The Responsibility Virus

Are you a heroic leader? Or are you a passive follower? Chances are you act like one or the other, and it's doing serious damage to your company, your customers, and your colleagues. The reason behind your harmful behavior? The fear that you'll be held responsible for any failures -which often makes failure the inevitable outcome. Management guru Roger Martin calls this fear of failure and the behavior it causes "The Responsibility Virus." With lively case studies based on real business practice, he shows how the Virus "infects" corporations and nonprofit organizations large and small. No message could be more urgent in today's business climate.Martin lays out a wholly original way of understanding group dynamics. His impassioned belief in the "power of one" will be required reading for any of us who think about how we function in organizations, from the boardroom to the mail room.

Roger Martin's tools for conquering the Responsibility Virus:--The Frame ExperimentHelps those already stuck in over- or under-responsibility to arrest their downward spiral, one relationship at a time--The Choice-Structuring ProcessHelps members of a group create robust and compelling choices together, rather than leaping to roles of heroic leadership or passive followership--The Responsibility LadderHelps managers and subordinates work together and shows each of us when and how to take on responsibility from a boss--Redefining Leadership and FollowershipHelps leaders move from unilateral decision-making to shared responsibilityRoger Martin was named one of "Sixteen Change Agents Who Are Creating Your Future" by Fast Company magazine, which said, "Martin is not interested in business as usual-or in business school as usual."

This book is brilliant, and well worth studying." Marketing Business, January 2003 Your business faces a challenge. The usual management suspects lock themselves in a meeting room and frantically create a plan. The plan is, of course, secret. They try to do everything themselves. They fail. Meanwhile, everybody else sits around waiting to have the problem solved for them by the heroic managers. They don''t get the full picture; they don''t buy into the plans. Recognize these symptoms? It''s the responsibility virus at work. What makes some people in organizations run from blame while others claim credit for everything? Why is it that so many important decisions get left to so few managers? Why do some people always take charge while others simply take orders? The Responsibility Virus is a cycle of failure driven by people who take too much or too little responsibility for results. Here''s how to cure you and your company of the fear of failure. From one of our most original business thinkers comes a diagnosis of the fear of failure that traps all who work in organizations - from the board room to the mail room . Complete with tried and tested tools to help everyone make better choices and decisions, The Responsibility Virus will help you to share the burden of leadership and spread responsibility. " The Responsibility Virus exposes a set of crucial interpersonal processes that underpin the success or failure of any organization structure. It also helps explain why so many companies fail to make strategic choices. By offering both a compelling framework and intensely practical ways forward, the book makes an important and welcome contribution to basic knowledge about management." -Michael E. Porter , Bishop Lawrence University Professor, Harvard University "A triumph. Few management books have ever brought such psychological insight to the question of why good people often struggle in positions of leadership. Roger Martin has changed the management paradigm." - Malcolm Gladwell , author of The Tipping Point "Martin advances a new concept that explains under performance and defensive routines. More importantly, it can be used to generate high organizational performance around difficult issues, and do so in such a way that the solutions not only work, they persevere. The book is full of concrete examples and stories that will grab the readers attention." - Chris Argyris, James Bryant Conant Professor of Education and Organizational Behaviour at Harvard Business School "Full of provocative insights that strike so many chords of self-recognition. Martin doesn''t just identify a common and deadly management failing but provides the road map to get out of the problem and win." -Tina Brown World-class consultant and business school dean Roger Martin leaps outside the box of contemporary management thinking to offer a provocative diagnosis of the problem that infects all too many organizations: the Responsibility Virus. Drawing upon his years of experience advising companies on strategy, planning and action, Martin shows how most poor decision-making begins at the level of individual behaviour. Because most of us will do anything to win, maintain control, and avoid embarrassment, we constantly adapt our behaviour to those around us. Trapped in this dynamic, we vacillate between taking charge and backing off, causing those around us to vacillate too. Over-responsible leaders need under-responsible followers. And under-responsible followers need over-responsible leaders. Each provides the energy the other needs to sustain their part of the Virus. The critical reality is that every one of us, in each specific situation, holds the power to stop the Virus in our own hands. All we have to do is refuse the opportunity presented to act over-responsibly or under-responsibly. With lively case studies based on real experience, Martin lays out the tools that all of us can put into practice as we contemplate business choices and decisions. His sophisticated and impassioned belief in the power of one will be required reading for any of us who think about how we function in organizations, from the boardroom to the mail room. In this book you will find tactics and personal strategies to overcome fear of failure and get everybody willing and able to take decisions for themselves. "Take-charge leadership is the stuff of Hollywood and history books. In most cases, such heroic leadership not only fails to inspire and engage, it produces passivity and alienation instead. Subordinates just stand back and watch." - Roger Martin

Reveals the deep roots of the UK's lack of resilience when COVID-19 hit and sets out an ambitious manifesto for change.

Virus Taxonomy is a standard and comprehensive source for the classification of viruses, created by the International Committee of the Taxonomy of Viruses. The book includes eight taxonomic reports of the ICTV and provides comprehensive information on 3 taxonomic orders of viruses, 73 families, 9 subfamilies, 287 genera, and 1938 virus species. The book also features about 429 colored pictures and diagrams for more efficient learning. The text is divided into four parts, comprised of 16 chapters and presenting the following features: • Compiled data from numerous international experts about virus taxonomy and nomenclature • Organized information on over 6000 recognized viruses, illustrated with diagrams of genome organization and virus replication cycle • Data on the phylogenetic relationships among viruses of the same and different taxa • Discussion of the qualitative and quantitative relationships of virus sequences The book is a definitive reference for microbiologists, molecular biologists, research-level virologists, infectious disease specialists, and pharmaceutical researchers working on antiviral agents. Students and novices in taxonomy and nomenclature will also find this text useful. * The standard official ITCV reference for virus taxonomy and nomenclature, compiling data from 500 international experts * Covers over 6000 recognized viruses, organized by family with diagrams of genome organization and virus replication cycle * Provides data on the phylogenic relationships between viruses belonging to the same or different taxa * Now includes information about the qualitative and quantitative relationships between virus sequences

If you want to be as successful as Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, or Michael Dell, read their autobiographical advice books, right? Wrong, says Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind. Though following best practice can help in some ways, it also poses a danger: By emulating what a great leader did in a particular situation, you'll likely be terribly disappointed with your own results. Why? Your situation is different. Instead of focusing on what exceptional leaders do, we need to understand and emulate how they think. Successful businesspeople engage in what Martin calls integrative thinking creatively resolving the tension in opposing models by forming entirely new and superior ones. Drawing on stories of leaders as diverse as AG Lafley of Procter & Gamble, Meg Whitman of eBay, Victoria Hale of the Institute for One World Health, and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys, Martin shows how integrative thinkers are relentlessly diagnosing and synthesizing by asking probing questions including: What are the causal relationships at work here? and What are the implied trade-offs? Martin also presents a model for strengthening your integrative thinking skills by drawing on different kinds of knowledge including conceptual and experiential knowledge. Integrative thinking can be learned, and The Opposable Mind helps you master this vital skill.

The practical need to partition the world of viruses into distinguishable, universally agreed upon entities is the ultimate justification for developing a virus classification system. Since 1971, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) operating on behalf of the world community of virologists has taken on the task of developing a single, universal taxonomic scheme for all viruses infecting animals (vertebrate, invertebrates, and protozoa), plants (higher plants and algae), fungi, bacteria, and archaea. The current report builds on the accumulated taxonomic construction of the eight previous reports dating back to 1971 and records the proceedings of the Committee since publication of the last report in 2005. Representing the work of more than 500 virologists worldwide, this report is the authoritative reference for virus organization, distinction, and structure.