Тема: Метафора у бізнес дискурсі

Тема: Метафора у бізнес дискурсі

Методика дослідження метафор у бізнес-дискурсі

Застосування метафор у бізнес-дискурсі

3.Концептуалізація метафор (Знайти у статтях журналу HBR https://hbr.org/magazine метафори та концептуалізувати (змоделювати,проаналізувати) їх)

How to Cool Down a Heated Negotiation

Many people fear that no matter how they prepare, their negotiation will spiral into an unproductive debate or a shouting match. Even if you’re approaching the negotiation with a collaborative, joint problem-solving mindset, it’s possible that things will get heated. You know when it’s happening: Perhaps you feel yourself getting emotional. You sense that your blood pressure is rising, that you’re becoming angry or anxious. Maybe your counterpart is doing the same. The volume might be getting louder, or one or both of you have started to yell.

Let’s look at an example inside a company doing its annual budget planning. Betty, the head of sales, is preparing her budget for next year, and she’s meeting with Amit, the director of finance. Betty has asked Amit several times for revised numbers that she can include in her budget. Instead of delivering, however, he keeps coming back to her with more questions. Betty’s draft budget is due to the CFO first thing tomorrow morning, so she sends Amit a meeting request to discuss what’s going on. Amit accepts but shows up 15 minutes late. After explaining why she needs the numbers today, Betty asks what’s preventing Amit from just giving her the numbers she’s asked for. He begins to explain that she hasn’t shared enough information and that he’s been working hard to make sense of what she has given him.

Betty raises her voice: “I’ve asked you four times to give me those numbers, you showed up late to this meeting, and this is somehow my fault. Why can’t you just do what I asked?”

Amit can’t believe she’s not getting it: “I’ve been working on your numbers for weeks! But I can’t get you the final figures until you give me all the information I need. Don’t you understand that this is on you?”

This situation may not strike you as a negotiation at first glance, but it is: there are two parties with different incentives and interests who are trying to come to an agreement about how to proceed. In this case a conflict has erupted, but it doesn’t have to hurt Betty and Amit’s relationship or Betty’s draft budget.

Emotions get heated during a negotiation because there are high stakes: people’s jobs, their standing with their bosses, their confidence, the success of a venture, or the future of their business.

A negotiation can also get emotional when you and your counterpart haven’t communicated well. Perhaps you misunderstood each other’s intentions or offended each other by accident, and feelings were hurt.

 

https://hbr.org/2016/02/how-to-cool-down-a-heated-negotiation

Should You Give Up on Your New Dream?

Does your business (or position in your company) occupy an otherwise unoccupied niche? Do you meet a need that isn’t being met or a need that isn’t recognized yet? Your novel contribution may be brilliant, even if initial interest is listless. You’re in good company: many game-changers have garnered little attention in their nascent stages. The Wright brothers tested their flying machines without an audience for years, encountering skepticism and apathy. The first powered flights weren’t covered by the press, and few outside the immediate neighborhood even believed they’d occurred. The Wrights were visionaries; they persevered until their genius flew up the S-curve and off the charts. A slow start isn’t the whole story.

Are you playing to your strengths? We want to do what we love, but sometimes our passion doesn’t intersect with our strengths. It’s important to identify your true gifts. Honestly assess these abilities relative to the resources your enterprise requires. Are they comparable? Or are you pursuing a passion for which you’re poorly adapted? If you really don’t know, seek out a few honest friends or mentors and ask them to be straight with you.

Based on your answers to the previous questions, have you assumed the right risks? If the competition is fierce, then you’ve embraced a higher probability of failing. If you’ve carved a niche that you occupy from a position of strength, then it’s time to settle in and persevere.

Do you find your work difficult but not debilitating? Do you face the new day with enthusiasm even though it’s daunting? Robust growth may yet be on the way. But the work of Gregory Miller and Carsten Wrosch, associate professors of psychology, demonstrates that continuing to pursue the wrong goals can increase levels of the inflammatory molecule C-reactive protein, which is linked to health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, and early aging in adults. Dreading your work, or suffering adverse physical conditions, is symptomatic of a flat-lining curve.

Are you gaining momentum? Momentum can be quantified. There are many metrics that can be measured: numbers of customers or closed transactions, level of exposure, pipeline prospects, etc. If your metrics show improvement or increasing growth, it’s time to double down. In 2004, Bravo launched Project Runway, the competitive reality TV show for aspiring designers. The Nielsen ratings showed fewer than 2 in 1,000 people watched the premiere, one-tenth of the Bravo projection. Weeks 2–4 were no better. But instead of giving up on it and reverting to sure-bet programming, Bravo showed the first three episodes again and again. A month later, the ratings had quadrupled. They still weren’t at the initial projection of 20 in 1,000 viewers, but as momentum accelerated, the low end of the S-curve was soon a thing of the past.

Knowing When to Pull the Plug

Any disruptive change results in at least a short-term loss of efficiency. And there are plenty of times when the only thing standing between us and the outcome we desire is patience and perseverance. But other times there’s just no viable prescription for success. Even when we follow the right regimen, nearly two-thirds of new enterprises are doomed. According to data from CEB, 50–70% of new executives fail.

Negative responses to the questions above suggest that it might be time to pull the plug. To the culturally popular “winners never quit” mentality, marketing guru Seth Godin retorts, “Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.”

Believing that additional doses of time and/or money will save the day is tempting — we are all sensitive to the sunk-cost fallacy. But knowing when to pull the plug can be the difference between sinking a rowboat and sinking the Titanic.

Even if your curve has flatlined, experience is a great instructor. Problems are solved by eliminating variables. Failed adventures help us chart a smarter path the next time. The Sports Performance Research Institute New Zealand has studied competitive surfers and determined they typically spend 8% of their time riding waves, 54% paddling, and 28% waiting. No one would suggest that the paddling, waiting, and inevitable wipeouts aren’t integral to their ultimate success. The next wave to roll in may well be the S-curve you’ve been waiting for.

https://hbr.org/2016/01/should-you-give-up-on-your-new-career

Interview for civility

Throughout the interview process, be on the lookout for signs of civility. Asking the candidate how she managed a particular situation in the past provides more valuable insight than hypothetical questions such as “How would you handle…” or “What would you do if…” Request examples of how their past behavior matches the values you’re looking for (which you also need to make explicit during the interview). Don’t just accept the first answer — ask for 2–3 examples.

It’s best to use structured interviewing, where you ask each candidate applying for the job the same questions in the same order. Research shows that these interviews are more predictive of candidate performance, even for jobs that are unstructured.

Follow up with every employee who encounters the candidate, not just those on her interview schedule. How did she treat your parking lot attendant? Your receptionist? Your administrative assistant? Is the candidate kind, gracious, and respectful? Or rude and condescending? Many HR professionals have told me that some of the best feedback they receive is from the person who drove the candidate from the airport or the receptionist who greeted the candidate at the front desk.

Get your team involved

Have your team go out to lunch or dinner with the candidate or take her out to a ball game. You want to give the candidate a first-hand opportunity to observe your team’s and organization’s values. Doing so will help her consider whether she’s willing to sign up to live those values. If she isn’t, you can both save yourself a world of time, frustration, and heartache — not to mention your organization’s money.

https://hbr.org/2016/02/how-to-avoid-hiring-a-toxic-employee

Secrets of the Superbosses

What do Ralph Lauren, Larry Ellison, Julian Robertson, Jay Chiat, Bill Walsh, George Lucas, Bob Noyce, Lorne Michaels, and Mary Kay Ash have in common?

Certainly all of them are known for being talented and successful—even legendary—in their respective fields. All have reputations as innovators who pioneered new business models, products, or services that created billions of dollars in value. But there’s one thing that distinguishes these business icons from their equally famous peers: the ability to groom talent. They didn’t just build organizations; they spotted, trained, and developed a future generation of leaders. They belong in a category beyond superstars: superbosses.

I started researching this cohort of managers a decade ago, when I noticed a curious pattern: If you look at the top people in a given industry, you’ll often find that as many as half of them once worked for the same well-known leader. In professional football, 20 of the NFL’s 32 head coaches trained under Bill Walsh of the San Francisco 49ers or under someone in his coaching tree. In hedge funds, dozens of protégés of Julian Robertson, the founder of the investment firm Tiger Management, have become top fund managers. And from 1994 until 2004, nine of the 11 executives who worked closely with Larry Ellison at Oracle and left the company without retiring went on to become CEOs, chairs, or COOs of other companies.

Eager to learn the secrets of these star makers, I reviewed thousands of articles and books and conducted more than 200 interviews to identify 18 primary study subjects (definite superbosses) and a few dozen secondary ones (likely superbosses). I then looked for patterns—common tastes, proclivities, behaviors—anything that might help explain why these people were able to propel not only their companies but also their protégés to such great heights.

I found that superbosses share a number of key personality traits. They tend to be extremely confident, competitive, and imaginative. They also act with integrity and aren’t afraid to let their authentic selves shine through.

But far more interesting (and more important for teaching purposes) were the similarities I saw in the “people strategies” that superbosses employed. Their remarkable success as talent spawners was not the result of some innate genius. These leaders follow specific practices in hiring and honing talent—practices that the rest of us can study and incorporate into our own repertoires.

Unconventional Hiring

Superbosses begin by seeking out unusually gifted people—individuals who are capable not merely of driving a business forward but of rewriting the very definition of success. As Lorne Michaels, the longtime producer of Saturday Night Live, has said, “If you look around the room and you think, ‘God, these people are amazing,’ then you’re probably in the right room.” Here’s how he and others do it.

Focus on intelligence, creativity, and flexibility.

Superbosses value these three attributes above all others. C. Ronald Blankenship and R. Scot Sellers, both protégés of real estate guru Bill Sanders before they became CEOs of leading property companies themselves, remember how Sanders would brag about bringing in so many people who were “four times smarter” than he was. He would insist that if you weren’t going to hire someone great, you shouldn’t hire anyone at all Superbosses begin by seeking out unusually gifted people.

Superbosses want people who can approach problems from new angles, handle surprises, learn quickly, and excel in any position. Norman Brinker, the casual-dining innovator who founded Steak and Ale, was a good example. As Rick Berman, who worked under him before founding a successful lobbying firm, recalls, Brinker “wasn’t a fan of hiring people to play first base; he just wanted to hire a good baseball player.” That emphasis on versatility helped give rise to a generation of top leaders in the restaurant

ndustry, including the CEOs of Outback Steakhouse, P.F. Chang’s, and Burger King.

Find unlikely winners.
Superbosses consider credentials, of course, but they’re also willing to take chances on people who lack industry experience or even college degrees. According to Marty Staff, who worked for Ralph Lauren before becoming CEO of Hugo Boss USA, Lauren once made a runway model the head of women’s design “for no other reason than she seemed to get it—she got the clothes.” At health care giant HCA, Tommy Frist sometimes set even physical therapists on a path to the C-suite, simply because he spotted something in them.

Because they reject preconceived notions of what talent should look like, superbosses often show greater openness toward women and minorities. Mary Kay Ash, in fact, expressly designed her company to empower women, holding sales conferences where the message was “If she can do it, so can I.” Walsh started a fellowship program in the NFL for minority coaches, giving participants a fast track into the league and himself a chance to tap into a vast new source of talent.

Superbosses often dispense with the conventional interview process, too; instead, they pose unusual or quirky questions or use observation as a tool. When Ralph Lauren met with job candidates, for example, he would ask them to explain what they were wearing and why. Sanders would invite prospects to hike a 7,000-foot peak on his New Mexico ranch with him and other managers. “We learned a whole lot about these kids on the hikes,” recalls Constance Moore, who worked for Sanders at Security Capital before becoming CEO of BRE Properties. “After, we would all sit down and talk about each of them and figure out which ones we wanted to ask to join.”

Adapt the job or organization to fit the talent.

Superbosses opportunistically tailor jobs and sometimes even their organizations to new hires. As an assistant coach for the Cincinnati Bengals, Walsh had to invent a new offense to enable the backup quarterback to excel after an injury brought down the team’s starter. Because the second-stringer had more accuracy than arm strength, Walsh designed an unusual strategy around short passes—which later became known as the West Coast offense (when Walsh was with the 49ers). Lorne Michaels lets his ensemble’s ideas and abilities constantly shape and reshape their contributions to Saturday Night Live. Writers sometimes become performers, and performers or assistant directors sometimes become writers. At Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas’s employees didn’t even have job descriptions. They were assigned tasks on various projects according to what was needed and who was available. All these examples run counter to traditional HR practices, but they reflect an innovative mindset that superbosses bring to virtually everything they do.

Accept churn.

Smart, creative, flexible people tend to have fast-paced careers. Some may soon want to move on. That’s OK with superbosses. They understand that the quality of talent on their teams matters more than stability, and they regard turnover as an opportunity to find fresh stars. Consider how Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks reacted when, in 1997, his second in command, Richard Allen, was asked to become the head of National Geographic’s for-profit arm. Hendricks would have loved to have kept Allen but never tried to hold him back, realizing that he’d rather have a friend leading his rival than anyone else. “It was a real indication of his generosity of spirit,” Allen says.

industry, including the CEOs of Outback Steakhouse, P.F. Chang’s, and Burger King.

Find unlikely winners.

Superbosses consider credentials, of course, but they’re also willing to take chances on people who lack industry experience or even college degrees. According to Marty Staff, who worked for Ralph Lauren before becoming CEO of Hugo Boss USA, Lauren once made a runway model the head of women’s design “for no other reason than she seemed to get it—she got the clothes.” At health care giant HCA, Tommy Frist sometimes set even physical therapists on a path to the C-suite, simply because he spotted something in them.

Because they reject preconceived notions of what talent should look like, superbosses often show greater openness toward women and minorities. Mary Kay Ash, in fact, expressly designed her company to empower women, holding sales conferences where the message was “If she can do it, so can I.” Walsh started a fellowship program in the NFL for minority coaches, giving participants a fast track into the league and himself a chance to tap into a vast new source of talent.

Superbosses often dispense with the conventional interview process, too; instead, they pose unusual or quirky questions or use observation as a tool. When Ralph Lauren met with job candidates, for example, he would ask them to explain what they were wearing and why. Sanders would invite prospects to hike a 7,000-foot peak on his New Mexico ranch with him and other managers. “We learned a whole lot about these kids on the hikes,” recalls Constance Moore, who worked for Sanders at Security Capital before becoming CEO of BRE Properties. “After, we would all sit down and talk about each of them and figure out which ones we wanted to ask to join.”

Adapt the job or organization to fit the talent.

Superbosses opportunistically tailor jobs and sometimes even their organizations to new hires. As an assistant coach for the Cincinnati Bengals, Walsh had to invent a new offense to enable the backup quarterback to excel after an injury brought down the team’s starter. Because the second-stringer had more accuracy than arm strength, Walsh designed an unusual strategy around short passes—which later became known as the West Coast offense (when Walsh was with the 49ers). Lorne Michaels lets his ensemble’s ideas and abilities constantly shape and reshape their contributions to Saturday Night Live. Writers sometimes become performers, and performers or assistant directors sometimes become writers. At Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas’s employees didn’t even have job descriptions. They were assigned tasks on various projects according to what was needed and who was available. All these examples run counter to traditional HR practices, but they reflect an innovative mindset that superbosses bring to virtually everything they do.

Accept churn.

Smart, creative, flexible people tend to have fast-paced careers. Some may soon want to move on. That’s OK with superbosses. They understand that the quality of talent on their teams matters more than stability, and they regard turnover as an opportunity to find fresh stars. Consider how Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks reacted when, in 1997, his second in command, Richard Allen, was asked to become the head of National Geographic’s for-profit arm. Hendricks would have loved to have kept Allen but never tried to hold him back, realizing that he’d rather have a friend leading his rival than anyone else. “It was a real indication of his generosity of spirit,” Allen says.

 

https://hbr.org/2016/01/secrets-of-the-superbosses

 

How to Prevent Overbilling

Overbilling and other kinds of fraud are rampant. But it may be possible to induce vendors, contractors, and employees to become more ethical just by changing how you ask them to account for their work. Focusing on units (hours needed, tasks performed, widgets produced) rather than overall price encourages accountability in providers.

That’s the finding from new research involving university students, online participants, and auto repair garages. Across four studies, people were 26% to 59% less likely to overbill if they were required to report the volume of work completed or projected before stating the amount of money due, rather than the other way around.

In one study, participants were paid for doing sets of numbered tasks. Because their pay was based on their own reporting, everyone had an opportunity to cheat, and many did. But people were less likely to cheat (42% versus 66%), and the average amount of overbilling was lower (55 cents versus $1.38), if they were required to first note the number of tasks completed and then request the amount they were owed.

In another study, one group of mechanics asked to come up with a charge for replacing brake pads and resurfacing rotors was instructed to first provide a cost estimate and then to enumerate the parts and labor needed; another group was instructed to do these things in the reverse order. The second group’s cost estimates were 14% lower, on average, and mechanics in this group projected significantly less labor time—suggesting that at least some mechanics in the first group had engaged in “defensive bolstering,” or fudging the details in hindsight to match the initial cost estimate.

The behavior comes down to what the researchers call “felt accountability”—a sense that someone is carefully monitoring the details. When vendors or employees are asked to specify the units of work or time required for a job, they may feel that the buyer or employer is paying close attention and might ask them to justify the price. And that appears to have a palpable effect on their ethics.

https://hbr.org/2015/12/how-to-prevent-overbilling

 

 

Тема: Метафора у бізнес дискурсі