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  • To Guide Difficult Conversations, Try Using Compassion

    HBR.org
    Allison Rimm
    19 Jun 2013 | 10:00 am
    "Oh no, here comes another one of those conversations," you say to yourself. You know what I'm talking about — we all have to face them from time to time, and they can be the bane of a leader's existence. Imagine that you're leading a project and one member of your group has been aggressive and counterproductive in team meetings recently. The first time you saw this behavior, you were stunned. It seemed so out of character that you let it pass. After all, even good people indulge in bad behavior now and then. But the next week, the same thing happened. Now you've just experienced the…

  • 356: Why We Need to Redefine Intelligence

    HBR IdeaCast
    Harvard Business Review
    13 Jun 2013 | 11:02 am
    Scott Barry Kaufman, adjunct assistant professor of psychology at New York University and author of "Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined."

  • Ten Charts That Show We've All Got a Case of the Mondays

    Our Editors
    Gretchen Gavett
    14 Jun 2013 | 11:46 am
    If you're in a workplace in America right now, chances are most of the people around you are pretty checked out. You might even be plodding through the day yourself, counting down the hours until you can fly out the door. Or you're doing your very best to make your unhappiness known to anyone within earshot. This type of disengagement is outlined by Gallup's latest "State of the American Workplace" report, which has implications for you, your financial bottom line, and the well-being of your company, so I pulled out some charts from the report that I found striking. First, though, a couple of…

  • What to Do When an Employee Cries at Work

    Best Practices
    Amy Gallo
    3 Jun 2013 | 11:00 am
    There are lots of reasons someone might be upset at work, from the personal (divorce, illness, kid troubles) to the professional (a failed project, bad review, or nasty colleague). Given how much time we spend in the office, it seems inevitable that people will occasionally get emotional. But how should you handle tears as a manager? What should you do with a distraught employee? What the Experts Say Many managers are uncomfortable with emotional behavior — whether it's positive or negative. "People think to be professional, you need to ignore your emotions and those of the people…

  • What 10-Foot Noodles Have to Do with Competitive Advantage

    Scott Anthony
    Scott Anthony
    12 Jun 2013 | 9:00 am
    "A properly integrated business model forms the essence of a company's competitive advantage," my colleague Mark Johnson advises. That quote ran through my head as I watched a young man in a track suit prance around my table twirling a 10-foot noodle. I was in one of the Shanghai locations of a chain of hot pot restaurants called Hai Di Lao. If anything deserves to be commoditized, it would be a hot pot restaurant. The essence of the meal is cooking food yourself in close-to-boiling broth. The popularity of that cooking style in many parts of China means many nondescript restaurants compete…
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    HBR.org

  • To Guide Difficult Conversations, Try Using Compassion

    Allison Rimm
    19 Jun 2013 | 10:00 am
    "Oh no, here comes another one of those conversations," you say to yourself. You know what I'm talking about — we all have to face them from time to time, and they can be the bane of a leader's existence. Imagine that you're leading a project and one member of your group has been aggressive and counterproductive in team meetings recently. The first time you saw this behavior, you were stunned. It seemed so out of character that you let it pass. After all, even good people indulge in bad behavior now and then. But the next week, the same thing happened. Now you've just experienced the…

  • Mobile Shopping's Data Goldmine

    Margarita Constantinides, Brian Gregg, and Brian Salsberg
    19 Jun 2013 | 9:00 am
    Mobile shopping is here to stay whether retailers like it or not. Some 44% of shoppers use their smartphones while they're shopping; more than a third of them are comparing prices. The impact of mobile research can be profound, affecting the buying behavior of nearly 90% of mobile shoppers, according to our research. But retailers shouldn't despair when shoppers whip out their smartphones among the product displays. Smartphones could be a retailer's best friend not just because they can open up new buying opportunities. We believe that the smartphones' greatest benefit for retailers is that…

  • Use Tension and Conflict to Create Breakthrough Products

    Matthew E. May
    19 Jun 2013 | 8:00 am
    I've written before about the science that helps explain why and how constraints and limits, often in the form of intelligent, well-set stretch goals, result in more creative solutions. Too often, though, managers set what appears to be a good stretch goal, only to discover that it did not produce the hoped-for innovative thinking. One common reason for this is that the goal was in fact not "stretch" enough. When I ask executives what they consider "stretch," I commonly hear about 5% to 10% increments in improvement. That's not stretch enough, because a 5%-10% improvement often translates to…

  • Research: Your Firm Probably Isn't an Equal Opportunity Employer

    Kevin Stainback and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey
    19 Jun 2013 | 7:00 am
    Anyone who has hiring responsibilities in 2013 would like to think that the U.S. is tackling diversity head-on. But how far have American companies really come? We have been examining what has happened to equal opportunity in the private sector since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Our data show that progress has stalled, many firms are showing signs of increased gender and racial employment segregation, and few firms monitor equal employment opportunity progress. The reality is that while your company may manage diversity, it probably doesn't hold anyone accountable for whether your applicants…

  • Is Anyone Really Responsible for Your Company's Data Security?

    Joel Brenner
    19 Jun 2013 | 6:00 am
    Protecting a company's critical information is a value proposition. Trade secrets, confidential business plans, and operational security depend on it. Losing that kind of information can mean a plunge in stock price and market share. So who's responsible for information security in your company? To find out, I like to ask questions. But when I put the question to top management, well, they're busy — not their problem, that's for sure — and they refer me to the chief information officer or the chief technology officer. So I knock on their doors and put the same question to them.
 
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    Our Editors

  • Ten Charts That Show We've All Got a Case of the Mondays

    Gretchen Gavett
    14 Jun 2013 | 11:46 am
    If you're in a workplace in America right now, chances are most of the people around you are pretty checked out. You might even be plodding through the day yourself, counting down the hours until you can fly out the door. Or you're doing your very best to make your unhappiness known to anyone within earshot. This type of disengagement is outlined by Gallup's latest "State of the American Workplace" report, which has implications for you, your financial bottom line, and the well-being of your company, so I pulled out some charts from the report that I found striking. First, though, a couple of…

  • Foreign Businesses Still Struggle with Beijing, 24 Years After Tiananmen

    Adi Ignatius
    5 Jun 2013 | 7:51 am
    This week's anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre provides a good opportunity to revisit the thorny question of what responsibilities foreign businesses have in dealing with a repressive government like China's. Over the years, I've seen tough-as-nails CEOs abandon their normal prudence when dealing with China and its potentially vast market. It's a dangerous trap, not just for the media companies that I know best but for any company trying to operate or expand in China. When I worked for Time magazine in the '90s and '00s, Jerry Levin was the chairman of our parent company, Time Warner.

  • Welcome to the "Data Under Siege" Insight Center

    Andrew O'Connell and Julia Kirby
    4 Jun 2013 | 8:00 am
    Shh. Don't say a word. If you're hacked, don't let on. That's the knee-jerk response at a lot of corporations, which routinely conceal cyber attacks from shareholders and the public. Incidents at Coca-Cola and BG Group weren't acknowledged, according to Bloomberg. Nor were breaches at ArcelorMittal and Chesapeake Energy. Even governments have been mum about the cross-border hacking that has risen to furious levels lately, which is why President Obama's vow to raise the issue of cyber security with Chinese president Xi Jinping this week represents a significant break from past whisper…

  • What A.G. Lafley's Return Means for P&G

    Sarah Green
    24 May 2013 | 8:41 am
    With former CEO A.G. Lafley returning to the helm of Procter & Gamble, I asked Rosabeth Moss Kanter for her analysis. She holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School. She's an expert on strategy, innovation, and leading change. She is also Chair and Director of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative. She is a regular contributor to HBR and HBR.org. She's on twitter @RosabethKanter. In her latest book, SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good, she analyzed how P&G (among other companies) achieved long-term…

  • A Futurist Looks at the Future of Marketing

    Dana Rousmaniere
    24 May 2013 | 7:00 am
    Digital marketing is evolving as fast as any other medium on our tablets, smartphones, Google Glass and beyond. To learn about what the future may bring to this marketing genre, we reached out to Gerd Leonhard, an author, strategic advisor, CEO of TheFuturesAgency, and someone whom The Wall Street Journal calls "one of the leading media-futurists in the world." Here are some of Leonhard's predictions for what's coming. Add yours in the comments section below. 1. By 2020, most interruptive marketing will be gone. Instead, marketing will be personalized, customized, and adapted to what I have…
 
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    Best Practices

  • What to Do When an Employee Cries at Work

    Amy Gallo
    3 Jun 2013 | 11:00 am
    There are lots of reasons someone might be upset at work, from the personal (divorce, illness, kid troubles) to the professional (a failed project, bad review, or nasty colleague). Given how much time we spend in the office, it seems inevitable that people will occasionally get emotional. But how should you handle tears as a manager? What should you do with a distraught employee? What the Experts Say Many managers are uncomfortable with emotional behavior — whether it's positive or negative. "People think to be professional, you need to ignore your emotions and those of the people…

  • Act Like a Leader Before You Are One

    Amy Gallo
    2 May 2013 | 9:00 am
    If you want to become a leader, don't wait for the fancy title or the corner office. You can begin to act, think, and communicate like a leader long before that promotion. Even if you're still several levels down and someone else is calling all the shots, there are numerous ways to demonstrate your potential and carve your path to the role you want. What the Experts Say "It's never foolish to begin preparing for a transition no matter how many years away it is or where you are in your career," says Muriel Maignan Wilkins, coauthor of Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your…

  • How to Write the Dreaded Self-Appraisal

    Amy Gallo
    29 Mar 2013 | 10:00 am
    No one likes review time. For many, self-appraisals are a particularly annoying part of the process. What can you say about your own performance? How can you be honest without coming off as arrogant, or shooting yourself in the foot? What the Experts Say Dick Grote, author of How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals, has a lot to say about self-appraisals and most of it isn't good. "I'll admit it's important to get the employee's point of view in the process but this is the wrong way to do it," he says. In his view, since study after study has shown that we are horrible judges of our own…

  • Go Ahead and Gossip

    Amy Gallo
    28 Feb 2013 | 9:00 am
    We're all taught that gossip — talking about someone when he or she isn't there — is not only rude but also possibly hurtful to feelings or damaging to reputations. And yet everyone does it. It would be difficult to find an office where there wasn't some sort of chatter about people who aren't present. Should you be polite and stay above it all? Or does it make sense to get involved in this information sharing? What the Experts Say Gossip is an important part of life, not just office culture. "We learn who we are through what people say to us and about us," says Kathleen Reardon,…

  • Is It Time to Quit Your Job?

    Amy Gallo
    30 Jan 2013 | 9:00 am
    Everyone has bad days at work or even long periods when they feel disheartened about their job. But how do you know the difference between ordinary, occasional dissatisfaction and a genuine mismatch? How do you know when you're truly ready to move on? And how do you then get out gracefully? What the Experts Say Quitting a job can negatively impact your career and disrupt your personal life. But staying in an undesirable situation can be worse. "I find a lot of people paralyzed by their unhappiness with their current reality," says Leonard Schlesinger, the president of Babson College and…
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    Scott Anthony

  • What 10-Foot Noodles Have to Do with Competitive Advantage

    Scott Anthony
    12 Jun 2013 | 9:00 am
    "A properly integrated business model forms the essence of a company's competitive advantage," my colleague Mark Johnson advises. That quote ran through my head as I watched a young man in a track suit prance around my table twirling a 10-foot noodle. I was in one of the Shanghai locations of a chain of hot pot restaurants called Hai Di Lao. If anything deserves to be commoditized, it would be a hot pot restaurant. The essence of the meal is cooking food yourself in close-to-boiling broth. The popularity of that cooking style in many parts of China means many nondescript restaurants compete…

  • Should You Take That Innovation Job?

    Scott Anthony
    27 May 2013 | 9:00 am
    You've been working at a small start-up for a while now when a large, deep-pocketed corporation comes knocking, asking you to join its innovation team. Should you take the job? Will this be the chance to exercise your entrepreneurial imagination in a more secure environment with ample assets? Or will you end up drowning in bureaucracy, pining for the white-knuckled start-up pace you're used to? We have similar concerns whenever we consider accepting an innovation engagement. Since 2009 we've conducted close to 500 innovation-related projects with about 100 large companies. Drawing on that…

  • Looking to Join the Lean Start-up Movement?

    Scott Anthony
    26 Apr 2013 | 9:00 am
    I love Lean. In my eyes, the work Steve Blank, Eric Ries, and others have done to provide a cogent, accessible frame around the academic concepts of emergent strategy is one of the most important contributions to the innovation movement over the past few years. I have repeatedly stated that the next wave of innovation will come from companies that harness the transformational power that too often lies latent inside their organizations. There is a growing sense that so-called lean start-up techniques — developing a minimal viable product, learning in the marketplace, and pivoting based…

  • How To Really Measure a Company's Innovation Prowess

    Scott Anthony
    21 Mar 2013 | 10:00 am
    Who is the world's most innovative company? The editors of Fast Company say Nike. Last year, number crunchers at Forbes found that Salesforce.com is the company with the highest "Innovation Premium" baked into its stock price. MIT Technology Review didn't pick a winner, but on its recent list of top 50 "disruptors," the magazine mixed stalwarts such as General Electric and IBM with up-and-comers, Square and Coursera. The difference of opinion isn't a new thing — in fact, if you look back a few years at similar lists you'll see less than 50% overlap. Why? Perhaps a company's ability to…

  • Seeing Through the Fog of Innovation

    Scott Anthony
    25 Feb 2013 | 10:00 am
    The Fog of Innovation — that moment when you realize that the data you need to make a critical decision about an innovative idea just aren't clear. Unfortunately, the data rarely are. For most large companies that find themselves lost in the fog, the default answer is to keep studying. After all, a risk that doesn't pan out tends to have more negative repercussions than risks not taken. But remember: data only become crystal clear when it is too late to take action on that data. And time spent waiting for perfect clarity creates room for disruptive upstarts and hungry competitors.
 
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    Peter Bregman

  • The Most Overlooked Leadership Skill

    Peter Bregman
    24 May 2013 | 9:00 am
    Even before I released the disc, I knew it was a long shot. And, unfortunately, it was a clumsy one too. We were playing Ultimate Frisbee, a game similar to U.S. football, and we were tied 14-14 with a time cap. The next point would win the game. I watched the disc fly over the heads of both teams. Everyone but me ran down the field. I cringed, helplessly, as the disc wobbled and listed left. Still, I had hope it could go our way. Sam was on my team. Sam broke free from the other runners and bolted to the end zone. But the disc was too far ahead of him. He would never make it. At the very…

  • The Unexpected Antidote to Procrastination

    Peter Bregman
    10 May 2013 | 6:00 am
    A recent early morning hike in Malibu, California, led me to a beach, where I sat on a rock and watched surfers. I marveled at these courageous men and women who woke before dawn, endured freezing water, paddled through barreling waves, and even risked shark attacks, all for the sake of, maybe, catching an epic ride. After about 15 minutes, it was easy to tell the surfers apart by their style of surfing, their handling of the board, their skill, and their playfulness. What really struck me though, was what they had in common. No matter how good, how experienced, how graceful they were on the…

  • What to Do When You've Made Someone Angry

    Peter Bregman
    23 Apr 2013 | 6:00 am
    I was running late. My wife Eleanor and I had agreed to meet at the restaurant at seven o'clock and it was already half past. I had a good excuse in the form of a client meeting that ran over and I wasted no time getting to the dinner as fast as possible. When I arrived at the restaurant, I apologized and told her I didn't mean to be late. She answered: "You never mean to be late." Uh oh, she was mad. "Sorry," I retorted, "but it was unavoidable." I told her about the client meeting. Not only did my explanations not soothe her, they seemed to make things worse. That started to make me angry.

  • Why You Should Take the Blame

    Peter Bregman
    8 Apr 2013 | 7:00 am
    I was at a party in Greenwich Village in New York City. It was crowded, with about twice as many people as the space comfortably fit. There was a dog in the mix too. But it was a casual event and we all spent a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning. I was at the sink washing dishes when I heard the dog yelp behind me. I turned just in time to see a woman curse at the dog as it dashed out of the kitchen. She had obviously just stepped on his foot or tail. "Watch out!" she shouted after the dog, then saw me looking at her and added, "He's always in the way." Really? You step on a dog…

  • How to Use Temptation to Strengthen Your Willpower

    Peter Bregman
    27 Mar 2013 | 9:00 am
    I was running a leadership offsite at The Allison Inn and Spa in Oregon — one of my favorite hotels — and the food, as always, was exquisite. The carrot cake at lunch was so delicious that I ate two pieces. And when the staff brought out big, thick, gooey, homemade cookies during a break, I was already so far outside my circle of guilt that I ate three of them. The offsite was a success. But physically, I felt so full, it hurt. So why did I keep eating? The answer is simple: It's hard to resist temptation. Picture the gap between wanting something and having it. Now imagine a…
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    Anthony Tjan

  • Becoming a Better Judge of People

    Anthony K. Tjan
    17 Jun 2013 | 6:00 am
    In business and in life, the most critical choices we make relate to people. Yet being a good judge of people is difficult. How do we get better at sizing up first impressions, at avoiding hiring mistakes, at correctly picking (and not missing) rising stars? The easy thing to do is focus on extrinsic markers — academic scores, net worth, social status, job titles. Social media has allowed us to add new layers of extrinsic scoring: How many friends do they have on Facebook? Who do we know in common through LinkedIn? How many Twitter followers do they have? But such extrinsic credentials…

  • Make Priorities Clear with Green, Yellow, and Red

    Anthony K. Tjan
    12 Apr 2013 | 9:00 am
    Boards, managements, and employees waste far too much time due to a lack of clarity in conveying and sharing what it is they are trying to accomplish. The basic task of defining goals and keeping score is so critical, yet not accomplished frequently or consistently enough. Even when we think we're communicating well, our perception of the clarity and impact of our message often outstrips the reality. Are your people nodding with understanding, or are they nodding with the look of a dog in front of the television? Try this exercise: ask two or three board members or employees what the top…

  • What High-Quality Revenue Looks Like

    Anthony K. Tjan
    7 Feb 2013 | 7:00 am
    Growth. In my world of venture capital, we hear all the time that growth drives value. It is how some investors justify putting sky-high valuations on companies that are growing, but not yet making any money. Consider Zynga, which lost $209 million in 2012 — but is still valued at about $2 billion because of the cash it raised and because its revenue is still growing. On the other hand, there's Groupon, once lauded as the "fastest-growing company ever." Its stock price peaked weeks after the company went public in 2011 and is down about 80% since. The market has come to question whether…

  • Have the Courage to Be Direct

    Anthony K. Tjan
    14 Nov 2012 | 9:00 am
    There are many situations where nuance, subtlety, and carefully crafted diplomacy in communications are critical. But most of the time, plain directness can go a long way. Tsun-yan Hsieh, a long-time counselor to corporate leaders and one of my co-authors on the book Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck, once surveyed a group of global CEOs and senior executives about whether they thought their meetings met the intended objectives. Only about 40% of the meetings did. How can this be? The answer lies at least in part in the human tendency to avoid or massage the delivery of difficult or…

  • The Most Important Job Interview Question

    Anthony K. Tjan
    28 Sep 2012 | 4:00 am
    At colleges and business schools across the country, the new academic year is just getting under way and with it a new recruiting season for talent. At my venture firm, Cue Ball, our day job is to be seekers of great talent with whom we can partner, invest, and grow exciting new ideas and businesses. We try to stay true to the principle of a founding figure of venture capital, George Doriot, who was fond of saying that it is always better to back an A-team with a B-plan than an A-plan with a B-team. People always trump ideas. That's because while good people can change misguided ideas, the…
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    shoescount.com

  • Peoplematics is joining TechStars Chicago for the summer!

    alex
    10 Jun 2013 | 9:48 am
    Here’s the link to the full Business Insider post… http://www.businessinsider.com/techstars-chicago-2013-5?op=1

  • Tollbooths vs. Billboards: Is CloudFlare Overvalued?

    alex
    26 Mar 2013 | 9:55 am
    This is another cross post from the Launching Technology Ventures blog. It was a response to the CloudFlare HBS case that we discussed in class… In the CloudFlare case, there was a discussion regarding the fact that it’s $1B+ valuation was perhaps based on the assumption that they could introduce advertising into their business model. What I found amazing about CloudFlare was that very quickly they were able to route approximately 1% of the entire internet’s traffic through their network. The investors’ enthusiasm seems to be built on a particular premise which is: If you build a…

  • Lean Manufacturing vs. Lean Startups: Business Ethos or Business Buzzword?

    alex
    26 Feb 2013 | 9:14 am
    I’m cross-posting this blog I wrote from the Launching Tech Ventures blog. Having spent the last twelve years of my life studying and applying lean methodologies in production and corporate environments, I was surprised upon arriving at HBS that the language of Lean had become a fundamental part of entrepreneurship in this community. In a manufacturing environment, labels didn’t matter (call it Lean, Six Sigma, TPS, Continuous Improvement, HMM, etc.) and mindset was everything. At the end of the day, the goal was the relentless pursuit of eliminating waste best expressed as a “zero…

  • An update on Peoplematics

    alex
    15 Oct 2012 | 10:06 pm
    Well it has been ages since I posted here but I just wanted to pop in really briefly to say that we launched an alpha product of Peoplematics recently. It’s a Chrome plugin that reimagines how you can search your Gmail account. It’s just a start but we’re pretty proud of it. Please check it out if you have a chance and let me know what you think! https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/peoplematics/pdfdfcpieejpkeddnjppiophbdljfhjc

  • Workplace Betrayal and Enterprise 2.0

    alex
    18 Jul 2012 | 9:25 am
    This is an article in progress that reflects some of the things that are going through my mind as I work to build Peoplematics into an amazing software company with real impact.   I am a child of broken promises and failed expectations… and I’m not alone. Growing up a child of Baby Boomer parents, I was told that if I work hard, manage my finances frugally, and was loyal to a company, I would be able to happily raise a family with some sense of security. What I’ve found as I’ve grown up is a world that has moved on from those sensibilities and rather than looking to my…
 
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