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HBR Staff/MirageC/flashpop/Getty Images Chances are that you spend between a third and a half of your waking hours each week at work. As a result, your relationships with people at work can become among the most important relationships in your life. Indeed, having good relationships with colleagues is one of the strongest predictors of people’s […]

frank mckenna/unsplash U.S. trade policy is roiling markets. At the end of March, the U.S. stock market tumbled 700 points in a single day on news that President Trump would impose tariffs on Chinese exports. A degree of volatility and uncertainty has continued since then as the tariffs continue to make news. Canada, China, Europe, […]

Glasshouse Images/Getty Images Poor pricing practices are insidious — they damage a company’s economics but can go unnoticed for years. Consider the case of a major industrial goods manufacturer that was struggling with low profit margins, relative both to competitors and to its own historical performance. It traced much of the cause to a mismatch […]

Caiaimage/Chris Ryan/Getty Images Far too many great ideas for solving pressing social problems are not being applied at the scale they deserve, because thousands of nonprofit organizations are teetering on the brink of collapse. Of the 300,000 nonprofits in the United States, two-thirds have an annual budget of $500,000 or below, which does not allow […]

AFPContributor/Contributor/Getty Images An estimated 1,833 lives were lost in 2005 in Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest storms in U.S. history. The federal government’s lack of preparedness and inadequate response to Katrina met with widespread criticism, and the need for a more robust system to respond to natural catastrophes emerged as one of the key […]

Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images Earlier this spring, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos released his annual letter to shareholders. Like every shareholders letter Bezos has written since his company went public in 1997, this year’s version was brilliant, entertaining, and filled with big strategic insights and gritty management takeaways. To my eyes, though, it was also missing something — […]

Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images Earlier this spring, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos released his annual letter to shareholders. Like every shareholders letter Bezos has written since his company went public in 1997, this year’s version was brilliant, entertaining, and filled with big strategic insights and gritty management takeaways. To my eyes, though, it was also missing something — […]

Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images Earlier this spring, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos released his annual letter to shareholders. Like every shareholders letter Bezos has written since his company went public in 1997, this year’s version was brilliant, entertaining, and filled with big strategic insights and gritty management takeaways. To my eyes, though, it was also missing something — […]

Justin Tierney/EyeEm/Getty Images In 2007 Joseph Golan, a division leader at Elop, an Israeli electro-optics company, faced a challenge. As an experienced manager, he knew that his manufacturing and operation division’s success depended on getting creative ideas from his employees. But he also realized that the existing system was not working as needed. Only a relatively small […]

HBR Staff/CSA Images/B&W Archive Collection/Getty Images Retail has been constantly reinventing itself, and participants race to keep up with what feels like a series of epic shifts in consumer preferences. Apparel brands are investing especially heavily in online shopping capabilities and introducing interactive features that complement apps and websites. Retailers and manufacturers are rushing out […]

Drew Angerer/Getty Images Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub is a perfect illustration of how value is ascribed differently in Silicon Valley than in the rest of the world. GitHub was acquired for close to 30x annual recurring revenue (an astronomical multiple). To put this in perspective, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26 billion in 2016 (7.2x revenue), in […]

HBR Staff/Chris Ryan/Getty Images When companies merge, customer experience (CX) is often overlooked — yet it’s arguably one of the most important aspects of any company. In fact, according to Gartner research, tomorrow’s companies are expected to compete primarily on customer experience. I just took my company through an acquisition and found that even the smallest […]

By Billy Bosworth, CEO, DataStax Like many technology companies, DataStax competes with some of the world’s largest enterprises for top talent. We’ve come to realize that much of that talent is located outside of Silicon Valley, and even outside of the typical urban areas where a company might naturally look for new talent. Over the […]

HBR/Martin Barraud/Getty Images Judson Manor is a gracious former 1920s luxury hotel near The Cleveland Clinic, Case Western University, and many of the museums and arts institutions in Cleveland, Ohio. Today it houses 120 highly educated retirees with an average age of 79 — and seven 20-something graduate students. Back in 2010, one of Judson’s residents […]

bs photo/Getty Images Imagine yourself at a restaurant, trying to decide between two desserts: a chocolate cake and a fruit bowl. You’ve been trying to eat healthier, but the cake just sounds so tasty… What do you do? As it turns out, your decision is likely to be influenced by how busy you perceive yourself […]

bs photo/Getty Images Imagine yourself at a restaurant, trying to decide between two desserts: a chocolate cake and a fruit bowl. You’ve been trying to eat healthier, but the cake just sounds so tasty… What do you do? As it turns out, your decision is likely to be influenced by how busy you perceive yourself […]

bs photo/Getty Images Imagine yourself at a restaurant, trying to decide between two desserts: a chocolate cake and a fruit bowl. You’ve been trying to eat healthier, but the cake just sounds so tasty… What do you do? As it turns out, your decision is likely to be influenced by how busy you perceive yourself […]

Bhandharangsri/Getty Images Today we consume five times more information every day than we did in 1986, an incredible amount that’s equivalent to a 174 newspapers…a day. That probably includes a lot of Instagram posts, but it’s not only social media. The corporate e-learning space has grown by nine times over the last 16 years, such […]

HBR Staff/Clare Jackson/EyeEm/Getty Images As soon as you step into a top position at a company that needs to significantly improve the way it operates, there’s pressure to get off to a quick start. Yet the best way to succeed, paradoxically, is to slow things down. Forces pushing in the other direction — toward hyperspeed — are […]

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Getty Images In his classic book, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, the political scientist A.O Hirschman argued that dissatisfaction with a product, service, relationship, or other outcome can give rise to two broad options: one can walk away (exit) or try to change the outcome by engagement (voice). In the labor market, exit and voice […]

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Most people show at least three. from HBR.org https://ift.tt/2JgqZTm

HBR Staff/Clare Jackson/EyeEm/Getty Images As soon as you step into a top position at a company that needs to significantly improve the way it operates, there’s pressure to get off to a quick start. Yet the best way to succeed, paradoxically, is to slow things down. Forces pushing in the other direction — toward hyperspeed — are […]

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and author James Patterson discuss their new novel, The President is Missing, in which a fictional president fights a cybersecurity attack amid intense political dysfunction. The coauthors share their lessons for collaborating across disparate skillsets — “clarity on the objective” and “don’t be afraid to admit what you don’t know.” […]

Microzoa/Getty Images As uncertainty is increasing and competition is becoming more fierce, executives need to have a broader understanding of competition itself in order to sustain an edge. Executives should be thinking about four different types of competition to maintain relevance in a changing environment, which originate from our work on competitiveness, strategy, and strategic […]

Nicholas Eveleigh/Getty Images Employers today know that employees want flexibility, and many companies say they offer it. But there are lots of people out there who need flexibility but don’t have access to it. In our study on flexibility in the modern workforce, we set out to determine whether a gap exists between flexibility supply and […]

Nicholas Eveleigh/Getty Images Employers today know that employees want flexibility, and many companies say they offer it. But there are lots of people out there who need flexibility but don’t have access to it. In our study on flexibility in the modern workforce, we set out to determine whether a gap exists between flexibility supply and […]

Martin Poole/Getty Images We all complain about meetings. We have too many. They’re a waste of time. Nothing gets done. These complaints often have merit, but they are so broad that they’re difficult to argue with and harder to address. There are specific complaints that can be tackled, however. When I ask people in the […]

Bernhard Lang/Getty Images Although it’s hard to pinpoint when skills shortages became the norm in the U.S., one widely acknowledged indicator of a crisis in the making appeared in 1983, with the release of “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.” This groundbreaking report, commissioned by President Ronald Reagan, concluded that the U.S.’s “once […]

Adie Bush/Getty Images Richard (not his real name) graduated from college on a Friday. Three days later he would start his first day on the job in his family business. The choice was not one that he gave much thought to. He’d grown up in the family wine business, which his grandfather had founded, and his […]

Adie Bush/Getty Images Richard (not his real name) graduated from college on a Friday. Three days later he would start his first day on the job in his family business. The choice was not one that he gave much thought to. He’d grown up in the family wine business, which his grandfather had founded, and his […]

Kant Santi Nu Ta Nnth/EyeEm/Getty Images “Almost everything we do is a recommendation.” That’s the essential design philosophy articulated by then-Netflix engineering director Xavier Amatriain five years ago, where personalizing and customizing choice is the coin of the realm. “I was at eBay last week,” he said at the time, “and they told me that […]

Gary Burchell/Getty Images Fair managers can reap big dividends. Extensive research finds that employees who feel fairly treated are better performers, helpful to colleagues, more committed to their workgroups and the organization, and less likely to steal or be rude to others. Yet, all too often, employees find themselves being treated unfairly – their boss […]

Gary Burchell/Getty Images Fair managers can reap big dividends. Extensive research finds that employees who feel fairly treated are better performers, helpful to colleagues, more committed to their workgroups and the organization, and less likely to steal or be rude to others. Yet, all too often, employees find themselves being treated unfairly – their boss […]

Daniel Grizelj/Getty Images Why does it seem like you can’t throw a paper airplane in some offices without hitting a person who is training for a marathon, planning a 10-day silent meditation retreat, or intending on scaling Kilimanjaro? On top of working 24/7 for a company that doesn’t pay overtime? Extremism is becoming the norm […]

Becky Hayes/EyeEm/Getty Images Today, good marketing relies on having detailed and accurate customer data. And companies, not surprisingly, are eager to collect vast troves of it. For instance, Amazon continuously tracks the behaviors of its 100 million Prime members, an example of “first-party” data. And many companies have found that sharing their own customer information with other companies […]

Paul Taylor/Getty Images In a book titled Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?, MIT scientists Henry Lieberman and Christopher Fry discuss why we have wars, mass poverty, and other social ills. They argue that we cannot cooperate with each other to solve our major problems because our institutions and businesses are saturated with a […]

Kimberly Whitaker/Getty Images A Fortune 250 B2B company spent a quarter of a million dollars trying to solve the wrong problem. A new product line had failed, and the company believed the problem was either poor product delivery times or lack of effort by the sales force. After throwing millions at both problems, they finally […]

Kimberly Whitaker/Getty Images A Fortune 250 B2B company spent a quarter of a million dollars trying to solve the wrong problem. A new product line had failed, and the company believed the problem was either poor product delivery times or lack of effort by the sales force. After throwing millions at both problems, they finally […]

Eric Raptosh Photography/Getty Images Checking into a hotel for a conference several years ago, I asked the receptionist where I could get some dinner. There was no restaurant in the hotel, I was told; my only options were ordering delivery from a fast-casual chain or a pizza joint. I went with the pizza, but my lack of […]

Peter Dazeley/Getty Images Asian Americans are the forgotten minority in the glass ceiling conversation. This was painfully obvious to us while reading the newly released diversity and inclusion report from a large Silicon Valley company: Its 19 pages never specifically address Asian Americans. Asian men are lumped into a “non-underrepresented” category with white men (we’ll […]

Ilka & Franz/Getty Images Profit and purpose are converging. Over 80% of millennials report that making a positive difference in the world is more important to them than professional recognition. They no longer believe the primary purpose of business should be to make profit, but rather to create social value. On the investor side, more […]

Ilka & Franz/Getty Images Profit and purpose are converging. Over 80% of millennials report that making a positive difference in the world is more important to them than professional recognition. They no longer believe the primary purpose of business should be to make profit, but rather to create social value. On the investor side, more […]

PM Images/Getty Images The pressure put on CEOs to deliver quarterly results is greater than ever before. A 2014 global survey of more than 600 C-suite executives and directors, conducted by the non-profit Focusing Capital for the Long Term (FCLT), reported that two-thirds of those surveyed said pressure for short-term results had increased over the […]

Jekaterina Nikitina/Getty Images A non-negligible percentage of customers who buy a new smartphone return it within the “free return” window. Many of these returners claim that the phone does not work correctly. However, the data clearly indicates that this is often not the real issue. The reality is that these customers simply don’t know how […]

Is your office killing your productivity? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Pete Bacevice, a workplace researcher at the global design firm HLW and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. They talk through how to survive in […]

wragg/Getty Images There’s a lot of buzz around price differentiation these days, especially with the spotlight on AI and big data.  Machine learning makes it much easier to customize the marketing of products and services – and that includes the price. Let’s be clear: price differentiation is not a new phenomenon. We encounter it regularly and, as consumers, […]

Adrienne Bresnahan/Getty Images Feedback, as they say, is a gift. Research bears this out, suggesting that it’s a key driver of performance and leadership effectiveness. Negative feedback in particular can be valuable because it allows us to monitor our performance and alerts us to important changes we need to make. And indeed, leaders who ask […]

Adrienne Bresnahan/Getty Images Feedback, as they say, is a gift. Research bears this out, suggesting that it’s a key driver of performance and leadership effectiveness. Negative feedback in particular can be valuable because it allows us to monitor our performance and alerts us to important changes we need to make. And indeed, leaders who ask […]

Adrienne Bresnahan/Getty Images Feedback, as they say, is a gift. Research bears this out, suggesting that it’s a key driver of performance and leadership effectiveness. Negative feedback in particular can be valuable because it allows us to monitor our performance and alerts us to important changes we need to make. And indeed, leaders who ask […]

Adrienne Bresnahan/Getty Images Feedback, as they say, is a gift. Research bears this out, suggesting that it’s a key driver of performance and leadership effectiveness. Negative feedback in particular can be valuable because it allows us to monitor our performance and alerts us to important changes we need to make. And indeed, leaders who ask […]

Adrienne Bresnahan/Getty Images Feedback, as they say, is a gift. Research bears this out, suggesting that it’s a key driver of performance and leadership effectiveness. Negative feedback in particular can be valuable because it allows us to monitor our performance and alerts us to important changes we need to make. And indeed, leaders who ask […]

afp/Getty Images Nearly one year after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the official death toll for the disaster stands at 64. However, a new study, published Tuesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, estimates that at least 4,645 people have died as a consequence of the storm. That is more than 70 times the […]

Max Oppenheim/Getty Images Think about something you’re having a hard time getting started on, something important to you. Maybe it’s a particular kind of work — like writing a proposal or crafting a particularly delicate email. Maybe it’s an important conversation you know you need to have with someone that you haven’t had. Or, when […]

Quality Sport Images/Getty Images The game had ended. The applause had died down, and people had gone home. His work was done, now he could rest. So he took off his cleats and he sat down. Someone took a picture, and it went viral. Andrés Iniesta, one of the most gifted and successful soccer players […]

artpartner-images/Getty Images For innovation-hungry legacy firms, partnering with a startup can be appealing. Relatively small sums of time and money can quickly yield generous returns. With due diligence and decent design, these partnerships can go beyond good results and energize organizations that have become too comfortable or complacent with everyday routines. In return, the startups […]

MirageC/Getty Images We see a paradox in two important analytics trends. The most recent results from The CMO Survey conducted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and sponsored by Deloitte LLP and the American Marketing Association reports that the percentage of marketing budgets companies plan to allocate to analytics over the next three years will […]

VANDAL Photography/Getty Images Shonda Rhimes, with four television shows simultaneously in production, is an entertainment industry titan. In a recent TED talk, she described her deep passion for her work: “When I’m hard at work, when I’m deep in it, there is no other feeling…It is hitting every high note. It is running a marathon. It is […]

Jonathan Kitchen/Getty Images Earlier this month, Google unveiled remarkable new capabilities for its automated assistant. They’re based on Google’s growing expertise in artificial intelligence (AI). Perhaps the most dramatic, and, to look at the deluge of commentary, troubling, demonstration was the ability of Google AI to make phone calls that imitate a human. If you […]

Jonathan Kitchen/Getty Images Earlier this month, Google unveiled remarkable new capabilities for its automated assistant. They’re based on Google’s growing expertise in artificial intelligence (AI). Perhaps the most dramatic, and, to look at the deluge of commentary, troubling, demonstration was the ability of Google AI to make phone calls that imitate a human. If you […]

Jonathan Kitchen/Getty Images Earlier this month, Google unveiled remarkable new capabilities for its automated assistant. They’re based on Google’s growing expertise in artificial intelligence (AI). Perhaps the most dramatic, and, to look at the deluge of commentary, troubling, demonstration was the ability of Google AI to make phone calls that imitate a human. If you […]

Don Farrall/Getty Images Open innovation processes promise to enhance creative output, yet we have heard little about successful launches of new technologies, products, or services arising from these approaches. Certainly, crowdsourcing platforms (among other open innovation methods) have yielded striking solutions to hard scientific and technological problems—prominent examples being the Netflix predictive recommendation algorithm and […]

Leslie K. John and Alison Wood Brooks, professors at Harvard Business School, say people in business can be more successful by asking more and better questions. They talk through what makes for a great question, whether you’re looking to get information or get someone to like you. They’re the coauthors of the article, “The Surprising […]

Don Farrall/Getty Images Open innovation processes promise to enhance creative output, yet we have heard little about successful launches of new technologies, products, or services arising from these approaches. Certainly, crowdsourcing platforms (among other open innovation methods) have yielded striking solutions to hard scientific and technological problems—prominent examples being the Netflix predictive recommendation algorithm and […]

Peter Dazeley/Getty Images How can hospitals and health systems generate a return on their investment in their physician enterprises? According to the most recent figures, from the American Medical Association, over 25% of U.S. physicians practiced in groups wholly or partly owned by hospitals in 2016 and another 7% were direct hospital employees. Yet, according […]

Rosemary Calvert/Getty Images Ashley Fina’s grandfather was a natural networker. As the founder of his own New York retail store, Michael C. Fina relied on his network to build his company into a beloved Manhattan institution, which counted Frank Sinatra among its customers. But when Ashley first entered the family business, she realized that while […]

Stephen Swintek/Getty Images According to Constellation Research, businesses across all sectors will spend more than $100 billion per year on Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies by 2025, up from a mere $2 billion in 2015. The marketing industry will be no exception. AI holds great promise for making marketing more intelligent, efficient, consumer-friendly, and, ultimately, more […]

Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images Everyone’s talking about a future in which vehicles are shared rather than owned, autonomous rather than driven, and where car companies make large shares of their profits on digital “mobility services.” But if you are the Ford Motor Company and face the prospect of investing billions in new technology while your century-old business […]

Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images Everyone’s talking about a future in which vehicles are shared rather than owned, autonomous rather than driven, and where car companies make large shares of their profits on digital “mobility services.” But if you are the Ford Motor Company and face the prospect of investing billions in new technology while your century-old business […]

Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images Everyone’s talking about a future in which vehicles are shared rather than owned, autonomous rather than driven, and where car companies make large shares of their profits on digital “mobility services.” But if you are the Ford Motor Company and face the prospect of investing billions in new technology while your century-old business […]

Jurgen Ziewe/Getty Images In April 2017, United Airlines encountered public outrage when an Asian passenger was dragged out of his seat and off of an overbooked United Airlines plane. Then, almost exactly one year later, two black patrons were arrested at a Starbucks store for sitting at a table without having made a purchase. Both […]

Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images When Naomi Simson founded RedBalloon, an online gift retailer that sells personal experiences, she was pioneering the category in Australia. With a $25,000 personal investment and a small office in her home, she began aggregating sales leads and aggressively acquiring customers through very traditional marketing means — like yellow page advertisements. It […]

Julian Watt/Getty Images Large companies in industries ranging from retail, to aerospace, to financial services are buying talent and technology to develop new digital capabilities and reinvent themselves quickly. But they will need to adopt the more hard-headed way that Silicon Valley companies evaluate acquisitions for their deals to pay off. Indeed, there are signs […]

Michael Blann/Getty Images Employees, investors, and partners don’t just follow anyone — they follow leaders who have command of the business and command of the stage. Whether you’re presenting on an analyst call or speaking to your entire organization in a town hall meeting, you’re being judged on your confidence and competence, not just your […]

Heini Wehrle/BIA/Minden Pictures/Getty Images Most companies see investor relations as a one-way street. When Bain & Company recently surveyed 51 top global executives about their investor relationship management practices, we learned that while most of them communicate at least monthly with investors and are segmenting their investor base for differentiated emphasis in communications, fewer than […]

Heini Wehrle/BIA/Minden Pictures/Getty Images Most companies see investor relations as a one-way street. When Bain & Company recently surveyed 51 top global executives about their investor relationship management practices, we learned that while most of them communicate at least monthly with investors and are segmenting their investor base for differentiated emphasis in communications, fewer than […]

akrp/Getty Images The idea of “vacation” often conjures up thoughts of trips to faraway lands. While it’s true that big trips can be fun and even refreshing, they can also take a lot of time, energy, and money. A lot of people feel exhausted just thinking about planning a vacation—not just navigating personal commitments and […]

James Brey/Getty Images From 1870 to 1911, John D. Rockefeller built what was arguably the single most impressive business organization in history: Standard Oil. Mr. Rockefeller’s business strategy was to vertically integrate every aspect of the oil business (exploration, development, logistics, marketing) to assure an ongoing competitive advantage. His vehicles were not just mergers and […]

Alex Maxim/Getty Images In recent years, marketers have lived through the Era of Big Data, and the Era of Personalization, and now we are living through the “Era of Consent.” With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) going into effect on May 25th, businesses will be required to protect the personal data and privacy of […]

Image Source/Getty Images The term “frictionless commerce” is widely used to describe how digital technologies are blending product purchases seamlessly into consumers’ daily lives. In the ultimate manifestation of frictionless commerce, purchases will be automatically initiated on behalf of consumers (with their advance consent) using real-time, integrated data from known preferences, past behaviors, sensors, and […]

Phil Ashley/Getty Images We like to think of ourselves as unbiased and objective in our employment decisions, but with two equal candidates, who are you going to promote? Someone who is described in their performance evaluations as analytical or someone who is described as compassionate? On the other end of the employment spectrum, if you’re […]

Phil Ashley/Getty Images We like to think of ourselves as unbiased and objective in our employment decisions, but with two equal candidates, who are you going to promote? Someone who is described in their performance evaluations as analytical or someone who is described as compassionate? On the other end of the employment spectrum, if you’re […]

Phil Ashley/Getty Images We like to think of ourselves as unbiased and objective in our employment decisions, but with two equal candidates, who are you going to promote? Someone who is described in their performance evaluations as analytical or someone who is described as compassionate? On the other end of the employment spectrum, if you’re […]

bloomberg/Getty Images President Emmanuel Macron together with many Silicon Valley CEOs will kick off the VivaTech conference in Paris this week with the aim of showcasing the “good” side of technology. Our research highlights some of those benefits, especially the productivity growth and performance gains that automation and artificial intelligence can bring to the economy […]

Lance Grandahl/Unsplash The term “acqui-hire” is a nifty neologism that enjoys the virtue of being well-defined in M&A circles while suffering the vice of being misunderstood. Ostensibly, young companies are “acqui-hired” more for their best people than for any real interest in their products, services, or ongoing operations. Talent acquisition is acqui-hiring’s main purpose, say […]

Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images Diversity means different things to different people. In a study of 180 Spanish corporate managers, we explored perceptions of diversity and found that depending on who is answering, diversity usually means one of three things: demographic diversity (our gender, race, sexual orientation, and so on), experiential diversity (our affinities, hobbies, and abilities), […]

Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images Diversity means different things to different people. In a study of 180 Spanish corporate managers, we explored perceptions of diversity and found that depending on who is answering, diversity usually means one of three things: demographic diversity (our gender, race, sexual orientation, and so on), experiential diversity (our affinities, hobbies, and abilities), […]

Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images Diversity means different things to different people. In a study of 180 Spanish corporate managers, we explored perceptions of diversity and found that depending on who is answering, diversity usually means one of three things: demographic diversity (our gender, race, sexual orientation, and so on), experiential diversity (our affinities, hobbies, and abilities), […]

Kittiyut Phornphibul/EyeEm/Getty Images It’s possible to fake emotional intelligence. Similar to knockoffs of luxury watches or handbags, there are emotions and actions that look like the real thing but really aren’t. With the best of intentions, I’ve seen smart leaders charge into sensitive interactions armed with what they believed was a combination of deep empathy, […]

ANTTI AIMO-KOIVISTO/Stringer /Getty Images How do emotions shape strategy making? We investigated this topic when we studied how Nokia executives dealt with the company’s severe strategic challenges between 2007 and 2013. As part of this research, we conducted 120 interviews, including nine with board members and 19 with top managers. Recall that Nokia dominated the […]

Loic Djim/Unsplash Networks matter for career success. They help you find people who can assist you with projects, refer you to new employers, and make connections to new and bigger opportunities. In a famous study by Ronald Burt, people who made efforts to improve their networks were 42%–74% more likely to be promoted than those […]

Jonathan Knowles/Getty Images After the stock market’s rocky ride in recent months, some analysts are wondering whether a new economic crisis might be around the corner. Judging by the economy’s overall performance, there is no need for immediate concern. But for entrepreneurs who prefer to be safe than sorry, the question remains: what should you do when the […]

Juj Winn/Getty Images Many companies are aiming to be more transparent and authentic about their products, services, and costs. For example, McDonald’s has an online FAQ about how the company’s food products are made, while Southwest’s Transfarency initiative aims to give customers a clearer picture of the total fare they will pay, with no unexpected fees. But when […]

Fanatic Studio/Getty Images By the end of 2017, Yelp had amassed more than 140 million reviews of local businesses. While the company’s mission focuses on helping people find local businesses more easily, this wealth of data has the potential to serve other purposes. For instance, Yelp data might help restaurants understand which markets they should […]

AleksandarNakic/Getty Images The demands of both work and parenting are rising. While working hours globally are falling (partially due to aging populations), those employed full-time are often working more. In the U.S., for example, full-time employees are working 47 hours per week, and four in 10 people work more than 50. And the bifurcation of […]

AleksandarNakic/Getty Images The demands of both work and parenting are rising. While working hours globally are falling (partially due to aging populations), those employed full-time are often working more. In the U.S., for example, full-time employees are working 47 hours per week, and four in 10 people work more than 50. And the bifurcation of […]