Alexis Krivkovich

The biggest inequity in advancement remains the broken rung—the very first step up into a manager position. Proportionally, for every 100 men we see leap forward, only 87 women advance. And if you’re a woman of color, it’s 73. If you’re a Black woman, it’s only 54. And it starts at the very beginning of a career. The challenge with this is that it sets … [ Read more ]

Lucy Parker

It’s not new that businesses have wanted to deliver social value, but it’s always been something else, maybe something on the edge. Now what you’re looking at is businesses really thinking, “I have to deliver financial value. That’s not a mystery. That’s how I got the job. That’s why I’ve got the job: I know how to do that.”

But how do you overlay that concept … [ Read more ]

Aaron De Smet, Monica Mcgurk, Marc Vinson

To unlock a team’s abilities, a manager at any level must spend a significant amount of time on two activities: helping the team understand the company’s direction and its implications for team members and coaching for performance.

Everyday habits: How CEOs navigate their six core responsibilities

To stay focused, productive, and motivated, leaders need to develop their own working rhythms and routines. Here’s how some CEOs do it.

Retain, integrate, thrive: A strategy for managing talent during M&A transactions

Keeping top talent in the fold and engaged before, during, and after a large deal closes is critical for creating value from transactions. Here’s how to address their needs throughout the M&A phases.

Moshik Temkin

We tend to think about leaders as individuals primarily—people who made history, who changed the world. That is certainly true and very important. But … we can’t understand very transformative, important leaders without understanding the history that shaped them, the world in which they came up, and the crises that they faced… For every important leader that you look at, you’ll find that a leader … [ Read more ]

Productivity at the core: How COOs deliver strategy

For the COO’s productivity mandate, the time to act is always. Six best practices can help.

Netta Jenkins

A “culture add” is someone who may bring qualities or experiences that are not already present on the team, as opposed to the “culture fit”—someone who exemplifies the attributes already on the team. When employers specifically seek culture fits… that can lead to homogeneous teams that can perpetuate exclusive practices. Overall, that prevents the team from diversifying and pushing forward in a productive way.

Netta Jenkins

What we know through research is that employees inherently do not trust HR departments, because employees perceive HR as heavily focused on protecting the employer. This is true despite the fact that there are incredible HR professionals driving impact. Since we understand the perception that employees hold, it’s key to have DEI under its own department. That structure provides a safe space for employees to … [ Read more ]

Carolyn Dewar

I was surprised how intentional the CEOs we spoke with were about their time. They have various versions of calendar color coding or agreements with their chiefs of staff or executive assistants on their priorities. They go back each month to see if they spent time on the things that they had said were important. If you don’t know what you should spend your time … [ Read more ]

Bryan Hancock

We hope that the next wave of technology actually frees up managers and gives them more time to be more effective leaders. But there’s a risk that, unguided, we end up in a world where managers spend even less time (as a percentage per employee) on coaching.

Bill Schaninger

Time spent on talent is high value. For some managers, though, administrivia is a great excuse to avoid scarier tasks. Filling out a form, while tedious, takes time away from the difficult coaching necessitated by, say, the three employees who may be a little problematic.

How AI is transforming strategy development

Artificial intelligence is set to revolutionize strategy activities. But as AI adoption spreads, strategists will need proprietary data, creativity, and new skills to develop unique options.

Zeynep Ton

There are two problems with relying so much on data.

The first problem is our desire to make business a science and identify cause and effect in isolation. The outcomes of so many decisions that companies make are not determined by inescapable laws of science. They’re determined by the actions of leaders who have agency to affect those outcomes.

The second problem with data is that when … [ Read more ]

The cost of (un)doing business

In a divestiture, companies must overcome the complexities of disentanglement.

A new operating model for a new world

While your strategic goals may be the right ones, is the organization built to achieve them? New research reveals a dynamic system that creates value in the face of volatility.

Marty Linsky

Leadership is about disappointing people at a rate they can absorb.

Claire Hughes Johnson

Build self-awareness to build mutual awareness. If you don’t understand yourself—your work style preferences, your motivators, your strengths, your blind spots—you’re going to have trouble being an effective manager and a leader.