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Organizational Psychology for Managers
No matter how monolithic it may appear, an organization is a collection of moving parts. Whether we are looking at building teams, providing leadership, hiring and training employees, problem solving, managing time effectively, or setting aggressive, inspiring goals, every decision can easily impact every other decision. The complexity can quickly become overwhelming. Organizational Psychology identifies a framework and offers key methodologies managers need to define behavioral tendencies and navigate complex organizational systems. Each chapter takes a high-level view of a particular aspect of organizational psychology, focusing on elements that shape companies and drive operational efficiency. Senior-level managers and C-Suite executives will benefit from the strategies presented in this book as they clearly indicate how to understand and leverage the psychological underpinnings of any corporate environment. Balzac combines stories of jujitsu, wheat, gorillas, and the Lord of the Rings with very practical advice and hands-on exercises aimed at anyone who cares about management, leadership, and culture. Todd Raphael
Editor-in-Chief
ERE Media
Riveting! Yes, I called a leadership book riveting. I couldn’t wait to finish one chapter so I could begin reading the next. The book’s combination of pop culture references, personal stories, and thought providing insights to illustrate world class leadership principles makes it a must read for business professionals at all management levels. Eric Bloom President Manager Mechanics, LLC Nationally Syndicated Columnist and Author Organizational Psychology for Managers is an insightful book that reminds the business leader of basic principles of leading a successful organization in an engaging style. As a business owner for over 25 years, I am aware of these principles; however, I need reminding of how these principles work together and impact the energy and success of my company. Throughout the book, the author demonstrates these concepts into a clear perspective by citing examples within other companies which is always a helpful technique and is often eye opening . These are situations that I may not have thought about before. This book holds the reader’s interest from start to finish. I look forward to his next book! Elizabeth Brown President Softeach, Inc.
"Author Stephen Balzac has written a terrific book that gets into the realpolitik of organizational psychology – the underlying patterns of behavior that create the all important company culture. He doesn't stop at the surface level, explaining things we already know like 'culture beats strategy' - he gets into the deeper drivers and ties everything back to specific, actionable stories. For example he describes different approaches to apparent "insubordination" by a manager; rather then judging them, he shows how each management response is interpreted, and how it then drives response. Balzac preaches real engagement with one's own company and a mindful state of operation, especially by executives – who must remember that culture "just happens" unless and until they learn to recognize that their behaviors play a huge part in creating and cementing it. It covers the full spectrum of corporate life, from challenging bad decisions to hiring, training, motivating teams - and the secrets of keeping people engaged and learning – and/or avoiding actions which do the opposite. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to participate in creating and steering company culture." Sid Probstein Chief Technology Officer Attivio – Active Intelligence I had the privilege of meeting Stephen Balzac at the 2011 International Computer Measurement Group (CMG) Conference. He was one of our keynote speakers at the Conference that year. His presentation was amazing. It was the first presentation I had seen at our Conference in which the speaker not only gave a non-technical presentation that left the audience captivated and hungry for more, but he did it without using PowerPoint, or other visuals and simply with the strength of the story and his oratory skills. As Director of CMG Publications I asked him to contribute some articles for our publications. He has been doing so now for two years and is one of our most popular authors. I was thrilled to learn Steve was having a book, Organizational Psychology for Managers , published, and was honored when he asked me to read it and for my opinion. Organizational Psychology for Managers is phenomenal. Just as his talks at conferences are captivating to his audience, Steve’s book will captivate his readers. In my opinion, this book should be required reading in MBA programs, military leadership courses, and needs to be on the bookshelf of every Fortune 1000 VP of Human Resources. Steve Balzac is the 21 st century’s Tom Peters. Stephen R Guendert, PhD CMG Director of Publications
Editor-in-Chief
ERE Media
Riveting! Yes, I called a leadership book riveting. I couldn’t wait to finish one chapter so I could begin reading the next. The book’s combination of pop culture references, personal stories, and thought providing insights to illustrate world class leadership principles makes it a must read for business professionals at all management levels. Eric Bloom President Manager Mechanics, LLC Nationally Syndicated Columnist and Author Organizational Psychology for Managers is an insightful book that reminds the business leader of basic principles of leading a successful organization in an engaging style. As a business owner for over 25 years, I am aware of these principles; however, I need reminding of how these principles work together and impact the energy and success of my company. Throughout the book, the author demonstrates these concepts into a clear perspective by citing examples within other companies which is always a helpful technique and is often eye opening . These are situations that I may not have thought about before. This book holds the reader’s interest from start to finish. I look forward to his next book! Elizabeth Brown President Softeach, Inc.
"Author Stephen Balzac has written a terrific book that gets into the realpolitik of organizational psychology – the underlying patterns of behavior that create the all important company culture. He doesn't stop at the surface level, explaining things we already know like 'culture beats strategy' - he gets into the deeper drivers and ties everything back to specific, actionable stories. For example he describes different approaches to apparent "insubordination" by a manager; rather then judging them, he shows how each management response is interpreted, and how it then drives response. Balzac preaches real engagement with one's own company and a mindful state of operation, especially by executives – who must remember that culture "just happens" unless and until they learn to recognize that their behaviors play a huge part in creating and cementing it. It covers the full spectrum of corporate life, from challenging bad decisions to hiring, training, motivating teams - and the secrets of keeping people engaged and learning – and/or avoiding actions which do the opposite. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to participate in creating and steering company culture." Sid Probstein Chief Technology Officer Attivio – Active Intelligence I had the privilege of meeting Stephen Balzac at the 2011 International Computer Measurement Group (CMG) Conference. He was one of our keynote speakers at the Conference that year. His presentation was amazing. It was the first presentation I had seen at our Conference in which the speaker not only gave a non-technical presentation that left the audience captivated and hungry for more, but he did it without using PowerPoint, or other visuals and simply with the strength of the story and his oratory skills. As Director of CMG Publications I asked him to contribute some articles for our publications. He has been doing so now for two years and is one of our most popular authors. I was thrilled to learn Steve was having a book, Organizational Psychology for Managers , published, and was honored when he asked me to read it and for my opinion. Organizational Psychology for Managers is phenomenal. Just as his talks at conferences are captivating to his audience, Steve’s book will captivate his readers. In my opinion, this book should be required reading in MBA programs, military leadership courses, and needs to be on the bookshelf of every Fortune 1000 VP of Human Resources. Steve Balzac is the 21 st century’s Tom Peters. Stephen R Guendert, PhD CMG Director of Publications
283 pages, Paperback
First published September 18, 2013
3 people are currently reading
28 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 25, 2024
In other words, it was an arbitrary decision, made as much to get things done and move on as for any other reason. The assignment of purpose and the beliefs around it came later.
Over time, each department in a business will develop their own reasons for doing things and build up their own set of beliefs around those reasons. Their actions will reflect those beliefs. If different departments develop beliefs that are at cross-purposes, friction will develop and the system will become less able to respond to competitive challenges.
Eventually, the reason is forgotten, only the behavior remains and the beliefs that are built around that behavior.
Changing the mechanism did not change the beliefs of the people already there about what sorts of people would make good engineers.
Culture is a powerful tool, and like all power tools, if you don’t use it carefully you may find yourself cut off at the knees. Although culture can, and does, lead organizations into trouble, it is also the glue that holds your organization together.
Behaviors depend on values, or the why, and values are driven by beliefs.
If senior management doesn’t, as the saying goes, walk the walk, neither will anyone else. Leading means just that: being out in front showing the way.
If you don’t replace the old stories with new stories, then, by default, the old stories are what people will repeat.
Forming, storming, norming, performing, terminating.
The minimum time for Forming and Storming are two months each; one month for Norming. The only exception to this appears to be when a group is formed from an existing group. In this case, the new group starts at the level of the parent group. The team can remain in Performing arbitrarily long. The challenge, however, is keeping it there.
It is truly amazing how long it can take to get nothing done.
Knowing when to avoid using power is at least as important as knowing when to use it.
Just as a broken bone, if allowed to heal properly, is stronger at the site of the break, so too is a ruptured relationship stronger if it is allowed to heal properly.
Fortunately, there are many ways to convince people to follow you; unfortunately, there are many ways to convince people to follow you. People will follow the leader because that leader is the standard bearer for a cause they believe in, or for a reward, or because that leader exemplifies particular values or a vision, or because that leader is providing structure and certainty. People will also follow out of fear or greed or as a way of hurting someone else. There is no implied morality in being able to convince people to follow you. Fundamentally, people follow a leader for their own reasons, not the leader's.
People stop following when the leader stops moving.
Good managers know that you cannot put into someone what is not there; rather, you build people by honing what is there.
When all communications are “urgent” or of “high importance” then pretty soon none of them are. People discount the urgency, which leads to an increase in “volume” from the sender. This triggers another round of scurrying about until people realize that this new level of urgency is also a chimera.
While logic is fine to get people to think, emotion is what gets people to act.
Recognize that trusting the process is not just about trusting that the results will be what you expect. That is important, but it’s a surprisingly small piece of the puzzle. There is no such thing as a perfect process and no process will always execute without something going wrong. True trust comes when you know that people can be trusted to handle mistakes and unpredictable events. Trust in our own skills comes from learning that we can make a mistake and recover; without that, trust is brittle. Trust in a process comes from recognizing that the process may sometimes give us the wrong answer, but it also gives us the ability to recognize that fact and recover.
the secret to winning is to learn how, and when, to not care.
People who are part of a community seek to gain status in the community.
“People say that motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend doing it every day.”
Part of the challenge in measuring productivity is that we are often drawn into valuing the things we can measure, rather than figuring out what we really value and measuring that.
This is because an obsessive focus on results prevents us from getting the feedback we need to actually accomplish our goals: with outcome goals, the feedback doesn’t come until the end, when it is often too late.
...perhaps the best definition of time is that it is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop us from trying to do everything at once!
Over time, each department in a business will develop their own reasons for doing things and build up their own set of beliefs around those reasons. Their actions will reflect those beliefs. If different departments develop beliefs that are at cross-purposes, friction will develop and the system will become less able to respond to competitive challenges.
Eventually, the reason is forgotten, only the behavior remains and the beliefs that are built around that behavior.
Changing the mechanism did not change the beliefs of the people already there about what sorts of people would make good engineers.
Culture is a powerful tool, and like all power tools, if you don’t use it carefully you may find yourself cut off at the knees. Although culture can, and does, lead organizations into trouble, it is also the glue that holds your organization together.
Behaviors depend on values, or the why, and values are driven by beliefs.
If senior management doesn’t, as the saying goes, walk the walk, neither will anyone else. Leading means just that: being out in front showing the way.
If you don’t replace the old stories with new stories, then, by default, the old stories are what people will repeat.
Forming, storming, norming, performing, terminating.
The minimum time for Forming and Storming are two months each; one month for Norming. The only exception to this appears to be when a group is formed from an existing group. In this case, the new group starts at the level of the parent group. The team can remain in Performing arbitrarily long. The challenge, however, is keeping it there.
It is truly amazing how long it can take to get nothing done.
Knowing when to avoid using power is at least as important as knowing when to use it.
Just as a broken bone, if allowed to heal properly, is stronger at the site of the break, so too is a ruptured relationship stronger if it is allowed to heal properly.
Fortunately, there are many ways to convince people to follow you; unfortunately, there are many ways to convince people to follow you. People will follow the leader because that leader is the standard bearer for a cause they believe in, or for a reward, or because that leader exemplifies particular values or a vision, or because that leader is providing structure and certainty. People will also follow out of fear or greed or as a way of hurting someone else. There is no implied morality in being able to convince people to follow you. Fundamentally, people follow a leader for their own reasons, not the leader's.
People stop following when the leader stops moving.
Good managers know that you cannot put into someone what is not there; rather, you build people by honing what is there.
When all communications are “urgent” or of “high importance” then pretty soon none of them are. People discount the urgency, which leads to an increase in “volume” from the sender. This triggers another round of scurrying about until people realize that this new level of urgency is also a chimera.
While logic is fine to get people to think, emotion is what gets people to act.
Recognize that trusting the process is not just about trusting that the results will be what you expect. That is important, but it’s a surprisingly small piece of the puzzle. There is no such thing as a perfect process and no process will always execute without something going wrong. True trust comes when you know that people can be trusted to handle mistakes and unpredictable events. Trust in our own skills comes from learning that we can make a mistake and recover; without that, trust is brittle. Trust in a process comes from recognizing that the process may sometimes give us the wrong answer, but it also gives us the ability to recognize that fact and recover.
the secret to winning is to learn how, and when, to not care.
People who are part of a community seek to gain status in the community.
“People say that motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend doing it every day.”
Part of the challenge in measuring productivity is that we are often drawn into valuing the things we can measure, rather than figuring out what we really value and measuring that.
This is because an obsessive focus on results prevents us from getting the feedback we need to actually accomplish our goals: with outcome goals, the feedback doesn’t come until the end, when it is often too late.
...perhaps the best definition of time is that it is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop us from trying to do everything at once!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 14, 2021
A very good insight into managing organisations, the book is focused a bit more on mistakes made and how (some at least) were later corrected. Balzac is a screaming fan of IBM and Jujitsu and I appreciate it's a solid strategy to make parallels and give examples of the things you know best. Initially, I was a bit miffed there was a bit more focus on things done wrong, but the right decision for any org is highly circumstantial and many, many ways you could be wrong maybe have a bigger overlap. I still can't say I know enough about setting goals. That chapter read like Groundhog's day for me recursing back into breaking any goal down into smaller goals. The question is stopping at the right time. The big takeaway for me is learning what people appreciate in an organisation, how to build a strong connection with them and motivate them. I'll be rereading some chapters as necessary and I advise anyone else to do the same.
July 30, 2024
Really enjoyed this book
I’ve really enjoyed this book. it reviews the traps of pessimism and how to work through the different phases of teams storming and storming, etc. and I think the last chapter is the best essentially brings it all together and summarizes.
I’ve really enjoyed this book. it reviews the traps of pessimism and how to work through the different phases of teams storming and storming, etc. and I think the last chapter is the best essentially brings it all together and summarizes.
December 28, 2015
I was really impressed by this book. It gave me a great overview on the topic and plenty of recommendations to go more in depth into certain topics. The author outlines this huge topic and adds just the right amount of detail for each chapter.
I recommend this book especially to people who recently took on leadership or higher management positions and want to catch up on some theory. This book is a good starting point.
I recommend this book especially to people who recently took on leadership or higher management positions and want to catch up on some theory. This book is a good starting point.
November 20, 2015
Excellent book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews