Weekly Impact Brief (2023.Aug.13)

Less superchickens; more middle managers

Aug 13, 2023

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Read time: 3 min

Welcome!

This Brief scours top-tier sources around the globe weekly to bring insights to high-impact executives, managers, advisors, and their teams; we focus on evidence-based practices, tactics, and insights based on elements of the Impactful Framework (explanatory article embedded below, for reference).

This Week’s Agenda

The Player vs. Coach Tension: How to Ensure Middle Manager Success
Chasing the Wrong Carrot: Rewarding the Opposite of What We Want
Head, Heart, and Hustle: The Leadership Cocktail You Didn't Know You Needed
Predictability in Leadership: How Consistency Became the Workplace's Rockstar
Forget Superchickens: The Surprising Truth About Team Dynamics
Minard’s “Napolean’s March”: Probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn

Impact Pulse

We review the weekly publications of 50+ top-tier academic and professional service-focused sources to explore 100+ studies and articles to bring you the “vital few” below.

The Player vs. Coach Tension: How to Ensure Middle Manager Success

Beyond Administrivia: How Middle Managers Reshape Team Performance

According to McKinsey, the book Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work highlights the contribution of middle managers to an organization’s health, performance, and productivity. Middle management must transmit and implement an organization’s top-down vision, but struggles with administrivia and the player-coach dilemma. Read more →

Chasing the Wrong Carrot: Rewarding the Opposite of What We Want

Ever Been Rewarded for Something Completely Different? You're Not Alone

According to Harvard, institutions consistently reward behaviors different from those they desire. In 1975, Steve Kerr first outlined the problem of leaders “rewarding outcome A while hoping for outcome B”, particularly with “high-acceptance, low-quality goals”. Read more →

Predictability in Leadership: How Consistency Became the Workplace's Rockstar

When Staying the Course is More Revolutionary Than a Rebellion

The CliftonStrengths for Leaders report identifies "consistency" as a foundational trait for leadership. Dr Jaclynn Robinson notes, "If you have Consistency high, you are keenly aware of the need to treat people the same. You crave stable routines and clear rules and procedures everyone can follow." Read more →

Head, Heart, and Hustle: The Leadership Cocktail You Didn't Know You Needed

The Three-Part Recipe That's Taking Business Transformations to a 96% Success Rate

According to BCG, Generative Leaders aspire to make a positive mark on everything they touch. Their leadership style encompasses three fundamental areas: the head, heart, and hands. For the most overlooked element of the three… “Only one in four companies adequately recognizes it and pay attention to it." Read more →

Deep Dive

Below is our featured work for the week, from a 2015 TED Women Talk by Margaret Heffernan focused on Superchickens.

Forget Superchickens: The Surprising Truth About Team Dynamics

And why the 'average' flock might be your team’s next big thing

William Muir of Purdue University conducted an experiment, drawing clear parallels to team productivity and dynamics. He created two flocks of chickens: one comprised of average chickens and the other comprised of “superchickens”, all the highest-performing individuals. After six generations, the ordinary flock thrived, while the individually productive superchickens were pecked to death by their peers.

The Big Picture

A significant part of executive communication is visual. See the big picture with thought-provoking and striking charts and data visualizations.

This week we have the 1869 work “Napoleon’s March” by Charles Joseph Minard, a prominent French engineer. Edward Tufte, a statistician and master of data visualization, has popularized and described the work as follows:

“Probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn, this map by Charles Joseph Minard portrays the losses suffered by Napoleon's army in the Russian campaign of 1812. Beginning at the Polish-Russian border, the thick band shows the size of the army at each position. The path of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in the bitterly cold winter is depicted by the dark lower band, which is tied to temperature and time scales.” Edward Tufte

Charles Joseph Minard’s “Napoleon’s March”

Source: Edwardtufte.com

Community Voice

We regularly collect and aggregate data, views, examples, and insights from The Impactful Executive community and play them back to our subscriber base.

The Impactful Executive’s Purpose

This newsletter pursues high-impact practices and tactics across Impactful Elements to share fact-based, usable, and (hopefully) surprising insights.

It takes deliberate and sustained effort to drive organizational greatness. The Impactful Executive aims to make this greatness far more reachable.

"Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline." Jim Collins

Impactfully yours,

The Impactful Executive Team