Articles

Building Your Company's Vision

Companies that enjoy enduring success have a core purpose and core values that remain fixed while their strategies and practices endlessly adapt to a changing world. The rare ability to balance continuity and change--requiring a consciously practiced...

3 Strategies to Help Employees Thrive in the New "Normal"

Start by recalibrating expectations.

Will Your Gen AI Strategy Shape Your Future or Derail It?

By studying 100 brand implementations of gen AI, researchers have discovered four archetypes for how companies are using the technology strategically. Bold innovators seek to reshape their markets with gen AI. Disciplined integratorsfocus on trust,...

Q&A: Professor Robert Sutton on Communicating Difficult Decisions as a Leader

In todays uncertain economy, leaders must navigate the delicate task of delivering bad news, such as layoffs or project cancellations, with empathy and transparency. Robert Suttons framework, originally published in a 2009 HBR article, remains relevant,...

How AI Is Reshaping Supplier Negotiations

AI is revolutionizing supplier negotiations, driven by the need for speed, scalability, and strategic agility in complex supply chains. Initially used for automating low-value tasks, AI can now play a crucial role in a growing number of key procurement...

Our Favorite Management Tips on Communicating Like a Leader

Our Management Tip of the Day newsletter continues to be one of HBRs most popular newsletters. In this article, weve compiled seven of our favorite tips on being a gracious communicator, talking to your team when times are tough, delivering a message...

Age Inclusion Is Your Company's Next Competitive Advantage

Demographic change isnt coming-its here, and its reshaping labor markets, consumer behavior, and economic growth. Businesses that cling to youth-centric product and talent strategies alone risk missing out on one of the greatest growth opportunities of...

Should Your Business Use a Generalist or Specialized AI Model?

Choosing the right generative AI architecture is crucial for professional problem-solving applications. Generalist models excel in enterprise applications due to their versatility and ability to synthesize information across domains. However, specialized...

Where Traditional Succession Planning Falls Short

The potential upsides of effective succession planning are huge, and yet most companies are not realizing these benefits, even though many are spending countless hours on the effort. Although most succession planning processes no longer work for todays...

New Research on How to Get Workplace Rituals Right

Plenty of research espouses the benefits of team rituals, including boosts in employee performance and motivation. However, most of the existing literature examines simple rituals (like a team cheer). A new study explored the impact that complex...

A Data-Based Approach to Delegating

Delegation is not an uncommon challenge. Many leaders know that they should be delegating some of their tasks, but often struggle to identify meaningful tasks to delegate. Using a time log to track daily activities provides objective data that reveals...

New Research on How Layoffs Affect the Labor Market

When a recession hits or is looming, many companies turn to layoffs in order to preserve cash and maintain flexibility in the face of economic uncertainty. However, new research on U.S. corporations and job cuts finds that when many firms cut jobs at...

3 Ways to Mitigate Executive Turnover

An experienced C-suite is a proven driver of performance, but retaining senior leaders is becoming harder. According to a Gartner survey, 56% of executives say they are likely or extremely likely to leave their current role in the next two years. Even...

Using Gen AI for Early-Stage Market Research

Generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), offers a promising new tool for early-stage market research by simulating customer responses to product concepts. This can allow companies to draw conclusions similar to those theyd obtain by...

How CEOs Hone and Harness Their Intuition

In the realm of executive decision-making, intuition is often misunderstood as impulsive or emotional, but it's actually a nuanced and powerful process of integrating experience and data. Top-performing CEOs rely on intuition, treating it as a skill to...

Planning an Offsite for Your Leadership Team? Ask These 5 Questions

Offsites aren't just a day away from the office-they're an opportunity to reset your team's trajectory if planned thoughtfully and with a forward-looking focus. To design an offsite that delivers lasting results, ask these five outcome-oriented...

Employee Empowerment Can Work in China

5 Ways Leaders Can Communicate Power

An often overlooked aspect of successful leadership communication is speakers ability to convey power through their diction, phrasing, topics, and patterns. Research points to five techniques anyone can use to enhance their standing with followers...

Can Gen AI and Copyright Coexist?

In recent years, gen AI companies have drawn heavily on unlicensed copyrighted materials to train their large language models. This practice has sparked legal battles, with courts divided on whether training AI on such content constitutes fair use. This...

Leading After Your Predecessor Fails

Succeeding after your predecessor fails demands an entirely different leadership approach. First, you must prepare to be surprised-you'll likely be stepping into a situation that is more broken than you knew. You'll need to quickly get a well-rounded...

You Lost Your Boss's Trust. Now What?

When you make a mistake that erodes your boss's trust in you, it's critical to proceed thoughtfully. Repairing a rupture with your boss will happen quicker if you can show that you've learned from your misstep and demonstrate those learnings the next...

4 Strategies to Help New Leaders Give Feedback

When stepping into a new leadership role, giving feedback can feel risky-but delaying it can be just as costly. Thoughtful, well-timed feedback can build credibility, strengthen relationships, and set the foundation for a culture of trust and...

Stop Solving Your Team's Problems for Them

Many leaders today are struggling to balance the aspiration of being supportive with the reality of feeling overwhelmed by their own to-do list. But when a well-meaning leader becomes the default problem-solver, the entire organization pays the price...

New Research on the Link Between Learning and Innovation

New research reveals a likely culprit of stalled innovation efforts: Teams are blending incompatible learning activities at the wrong times. The highest-performing teams dont try to do everything at once; instead, they separate learning activities into...

How AI Assessment Tools Affect Job Candidates' Behavior

When considering AI assessment tools, most companies focus on the gains the tools bring in terms of efficiency and quality. But what they dont factor in is how AI assessment may change candidates behavior during the process. A new study reveals that job...

Leading Is Emotionally Draining. Here's How to Recover.

Emotional depletion is a real and significant tax of modern leadership. Recovery is no longer a luxury. Instead, it's a leadership imperative, critical for protecting your well-being and sustaining your capacity to lead over the long haul. Three proven...

How to Know When to Pursue Your Side Gig Full-Time

Data show that many people are leaving traditional jobs to pursue side gigs-and that many more aspire to make this leap. One of the things that holds people back is uncertainty about the timing. In our work, weve identified five factors to consider. They...

Why Understanding AI Doesn't Necessarily Lead People to Embrace It

New research has uncovered a paradoxical relationship between AI literacy and receptivity: Individuals with lower AI literacy are more likely to embrace AI, despite perceiving it as less capable and more ethically concerning. This enthusiasm stems from a...

How Pop Mart Won Young Customers in a Fragmented Attention Economy

To win young customers who grow up in today's fragmented attention economy, leaders need to deploy strategies specifically tailored to the emotional and identity needs of these individuals. Analysis of Pop Mart-a Chinese brand listed on the Hong Kong...

Research: The Gender Wage Gap Tipping Point

The gender wage gap has barely budged over the past 20 years. Women still only earn 83 cents for every dollar that men make, and men make more money when they have the same educational degrees, at every educational level, and at all parts of the wage...

New Research on Why Teams Overwork-and What Leaders Can Do About It

Many high-performing professional services firms-from big law to accounting to consultancies-are characterized by the extreme hours logged by their employees. Yet, organizational attempts to curb these hours (and the stress associated with overwork) have...

How 3 Companies Digitized Their Procurement Processes

Companies want to rapidly digitize procurement by exploiting emerging technologies like AI. However, traditional IT investment and adoption processes are often too slow and rigid. To overcome the obstacles, BP, Otto Group, and Walmart have developed new...

Competing in the New Era of Industrial Policy

It used to be that legislative agendas and macro policy issues like trade policies or environmental initiatives were long-cycle issues about which executives could say, "Oh, let's see what happens in the next G7 meeting." They no longer have that luxury...

6 Steps to Reset a Demotivated Team

Like any living systems, teams need regular care, attention, and intentional renewal to thrive. Whether driven by restructuring, relationship tensions, demotivation, or strategic pivots, there comes a moment when a team needs more than a tweak. It needs...

Why Senior Leaders Should Stop Having So Many One-on-Ones

In most large organizations, a typical CEO's or senior executive's calendar is clogged with 1:1 meetings. These are usually seen as necessary for alignment, decision-making, or relationship management. But at the top of an enterprise, the very structure...

Research: When It's Time to Leave a Career You're Passionate About

If you're someone pursuing your passion and thinking about quitting, ask yourself: Are you staying because you want to-or because you're afraid of what others will think? It's easy to assume that walking away signals weakness. But new research shows the...

When Omnichannel Retailers Don't Deliver What Customers Ordered

As more retailers fulfill online orders from local stores, customers are increasingly receiving orders with missing or substituted items. These fulfillment failures may seem small, but they have lasting consequences. When orders fall short, customers...

How to Communicate with Your Team When Business Is Bad

Profits are lagging, and your team is looking to you for answers. What can-and should-you tell your employees about the true state of the business? How can you highlight the good stuff without creating a false sense of security? And when do you risk...

Research: Being Well Connected Isn't Always Good for Your Career

In many industries, getting hired is not about what someone knows, but who they know. However, new research finds that the same star connections that help a candidate land a new job can hurt them when it comes time for performance evaluations. A...

Research: Marketing Tech Is Broken. Here's How to Fix It.

Researchers surveyed senior marketers to learn about how they use marketing technology. They determined that the systems have modest impact, theyre not achieving their expected performance results, and almost half of martech systems go unused. Based on...

A New Framework for Reducing Healthcare Disparities

A framework developed by studying the Health Equity Accelerator at Boston Medical Center can help healthcare organizations create customized strategies for addressing the particular healthcare disparities in their local communities. The framework...

Set Your Committees Up for Success

Despite the many advantages that committees bring, decision-making groups are known to face several challenges in surfacing and processing information. These challenges stem from a common root: sharing unique information incurs significant costs to the...

5 Ways Cooperatives Can Shape the Future of AI

AI development is dominated by a handful of powerful firms, raising concerns about equity, accountability, and social harm. AI cooperatives-democratically governed and community-owned-offer a promising alternative through five key interventions: 1)...

When Launching a Product During a Recession Pays Off

While many companies may be hesitant to launch new products during an economic downturn, research shows that doing so can be a successful marketing strategy for some types of products. Evidence from the automotive and fast-moving consumer goods sectors...

How to Supercharge Your Crisis Training

Typical crisis simulations don't train leaders for today's unpredictable disruptions. Modern crises - like the global CrowdStrike outage and Silicon Valley Bank's collapse - strike without warning or a playbook to guide a leader's response. Instead of...

Maximize the Wisdom of the Crowd for Complex Problems

Crowdsourcing can drive innovation, but its success depends on participant guidance and problem complexity. For simple problems, idea-sharing guidance, which encourages people to share and build on one another's ideas, works best. Complex problems...

What the Return-to-Office Debate Misses: Employees Are Customers

Too many companies treat employees as costs rather than customers who choose how much effort to bring to work. Return-to-office mandates, for example, imply a lack of trust. Even when organizations pursue employee-centric policies, many treat workers...

Will AI Disrupt Your Business? Key Questions to Ask

Artificial intelligence won't disrupt all industries equally. While new technology creates both threats and opportunities, most businesses - especially those with physical offerings - will find AI to be a sustaining rather than disruptive force. A...

How to Make Friends and Influence POTUS

The rules of corporate influence in Washington are changing dramatically. In President Donald Trump's second term, power has shifted from Congress to the White House, turning lobbying into a personalized game of presidential access. At the same time, the...

How to Structure a B2B Marketplace Venture

Companies setting up a business-to-business marketplace to make transactions more efficient for buyers and sellers should carefully consider the best ownership structure. New research suggests that owning the marketplace outright can give a company...

Why You Can't Hire for Skills Without a Skills-Based Culture

Skills-focused hiring approaches need time to take root, given that any cultural transformation takes consistent effort over years, not months. Four key elements of successful skills-based talent practices are organizationwide buy-in, realigned...