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In recent years, health care organizations have made sizable investments in information technology. They've used their IT systems to replace paper records with electronic ones and to improve billing processes, thereby boosting revenue. But so far, IT has been of little value in making medical care delivery more effective or less expensive. How can health care organizations change this? One key is to prioritize quality improvement over cost cutting. By harnessing IT to help design better clinical practices, it's possible to achieve better patient outcomes and better financial performance. It is also vital to gather good information—by using simpler, more-organic collection methods—and to make it actionable by applying analytics. Finally, many organizations will need to forge new business and operating models, expanding their IT staffs, revamping how their clinical staffs work, and creating new payment structures. The authors provide numerous examples of health care organizations that are taking these steps—and seeing impressive results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though executives tend to think— and want to believe—they're hiring and promoting fairly, bias still creeps into their decisions. They often use ambiguous criteria to filter out people who aren't like them or deem people from minority groups to be “not the right cultural fit,” leaving those employees with the uneasy feeling that their identity might be the real issue. Companies need to acknowledge that it's fair for employees from underrepresented groups to be suspicious about bias, says Williams, Facebook's global director of diversity. They also must find ways to give those workers more support. To that end, many organizations are turning to people analytics, which aspires to replace gut decisions with data-driven ones. Unfortunately, firms often say that they don't have enough people from marginalized groups in their data sets to produce reliable insights. But there are things employers can do to supplement small n's: draw on industry or sector data; learn from what's happening in other companies; and deeply examine the experiences of individuals who work for them, talking with them to gather critical qualitative information. If firms are systematic and comprehensive in these efforts, they'll have a better chance of improving diversity and inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Silicon Valley venture capitalists used to routinely oust start-up founders— who were viewed as green and unskilled—as part of the process leading to an IPO. The author, an adjunct professor at Stanford and a well-known entrepreneurship thinker, describes how VCs gradually came to see founders not as a problem that needed to be solved but as a valuable asset that needed to be retained. In July 2009, when Mark Andreessen cofounded the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz with Ben Horowitz, it was with a key philosophical difference from rival firms: a “founder friendly” focus. Blank argues that this trend has gone too far, and the situation at Uber is just the most obvious example of that. He offers prescriptions for how to begin correcting this power imbalance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 25 to 30 years, agile innovation methods have greatly increased success rates in software development, improved quality and speed to market, and boosted the motivation and productivity of IT teams. Now those methods are spreading across a broad range of industries and functions and even reaching into the C-suite. But many executives don't understand how to promote and benefit from agile; often they manage in ways that run counter to its principles and practices, undermining the effectiveness of agile teams in their organizations. From their work studying and advising companies that have successfully employed agile methods, the authors have discerned six crucial practices for capitalizing on agile’s potential: (1) Learn how agile really works; (2) understand when it is appropriate; (3) start small and let passionate evangelists spread the word; (4) allow teams that have mastered the process to customize their practices; (5) practice agile at the top; and (6) destroy corporate barriers to agile behaviors. They expand on each, providing executives with a practical guide for accelerating innovation and profitable growth. INSETS: 核心观点;敏捷方法的.... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many companies today rely on employees around the world, leveraging their diversity and local expertise to gain a competitive edge. However, geographically dispersed teams face a big challenge: Physical separation and cultural differences can create social distance, or a lack of emotional connection, that leads to misunderstandings and mistrust. To help global team leaders manage effectively, the author shares her SPLIT framework for mitigating social distance. It has five components: • Structure. If a team is made up of groups with different views about their relative power, the leader should connect frequently with those who are farthest away and emphasize unity. • Process. Meeting processes should allow for informal interactions that build empathy. • Language. Everyone, regardless of language fluency, should be empowered to speak up. • Identity. Team members must be active cultural learners and teachers to understand one another's identity and avoid misinterpreting behaviors. • Technology. When choosing between videoconferencing, e-mail, and other modes of communication, leaders should ask themselves if real-time conversation is desirable, if their message needs reinforcement, and if they are opting for the technology they want others to use. INSET: Untitled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of Global Dexterity: How to Adapt Your Behavior Across Cultures Without Losing Yourself in the Process draws on his years of field research, teaching, and consulting to advise managers who must learn to adapt to a new culture. Molinsky focuses on how people practice new behaviors in actual situations, such as speaking up in a meeting or giving performance feedback, rather than on the differences between cultures. He suggests an approach that consists of three stages: (1) Figure out what the cultural norms are and how they differ from the home culture in directness, enthusiasm, formality, assertiveness, self-promotion, and self-disclosure. (2) Figure out what the “zone of appropriateness” is in the new culture for each of those six dimensions. (3) Once you know what adaptations you can (and are willing to) make, practice them to develop “muscle memory” Certain psychological barriers may arise in the process. People get anxious about whether they're being authentic, or they feel incompetent and worry that others see them that way, or they become resentful of the hard and stressful work of adapting. But they often learn something interesting about themselves, Molinsky says, and that can be exciting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As companies internationalize, their employees lose shared assumptions and norms. People in different countries react to inputs differently, communicate differently, and make decisions differently. Organically grown corporate cultures begin to break down; miscommunication becomes more frequent, and trust erodes, especially between the head office and the regional units. In their efforts to fix these problems, companies risk compromising attributes that underlie their commercial success. INSEAD's Erin Meyer presents five principles that can prevent disintegration. Managers should: • identify the dimensions of difference between the corporate culture and local ones • make sure every cultural group has a voice • protect the most creative units, letting communication and job descriptions remain more ambiguous • train everyone in key norms • ensure diversity in every location Getting culture right should never be an afterthought. Companies that don't plan for how individual employees and the organization as a whole will adapt to working in a global marketplace will sooner or later stumble because of unnoticed potholes. By the time they regain their balance, their economic opportunity may have passed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]