Assessment: Are You Ready for That Job Interview?

You’ve scored an interview, and it’s time to prepare. Should you believe your colleague who says to wear a suit even though the company is a tech start-up? Should you trust your friend who tells you, “Just be yourself”? There’s so much conflicting advice out there—how do you know what tactics are best?

This assessment will test your knowledge. Consider each piece of conventional wisdom below … [ Read more ]

Assessment: Should We Pursue This New Project?

Like aviators, experienced innovators use checklists. It’s how they make sure they haven’t left out any critical steps when assessing new ideas. This approach also helps company strategists and innovation leaders evaluate investments and advise new-growth teams in a disciplined way. We’ve created this brief interactive checklist to help you vet the possibilities in your innovation pipeline. Think of a project proposal you’re considering, and … [ Read more ]

Giving Effective Feedback When You’re Short on Time

It’s not easy to help your employees develop even as you take advantage of every business opportunity, but you can make coaching easier on yourself, in part by giving feedback efficiently.

What Everyone Should Know About Office Politics

Nobody really likes office politics. In fact, most of us try to avoid it all costs. But the reality is that companies are, by nature, political organizations, which means that if you want to survive and thrive at work, you can’t just sit out on the sidelines. If you want to make an impact in your own organization, like it or not, you’re going to … [ Read more ]

How to Manage Remote Direct Reports

Geographically dispersed teams are increasingly common in the modern workplace. How do you overcome the challenges of supervising employees in different locations and time zones? What steps should you take to build trust and open lines of communication? How should you establish routines? And how do you help remote workers feel part of a team?

Thomas C. Redman

Every manager must make the distinction between “correlation” and “cause and effect” regularly, as the topic comes up in many guises.

Most HR Data Is Bad Data

How good a rater do you think you are? The research record reveals that neither you nor any of your peers are reliable raters of anyone. And as a result, virtually all of our people data is fatally flawed.

Things to Buy, Download, or Do When Working Remotely

Whether you’re working from home full-time, living life as a road warrior, or simply working the occasional day away from the office, you’ll be most effective if you have the right digital infrastructure for remote work. What needs to be in that toolkit depends on the kind of work you do, your personal working style and your family life. Whatever the particular circumstances of your … [ Read more ]

A Simple Way to Measure How Much Customers Love Your Brand

How do you measure love? Beyond the supermarket magazine or social media “quiz” that we’ve probably all taken, you really can’t. It’s a feeling. You just know. But when thinking about a brand’s relationship with consumers, the marketer in me needs something more concrete. I need to know how many of my consumers are in love with my brand and the degree of their passion. … [ Read more ]

How to Conduct an Effective Job Interview

The virtual stack of resumes in your inbox is winnowed and certain candidates have passed the phone screen. Next step: in-person interviews. How should you use the relatively brief time to get to know — and assess — a near stranger? How many people at your firm should be involved? How can you tell if a candidate will be a good fit? And finally, should … [ Read more ]

What Is a Business Model?

In The New, New Thing, Michael Lewis refers to the phrase business model as “a term of art.” And like art itself, it’s one of those things many people feel they can recognize when they see it (especially a particularly clever or terrible one) but can’t quite define. That’s less surprising than it seems because how people define the term really depends on how … [ Read more ]

A Checklist for Someone About to Take on a Tougher Job

Careers involve numerous transitions when we “step up” into a new role, typically one with greater rewards, bigger responsibilities, and higher stakes. We’re well aware that these opportunities come as the result of effort and diligence in our previous role, but we can fail to appreciate how much hard work is required after we’ve made the transition to ensure that it’s a successful one. The … [ Read more ]

Signs That You Lack Emotional Intelligence

In my ten years as an executive coach, I have never had someone raise his hand and declare that he needs to work on his emotional intelligence. Yet I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard from people that the one thing their colleague needs to work on is emotional intelligence. This is the problem: those who most need to develop it are the … [ Read more ]

How to Prevent Experts from Hoarding Knowledge

Lack of time or resources can, of course, constrain knowledge transfer. But one barrier to passing deep smarts along to the next generation that is often unaddressed is the expert’s inclination to hoard knowledge. Financial incentives, personal ego, and discontent or frustration with the company are three of the top reasons individuals choose to keep their expertise to themselves. But they’re also three issues that … [ Read more ]

Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators

In The Innovator’s DNA, co-authors Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen built on what is known about disruptive innovation to show how individuals can develop the skills necessary to move from idea to impact. Through their research on the world’s best innovators these authors have identified five key skills that differentiate great innovators.

In this interactive Harvard Business Review webinar, Dyer describes these five key … [ Read more ]

How to Promote Yourself Without Looking Like a Jerk

Self-promotion can be uncomfortable for many people. It’s a tricky prospect: how can you ensure that your talent is recognized without alienating your colleagues and looking like a jerk?

A Method for Better Marketing Decisions

Marketing increasingly must work across boundaries with other functions such as IT, sales, and finance to execute shared decisions. But it is at these seams that communication most often breaks down and processes stall. They key to effective collaboration is to define clear roles and processes for shared decision making. This video, based on “Decision-Driven Marketing” — an article featured in the July/August 2014 issue … [ Read more ]

What Maslow’s Hierarchy Won’t Tell You About Motivation

Maslow’s idea that people are motivated by satisfying lower-level needs such as food, water, shelter, and security, before they can move on to being motivated by higher-level needs such as self-actualization, is the most well-known motivation theory in the world. There is nothing wrong with helping people satisfy what Maslow characterized as lower-level needs. Improvements in workplace conditions and safety should be applauded as the … [ Read more ]

A Refresher on Net Present Value

Most people know that money you have in hand now is more valuable than money you collect later on. That’s because you can use it to make more money by running a business, or buying something now and selling it later for more, or simply putting it in the bank and earning interest. Future money is also less valuable because inflation erodes its buying power. … [ Read more ]

A Refresher on Storytelling 101

I work with future leaders at Stanford to help them develop compelling stories that achieve their management goals — and I’ve developed a seven-part formula for storytelling success in presentations and business meetings.