How Gap, Inc. Innovates
Business innovation is risky, but essential for growth. To manage the risks, establish a disciplined process for innovating in your organization—by following these simple but potent steps.
Episodes
The HBR Channel
Weekly ideas, insights, and tips on management from Harvard Business Review.
Episodes
Guidelines for Deciding Who's Trustworthy
Who can we trust in business? David DeSteno shows us 4 main tips on how to determine trustworthiness "wisely."
Use Values to Make Work-Life Decisions
You’re juggling a lot of different priorities. Clarify which one is most important. That way, the next time you feel torn between two commitments, you’ll know which one deserves your attention first.
Coach for Executive Presence
A critical job for any leader is to develop other leaders. That includes helping your people cultivate executive presence—the ability to exude leadership. These potent suggestions can help.
Get Better at Receiving Feedback
Sheila Heen explains why feedback is so hard to receive and how to pull value from criticism.
Business Analytics Defined
To get the most from the business data you gather and analyze, first decide what you want the data to do for you: Describe something? Predict something? Or suggest a certain course of action that should be taken?
Leading with a Light Footprint
Charles-Edouard Bouee discusses the "light footprint" military doctrine and how it applies to business management in three components: innovation, organization, disposition.
Understand What Your Customers Really Want
Christian Madsbjerg discusses the concept of sensemaking - studying the set of practices that feel normal to us - through the metaphor of wine and its application for business. Madsbjerg discusses the difference between truth and correctness in market research.
Six Skills Middle Managers Need
The general manager’s job is dauntingly complex. To succeed in it, you need to get six things right: your business strategy, team members, resource allocation tactics, data, team incentives, and organizational structures.
The Risk and Reward of Disagreeing with Your Boss
When you develop a strong “backbone,” you know how to stand up for yourself and your opinions. You also have the strength and wisdom to apologize if you make a mistake in how you treat others.
Trust Your Team to Use Their Talent
How to get the best work from your people? Don’t try to do their work for them. Instead, create an environment where they can take chances, use their skills, and succeed. Thinking of yourself as a coach can help.
How Successful People Reach Their Goals
Successful people reach their goals not because of who they are but because of what they do.
Good Leaders Admit Mistakes
The best leaders know when they’ve made a wrong decision. They admit it, apologize, and take swift action to correct the mistake.
Encourage Candor at Work
The best-performing teams have a culture of candor—people feel comfortable asking questions, giving honest feedback, and acknowledging problems. These three tips can help you foster a candid culture in your team.
The Ripple Effect of a Great Work Culture
An organization’s culture powerfully shapes how people behave and how they do their work. Culture can therefore be more important than strategy for sharpening your organization’s competitive edge.
The Power of Small, Flexible Teams
Major changes in the business arena call for small, flexible teams that can help your organization innovate. Learn some practical ways to assemble such teams and empower them to generate fresh ideas and put them into action.
Build Your Emotional Agility
When you experience negative thoughts and feelings, it’s tempting to try to suppress them. But that only makes things worse. Instead, learn how to put some distance between you and them, and then channel them into productive outcomes.
Create a Marketplace for Great Ideas
Successful organizations generate and execute the best ideas. That requires a culture of openness—where people feel safe offering a diversity of perspectives. Here’s how to foster such a culture.
The Explainer: Disruptive Innovation
To achieve growth in a fast-changing world, you want to be a disruptor.
Build Confidence to Unleash Creativity
Do you have great ideas but lack the courage to put them into action? If so, they have little hope of becoming reality. To gain the confidence to act on your ideas, share prototypes with customers—then use their feedback to improve these concepts.
Create Time for Your Most Important Work
How to free up as much as 20% of your workday to focus on the responsibilities that really matter.
Why Leaders Struggle Today
Today’s leaders face relentless performance pressure and have to serve markets that are always on. To stay motivated under these tough conditions, the best leaders focus on the near-term, personal, and concrete payoffs of leadership.
Gaining Credibility in a New Role
To win credibility in the eyes of your new direct reports, you may need to adopt behaviors that don’t come naturally to you. Practicing these behaviors and tailoring them to your own personal style can help.
Innovative Ways to Change Customer Behavior
What’s the best way to get your customers to adopt a desirable new behavior? Tell them that the majority of people who are just like them have adopted that same behavior.
Why You Need a "State of the Company" Address
Your organization’s mission can inspire people to achieve great things. But to leverage the mission’s power, you need to regularly discuss it with your employees and explain how the mission affects their work.
Consider Gender Differences to Improve Sales
Making a sales pitch? Find out whether your prospective client’s a man or woman. Then tailor your pitch to your target’s interests, attitudes toward rank and responsibility, and decision-making approach.
The Real Job of a Manager
Your job as a manager isn’t to be the smartest person in the room. It’s to help the smartest people in your organization exert maximum positive impact on the business. Three practices can help you do that.
Responding When Your Expertise Is Challenged
Whenever you walk into a room in a business situation, others form an impression of your expertise. But if you can tell others something they don’t already know, you demonstrate your expertise and define the perception they walk away with.
Four Methods for Corporate Innovators
Companies kill off most new ideas early because the value of the innovation isn’t clear. To make sure your idea survives, make it real in people’s minds. Here are four methods for making that happen.
Slingshot Your Career
Didn’t get the job you hoped for to advance your career? Don’t be too disappointed: That less-than-perfect job could help you build skills that will prove critical later in your professional life.