What's New
Every week we publish new articles and add books to the library. Here's everything that landed this week.
Why the most psychologically healthy organisations tolerate productive conflict
The distinction that changes everything Karen Jehn's 1995 foundational study found that conflict in groups could be productive as well as destructive, and designed her research specifically to find situations in which each outcome obtained.…
Crucial Conversations
Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler
Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler is the most practically grounded treatment of how to conduct task-level disagreement without triggering the relationship conflict escalation that destroys its value. Their framework maps directly onto the interaction norm variable that Jehn and Mannix identify as the primary moderator of whether conflict stays productive. For any entrepreneur who understands the research and wants a practical skill framework for what to actually say and do when a high-stakes disagreement is beginning to tip from productive to personal, this is the most directly applicable available starting point.
Why the most psychologically healthy organisations tolerate productive conflict
The research on which type of conflict improves performance — and which destroys it
The psychology of organisational memory — why companies keep making the same mistakes
The mechanisms by which hard-won experience fails to become durable learning
Why brainstorming sessions produce worse ideas than individuals working alone
Why the most popular ideation technique in business is also one of the most consistently counterproductive
The psychology of workplace gossip — why it serves a genuine psychological function
Why eliminating gossip damages the social infrastructure it was maintaining
How social comparison in the workplace drives both motivation and toxicity simultaneously
Why the same process produces inspiration in one person and malicious envy in another — and what determines…
How cognitive load theory applies to employee training and development
Why most training fails to produce durable learning — and the design principles that fix it
The bystander effect in organisations — why nobody reports problems they all see
The three mechanisms that produce collective silence in the presence of universal observation
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