More from these Authors

• Book | 2013

  What You're Really Meant To Do: A Road Map for Reaching Your Unique Potential

  Robert Steven Kaplan

  How do you create your own definition of success—and reach your unique potential? Building a fulfilling life and career can be a daunting challenge. It takes courage and hard work. Too often, we charge down a path leading to "success" as defined by those around us—and ultimately, are left feeling dissatisfied. Each of us is unique and brings distinctive skills and qualities to any situation. So why is it that most of us fail to spend sufficient time learning to understand ourselves and creating our own definition of success? The truth is, it can seem so natural and so much easier to just do what everyone else is doing—for now—leaving it for later to develop our best selves and figure out our own unique path. Is there a road map that will enable you to defy conventional wisdom, resist peer pressure, and carve out a path that fits your unique skills and passions? Harvard Business School's Robert Steven Kaplan, leadership expert and author of the highly successful book What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, regularly advises executives and students on how to tackle these questions. In this indispensable new book, Kaplan shares a specific and actionable approach to defining your own success and reaching your potential. Drawing on his years of experience, Kaplan proposes an integrated plan for identifying and achieving your goals. He outlines specific steps and exercises to help you understand yourself more deeply, take control of your career, and build your capabilities in a way that fits your passions and aspirations. Are you doing what you're really meant to do? If you're ready to face this question, this book can help you change your life.

  Keywords: career planning; vocational guidance; Job satisfaction;

  Citation:

  Kaplan, Robert Steven. What You're Really Meant To Do: A Road Map for Reaching Your Unique Potential. Boston, MA, USA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013.

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• Article | Harvard Business Review | November 2012

  A Whole New Way of Looking at the World

  Nitin Nohria

  Citation:

  Nohria, Nitin. "A Whole New Way of Looking at the World." Harvard Business Review 90, no. 11 (November 2012): 91.

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• Article | Management Science | 2012

  Specialization and Variety in Repetitive Tasks: Evidence from a Japanese Bank

  B. Staats and F. Gino

  Sustaining operational productivity in the completion of repetitive tasks is critical to many organizations' success. Yet research points to two different work-design-related strategies for accomplishing this goal: specialization to capture the benefits of repetition and variety (i.e., working on different tasks) to keep workers motivated and provide them opportunities to learn. In this paper, we investigate how these two strategies may bring different productivity benefits over time. For our empirical analyses, we use two-and-a-half years of transaction data from a Japanese bank's home loan application-processing line. We find that over the course of a single day, specialization, as compared to variety, is related to improved worker productivity. However, when we examine workers' experience across a number of days, we find that variety helps improve worker productivity. Additionally, we show that part of this benefit results from workers' cumulative experience with changeovers. Our results highlight the need for organizations to transform specialization and variety into mutually reinforcing strategies rather than treating them as mutually exclusive. Overall, our paper identifies new ways to improve operational performance through the effective allocation of work.

  Keywords: Boundaries; Performance Productivity; Organizations; Research; Strategy; Motivation and Incentives; Opportunities; Market Transactions; Resource Allocation; Performance; Goals and Objectives; Learning;

  Citation:

  Staats, B., and F. Gino. "Specialization and Variety in Repetitive Tasks: Evidence from a Japanese Bank." Management Science 58, no. 6 (2012): 1141–1159.

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