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  • Effective Leaders Know How to Zoom

    We are now one year removed from the start of the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Looking back at how the company responded in the first weeks and months of the spill, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter says the company CEO, Tony Hayward, failed to lead effectively because he did not "zoom out" and look at the big picture. Kanter argues that successful business leaders need to be able to zoom out and zoom in. They need to be able to take in the big picture, and they need to see the details. Kanter writes in the Harvard Business Review : The lens through which leaders view the world can help or hinder their ability to make good strategic decisions, especially during crises. Zoom in, and get a close look at select details—perhaps too close to make sense of them. Zoom out, and see the big picture—but perhaps miss some subtleties and nuances. Zoom buttons on digital devices let us examine images from many viewpoints. They also provide an apt metaphor for modes of strategic thinking. Some people prefer to see things up close, others from afar. Both perspectives—worm’s-eye and bird’s-eye—have virtues and pathologies. But they should be vantage points, not fixed positions. Leaders need multiple perspectives to get a complete picture. Effective leaders zoom in and zoom out. Here Kanter discusses the strategy:

  • Office Politics and Becoming a Better Boss

    If you want to completely avoid and ignore office politics on your path up the management chain, then you're likely to find yourself stalled on your way up. So say Linda Hill and Kent Lineback , authors of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader . Their new book focuses on the tools required to step into a management position and then move both your team and yourself forward. And part of that involves understanding the political game of the office, as they discuss in this Harvard Business Review Idea Cast:

  • Ned Hallowell and the Steps to Getting Employees to 'Shine'

    Edward (Ned) Hallowell , formerly on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and now the head of the Hallowell Centers, is a psychiatrist who seems to have spent a lot of time thinking about what makes humans tick at work. His latest book, Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People , is all about learning how to manage employees and put them in position to succeed. Hallowell argues that the old method of just getting people to work harder doesn't get results. Rather, a good manager must master five steps in order to get the most productive and reliable workforce: select, connect, play, grapple, and shine. He describes the steps in this Harvard Business Idea Cast:

  • Rohit Deshpandé on the Provenance Paradox and Overcoming Consumer Bias

    Corona is a mass market, inexpensive beer in its native Mexico. But in the US, it is marketed as "fun, sun, beach, vacation in a bottle," says Harvard Business School marketing professor Rohit Deshpandé . And it represents one of many products that has overcome what Deshpandé calls the "provenance paradox." "Provenance paradox," is when companies in emerging markets struggle to sell their products at a reasonably high price because of where the product comes from. That is, consumers are reluctant to pay a lot for something that comes from a less developed economy. Deshpandé explains the paradox and how companies can overcome consumer bias in this Harvard Business Idea Cast : Read more about the provenance paradox from Deshpandé here .

  • Time for Business Leaders to Get Tough...with Themselves

    Harvard Business professor Robert Simons believes that a lot of business leaders got soft in the years leading up to the global economic crisis. And now that we're on the road to recovery, those leaders need to reacquaint themselves with the need to make tough choices. And to be tough on themselves. Simons prescribes stress tests for all major business decisions. By asking themselves tough questions before implementing new strategies, business leaders are more likely to put the right strategies in place. Here is Simons discussing these ideas, and his new book, Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution in the Harvard Business Ideascast:

  • Leadership in the Age of Global Business

    The business world is always changing, but it may be changing more rapidly in the digital age. More and more businesses operating in a global marketplace, and more organizational charts shifting, and in some cases becoming flatter. As a result, the role of business leaders is changing. Harvard Business Publishin g asked "management thought leaders" to weigh in on what leadership will require in the business world of tomorrow:

  • The Future of MBA Programs

    Harvard Business School professor David Garvin has spent the last two years examining the very nature of business schools, and attempting to identify ways for MBA programs to adapt to changing times. He says that business schools should help students develop in three key areas: knowledge, skills, and a sense of purpose. Since their inception, business schools have been excellent at developing knowledge, but less strong in building up the other two areas, Garvin argues. In this Harvard Business School video, Garvin discusses his findings and his book, Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads (co-authors Srikant Datar and Patrick Cullen) with Harvard Publishing's Sarah Green:

  • Simplify: Ron Ashkenas on Taking Complexity Out of Your Workplace

    Ron Ashkenas , author of Simply Effective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organization and Get Things Done , says no CEO sets out to make his or her company as complicated as possible. And yet, as businesses grow, they tend to become more complex. And taking the time to readjust and cut out inefficient institutional complexities is essential to continued growth. Ashkenas discusses some of the ways managers can create simpler workplaces in this interview with Harvard Business Publishing 's Sarah Green :

  • How Intuition Can Lead Smart Managers Down the Wrong Path

    Michael Mauboussin , chief investment strategist at Legg Mason , wants you to check yourself before you make a decision based on intuition. In his new book, Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition , Mauboussin argues that, when confronted with difficult problems to solve, our brains "revert to simplified patterns" and lead us down decision-making paths that make us more comfortable, even if they are the wrong paths. In this interview with Harvard Business Publishing's Sarah Green, Mauboussin explains why managers need to think "counterintuitively"--and apply measures that force them to evaluate more fully the possible solutions to problems they face:

  • Kindle Can't Be Manufactured in US: Harvard's Shih Argues This is Bad for Innovation in High Tech

    Amazon keeps sales numbers for its Kindle close to the vest, but ABC is reporting that November was the biggest month yet for sales of the e-reader . And analyst Sandeep Aggarwal of Collins Stewart is estimating total sales of the Kindle to reach 550,000 by the end of 2009 . Good numbers for Amazon just as the e-reader market begins to heat up, with Sony upping the advertising for its e-reader and Barnes and Noble now taking pre-orders for its Nook e-reader. Whatever Kindle's future, it stands as one of the more recent innovative success stories in US consumer technology. And its real breakthrough is the display, which is also its most expensive component to build. Willy Shih , professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, is concerned that the display depends on overseas manufacturing, and not so much because that will contribute to the trade deficit. Rather, Shih argues that "when innovations can't be manufactured in the U.S., the locus of innovation in that area frequently shifts to the countries that can manufacture them." The more worrying thing to me, though, is the likelihood that by not manufacturing the electrophoretic display, the U.S. will miss out on the future industries that spring from it — things like large flexible displays, future generations of electronic signage, and plastic electronics. Those technologies could, in turn, spawn other innovations and new industries. Years ago the U.S. lost the vast majority of its infrastructure, or "commons," in precision optics to Japan. The Japanese used those capabilities to grab the lead in producing lithography tools for semiconductor manufacturing, which, in turn, drove most American semiconductor manufacturers out of the DRAM business. The Japanese also employed those capabilities to expand into lithographic tools needed to manufacture flat panel displays. This same story has played out in high tech industry after high tech industry. The lesson: Sometimes when you let your capabilities get away, you give up not only one industry but all its progeny. Read The U.S. Can't Manufacture the Kindle and That's a Problem here .

  • Rosabeth Moss Kanter on Big Companies as a Force for Progress

    Rosabeth Moss Kanter has a great deal of faith in "vanguard corporations" and their ability to adapt to a change and create a better world. In her new book, SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good , she writes about how she sees companies like IBM, Banco Real, and Proctor & Gamble as global innovators that focus on the social good as well as profits. She discussed her book with Sarah Green of Harvard Publishing:

  • Navigating Transition, as an Organization and as a Worker

    This is a time of transition for the economy, companies across the country. And when recovery starts to hit in a meaningful way, then many workers will face a new sort of transition as they face new opportunities for advancement. Michael Watkins , Chairman of Genesis Advisers and author of a new book titled Your Next Move.The Leader's Guide to Successfully Navigating Major Career Transitions . And as Watkins wrote in an online article for Harvard Business , he believes that a lot of workplaces are set up to face a lot of change: According to a recent study just 10% of high-potential leaders lost their jobs during the recession (with many quickly securing new opportunities). But fewer than usual received promotions or moved to new companies. So at the first sign that the job market is heating up, many will be dusting off their resumes and seeking greener pastures. Companies that did a clumsy job of managing cost-cutting and restructuring during the downturn are particularly at risk of losing their best talent as conditions improve. Given plummeting revenues and the need to get costs under control, many firms rightly went into crisis mode. But the way they went about making the reductions varied greatly. For some, it was a process akin to taking a meat cleaver to the organization, with rapid, often indiscriminate cuts, and the attitude that virtually anything could be demanded of the survivors (longer hours, reduced salaries) because things were so dire. These same survivors, especially the most talented of them, understandably feel absolutely no loyalty to their current employers; they will jump ship the instant they feel it's safe to do so. In fact it's a wonderful time for strong companies to consolidate their positions and accelerate out of the downturn by cherry-picking the very best talent out of competitors who have (probably irreparably) damaged their corporate cultures. Some attention to effective on-boarding is also warranted as it will help you to retain the talent you hire. Watkins discussed his new book with Sarah Green of Harvard Publishing:

  • De-mystifying Finance

    Joe Knight , co-owner of the Business Literacy Institute , and co-author of the book, Financial Intelligence (both along with Karen Berman ) is out to de-mystify finance. He travels the country to teach business owners and comapny managers the basics of finance. In his mind, the notion that finance is a specialized field is a mistake. He believes that all employees should have a sense of a company's finances, and that the more they understand, the more care they take to build a stronger business and make a stronger balance sheet. He explains his approach in this Harvard Business video: