaptive organisations. Professor Mink was a professor of adult education and human resource development leadership at the University of Texas. Oscar developed and implemented programs of cultural change and total systems renewal, strategic leadership development, succession planning, management skills training, organisational behviour and total quality management.

Chris Argyris: Chris Argyris, a director of the Monitor Group, is the James Bryant Conant Professor of Education and Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. Agyris’s early research focused on the unintended consequences for individuals of formal organizational structures, executive leadership, control systems, and management information systems, and on how individuals adapted to change those consequences. He then turned his attention to ways of changing organizations, especially the behavior of executives at the upper levels of organization. During the past decade, Argyris has been developing, a theory of individual and organizational learning in which human reasoning (not just behavior) becomes the basis for diagnosis and action.

Reflection on Marketing Effectiveness

As have been working on the market processes in my business lately and I have found the information presented below useful. I thought I should share it.

1. Thinking that ROMI (return on marketing investment) measurement is the goal Measurement is not the goal, it is a tool for managing the overall process and, more importantly, driving continuous performance improvement.
2. Treating marketing accountability as a tech/tool project - It's fine for your IT department to house the data, but they shouldn't own the data.
3. Believing your organisation is ready to be accountable - Marketing accountability needs organisational readiness; take an internal audit to see what skills, processes, tools and data exist, then see where the needs are.
4. Believing better visibility requires more reports - Don't just report data, build a company-wide analytics framework.
5. The more precise the measures, the better the decisions Information is there to inform decisions, not lead them.
6. Treating marketing effectiveness as a marketing function - Marketing effectiveness is not a marketing issue, it's a company issue.
7. Dropping analytics and tools on the desktop - New metrics and processes need to be phased in so that change can take root.
8. Leaving the data until last - Keep marketing analytics in mind early in the process, so that as your information architecture is designed from the ground up, you know what data you need to capture -- and why -- so that you can make meaningful analyses.
9. Taking the "do it yourself" approach - It can be done, but you better have expertise in seven major competencies: project management, business metrics design, organization and process design, data and database design, marketing analytics, systems integration and change management.

According to my research (so to be published here), avoiding these pitfalls can lead to a 15 percent improvement in ROI in just the first year of implementation alone.

Also I thought it might be useful to highlight the key points for Word of Mouth campaigns:

1. Finding the right people to talk about you (influencers and evangelists)
2. Giving them something to talk about (viral email, samples, buzz and more) - not the important link to email marketing here!
3. Creating tools to make it easier for them to talk to each other (blogs, discussions, tell-a-friend forms)
4. Participating in the conversation
5. Tracking and measuring results

I hope this is useful?

Cheers

OD Doctor

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The OD Doctor