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Which Weak Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Traditional economic indications, such as interest and unemployment rates, are sending conflicting signals about the state and future of the global economy. In this issue of the HBR Executive Agenda, HBR editor at large Adi Ignatius asked CEOs from HBR Executive’s Advisory Council to share which metrics they follow to stay ahead of the competition.
When CMOs and CFOs Align Their KPIs, They Deliver More Value
CMOs are under intense pressure to increase revenue and improve efficiency. The problem is that many of their traditional KPIs–reach, impressions, engagement rates, brand lift studies–are useful for marketers but don’t connect directly to business results. CFOs, CEOs, and the board care about profit, forecasting stability, and capital allocation. They want to know: If we spend an additional $2 million on marketing next quarter, how much incremental revenue can we expect? And how confident are we in that number? When CMOs can’t answer that question clearly, it leads to misaligned expectations and under-leveraged marketing budgets. But when organizations align marketing and finance around measurement, they can cut waste and do a better job of investing in what actually works.
Teams That Prioritize Either Learning or Performance Perform Better
Performance management practices and systems often encourage teams to “innovate and deliver,” pushing them toward high standards while asking them to be flexible and experimental. But new research finds that expecting teams to emphasize both learning and performance at the same time in this way dilutes their focus. Employees can end up confused: Are we here to grow and try new things, or to hit targets and avoid mistakes? This ambiguity erodes a critical ingredient for high-functioning teams: task meaningfulness. Teams need clarity. When they’re given a focused direction—either to master or to deliver—they’re more likely to find meaning in their work, collaborate effectively, and achieve better results.
What Companies with Successful AI Pilots Do Differently
The overwhelming majority of generative AI programs have so far failed to deliver significant business returns. Research across industries reveals that the small percentage of companies who actually are unlocking AI’s potential are distinguished by leaders who act as “shapers,” aligning technical innovation with business strategy, fostering trust, driving adoption, and embedding AI responsibly into operations. These leaders consistently exhibit five crucial behaviors: strategic agility, human centricity, applied curiosity, performance drive, and ethical stewardship. Rather than concentrating authority in a single AI champion, successful firms need to intentionally cultivate these skills in leaders across teams and levels, so that leadership will become an accelerant, not a barrier, to AI transformation.
Loneliness Is Reshaping Your Workplace
If loneliness is reshaping society, then it’s already reshaping the teams we lead, whether we see it clearly or not. Loneliness silently dismantles trust and team cohesion, foundational elements that drive performance, innovation, and resilience. By attending to connection as a strategic responsibility, leaders have an opportunity to unlock a huge strategic advantage—and become architects of healthier, more human workplaces. Effectively managing teams in an era of loneliness requires leaders to focus on two distinct but deeply interconnected layers of connection: social cohesion and belonging and meaningful interpersonal relationships.
What It Takes to Lead Through Digital Disruption
Researchers found that leaders who successfully navigate digital disruption draw from a mix of traditional and emerging leadership styles. Most impactful, however, was a tension between two leadership styles: prospectors, who display curiosity about internal and external threats and opportunities, and miners, who are willing to go deep and invest in a particular topic or direction. Successful leaders through disruption display both behaviors as a series of sequential steps. They described the process as “going wide” to see what is out there, deciding where to invest resources; “going deep” and investing; and then “coming up again for air” to see if the environment around had shifted and required new prospecting.
Become a Better Negotiator
In this HBR Executive Masterclass, Harvard Business School’s Max H. Bazerman breaks down the mindset traps that cause even senior leaders to leave value on the table during negotiations. He explains why a “fixed pie” mentality limits deals for both parties, how to create value through smart trades, and why framing the negotiation early is your biggest edge.
AI Is Changing the Structure of Consulting Firms
AI is transforming consulting by making it possible to automate tasks traditionally handled by junior consultants such as research, modelling, and analysis. This shift is leading to a new leaner consulting model, the “obelisk,” which features fewer layers and smaller teams. Key roles in this model are AI facilitators trained in the latest AI tools and data pipelines; engagement architects who lead projects, help define the problems to solve, interpret AI outputs, and translate them into actionable strategies; and client leaders who cultivate deep, trusted relationships with senior executives, helping them make sense of change. Traditional firms must adapt to remain relevant in this evolving landscape.
Managing Your Team When the C-Suite Isn’t Providing Strategic Direction
In fast-moving industries and volatile markets, strategy is supposed to come from the C-level. But when it doesn’t, senior leaders must step up to translate ambiguity into clarity, maintain momentum, and keep teams focused. There are four key strategies for leading effectively when the C-suite can’t make a decision: 1) Reframe requests and proposals as low-risk; 2) quantify the cost of inaction; 3) keep your team moving and motivated; and 4) build your influence up and across. In these moments, your ability to stay focused, reframe risk, and keep the organization moving becomes your superpower.
Gender Diversity Helps Teams Maintain Integrity Under Pressure
Economists label situations when a decision‑maker’s personal stake in the outcome threatens to cloud objective judgment as “conflict-of-interest.” Employees might just call it “doing what it takes” or “being a team player.” It’s what happens when incentives or group dynamics push people—even subconsciously—to favor a particular outcome that serves them best. One common distortion this tension produces is optimism bias : the impulse to downplay real risks and paint a future that looks brighter than the evidence warrants. In such cases, the question haunting leaders is obvious: In the face of corporate pressures, how do you uphold honesty in your team’s decisions? New research found that simply having more women on the team tilted behavior toward greater honesty in financial analysis. It’s a form of soft regulation that arises organically from within the team, complementing formal compliance and external oversight.
Your Company Needs a Gaming Strategy
The rise of video games as a dominant digital medium has transformed consumer engagement, prompting companies across industries to adopt gaming strategies to connect authentically with modern audiences. This article, which is an excerpt from the book Press Play: Why Every Company Needs a Gaming Strategy (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025) , explores how brands leverage gaming platforms to offer personalized, immersive experiences that resonate with consumers’ evolving expectations and behaviors.
What Happened When Researchers Co-Founded a Startup with AI
Startups are undergoing a profound transformation as artificial intelligence becomes a foundational element from day one. Rather than being a tool added later, AI is now positioned as the first hire, taking on strategic roles such as analyst, designer, and even co-founder. This shift allows founders to move rapidly from ideation to execution, bypassing traditional hiring bottlenecks and enabling leaner teams. AI’s ability to handle ambiguous tasks and produce tangible outputs helps clarify organizational needs early on, reframing hiring decisions around what gaps remain after AI has contributed. It becomes an economic lever, not a cost center, driving faster iteration and more strategic scaling.
How to Keep Your Team’s Spirits Up in Anxious Times
During periods of turbulence and turmoil, leaders must be not just muscular strategists but also caring empaths, attuned to the emotional barometers of their teams and able to move the mood of the organization in a most positive direction. This requires communicating a clear purpose, embodying and modeling organizational values, and always projecting focused calm. When you adopt all three strategies, you move everyone toward a more courageous collective mindset that will help propel you through uncertainty toward a more successful future.
The Case for Using Small Language Models
Small Language Models (SLMs) are redefining enterprise AI by offering faster, more efficient, and cost-effective solutions compared to Large Language Models (LLMs). Their compact design enables deployment on edge devices, allowing real-time decision-making without cloud dependency—ideal for applications like autonomous vehicles, voice assistants, and wearable tech. SLMs consume less energy and require fewer resources, making them more sustainable and accessible for widespread use. Their ability to be fine-tuned for specific domains enhances accuracy and reduces irrelevant outputs, especially in industries like healthcare, finance, and agriculture. They also offer greater control, privacy, and transparency, supporting secure data processing and regulatory compliance. SLMs integrate easily into existing systems, enabling agile development and rapid prototyping without major infrastructure changes. Organizations should align model size with task complexity and explore SLMs for localized, privacy-sensitive, and scalable AI solutions. With their adaptability and efficiency, SLMs are positioned to drive practical, responsible innovation across industries.
Hiring Top AI Talent When You’re Not a Tech Giant
The news has been filled with reports of the eye-popping salaries that tech giants are offering AI talent. So how can other companies compete in this marketplace? In this edition of the HBR Executive Agenda, editor at large Adi Ignatius asks a number of executives and hiring experts for their advice on how to persuade this talent to join your organization.
Protecting Your Team in a Toxic Organizational Culture
Leading a team in an organization where communication and trust have broken down can leave you feeling powerless. The bad energy has a way of seeping into everything, threatening to contaminate your team. But you have more control than you might realize. Here are seven ways to protect your team if your organizational culture has turned toxic: 1) Set your own standards; 2) Reinforce good habits; 3) Make sure you’re not part of the problem; 4) Be the lightning rod; 5) Make impact front and center; 6) Build community to fill the void; 7) Don’t wait for exit interviews.
Make Sure Your AI Strategy Actually Creates Value
A company’s success will not rest on AI per se; it rests on what companies do with it. When companies lead with AI or treat it as the answer, they put the cart before the horse and risk compromising their company’s strategy and the value it provides to the marketplace. But when companies take the opposite approach, starting with strategy, identifying how they can offer buyers a leap in value, and then looking to technology as a tool to deliver that leap, AI can be a powerful catalyst to profit, growth, and commercial opportunities.
Does Bitcoin Belong on Your Balance Sheet?
As crypto increasingly goes mainstream, CEOs, CFOs, and treasurers need a strategy for where assets like Bitcoin belong on their balance sheet. The important thing to understand is that Bitcoin is both an asset and a network for moving money. For most corporations, going beyond the low single digits on the balance sheet would be irresponsible: Bitcoin’s volatility isn’t going away any time soon, and under new fair‑value accounting rules it can weigh on Wall Street’s perceptions of stability. When deciding on an investment strategy, leaders should focus on two dials: 1) Bitcoin’s share of store-of-value demand relative to monetary gold and to high-quality sovereign debt such as U.S. Treasuries, Bunds, and Gilts, and 2) evidence that the Bitcoin network is moving payments and financial transactions at scale.
Research in Brief: With a Bonus on the Line, Teams Prioritize Leadership
Adapted from our September-October 2025 magazine, this succinct write-up offers insights from a recent study on incentives and group performance. Across 722 escape-room teams in Germany, comprising more than 3,300 participants, from 2015 to 2017, researchers found that not only did the possibility of a bonus make teams more likely to finish the escape rooms faster, but it also made them more likely to emphasize the importance of leadership in subsequent interviews. In a follow-up study in which some escape room teams were prompted to select a leader, the researchers found that those who did so outperformed other groups.
The Secret to Building a High-Performing Team
Teams need to be able to take risks—from making hard decisions, to naming inconvenient truths, to having a hard conversation—in order to be successful. But human biology makes risk-taking the exception, rather than the rule. So, how can leaders encourage smart risk-taking among their employees? Surveys find that two elements are key for cultivating this behavior: communication and courage. Teams that rank high in both tend to be more savvy risk-takers than teams that fall into three other categories. You can determine where your team falls by analyzing a 2×2 chart and asking a series of probing questions.
Running Your Business in a Fractured World
In this HBR Executive Live, Foreign Affairs editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan joins HBR editor at large Adi Ignatius for a candid conversation on geopolitics, national security, and the new realities of globalization. The session goes beyond the daily news cycle to give you a sharper view of the forces reshaping business.
Sponsoring Cross-Functional Projects That Succeed
Cross-functional collaboration has always been critical for innovation, but it’s even more critical today as complex challenges require system-wide responses. But these collaborations fail at high rates, whether due to unclear decision rights, competing goals, or breakdowns in trust. This playbook offers executives strategies for limiting team size, incentivizing joint success, watching for misalignment, and disseminating collaboration best practices throughout the organization.
Research Roundup: CEO Start Dates, Online Reviews, AI’s Impact on Morale, and More
Adapted from the September-October 2025 edition of our magazine, these recent research findings—pulled from academia, consultancies, and more—can help companies make the most informed decisions. Topics include a simple way to set a new CEO up for success, which online reviews companies should reply to, and the long-term impact of good managers.
The Power of Being an Amateur
For leaders in the age of AI, creativity and adaptability will be the most important skills, more sought-after than static expertise. One valuable way of developing such skills is to embrace strategic amateurism, the practice of intentionally engaging in new and unfamiliar pursuits to maintain cognitive flexibility and innovative thinking. By stepping into roles where they have no prior experience to draw on, leaders can break free from cognitive entrenchment and stimulate their brains to form new neural connections and become more plastic, which enables creativity and adaptability. This approach not only helps in personal growth but also translates into professional environments, helping leaders to foster a culture of openness, curiosity, and dynamic problem-solving.
The New Economic Data Companies Need to Be Watching
Amid constantly changing tariff rates, the firing of top government officials, and splashy headlines about their implications, it can be hard for companies to plan for the future. Which data is reliable? Which is relevant? Researchers from the Yale Budget Lab examine historical trends, consumer spending habits, and recent government readouts to help make sense of the current economic landscape, including what data you need to be following to best understand the labor market, the impact of tariffs, central bank independence, the value of the U.S. dollar, and recent investor actions.
Why Some Sales Teams Are Actually Growing Alongside AI
Despite advances in AI and digital tools human expertise remains crucial for complex and high-stakes purchases, where salespeople help buyers navigate ambiguity and build trust. Because companies continue to produce complex products, the demand for skilled salespeople will continue to grow in many sectors—particularly in tech and advanced manufacturing. To adapt, leaders must ask questions aimed at fully understanding where human involvement is essential and where digital tools can be the primary sales channel.
Beware the AI Experimentation Trap
The MIT Media Lab’s finding that 95% of generative AI investments have produced no measurable returns highlights a familiar pitfall: Leaders are repeating the mistakes of the digital transformation era by funding scattered pilots that don’t connect to real business value. The takeaway is not that AI experimentation is broken, but that it must be disciplined—focused on solving core customer problems; chosen with frameworks like intensity, frequency, and density; run at low cost to enable iteration; and designed with scaling in mind through empowered “ninja” teams. Leaders should ignore hype-driven distractions and instead view AI as one tool in the larger shift toward digitally driven organizations, where success depends on using technology to transform operations and serve customers better.
When You’re Suddenly Managing More People—and Feeling Buried
On paper, a flattened org chart may look efficient, but the day-to-day can feel overwhelming when you’re a senior leader suddenly responsible for a sprawling team. Without a clear strategy, scale becomes a liability. It’s easy to feel buried by decisions, demands, and sheer volume. But leadership at scale is about leading differently, not simply doing more. Shifting from reacting to intentionally resetting how you lead won’t just help you survive the avalanche; it will help your team find solid ground and start building again.
You Need to Be Bored. Here’s Why.
If you embrace the skill of boredom, you might get better at confronting life’s bigger questions around meaning, happiness, and work. When we are bored, our brain moves to its default mode network, which are structures that switch on when you don’t have anything else to think about. When this happens, your mind wanders and thinks about, for example, big questions of meaning in your life. This makes us uncomfortable, but this kind of thinking is beneficial. To begin, commute with nothing, not even the radio. Try phone-free periods of 15 minutes and longer. And have device-free meals with your family.
My AI Investments Haven’t Paid Off. Should I Tap the Brakes?
Despite billions spent, a new MIT study shows that 95% of organizations aren’t yet seeing ROI from generative AI, raising questions about hype, strategy, and timing. In this edition of the HBR Executive Agenda, editor at large Adi Ignatius talks to a number of experts to get their take on whether businesses are over- or underinvesting in AI. Plus, executive leadership consultant Ann Hiatt shares an exercise senior leadership teams can use to clarify priorities, surface opportunities, and energize strategy offsites.
Building Your Organization’s Next Generation of Leaders
Leadership development is a critical yet often overlooked driver of long-term organizational success. Building leaders from within ensures cultural continuity and the preservation of institutional knowledge. This playbook outlines four ways executives help shape the process at their organizations: redefining potential, prioritizing stretch experiences, making development a cultural pillar, and reinforcing the effort from the top. By embracing these strategies, leaders can create a sustainable pipeline of talent prepared to guide their organization into the future.
3 Ways AI Can Improve Team Meetings
Even Gen AI–savvy teams often overlook the opportunity to use AI in collaborative settings—workshops, planning sessions, strategy reviews—defaulting to pre-AI habits. But when Gen AI is embedded intentionally in meeting it can elevate group thinking, sharpen decisions, and unlock deeper alignment. Three practical modes are emerging: “AI sets the table” (used in meeting prep), “AI at one seat” (used by a facilitator during the meeting), and “AI at every seat” (used by all participants during the meeting). Each mode offers distinct benefits and challenges, but together they form a flexible framework for reimagining teamwork.