david burkus

Take the Creative Risk – Creative Oklahoma

david — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:28:34 +0000

I just finished working on a PSA with Creative Oklahoma, an awesome non-profit dedicated to developing creativity and innovation in my home state. The film below considers the risks involved in letting people be creative but asserts that those risks are necessary if you’re trying to lead innovation.

[Can't See the Video? Watch It Here.]

Faulty Intel in the War For Talent

david — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:15:44 +0000

I’m excited to announce that my new article, Faulty Intel in the War for Talent, has been published in the Journal of Business Studies Quarterly. The piece explores many faulty assumptions regarding talent management and offers evidence-based suggestions for winning the war for talent. As always, my hope is that you’ll find it entertaining and enlightening.

Abstract

Despite a raging “war for talent,” the field of talent management suffers from a lack of empirically developed definitions, goals or models. Lacking these, organizational leaders have relied on commonly accepted HR practices that have been rebranded as “talent management.” This article reviews the research, challenging many of the foundational assumptions of these HR practices. The implications of this research are reviewed and “evidence-based strategies” for talent management proposed with examples provided of each strategy.

[View/Download the Article]

New Chapter

david — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:12:33 +0000

There are several exciting things in the works for me and for LeaderLab over the next year. I just wanted to let everyone know of another major one. I’ve recently accepted an opportunity to join the faculty of the College of Business at Oral Roberts University. ORU is my alma matter and so I am particularly excited by the opportunity. I anticipate being able to put more time into blogging as well and produce more insights for readers from the world of research.

Thanks for being a part of what I love to do.

New Article – The Portable Guide to Strategy

david — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:28:25 +0000

The very mention of the word strategy brings with it connotations of planning and images of executives sitting around large tables at off-site meeting facilities. These executives pour over data regarding what products are profitable and unprofitable. Finally, they emerge from their off-site cave with a step-by-step guide for the rest of the hierarchy to implement. This view of strategy is commonly held, but represents a very narrow perspective on what it means to be strategic. In reality, there are numerous schools of thought surrounding strategy, each one with an infinite number of perspectives on how to implement the ideas of that school. There are ten main schools of strategy as first outlined by Henry Mintzberg, Joseph Lampel and Bruce Ahlstrand. The Portable Guide to Strategy is a summary of each school and the key thought leaders to seek out for a more in-depth perspective.

[View/Download Article]

Leading Millennials in Canada

david — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:39:56 +0000

Last week LeaderLab contributor Tim Vanderpyl and I presented at the HR360 conference in Edmonton, AB. The topic? Us. We spent two solid hours presenting the research on millennials in the workforce and discussing with executives what changes their organizations will have to make. As promised during the session, we’re posting our slides here.

If you joined us at the conference, I hope this is a suitable souvenir. If you didn’t make it to the conference, I suppose it is just free swag for being a reader.

Millennials in the Workforce – HR360 Conference

Why Your Boss Sucks – My Talk from IgniteOKC 2

david — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 02:09:22 +0000

IgniteOKC Talk

david — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:56:27 +0000

Last week I had the opportunity to give a talk at the inaugural IgniteOKC event in Oklahoma City. I chose three essays in the “How to Fail” series and compiled them into the talk you see below. For those of you unfamiliar with Ignite, it is a style of presentation where speakers are given 5 minutes and 20 slides that advance automatically ever 15 seconds. The format creates a challenge often summarized as “Enlighten us, but make it quick.”

How to Fail (or not) – IgniteOKC