The algorithmic trade-off between accuracy and ethics

In The Ethical Algorithm, two University of Pennsylvania professors explain how social values such as fairness and privacy can be designed into machines.

Theodore Kinni

Although power is distributed, it is rarely balanced. It is relative and changes with the context. Sometimes you are dealing with people who need the resources you control, such as a team seeking your permission to pursue a project; sometimes you need the resources other people control, such as a colleague’s cooperation to execute a plan. Whatever the case, the balance of power in a … [ Read more ]

Theodore Kinni

One of the challenges of leading remote workers is ensuring that they share a clear understanding of four key areas: their goals, their individual roles, the resources at their disposal, and the norms that will govern their interactions. This alignment can be hard to achieve when employees are co-located. But it becomes even more difficult when they are working separately and at a distance.

A Transactional Approach to Power

Focusing on resources, not people, can help leaders avoid power’s worst pitfalls.

Becoming a Leader of Conscience

As executives are called upon to hit a broader range of ESG targets, they will need better ways to manage ethical dilemmas. Enter G. Richard Shell’s CLIP framework.

How Noisy Is Your Company?

In Noise, a professorial supergroup explains the causes and consequences of the inherent variability in professional judgment.

What if every job seeker got a living-wage job?

Economist Pavlina R. Tcherneva demolishes the idea that there is an optimal rate of unemployment and makes a timely case for a national job guarantee.

In Praise of the Purposeless Company

No purpose? No problem. Create customers, care for employees, be a good citizen, and make money instead.

The Power of a Free Popsicle

A new book shows the value of memorable defining moments on customer and employee experiences.

Robert Cialdini, Theodore Kinni

We not only assign undue levels of importance to whatever captures our attention at a certain point in time, but also assign causality to it.

Use Social Influences to Be a Better Manager

A new book shows how you can create a better team by recognizing people’s needs to stand out, fit in, and shape their identities.

Joel Peterson

[Joel] Peterson provides three tests for deciding who to trust. The first is character. “We can’t trust a leader without integrity, who we can’t count on to do what he or she says,” he explains. Next is competence. You trust your mom, for example, but would you trust her to fly a 747 to London? The third, he says, is authority to deliver. There’s no … [ Read more ]

The Secrets to Corporate Longevity

Companies need ambidextrous leaders who can simultaneously exploit and explore their markets.

Conquering Complexity With Simple Rules

A Stanford professor offers a better way to make decisions.

Theodore Kinni

Asking how you can make better, faster, and cheaper widgets assumes that you should be making widgets.

Does Capitalism Create Social Mobility?

The storyline of capitalism—and the technological innovation that simultaneously supports and drives it forward—is almost always one of ever-greater personal freedom and opportunity. With the liberal application of hard work, inventiveness, or entrepreneurial chutzpah, anyone can rise through the ranks of society. The sky is the limit. Or is it? This is the question that Gregory Clark, economics professor at the University of California, Davis, … [ Read more ]

Zachary Shore on How to Predict the Future

A historian’s approach to strategic empathy can help you anticipate your rivals’ next moves.

Rita Gunther McGrath on the End of Competitive Advantage

The Columbia Business School professor says the era of sustainable competitive advantage is being replaced by an age of flexibility. Are you ready?

Alternative Systems for Corporate Survival

Change management expert John Kotter argues that companies cannot adapt to change mainly because of their hierarchical management systems. These systems are designed to coordinate large groups of people in the consistent and efficient delivery of products and services—and they do it well. They are, Kotter says, “absolutely necessary to make organizations work.” Here’s the conundrum: You can’t jettison the hierarchical system that runs your … [ Read more ]

How You Can Be a Great Mentor, and a Great Protégé

Here is a list of “quick tips” for mentors and their protégés taken from the book, Managers as Mentors: Building Partnerships for Learning by Chip Bell and Marshall Goldsmith.