When a new team is created, people share their beliefs and values which lead to attitudes that reflect the opinions of the majority.

When a new member enters a team, he goes through an induction process which could include communication of norms. In most cases, the new employee will ask around or observe what the others are doing.

Various norms classifications:

1. Prescriptive – define the behavior that should be performed
2. Proscriptive – define the behavior that should be avoided

or

1. Appearance norms – what you were becomes what you are
2. Informal social arrangements norms – the informal groups
3. Allocation of resources norms – who gets what
4. Reward allocation norms – the rewards are granted according to different principles:
   • Equity – you get what you deserve
   • Equality – everybody gets the same
   • Reciprocity – you give me, I will give you
   • Social responsibility – you get something because you need it
5. Performance norms – you do what the others do in order to be perceived as a high performer or “one of us”

Why are norms useful?

1. They ensure the team existence – the members will support the norms as a way to survive
2. They increase predictability which can lead to increased efficiency
3. They satisfy the need of belonging to a group. The norms are a differentiation factor next to other teams.

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Job satisfaction is personal experience, your overall attitude next to your job. An attitude is a combination of beliefs and values (see previous posts).

• The difference between what you get and what you think you should get from your job is called discrepancy
• The difference between what you get compared with what others are getting is called distributive fairness.
• Procedural fairness is a factor that relates with the way decisions that affect you are taken. It is important if you perceive them as reasonable and taken according to a procedure. But more important is if you were part of the decision-making process.
• Extroverted and conscientious people manifest a predisposition to be happy with their job, while other people have natural disposition to be unhappy about everything.

Maybe the most important determinant of job satisfaction remains our emotion and the way in which you identify, assess and manage them in a work environment. Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ), even if you agree with its existence or not, is important even only for the fact that most of the people around you believe in it and modify their behavior in accordance with their knowledge.

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A simple sentence has triggered a complex process: Strategy is the way in which you reach your objectives. When I heard it my past experiences and knowledge have become pieces on a chessboard in a game where I know beforehand what moves my opponent will do.

Regardless of how much information and experience you accumulate the engine that will move you ahead depend on how you create connections between them.

Strategy remains a word said with reverence in business. Until now I have met 3 types of people who assume an expertise in what is called business strategy:

1. Unknowers – those who use the word strategy in contexts like “I do PR strategy”, etc. without understanding how much experience involves the assumption of such expertise. Usually these people gather with similar to them people and feed their vanity listening to each other speaking.
2. Conservators – those managers and business owners that apply with perseverance things applied 10 years ago without understanding that the terms used no longer exist or have a completely different meaning. Formal authority given by the assertion “I am the boss and I know best” spreads terror among subordinates who will bend over to do things as they should be done without upsetting the boss. Eventually profits will come and he / she will be proud of his strategic abilities and will be generous with kicking the lower backside of the slaves that worked for it.
3. I-want-to-be-like-him-when-I-grow-up People – those who aggregate intelligence, experience, common sense and care about those around them and which do not even bother to use the word strategy. They know that their experience is a foundation which can be build upon only if they have an attitude open to new and the consciousness that they are not always right.

Except those who are truly exceptional, for the rest of us to get success requires a lot of work and continuous learning. These are some minimum requirements. If success means not only money and social position, you need to be a genuine human being with real values for others to look at you like as to a model to follow.

The ability to understand the concept of strategy as well as its applicability in professional and personal life and in building your personal brand is obtained while gathering experience and continuous learning.

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Your values are always editing your attitudes. When a value combines with information from the environment about the subject they will have a positive output if they fit or a negative output if they are in contradiction.

This combination of values and beliefs is your attitude. And your attitude will dictate your behavior, except the case in which you are forced or in need to behave against your values or beliefs.

In organizational behavior the most obvious application is the reaction to your boss. A manager is always assimilated with the most accessible image of the company.

1. Belief – I do not like my boss.
2. Value – My boss is my connection with the company.
3. Attitude – I do not like this company and my job here.

Guess what the materialization of this process will be?

Behavior – I will find another job.

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