Harvard Business Review

Lessons from Yelp’s Empirical Approach to Diversity

Beginning in 2013, a handful of tech companies (including Yelp, where some of us work, Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook) began to research and release data on the diversity of their workforces. The numbers were grim. For instance, in 2014 only 10% of Yelp’s engineers were female. Seven percent of …

Why Superstars Struggle to Bond with Their Teams

From the moment you start each workday, you’re subject to two basic human impulses: to excel and to conform.<p>If people in your immediate environment …

Japan Is Counting on Shareholder Activism to Improve Its Economy

Shareholder activism is a quintessentially American form of investing. In the U.S., CEOs live in fear of activist hedge funds, and politicians worry about their effects on workers. But the case for shareholder activism is perhaps best seen in Japan, where the corporate sector tends to be …

Research: Consumers Prefer Products with Imperfections Because They Feel More Unique

Mistakes occur more frequently than we’d like. And generally, when they happen, we often don’t go about advertising them to others. But companies can benefit from letting consumers know when they make mistakes with a product. Consumers perceive these products as more unique, because they think …

"Creating Great Choices is the rarest of business books that teaches decision makers how to think, now what to think." - @Gladwell https://t.co/sNR0Dk02Iw

The Explainer: The Balanced Scorecard

<b>Robert S. Kaplan</b> and <b>David P. Norton</b>'s seminal framework — in under three minutes.

Creating Great Choices: A Leader's Guide to Integrative Thinking

Publication Date: <b>September 19, 2017</b><p>Move Beyond Trade-Off Thinking. When it comes to our hardest choices, it can seem as though making trade-offs is inevitable. But what about those crucial times when accepting the obvious trade-off just isn't good enough? What do we do when the choices in front of …

How to Mentor a Narcissist

No workplace is immune to the self-absorbed and self-important employee. You know the one. Preoccupied with status, appearance, and power, narcissists exude a palpable sense of entitlement, often overestimate skills and abilities (while devaluing others), and can be quite comfortable manipulating …

We Shouldn’t Always Need a “Business Case” to Do the Right Thing

I’ve been a consultant for almost 20 years, advising companies on complex challenges in ethics, risk, and responsibility. Each year several clients raise the same issue: the need to get buy-in from a skeptical senior executive in order to demonstrate a concrete benefit that will follow a proposed …

The 5 Skills Employers Seek in Today’s Digital Economy - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM HBX

Leading scholar Ernie Wilson on the surprising skills that employers look for when hiring and promoting employees.<p>The global economic landscape is perpetually evolving, and companies are adjusting their hiring practices to better fit their needs. Are they searching for more engineers, data …

Should Employers Fire Employees Who Attend White Supremacist Rallies?

In the aftermath of the recent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a social media campaign began circulating pictures of protestors in Nazi and Confederate regalia, asking the public to match names to the faces. As the protestors were identified, attention turned to their …

Starting a Business Can Increase Older Workers’ Quality of Life (Even When It Doesn’t Pay Well)

As a result of declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy, the average age of the global population is increasing. This demographic trend has important implications for the labor market. Aging individuals are not always able to find satisfactory outlets for their abilities. Moreover, …

The Comprehensive Case for Investing More VC Money in Women-Led Startups

Only 8% of venture capital (VC) firms in the U.S. have female partners, and that lopsided gender composition may be hurting venture capital performance portfolios. The evidence suggests that having no female partners makes VC firms less likely to invest in female-founded or female-led firms. But …

The Best Senior Teams Thrive on Disagreement

Most team leaders try to build cohesion on their teams. Through team-building exercises and the careful establishment of norms and processes, leaders aim to create a culture of trust, psychological safety, and good feeling.<p>But should enterprise leadership teams also pursue cohesion? To explore this …

The Most Overused Negotiating Tactic Is Threatening to Walk Away

Professional negotiators and researchers alike hail the BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement, or “walk away” outcome) as a negotiator’s primary source of relative power. But relying on even the best of alternatives as leverage can be tricky business.<p>Your relative power in a negotiation …

Find Your Happy Place at Work

<b>Annie McKee,</b> a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the book <i>How to Be Happy at Work,</i> tells the story of her journey to happiness—starting with her early job as a caregiver for an elderly couple. Even in later, higher-paying work, McKee saw that pursuing prestige and …

594: Find Your Happy Place at Work

The High Price of Overly Prescriptive HR Policies

Recently, one of my colleagues left our firm to make significantly more money at another company. We wanted to keep her, but the commission-based salary offered by the other company was more than we could match. She hadn’t realized how long her new commute would be during rush hour, however, and …

Who Empathizes with Machiavellian or Narcissistic Leaders?

Have you ever worked with a leader who manipulates others to get their own way? Or is there someone in your team who is so completely self-obsessed that they disregard other’s opinions and contributions? Hostile personality characteristics such as these might help people climb the career ladder, …

Harvard Business Review

To Eliminate Stress, Stop Trying to Control Everything with Srikumar Rao, founder of The Rao Institute and author of Happiness at Work. #HBRLive

The Case for Stock Buybacks

If paying excessive CEO salaries is the most maligned use of corporate funds, stock buybacks may well take second place. Conventional wisdom is that CEOs buy back stock to manipulate the short-term stock price. They fund the buyback by cutting investment, and so firm value suffers in the long-term. …

Check out the Sept/Oct HBR Issue: The overcommitted organization, Jeffrey Immelt on remaking GE, and how to find happiness at work. https://t.co/QqgN2YcXAZ

The Tragic Crash of Flight AF447 Shows the Unlikely but Catastrophic Consequences of Automation

The tragic crash of Air France 447 (AF447) in 2009 sent shock waves around the world. The loss was difficult to understand given the remarkable safety record of commercial aviation. How could a well-trained crew flying a modern airliner so abruptly lose control of their aircraft during a routine …

How to Motivate Employees to Go Beyond Their Jobs

Every day, employees make decisions about whether they are willing to go the extra mile in ways that contribute to their organization’s success. These are important decisions because research shows that when employees are willing to go beyond their formal roles by helping out coworkers, …

Daniel McGinn

Daniel McGinn (@danmcginn) is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review, and the author of <i>Psyched Up: How the Science of Mental Preparation Can Help</i> …

Playing Office Politics Without Selling Your Soul

Politics is a dirty word. But office politics are unavoidable; as Aristotle noted, “man is by nature a political animal.” Whether you participate in them or not, politics have a big influence on what happens to you, your projects, and your team, so it’s hard to be indifferent to them.<p>To borrow from …

Research: How the Best School Leaders Create Enduring Change

Transforming a school is a long, hard, and often lonely task. Some people want change, others don’t, and some simply aren’t prepared to wait for results to show. As a school leader sets off on this journey, how do they know what to do, when to do it, who to listen to, and how to manage critics …

Severe Weather Threatens Businesses. It’s Time to Measure and Disclose the Risks

The weather affects consumers’ behavior in terms of what products they buy, where they buy them, and in what quantity. Even if a business knows how normal weather affects its earnings, unexpected <i>abnormal</i> weather events present their own risks. Research shows that abnormal weather disrupts the …

How to Work from Home When You Have Kids

Finally: You’ve got the chance to work remotely. Maybe it’s due to the structure of your new job, or organization; maybe it’s part of that new corporate work/life initiative; or maybe it’s the result of months of lobbying the higher-ups. Regardless, you’ve won the prize that many — or most — …