A new paper by Ben Schneider in People + Strategy. Abstract: Over time, my colleagues and I have developed, tested, and refined measures of a climate for service quality that can actually predict three years out company corporate market value (Tobin’s q), as well as performance on the American Customer Satisfaction Index. When improvements in service quality can deliver those types of returns, most senior executives want to know what really makes the difference.
Research and Insights Archive
Research and Insights from the Center for Effective Organizations
Available Content
Human Resource Consulting
The field of human resources (HR) consulting is large, extremely diverse, and highly dynamic. This introductory update to the 2005 chapter by Gerald E. Ledford (CEO), Edward Lawler III (CEO), Susan A. Mohrman (CEO) provides an updated view of the HR consulting marketplace and the types of individuals and consulting firms that occupy it, as well as the organizational actors who purchase and consume HR consulting services.
The Best Strategy to Achieve True Innovation: The latest post from John Boudreau
In your organization, does innovation mean finding new ways to exploit what you already do well, or exploring arenas where you’re unfamiliar and will make mistakes? Or both?
Using Workforce Analytics to Improve Strategy Execution
In this article Alec Levenson (CEO) introduces an approach to conducting workforce analytics that is designed to improve strategy execution and organizational effectiveness through the application of systems diagnostics.
Blog: Robert Felton’s Road Show Diary: Lessons learned from the three-eyed IPO monster
There is tremendous scrutiny getting ready for an IPO and life as a public company. Like a three-eye monster, a company must face three perspectives when going through an IPO: the public eye, the operations eye and the internal eye.
Strategic Analytics, 12/1/15
This webinar aligns with Alec Levenson’s new book, Strategic Analytics: Advancing Strategy Execution and Organizational Effectiveness.
HR Perfect Processes are the Enemy of What’s Good for the Business
a.k.a. Are You Helping to Improve Strategy Execution Where It’s Most Needed?

Strategic Analytics: Advancing Strategy Execution and Organizational Effectiveness
More than ever, data drives decisions in organizations–and we have more data, and more ways to analyze it, than ever. Yet strategic initiatives continue to fail as often as they did when computers ran on punch cards. Economist and research scientist Alec Levenson says we need a new approach.
Data-Driven Storytelling, 5/7/15
Theresa Welbourne discusses how Data-Driven Storytellers help leaders use HR data to have highly interactive dialogues that lead to decisive action that fuels high-impact and measurable business results.
It Takes a Village: Creating HR Strategic Impact by Reaching Out Beyond the HR Function, 9/23/14, recording/slides
John Boudreau (Professor and Research Director)
Do your chief strategy, marketing, operations and technology officers help create your organizations HR strategy? They should.
Leveraging the Secrets of Memory Champions to Craft Memorable Messages, 2/7/13, Audio/Slides
How many meetings have you attended where you literally forgot most of what you had just heard by the meeting’s end? In this webinar, Jay Conger explored how to make the message behind your presentations endure far beyond the meeting. He covered the techniques developed by memory champions which you can deploy in your own presentations.
Silence Speaks Volumes: The Effectiveness of Reticence in Comparison to Apology and Denial for Responding to Integrity- and Competence-Based Trust Violations
Donald L. Ferrin (Singapore Management University), Peter H. Kim (USC), Cecily D. Cooper (University of Miami), and Kurt T. Dirks (Washington University in St. Louis) Prior research on responses to trust violations has focused primarily on the effects of apology and denial. We extend this research by studying another type of verbal response that is often used to respond to trust violations, but has not been considered in the trust literature: reticence.