Professors Michael Toffel, of Harvard Business School, and Aaron Chatterji, of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, discuss the emerging phenomenon of CEO activism. They explain how political polarization in the U.S. and employee expectations around company values are pushing corporate leaders to enter into controversial political and social debates. Toffel and Chatterji are the coauthors of the HBR article “Divided We Lead.” We also hear from PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, who talks about standing up for...
Mar 27, 2018•30 min•Ep. 622
Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter, of the global consulting firm Potential Project, make their case for mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion in leadership. Their survey of 30,000 leaders showed those characteristics are foundational — and often missing from leadership development programs. Practicing self-awareness, they say, leads to more focused and more people-focused organizations. They’re the authors of the new book, “The Mind of the Leader: How to Lead Yourself, Your People, and Y...
Mar 21, 2018•20 min•Ep. 621
Dominic Barton, the global managing partner of McKinsey&Company, discusses the firm’s sustainability efforts. He talks about the wake-up call he got about sustainability and how he tries to convince CEOs hesitant to make it part of their business model that doing so will improve company performance. He says he sees companies thinking about the environment. “But the speed and scale of what we need to do — I don’t think it’s sufficient.”
Mar 13, 2018•18 min•Ep. 620
Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University, talks about leading the institution through a decade of change, from the financial crisis to the Trump era. Faust discusses how communicating as a leader is different from communicating as an expert, the surprising ways her study of U.S. Civil War history prepared her for the top job, and what it's like to be the first female president in the University's four-century history.
Mar 07, 2018•30 min•Ep. 619
Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Paul Leonardi, a management professor at UC Santa Barbara, talk about the potential that applications such as Slack, Yammer, and Microsoft Teams have for strengthening employee collaboration, productivity, and organizational culture. They discuss their research showing how effective these tools can be and warn about common traps companies face when they implement them. Neeley and Leonardi are co-authors of the article "What Managers Need...
Feb 27, 2018•33 min•Ep. 618
Kenneth Frazier, the CEO of the pharmaceutical company known as MSD outside of North America, discusses his upbringing and how it influences his leadership as chief executive. He is one of the few African-American CEOs in the Fortune 500, and shot to prominence after resigning from a council advising the Trump White House. Frazier discusses the importance of values in leadership and how Merck thinks about R&D and drug prices.
Feb 19, 2018•30 min•Ep. 617
Scott DeRue, the dean of University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, says the old model of business school education is gone. It's no longer good enough to sequester yourself on campus for two years before heading out into the world of commerce. DeRue discusses how the perceived value of an MBA education is changing in the digital era, and how MBA programs are innovating in response to individual and company demands.
Feb 14, 2018•22 min•Ep. 616
What should you do when you become the boss? HBR's new advice podcast Dear HBR: has the answers. In this bonus episode, Dear HBR: co-hosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks, an expert on behavioral insights. They talk through what to do when your direct reports are older than you, how to be a likeable leader, and what to say if you're not ready to be in charge.
Feb 09, 2018•36 min
Jay Conger, a leadership professor at Claremont McKenna College, goes behind the scenes to show how you can get on, and stay on, your company's fast track. He demystifies how companies (often very secretly) develop and update their list of high-potential employees. And he discusses five critical "X factors" his research has shown are common to high-potential employees. Conger is the co-author of the new book, "The High Potential's Advantage: Get Noticed, Impress Your Bosses, and Become a Top Lea...
Feb 06, 2018•25 min•Ep. 615
In this special episode, HBR IdeaCast host Sarah Green Carmichael introduces Harvard Business Review’s new podcast “Women at Work,” about women’s experiences in the workplace. This episode about being heard tackles three aspects of communication: first, how and why women’s speech patterns differ from men’s; second, how women can be more assertive in meetings; and third, how women can deal with interrupters (since the science shows women get interrupted more often than men do). Guests: Deborah Ta...
Jan 30, 2018•46 min•Ep. 614
Moshe Cohen, a senior lecturer at Boston University's Questrom School of Business, says you can't take the emotion out of a negotiation. After all, negotiations revolve around conflict, risk, and reward — which are inherently emotional. Instead of sidelining your feelings, understand them. Cohen explains how to understand your triggers and use your emotions and those of your counterparts to your advantage.
Jan 23, 2018•26 min•Ep. 613
Jagdip Singh, a professor of marketing at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, explains his research team’s new findings about customer satisfaction. He says apologizing is often counterproductive and that offering customers different possible solutions is usually more effective. He discusses what companies can do to help service representatives lead interactions that leave a customer satisfied—whether or not the problem has been solved. Singh’s research is fe...
Jan 16, 2018•28 min•Ep. 612
Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, encourages leaders to approach their direct reports like teachers. As Finkelstein explains, being a teacher-leader means continually meeting face to face with employees to communicate lessons about professionalism, points of craft, and life. He says it’s easy to try and that teaching is one of the best ways to motivate people and improve their performance. Finkelstein is the author of “The Best Lea...
Jan 09, 2018•19 min•Ep. 611
Patty McCord, Netflix’s former Chief Talent Officer, sees hiring as constant matchmaking. Building a team of people that gets amazing work done, she says, requires managers to really know what they need, and for HR to actually understand the workings of the business. She says money should not be the reason someone leaves and that we should stop using words like “poaching” and “firing.” McCord is the author of “How to Hire,” in the January–February 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review.
Jan 02, 2018•28 min•Ep. 610
Mihir Desai, a professor of finance at Harvard Business School, breaks down the brand-new U.S. tax law. He says it will affect everything from how corporate assets are financed to how business are structured. He predicts many individuals will lower their tax burdens by setting themselves up as corporations. And he discusses how the law shifts U.S. tax policy toward a territorial system of corporate taxes, one that will affect multinationals and national competitiveness. Finally, Desai explains w...
Dec 26, 2017•26 min•Ep. 609
Aron Ain, the CEO of Kronos Incorporated, explains why unlimited vacation can be in the best interests of employees and the organization. He describes how his software company tracks requests for time off and the conversations he's had with skeptical managers and longtime employees. Ain says the "open vacation" program benefits the business and serves as a template for other companies figuring out how to make unlimited vacation work for them.
Dec 20, 2017•23 min•Ep. 608
Rachel Botsman, the author of “Who Can You Trust?", talks about how trust works, whether in relation to robots, companies, or other people. Technology, she says, speeds up the development of trust and can help us decide who to trust. But when it comes to making those decisions, we shouldn’t leave our devices to their own devices.
Dec 12, 2017•19 min•Ep. 607
Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, reflects on the cloud storage company’s entry into the enterprise market. He was skeptical about pivoting away from consumers, and it was challenging. But by staying disciplined with the product and deeply understanding market trends, they've made the strategic shift from B2C to B2B work.
Dec 05, 2017•19 min•Ep. 606
Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a senior adviser at the global executive search firm Egon Zehnder, makes the case for finding a company’s next CEO inside the firm. But to find the best contenders, organizations have to learn what to look for, how to find it, and how to nurture it. Fernández-Aráoz is the co-author of the new HBR article “Turning Potential into Success: The Missing Link in Leadership Development.”
Nov 28, 2017•19 min•Ep. 605
Andrew Liveris, the CEO of Dow Chemical, discusses the 120-year-old company’s ambitious sustainability agenda. He says an environmentally driven business model is good for the earth—and the bottom line. Liveris is one of the CEOs contributing to Harvard Business Review’s Future Economy Project, in which leaders detail their company’s efforts to adapt to and mitigate climate change.
Nov 21, 2017•16 min•Ep. 604
Freek Vermeulen, an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the London Business School, argues that too many companies are following so-called best practices that are actually holding them back. They do it because of deep-seated industry tradition—and because it’s hard to know how seemingly successful business models will hold up over the long term. That’s why, he says, organizations should avoid benchmarking and instead routinely test their business practices before there’s a pr...
Nov 14, 2017•20 min•Ep. 603
Irene Yuan Sun, a consultant at McKinsey, explains why so many Chinese entrepreneurs are setting up factories in Africa. She describes what it’s like inside these factories, who works there, what they’re making—and how this emerging manufacturing sector is industrializing countries including Lesotho and Nigeria. Sun’s new book is “The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa.”
Nov 07, 2017•26 min•Ep. 602
Scott Kelly, a retired U.S. astronaut, spent 520 days in space over four missions. Working in outer space is a lot like working on earth, but with different challenges and in closer quarters. Kelly looks back on his 20 years of working for NASA, including being the commander of the International Space Station during his final, yearlong mission. He talks about the kind of cross-cultural collaboration and decision making he honed on the ISS, offering advice that leaders can use in space and on ear...
Oct 31, 2017•18 min•Ep. 601
Pablo Isla, the CEO of Inditex, is No. 1 on Harvard Business Review’s list of “The Best-Performing CEOs in the World 2017.” He opens up about his management style and reflects on his tenure leading the Spanish clothing and accessories giant, whose brands include Zara, Massimo Dutti, and Pull&Bear. Successful fast fashion takes much more than speed, he says. Isla discusses aspects of the company’s business model: source close to headquarters, entrust store managers with product orders, and treat ...
Oct 24, 2017•18 min•Ep. 600
Nancy Koehn, a Harvard Business School historian, tells the life stories of three influential leaders: the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the pacifist Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the ecologist Rachel Carson. They all overcame personal challenges to achieve and inspire social change. In Koehn’s new book, "Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times," she argues that tomorrow's leaders of social change will come from the business world.
Oct 19, 2017•23 min•Ep. 599
Jeff Bussgang, a venture capitalist who teaches entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, knows from personal experience and having funded many startups that there’s more than one way into that world. You don’t have to have a technical background. Excellent communication skills and a high emotional IQ are startup skills, too. Bussgang, the author of “Entering StartUpLand,” walks through the process of finding your dream job in a new company.
Oct 12, 2017•27 min•Ep. 598
Dorie Clark, a marketing strategy consultant, answers a burning question: how do people make money off of what they know? She outlines the options for experts who want to monetize their knowledge. Clark explains, using herself and other successful solopreneurs as examples, how to earn revenue from public speaking, podcasting, e-books, and online courses. She also goes over what to charge and when to get an assistant. Clark teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and is the author o...
Oct 05, 2017•22 min•Ep. 597
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s third CEO, opens up about his effort to refresh the culture of the company and renew its focus on the future. He reflects on important life lessons he learned growing up in India, immigrating to the U.S., and working for Microsoft for 25 years. Nadella thinks of the past, he says, for the sake of the future—of technology, public policy, and work. His new autobiography is "Hit Refresh."
Sep 28, 2017•24 min•Ep. 596
Jennifer Riel, an adjunct professor at the Rotman School of Management, presents a model way to solve problems: integrative thinking. It’s taking the best from two inadequate options to come up with a successful solution. She gives examples from the film industry to show how CEOs have put the process to work. Riel is the co-author, along with Roger Martin, of the book “Creating Great Choices: A Leader’s Guide to Integrative Thinking.”
Sep 21, 2017•19 min•Ep. 595
Annie McKee, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book “How to Be Happy at Work,” 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 success for the wrong reasons ruined people’s personal and professional lives. She discusses how misplaced ambition, obsession with money, and fatalism are traps anyone, in any kind of job, can fall for—an...
Sep 14, 2017•30 min•Ep. 594
