_3 Positive Organizations

Ever since Friedman and Roseman’s 1959 study identifying the Type A personality and its link to coronary heart disease, research into the influence of personality factors on health has caught public attention. Type A personality is characterized by behavioral traits such as competitiveness, impatience, hostility, time-consciousness, feeling pressured, and restlessness. Type A personalities have also …

These researchers ask, “Whose responsibility is happiness?” It does not rest solely on the individual, and it does not emerge solely from the conditions of society. The researchers suggest co-responsibility as the answer: “The idea that happiness emerges as a collective and cooperative endeavor that requires both favorable life conditions and individual effort.”

I highly recommend this book as a source of ideas for enhancing your leadership skills, whether you lead yourself or thousands of people. The many stories of positive outcomes will help you see that you can make a difference by making small changes. Want ideas for your small change? There are more than 70 strategies …

According to several news reports, what Inamori did to re-engage employees and lead Japanese Airlines back into the black was to insist on compulsory philosophy sessions for all staff, washed down with free beer. I was so intrigued by this story that I wanted to delve a bit deeper. I hoped Kazuo Inamori’s business philosophy …

In Kim Cameron’s Deviance Continuum, designed for use in businesses and other organizations, normality or healthy performance is a mid-point between positively deviant and negatively deviant performance. Negative and positive deviance are aberrations from normal functioning, problematic at one end and virtuous at the other.