Power and influence

The corporate president stared out the window of his skyscraper office. His forehead was furrowed in anger and puzzlement. His fingers drummed the arm of his chair with a speed that signified intense frustration. The other executives in the room waited expectantly. Each had said his piece. Each had come to his and her own […]

Being conflicted is exhausting.

Effective leadership today relies more than ever on influencing others - impacting their ideas, opinions, and actions. While influence has always been...

Though celebrity influencers get lots of attention, they often don't produce sales. When Bocconi University's Maximilian Beichert and colleagues looked...

It’s unfortunate — but true — that it’s easier to think shallowly about a big problem than deeply about small ones. In the last post, a business leader and an IT leader appealed to you for help in defining how to deliver a large initiative using a fast-cycle, iterative approach. To force deep thinking, it […]

It's a lot like storytelling.

Executives of multinationals partnering with Chinese firms should be alert to Mao Zedong's lingering influence on some of the country's most successful...

Workers who come from lower social-class origins in the United States are 32% less likely to become managers than those who come from higher social-class...

Bridge mentorships create equal opportunities for young professionals from socially marginalized communities.

People tend to respond less quickly to managers they’re friends with.

Managers meet resistance every day. The way they handle it often is counterproductive. The resistance can come from a boss who won’t approve a project, a management peer who refuses to provide resources, a customer who flatly rejects a proposal — anybody blocking you from meeting a goal. The typical manager’s default response when somebody […]

To recruit the best, offer more than a job.

In a famous experiment, researchers ran a lottery with a twist. Half the participants were randomly assigned a lottery number. The remaining half were...

Make it their decision, not your directive.

Our annual survey of ideas and trends that will make an impact on business: Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi believe consumer credit should be made as...

Know your employer brand.

by Jonathan Kranz

Leaders often get to skip “good process” and simply act on their whims. Take the boss at my colleague’s former workplace. He inherited a team and fired the unit head who had the best profit-and-loss performance—and the best reputation as a people manager. Asked how he came to that decision, the boss said he owed […]

Congratulations—you’ve been asked to lead a change initiative! But there’s a catch—its success hinges on the cooperation of several people across your organization over whom you have no formal authority. If you’re like most managers, you’re facing this sort of challenge more often these days because of flatter management structures, outsourcing, and virtual teams. For […]

by Madeleine Homan