675 Posts found for Source: Harvard Business Review

Many new executives inadvertently set themselves up for failure within the first few months of their tenure through their own actions. As an executive hired from outside the firm, you’ll naturally want to add value and assure your employers and employees that you are the right hire. But based on my work helping executives transitioning into new organizations, I’ve discovered common traps new executives tend … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Sabina Nawaz | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Career, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

75% of organizations struggle to implement strategy. Improve your odds of success with this 7-minute video slide deck.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Donald Sull | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Although we found that many factors can matter for happiness at work – type of occupation, level of education, tenure, and industry are also significant, for instance – they don’t even come close to mattering as much as the boss’s technical competence. Moreover, we saw that when employees stayed in the same job but got a new boss, if the new boss was technically competent, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Benjamin Artz | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Executives can view political moves as dirty and will try to distance themselves from those activities. However, what they find hard to acknowledge is that such activities can be for the welfare of the organization and its members. Thus, the first step to feeling comfortable with politics requires that executives are equipped with a reliable map of the political landscape and an understanding of the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Michael Jarrett | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Career, Management, Organizational Behavior

For managers and marketers alike, the power to calculate what customers might be worth is alluring. That’s what makes customer lifetime value (CLV) so popular in so many industries. CLV brings both quantitative rigor and long-term perspective to customer acquisition and relationships. For all its impressive strengths, however, CLV suffers from a crippling flaw that blurs its declared focus.

Content: Article | Author: Michael Schrage | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

I believe there are some essential questions that are useful across a variety of contexts, including, and perhaps especially, the workplace. In fact, I gave a commencement speech last year on this topic, suggesting to students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education that there are really only five essential questions in life. Although the audience was future educators, I believe these questions are equally … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: James E. Ryan | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Leadership

In business management, it is easy to fall victim to the buzzwords or trends of the day when historical understanding and consciousness are lacking. When that happens, authors and thinkers purport to create something new, when they are really only serving old wine in new wineskins. This recalls the comments of the philosopher George Santayana that history will repeat itself for those who do not … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Hermann Simon | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: History, Innovation

As [Peter Drucker] saw it, the winners of the IT revolution are not the hardware or software developers of today, but rather the companies which have access to knowledge and content.

Content: Quotation | Author: Hermann Simon | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Knowledge Management

History does not repeat itself, nor does it follow given laws, as Karl Marx or Oswald Spengler have suggested. Nevertheless, it can be said that the human being has changed very little during the known course of history. We gain, therefore, valuable insight when we interpret current developments and the future in light of historical analogies.

Content: Quotation | Author: Hermann Simon | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: History, Personality / Behavior

During my 15 years of managing talent as dean of the Rotman School of Management, and previously as cohead of Monitor, I have managed some of the best and brightest in professorial talent and the strategy consulting industry worldwide. Over this combined quarter-century of experience, I developed three rules for managing top-end talent.

Content: Article | Author: Roger L. Martin | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Michael Mankins, Bain & Company partner and head of the firm’s Organization practice, explains how organizations unintentionally fail to manage their employees’ time and energy. He also lays out what managers can do to reduce what he calls organizational drag.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Michael C. Mankins, Sarah Green Carmichael | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The New York Stock Exchange requires that the boards of all publicly traded corporations conduct a self-evaluation at least annually to determine whether they are functioning effectively. Our research suggests that many board evaluations are inadequate. How can boards better evaluate the performance of directors? Any thorough evaluation should assess the following.

Content: Article | Author: David Larcker | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Corporate Governance

A high-potential employee is usually in the top 5% of employees in an organization. These people are thought to be the organization’s most capable, most motivated, and most likely to ascend to positions of responsibility and power. To help these employees prepare for leadership roles in a thoughtful, efficient manner, companies often institute formal high-potential (HIPO) programs. And yet, according to our data, more than … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jack Zenger | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Human Resources

Human beings evolved in groups, and most of us still work in groups every day. Our affinity for groups is wired deeply into our basic biology. Indeed, humans are unique among primates in that we readily cooperate with in-group members–even if they are completely unknown to us. […] Group identification is one ingredient that can bring strangers together.

Given that group membership is such a deeply … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jay Van Bavel | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

For some networking meetings, the agenda is obvious: Your companies are considering doing business together, or you’re looking for a job and this person might help you get one. But many professionals find themselves in networking meetings where the goals are murkier. Here are four ways to ensure your networking meeting is productive and meaningful, even if the agenda is amorphous.

Content: Article | Author: Dorie Clark | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Career, Networking, Personal Development

The ability to recognize, own, and shape your own emotions is the master skill for deepening intimacy with loved ones, magnifying influence in the workplace, and amplifying our ability to turn ideas into results. My successes and failures have turned on this master skill more than any other.

Content: Quotation | Author: Joseph Grenny | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Personal Development, Personality / Behavior, Success / Failure

Effective teams don’t just happen — you design them. And two of the most important elements of that design are a) the degree to which team members are interdependent — where they need to rely on each other to accomplish the team task, and b) how you’ll actually coordinate that interdependence.

Content: Article | Author: Roger Schwarz | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

The holy grail of today’s workplace is high employee engagement. Many companies are investing heavily to identify what leads to high engagement in order to motivate employees, thereby increasing their happiness and productivity.We think this is important. But based on our research with several large companies, we want to offer a word of caution: senior leadership needs to invest more into creating a culture of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Ryan Fuller | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

And what to do instead

Content: Multimedia Content | Authors: Alexandra Kalev, Frank Dobbin | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Without a sound fact and insight base on which to prioritize resources, squeaky wheels get all the grease. Great strategic executives know how to use data to generate new insights about how they and their industries make money. Examining patterns of performance over time — financial, operational, customer, and competitive data — will reveal critical foresight about future opportunities and risks.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ron Carucci | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Strategy