Here’s how your company should scale up artificial intelligence this year
28/01/2020
One of the key benefits that company leaders expect from investment in AI is the streamlining of in-house processes. The automation of routine tasks, such as the extrication of information from tax forms and invoices, can help companies operate more efficiently and make significant savings. As AI usage continues to grow, so do public fears […]
What Happens When Your Career Becomes Your Whole Identity
27/01/2020
Caspar Benson/Getty Images Dan*, a partner at a major Boston law firm, was due at the office, but instead, he was curled on his bathroom floor, unshaven and in his pajamas, crying into a towel. It began slowly, in a meeting with a particularly pushy client, when a thought bubbled up in his mind: “Why […]
What makes a good leader?
25/01/2020
Structure is not the enemy of problem-solving; it’s actually a resource. An innovation expert presents a framework that that won’t just help you generate more creative ideas and make smarter decisions—it will teach you to see around corners. Now that you have a better handle on solving the problems, it’s time to learn how to […]
Hire me because I’m the best, not because I’m a woman
24/01/2020
And guess what? I wasn’t hired for either of those jobs because of my gender. Many women – and I consider myself one of them – see themselves as much more than a female leader. I feel this label can detract and deflect attention from my professional and personal achievements. I, for one, am thrilled […]
Greta Thunberg is not alone: Meet the 10 teenage campaigners at Davos 2020
23/01/2020
For the first time in its history, the World Economic Forum will welcome teenage change-makers to the Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters to boost collaboration between the generations. Here are 10 of them… Canadian Autumn is an Eagle Clan Anishinaabekwe from the Wiikwemkoong First Nation in Northern Ontario. She has been a “water warrior” since the […]
Are You Pushing Yourself Too Hard at Work?
22/01/2020
C.J. Burton/Getty Images We all have intense periods at work where multiple deadlines converge, an important deal is closing, or a busy season lasts for a few months. During these times, we may work more intensely or longer hours, but we know that the situation is temporary, and we are able to keep work in […]
How Corporate Cultures Differ Around the World
20/01/2020
Jonathan Kitchen/Getty Images Building upon the integrated culture framework we presented in “The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture” (written with our collaborators Jeremiah Lee and Jesse Price), we launched an online assessment to allow HBR readers to explore their own organizations’ cultural profiles. We received over 12,800 responses from across the globe between December 2017 […]
Unexpected Companies Produce Some of the Best CEOs
17/01/2020
MirageC/Getty Images About 10% of S&P 500 companies change CEOs annually. Behind these appointments are often years of intricate preparation grooming successors. We regularly get approached by CEOs and boards who find it challenging to groom the right candidates and look for effective approaches to develop the next CEO. Venerable behemoths like GE, IBM, P&G, […]
How the VC Pitch Process Is Failing Female Entrepreneurs
15/01/2020
HBR Staff/alxpin/Getty Images In 2018, only 3% of venture capital in the U.S went to companies with a female CEO. Yet, the number of female-owned businesses has risen both in the U.S. and around the world, and the number of women intending to become entrepreneurs globally has increased even more sharply. Women who venture into […]
Why isn’t your transformation showing up in the bottom line?
17/12/2019
“Transformation” is the buzzword of the day for companies in most industries, but for many it carries an asterisk: studies show wide variation in companies’ rates of success with organizational transformations—whether they are changing how they go to market, updating back-office processes, automating production systems, or otherwise making significant changes in how their businesses are […]
4 ways to build businesses that put people and planet over profits | World Economic Forum
16/12/2019
For people working in social enterprise and impact investing, this is not news, although it is very much welcome. However, the bigger and still-outstanding question remains: will this be merely a press release that achieves little beyond a season’s-worth of good PR, or will it lead to tangible, substantive change? On the one hand, there […]
Brexit: The bigger picture | Rethinking UK talent for the long term
13/12/2019
Just as British employment levels have reached record highs, the indicators show that the prospect of Brexit has been stemming the flow of foreign talent from the European Union into the United Kingdom and has prompted many EU nationals already there to look elsewhere for career opportunities. For companies operating in the United Kingdom, that […]
5 ways to swim, not sink, as part of a ‘liquid workforce’ | World Economic Forum
12/12/2019
Companies are going to be demanding different competencies, and we need to be ready to meet this demand. I visualize the idea of the liquid workforce as an immense moving ocean. One day, we may have a great job and be enjoying a warm tropical area. However, strong currents may move us quickly from being […]
How CEOs can help lead technology transformations
11/12/2019
We’ve seen numerous companies boost their financial performance after their CEOs made it a priority to strengthen the technology function and bring more technology capabilities closer to the business’s strategy and operations. Fulfilling this mandate, however, can be a challenge. Most CEOs already have a long slate of priorities, and relatively few feel comfortable enough […]
Davos Manifesto 2020: The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
10/12/2019
i. A company serves its customers by providing a value proposition that best meets their needs. It accepts and supports fair competition and a level playing field. It has zero tolerance for corruption. It keeps the digital ecosystem in which it operates reliable and trustworthy. It makes customers fully aware of the functionality of its […]
Is China the next frontier for the meatless industry?
07/12/2019
China’s “free from meat” market, which includes plant-based products meant to replace meat, has grown 33.5% since 2014 to be worth $9.7 billion last year, according to . It predicts that the. U.S. plant-based “meat” makers targeting China like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat Inc will need to battle homegrown rivals which are developing local […]
How inclusive design can reconnect people with government
06/12/2019
What’s not to love about Scandinavia? Not only is the region among the world’s most prosperous, healthy, and educated, but it has also given us cultural gems such as ABBA’s pop ballads and Stieg Larsson’s bestselling crime novels, including The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Scandinavian design, too, has rippled across the world. Danish architect […]
Sovereign wealth could fund the SDGs
05/12/2019
The striking fact is that funding is available, but it is not flowing to where it is needed. The total investment available is approximately $98 trillion, including commercial banks, investment banks, insurance and public pensions, sovereign wealth funds, equity funds and public global funds, such as donors, foundations and endowments. This mounting finance gap is […]
A new leadership imperative: Corporate social responsibility
03/12/2019
Society’s expectations for business are rising. Customers—particularly younger ones—want to know what the companies they engage with are doing for, with, and to the world. Nine in ten Generation Z consumers believe that companies have a responsibility to address environmental and social issues. Younger people think that environmentally and socially focused companies are better prospective […]
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is redefining the economy as we know it
03/12/2019
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) upends current economic frameworks. Who makes money – and how – has changed. Demographics have changed. Even the skills that brought our society to where we are today have changed. Leaders must account for these transformations or risk leaving behind their companies, their customers and their constituents. The top three […]
Don’t Be Afraid to Disagree in a Job Interview
03/12/2019
GlobalP/Getty Images When you’re interviewing for a job, you typically have one primary goal: impress the interviewer enough to get an offer. Often, we think that we need to be agreeable to succeed, which can lead to a lot of nodding on both sides — even if you don’t necessarily believe in what the person […]
Why Groups Struggle to Solve Problems Together
02/12/2019
Robert Warren/Getty Images Why are so many meetings so unproductive? Many professionals, fed up with calendars chock-full of long, disorganized, soul-bruising sessions, resort to uncharitable, even cynical explanations: But if we want an accurate, rather than merely cathartic answer to the question, we’d be wise to consider Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which […]
You Didn’t Land Your Dream Job. Now What?
23/11/2019
fStop Images – Caspar Benson/Getty Images No professional has a perfect record: at some point, you’ll apply for what seems like a dream job — and be rejected. Taking a little time to wallow is natural. But eventually, you have to will yourself to move on. That doesn’t mean giving up on your dream, but […]
How to Manage the Emotional Roller Coaster of a Job Search
21/11/2019
Jorg Greuel/Getty Images Most of us, at some point in our career, will conduct a job search — if not several of them. While it can be a time of excitement and hope about new opportunities to come, it can also be a time of great uncertainty and anxiety. Not only will you likely feel […]
Digital transformation: Improving the odds of success
20/11/2019
For established companies, the pressure to digitize business models and products has reached new intensity. McKinsey research shows that the best-performing decile of digitized incumbents earns as much as 80 percent of the digital revenues generated in their industries. Ascending to that elite group is far from easy. In a new survey of more than 1,700 […]
Why Likable Leaders Seem More Effective
19/11/2019
masterzphotois/Getty Images In late 2007, one of us, Charn, found himself in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, preparing to fly a Kiowa Warrior helicopter over the Iraqi border. Kuwait is a stopover where U.S. soldiers finish all required training just prior to deploying into combat. The only treacherous part of Kuwait is the sand — it is […]
5 Simple Rules for Strategy Execution
15/11/2019
Bjarte Rettedal/Getty Images In survey after survey, the execution of carefully developed strategy comes in as a key problem that evades solution by executives. They acknowledge that they can’t seem to get it right. It’s one thing to design a strategy in the boardroom and quite another to get it operating at all levels of […]
Mindsets and practices of the best CEOs
14/11/2019
A company has only one peerless role: chief executive officer. It’s the most powerful and sought-after title in business, more exciting, rewarding, and influential than any other. What the CEO controls—the company’s biggest moves—accounts for 45 percent of a company’s performance. 1 1. Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit, Strategy Beyond the Hockey […]
A Guide to the Big Ideas and Debates in Corporate Governance
13/11/2019
ronstik/Getty Images Corporate governance has become a topic of broad public interest as the power of institutional investors has increased and the impact of corporations on society has grown. Yet ideas about how corporations should be governed vary widely. People disagree, for example, on such basic matters as the purpose of the corporation, the role […]
Burnout is a pandemic. Why don’t we talk more about it?
29/10/2019
Stress – from the Latin “stringere”, to squeeze tight, touch or injure – is not bad, per se. Positive stress and adrenaline in the right circumstances can make us stronger, happier and healthier. Yet, in certain work environments, chronic stress provokes anxiety, detachment and fatigue that can lead to burnout. The World Health Organization (WHO) […]
Can a Board Member’s Job Be Automated?
28/10/2019
koya79/Getty Images The role of a Non-Executive Director (NED) is to represent and safeguard the long-term interests of shareholders and broader stakeholders, including employees, customers, society, and environment. As stewards of the company, the Board and its NEDs, have two primary governance responsibilities: However, continued advances in artificial intelligence, robotic process automation (RPA), and distributed […]
Why Junior Employees Should Mentor Senior Employees
26/10/2019
Peter Dazeley/Getty Images When Mark Tibergien, CEO of Advisor Solutions, thought about the future of BNY Mellon’s Pershing, he knew the company had a problem. Millennials were uninterested in working in financial services. In addition, Millennials who did join the company were leaving the company at higher rates than their older peers. Like BNY Mellon’s […]
5 Things Leaders Do That Stifle Innovation
24/10/2019
Michael Blann/Getty Images In 2018, the U.S. slipped out of Bloomberg’s top 10 most innovative countries for the first time. But this isn’t necessarily a hint of entrepreneurship’s demise; it’s a reflection of the tumultuous environment we find ourselves in — one that’s rife with unpredictability. This type of environment is often referred to as VUCA — volatility, uncertainty, complexity, […]
Prepare your board of directors for crisis management
23/10/2019
A corporate crisis has become a modern-day rite of passage for the board directors and senior executives of many companies. Everyone knows by now that crises are an ever-present threat that can strike any organization, no matter how apparently well run. Crises can emerge from a clear blue sky, escalate within hours or even minutes, […]
In our digital age, taxation needs to become more mobile..
22/10/2019
For a government to levy corporate tax on a foreign firm, tax rules require a “nexus” or link between the taxpayer and the taxing jurisdiction, typically in the form of physical presence such as offices or workers. In our digital world, firms can interact with users and create value in a country without needing to […]
GDP Is Not a Measure of Human Well-Being
21/10/2019
malerapaso/Getty Images Economic growth has raised living standards around the world. However, modern economies have lost sight of the fact that the standard metric of economic growth, gross domestic product (GDP), merely measures the size of a nation’s economy and doesn’t reflect a nation’s welfare. Yet policymakers and economists often treat GDP, or GDP per […]
How PE investors can become more entrepreneurial in private equity
19/10/2019
Historically, in a buoyant economic environment with ever-growing multiples, active management hasn’t always been required for private-equity (PE) firms to make healthy returns. Today, the economic underpinnings of PE deals have changed. There is a palpable sense in the market that deal prices have likely reached their peak. As competition intensifies, secondary and tertiary […]
Successful Singapore – the secrets of the world’s most competitive economy | World Economic Forum
18/10/2019
In the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Competitiveness Report, Singapore scored 85 points out of a possible 100, placing it above the US, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and Switzerland in the top five. It was awarded more than 90 points in four of the 12 gauges used to rank the 141 countries and scored more […]
Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development
17/10/2019
Gregor Schuster/Getty Images Organizations spent $359 billion globally on training in 2016, but was it worth it? Not when you consider the following: Not only is the majority of training in today’s companies ineffective, but the purpose, timing, and content of training is flawed. Learning for the Wrong Reasons Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at […]
Are you a growth leader? The seven beliefs and behaviors that growth leaders share
16/10/2019
What makes someone a growth leader? In conversations we’ve had with business leaders, the answer tends to boil down to a variation of “I know it when I see it.” But it turns out that there is a specific set of attributes that growth leaders share. After carrying out a survey of 165 C-suite executives […]
How to Improve Your Company’s Net Promoter Score
14/10/2019
HBR Staff/Paula Daniëlse/Getty Images There is a sure-fire way to increase your company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) or the likelihood that customers will recommend you to others. There’s also a sure-fire way to learn about your operational vulnerabilities using customer surveys. The key in both cases is to give customers the chance to evaluate you […]
Pricing: Distributors’ most powerful value-creation lever
12/10/2019
Pricing is undergoing a revolution fueled by big data, advanced analytics tools, and powerful digital capabilities. Distribution businesses are well positioned to reap the benefits of this revolution, given the high volume of transactions they support and the breadth and complexity of both their product and customer portfolios. The pricing capability is critically important in […]
What Happens When Teams Fight Burnout Together
11/10/2019
Michael Blann/Getty Images Here’s a vexing paradox. On the one hand, companies are offering more wellness and well-being options than ever before, including mindfulness and yoga classes, nap rooms, and fitness facilities. On the other hand, employee burnout has risen to such a level that the World Health Organization now considers it a workplace hazard. Most […]
Convening a red team and blue team can help business leaders get both sides of the story
09/10/2019
Despite their best intentions, executives fall prey to cognitive and organizational biases that get in the way of good decision making. In this series, we highlight some of them and offer a few effective ways to address them. Our topic this time? Getting both sides of the story The dilemma The CEO of a large, […]
3 of the Most Common Challenges Women Face in Negotiations
08/10/2019
master1305/Getty Images Small negotiations are woven through the fabric of our everyday working lives. Managers negotiate to secure resources for their teams, create new positions, or retain existing ones. Employees negotiate to gain more flexible work arrangements, access development opportunities, or define new roles. We use negotiations to help our selves, our team members, and […]
Millennials are starting to get more involved in government, and the impact will be huge | World Economic Forum
05/10/2019
They are a few examples of how millennials are pushing innovation and getting involved in government. Around 30% of the world’s population is under the age of 30, yet young people don’t really have a voice in government leadership. Stereotypically, they aren’t supposed to care about government or even have a positive view of it […]
Artificial intelligence and war – Mind control
04/10/2019
THE CONTEST between China and America, the world’s two superpowers, has many dimensions, from skirmishes over steel quotas to squabbles over student visas. One of the most alarming and least understood is the race towards artificial-intelligence-enabled warfare. Both countries are investing large sums in militarised artificial intelligence (AI), from autonomous robots to software that gives […]
A small group of world leaders are standing together against inequality
03/10/2019
This exciting group is brought together by the Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Löfven, a former trade union leader who leads a nation that at times has felt like a lonely voice in a world of rising inequality. Standing with him were leaders such as the President of Ethiopia – a woman president of one […]
How dual-career couples find fulfilment at work
02/10/2019
The struggle to balance two demanding careers is a dilemma that many employees face daily. Our recent study of more than 35,000 workers with spouses or live-in partners in a variety of professional sectors found that 89 percent of women and 70 percent of men are part of a dual-career couple (DCC)—a couple in which […]
Are these the 6 best science books of 2019?
01/10/2019
A boost for women writing about science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the 35-year-old became the fifth woman to take the prize in as many years – and was praised by the panel of judges for challenging their own perceptions by exposing the systemic discrimination caused by the data gap. Judge and author Dorothy Koomson said, […]
4 Tips for Managing Organizational Change
27/09/2019
Walker and Walker/Getty Images Launching major transformation efforts is a common way business leaders try to get a leg up on the competition or just to keep their heads above water. But too many of these efforts fail. Change is difficult and many will not only resist it, but seek to undermine it. Unsurprisingly then, […]
Hire Leaders for What They Can Do, Not What They Have Done
25/09/2019
cranach/Getty Images Fifty years have passed since the publication of The Peter Principle, but its rule still applies today. “In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties,” noted Laurence J. Peter, the educator behind this famous work. His theory postulates that most competent people […]
Should You Accept a Lower-Level Job After a Career Break?
23/09/2019
Henrik Sorensen/Getty Images It’s a dilemma in the career re-entry world: What level is the right level to return to after a career break? Returning professionals who take a lower-level position than the one they were in before their career break may worry they are selling themselves short. Employers can be confused by the relauncher who […]
6 Ways CEOs Can Prove They Care About More Than Shareholder Value
21/09/2019
Hiroshi Watanabe/Getty Images Somewhere, Milton Friedman must be spinning. Whatever they thought they were doing, the 181 CEOs who signed the Business Roundtable’s breakthrough statement on the purpose of corporations embraced a much wider interpretation of corporate responsibility—signalling the beginning of the end for the shareholder primacy cult. The pressure on business leaders to declare […]
How to Avoid Groupthink When Hiring
19/09/2019
Henrik Sorensen/Getty Images When it comes to hiring, democratic decisions lead to better outcomes. There is wisdom in crowds when it comes to spotting talent. When Google tracked the performance of recent hires against their interview ratings, the company found that averaging the ratings of a group of interviewers was by far a more accurate […]
It’s Time for a C-Level Role Dedicated to Reskilling Workers
19/09/2019
Tara Moore/Getty Images Although corporate leaders have talked about skills gaps for years, the spread of automation and artificial intelligence is prompting some of the biggest companies — including Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, SAP, Walmart, and AT&T, to name just a few — to take action, not with small pilots but with comprehensive plans to retrain […]
Why Africa’s Industrialization Won’t Look Like China’s
16/09/2019
eyegelb/Getty Images China designed and executed a policy that shrank the industrialization process in a mere 25 years — something that many economies took at least a century to do. That redesign has brought immense dislocation in global commerce and industry, enabling China to become one of the world’s leading economies. China’s success has led […]
How Multinationals Can Help Advance LGBT Inclusion Around the World
16/09/2019
Kelly Bowden/Getty Images As the rainbow flags came down in New York City after the WorldPride and Stonewall 50 celebrations, and as flags go up for pride events in other parts of the world, it’s worth asking: where do we stand on global LGBT rights? This year has offered a mixed bag. More jurisdictions, including […]
Ranking 42 Countries by Ease of Doing Digital Business
14/09/2019
Paul Taylor/Getty Images The World Bank’s annual Doing Business survey has been described by some as the “World Cup” or “Olympics” for governments competing to make their countries attractive to businesses. The ranking measures how easy it is to do business in a country by examining regulatory environments and is enormously influential: it has inspired […]
Research: Where a Founder Is from Affects How They Structure Their Company
12/09/2019
George Diebold/Getty Images Where a person is born can shape the languages they speak, their life expectancy, and even how much they talk with their hands or smile. But how does it affect how they build a company? Does someone from South Africa have an entirely different approach than someone from Russia? It turns out […]
Research: How Political Connections Help (and Hurt) Chinese Startups
10/09/2019
David Bokeh/Getty Images New ventures need resources to survive, let alone thrive. In emerging markets, their survival also depends on their ability to deal with what academics call the “institutional void” — the lack of strong market intermediaries ensuring the smooth flow of business. In this void, where rules are loosely interpreted, and information hard […]
To Build an Inclusive Culture, Start with Inclusive Meetings
10/09/2019
Nicholas Rigg/Getty Images Chances are you’ve attended a meeting today. Was it time well spent or a soul-draining exercise in futility? Although no two meetings are the same, their collective impact on the culture of a company is significant. Meetings matter. They are the forum where people come together to discuss ideas, make decisions, and […]
The Gap Between Large and Small Companies Is Growing. Why?
10/09/2019
Gandee Vasan/Getty Images Research and news headlines are replete with the idea that traditional large companies can’t innovate, and that smaller digital companies will render many larger ones extinct. While we’ve seen numerous startups of the last thirty years not only disrupt businesses but become the megacorporations of today, we wondered whether this disruption is […]
A Lack of Sponsorship Is Keeping Women from Advancing into Leadership
07/09/2019
ferrantraite/Getty Images Too few women are reaching the top of their organizations, and a big reason is that they are not getting the high-stakes assignments that are prerequisite for a shot at the C-suite. Often, this is due to a lack of powerful sponsors demanding and ensuring that they get these stepping-stone jobs. Ensuring that […]
Why Are We So Bad at Choosing the Right Job?
04/09/2019
RyanJLane/Getty Images What would be your perfect job? Although there are well-defined parameters around what people actually want from work, our career-related choices are not always consistent with those parameters — even when we are consciously aware of them. Consider that most of us want just three specific things from our jobs, namely: Of course, […]
181 Top CEOs Have Realized Companies Need a Purpose Beyond Profit
30/08/2019
Tim Robberts/Getty Images On August 19 the Business Roundtable issued an open letter titled “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” One of the preeminent business lobbies in the United States, the Business Roundtable (BR) includes the CEOs of leading U.S. companies from Apple to Walmart. Sandwiched between the spare title and 181 signatures was a one-page […]
Are Your Company’s Strengths Really Weaknesses?
27/08/2019
MediaProduction/Getty Images Look at a map of the world drawn upside down. It’s a good way to challenge your assumptions about the way the world is — especially which continents and oceans are bigger and which are smaller. Looking at the business world upside down has a similar effect: It challenges your assumptions about company […]
CEOs Say They Don’t Just Work for Shareholders. Do They Mean It?
23/08/2019
Steven Peutzer/Getty Images The Business Roundtable’s statement on corporate purpose issued earlier this week is noteworthy both for its endorsement of inclusive prosperity as an ideal and for its rejection of maximizing shareholder returns as the sole corporate objective. Although echoing what many other groups and commentators have long been saying, the BRT’s about-face on […]
The Trust Crisis
09/08/2019
Businesses put an awful lot of effort into meeting the diverse needs of their stakeholders — customers, investors, employees, and society at large. But they’re not paying enough attention to one ingredient that’s crucial to productive relationships with those stakeholders: trust. Trust, as defined by organizational scholars, is our willingness to be vulnerable to the […]
5 Steps for Tying Executive Compensation to Sustainability
05/08/2019
Thomas Jackson/Getty Images The final link in the chain of improving corporate accountability for sustainability is to tie improvements to pay. In our last article, we explained that companies should use incentives to motivate executives to tap big strategic opportunities related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. Now we want to describe how these […]
These 5 industries can drive digital financial inclusion
02/08/2019
Digital payments are no different. Cards and digital wallets are tools; it’s the act of using these tools for making payments that gives them impact. In the past decade, the world has made tremendous progress in expanding access to digital financial services to those at the base of the pyramid, but this has not been […]
When Should You Fire Your Child from the Family Business?
31/07/2019
Tetra Images/Getty Images For years Charles dreamed of working side by side with his son, James, in the family business, a thriving manufacturing company that his father had founded and he had grown. Since James joined the business straight out of college, both men assumed he would eventually take over. But things hadn’t turned out […]
The next startup cities that will transform the global economy | World Economic Forum
29/07/2019
During the past decade, much of the discussion about start-up ecosystems has been centered on the question of which city or region will become “the next Silicon Valley”. Although there are several places with promising growth trajectories, we frankly think this view is short-sided. It implies there needs to be a new champion overshadowing the […]
When Passion Leads to Burnout
27/07/2019
ito akihiro/Getty Images You’ve no doubt heard the well-worn advice that “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” It’s a nice idea but a total myth. When we equate work we love with “not really working,” it propagates a belief that if we love it so much, we […]
The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means and how to respond
25/07/2019
We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the […]
How traditional companies can launch new businesses that ensure their survival
22/07/2019
The list of long-established companies that have been disrupted by fast-moving, tech-enabled powerhouses gets longer by the day. Facing pressure from younger, more innovative challengers, many incumbent companies in the energy sector are also reinventing themselves through a dual effort to digitize their legacy businesses and create new enterprises. Indeed, McKinsey research shows that top-performing […]
How to Onboard New Hires at Every Level
21/07/2019
artpartner-images/Getty Images Most large companies do a good job with the basics of signing up and orienting new employees, but far fewer have processes that address the biggest challenges these hires face in fully integrating into their teams and coming up to speed in their roles. For example, in surveys of HR executives, just 29% […]
Stop Panicking About Corporate Short-Termism
20/07/2019
Juj Winn/Getty Images Contrary to some claims in popular culture, boards and c-suites are not intrinsically heartless and societally myopic. While the rules of the capitalist road surely could do with some updates, almost all of the corporate decision makers my firm has dealt with are responsible, not reckless. This is particularly true when it […]
Confronting overconfidence in talent strategy, management, and development | McKinsey
18/07/2019
Many leaders we encounter insist that their talent- and people-development strategies are sound—and that their organizations are good at implementing them. Is this confidence warranted, and are companies living up to their leaders’ assertions? Could these leaders be succumbing to the same optimism bias that motivates three out of four people to imagine that they […]
Do Your Diversity Efforts Reflect the Experiences of Women of Color?
17/07/2019
Image Source/Getty Images In a previous job, Minda Harts corrected her manager who was celebrating the company for “having the most diverse leadership across the country in our industry.” When Harts, now an assistant adjunct professor at New York University, pointed out that their organization shouldn’t be celebrating their diversity numbers just yet — all […]