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Research: To Retain Employees, Promote Them Before the Job Market Heats Up
Labor markets regularly swing from firm-friendly to job seeker–friendly, causing organizations to fluctuate greatly in terms of the number of employees at hand to meet customers’ needs. But is there a way employers can future-proof their workforce, encouraging talent to stay when jobs are plentiful? Drawing on turnover data for over 11,000 managers from 2018 to 2023 (including pre-pandemic, pandemic, and “Great Resignation” labor shifts), researchers found that promoting employees during employer-friendly labor markets reduces the likelihood that these employees will quit later when the job market shifts in their favor. They offer suggestions for companies looking to increase talent retention rates and make their workforce more resilient to market changes.
“I’m Afraid We Are Automating This Work Without Really Understanding It”
AI is often touted as a way to handle busy work to free people up for tasks that matter. But in the race to add automation to pretty much every job, it’s rare that people question what, exactly, people are being freed from, and which tasks actually matter. This interview with sociologist Allison J. Pugh explores what she calls “connective labor,” why it’s under threat from automation, who will be most affected, and what we’ll lose as humans if it disappears.
Does Returning to the Office Support Your Company’s Strategy?
The news seems full of companies abandoning remote and hybrid work, requiring their employees to come to the office five days a week. You may wonder if your company should follow suit. Instead of immediately jumping on the RTO bandwagon, however, consider whether and how your strategic goals might actually benefit from a more flexible work arrangement. Specifically, you should ask key questions in the following areas: 1) market and innovation goals, 2) governance, 3) internal data and analytics, 4) recruitment and retention, and 5) manager training. By tying your work arrangements to your metrics for success, you’ll build a stronger remote, hybrid, or fully in-office strategy as opposed to simply following the trends.
Can You Tell a Genius Strategy from a Huge Mistake?
Chess can be played at different speeds, and when master players observe one move in isolation without knowing the kind of chess being played, it can be hard to identify smart play from poor play. Likewise in business, judging decisions can be difficult because of differentials in timing. Some investors focus on the extreme short term; others have an infinite holding period, and the kinds of managerial decisions that will be smart for one type of shareholder are often poor for the other.
How to Get Hired When AI Does the Screening
Companies are increasingly using generative AI tools for recruitment and hiring—think AI-assisted resume screens and AI-conducted interviews. Understanding how companies are leveraging AI for hiring is critical for landing your next job and can give you an edge in making sure your application gets to the top of the pile. Further, in your interviews, you’ll be able to position yourself not only as a capable professional, but one who’s eager to evolve your skillset along with AI. Here are five ways to prepare for an AI-based hiring process, from your resume to interviews.
When Gratitude Leads You to Accept Less Than You Deserve
It’s no secret that practicing gratitude offers numerous benefits that can significantly enhance both individual and organizational performance. But excessive gratitude has its pitfalls. Falling into a gratitude trap could make us complacent and hinder professional development by creating a barrier to effective self-advocacy. Failing to balance appreciation for what we have and the drive to improve our circumstances can possibly lead to a career where your contributions are praised but the eventual outcome is missed opportunities for professional growth. An overemphasis on gratitude can make you hesitant to voice legitimate concerns. By cultivating empowered gratitude, you can build the confidence and growth mindset needed to advocate for yourselves and your organization effectively.
5 Questions to Help Your Team Make Better Decisions
In fast-paced, complex business environments, it’s often hard to carve out the time for thoughtful, thorough analysis. Leaders might recognize that better questions lead to better decisions, but they aren’t sure exactly what to ask. These five questions can help. 1) What would happen if we did nothing? 2) What could make us regret this decision? 3) What alternatives did we overlook? 4) How will we know if this was the right decision? 5) Is this reversible?
Research: What Consumers Find Persuasive in Online Reviews
Most people report that online reviews are one of the main factors they consider before making a purchase. Unsurprisingly, many companies have attempted to harness reviews’ persuasive power by highlighting those they believe will be most compelling to customers. But what do customers find persuasive in a review? Researchers analyzed 111,728 purchase reviews and conducted experiments with over 2,000 participants to answer that question. Their findings indicate that persuasiveness is dictated by how frequently an item is purchased. For items that are purchased only rarely, recommendations seem to be the most persuasive. But when items are likely to be bought frequently — for example, cosmetics or bottles of wine — it’s most persuasive when reviewers indicate they would buy that item again. This is because recommendations are viewed as more credible than repurchase intentions for infrequently bought items, while the opposite is true for frequently purchased goods or services.
How Sales Teams Can Use Gen AI to Discover What Clients Need
In the face of decreasing access to buyers, sales organizations often increase the volume of their sales outreach, hoping that more times at bat will result in more hits. While this can produce short-term results, over time it’s more likely to erode an organization’s value case. Instead, revenue leaders leverage can generative AI to improve the quality — not quantity — of their sales engagement. When sellers leverage AI for client discovery, they can begin their buyer conversations from a stronger position that’s more grounded in the customer’s business challenges. Specifically, they can use AI to help them: 1) understand the client’s major challenges and goals, 2) identify the key metrics associated with those challenges, 3) find the client stakeholder who cares about those metrics, 4) assess how your product can improve those client metrics, 5) open your interactions with clear, concise, and relevant messaging that ties all together.
How Constructive Dissent Can Unlock Your Team’s Innovation
The key to unlocking innovation from diverse perspectives is constructive dissent: a team’s ability to engage respectfully in the exchange of conflicting viewpoints. As a norm, or pattern of shared behavior, it brings together creative abrasion, social collaboration, and emotional regulation. If a team can’t find a way to engage in constructive dissent, it will default to preserving the status quo. But if it can, that norm will unleash the team’s innovative capability. The author presents eight practical ways to nurture constructive dissent and release your team’s full innovative potential.
When Your Job Breaks Your Heart
Professional heartbreak is the loss of something work-related that feels as personally wounding as grief or heartbreak in your personal life. It might involve the death of a dream, like owning your business. Sometimes it’s when your identity seems to escape you through a layoff or a job loss. And sometimes it happens when you don’t get something that you really, really want. This interview with author and podcast host Morra Aarons-Mele delves into why a professional heartbreak can be so devastating, offering stories of people who have gone through them and suggestions for those who may be experiencing one now.
Research: A Better Way to Keep Tabs on Your Remote Workforce
As remote work continues to grow in the U.S., employers are increasingly adopting new technologies to monitor how their employees spend their time. The research on the utility of these monitoring tools has been mixed: Some studies show that they boost performance whereas others suggest they increase deviant behavior and erode trust. In a new study, researchers explored the impact that different kinds of monitoring have on employees’ willingness to share new ideas. They found that “interactional monitoring,” characterized by regular, discussion-based check-ins, can encourage innovation while passive “observational monitoring,” often powered by technological surveillance, makes employees less likely to speak up. This is particularly true of workers in complex jobs like software engineering, product design, or strategy consulting, who are three times less likely to share new ideas if they are experiencing observational monitoring. The researchers offer considerations for companies looking to encourage creativity without weakening employee trust.
How AI Can Help You Lead with Heart
AI systems have come far in recognizing and responding to emotional cues, offering messages that provide emotional support and insights. However, AI lacks authentic human understanding and self-reflection. Employed the wrong way, it can lead to interactions feeling even more transactional and people feeling less heard, but AI can actually complement leadership to increase the well-being of those you lead. The key is using the technology with the right intention to enhance human compassion. The authors show how leaders can leverage AI for personalized coaching, enhancing communication, and understanding employee diversity, ultimately fostering greater connection and engagement in the workplace.
7 Questions to Decode Your Manager’s Priorities
It’s well known that understanding your boss’s priorities is crucial for career success. Yet many professionals find themselves guessing what their manager really wants or needs. The result? Misaligned efforts, wasted time, and missed opportunities for both you and your leadership. The problem isn’t just busy bosses or poor communication — it’s that we often don’t ask the good questions to get inside our manager’s head. Here are seven questions designed to uncover your boss’s true priorities, pressures, and preferences.
How to Build a Power Map for Your Project
While good work quality matters, far too many professionals overlook the hidden dynamics that really determine whether their ideas get implemented or ignored, whether they’re considered for projects, and even how quickly they advance. Understanding who to influence is often just as important as knowing what to propose. This is where power mapping comes in — a useful tool that can help you make smart decisions about which key decision-makers you need to build relationships with as well as who might block your progress. There are five steps you can take to create a power map: 1) Identify your potential stakeholders; 2) Rate each stakeholder’s level of influence and interest; 3) Plot stakeholders on a power matrix; 4) Tailor your strategy; and 5) Regularly update as new information arises and projects evolve.
The Legal Landscape Around DEI Is Shifting. Your Messaging Should, Too.
Anti-DEI activists and government officials are combing corporate websites and public statements looking for evidence of illegal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. That has led some corporate leaders to stop talking about DEI, but silence risks damaging the trust of your employees and customers. The authors, from NYU School of Law’s Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, identify best practices for communicating about DEI, offer some sample language to avoid legal risk, and share strategies to disseminate these best practices throughout your organization.
Research: The Costs of Circumventing Tariffs
When tariffs are levied against a specific country, that country might attempt to circumvent the tariff by rerouting products through a third country to avoid the higher taxes. Research in the aftermath of the 2018 U.S.-China trade war examined this phenomenon, finding that, while tariff circumvention through Vietnam did happen, it wasn’t as widespread as many had initially thought. That said, there still was an increase in tariff circumvention more broadly, and specifically via Chinese-owned firms in Vietnam. The findings suggest that if a country is considering implementing tariffs, a better approach might involve ownership-based duties or firm-specific sanctions instead of blanket tariffs.
How AI Can Help Managers Think Through Problems
Gen AI has the potential to become a thought partner for managers, assisting them with strategic thinking, leadership development, and decision-making. But while two-thirds of managers see this potential, currently only 30% feel prepared to use the technology for this purpose. This article helps bridge this gap by introducing a process called co-thinking in which managers follow a four-step framework: Assign AI a role, define the setting, outline the dialogue, and create structured prompts. Best practices for co-thinking include engaging actively, challenging AI’s outputs, and involving teams to enhance collaboration. By adopting these approaches, humans and AI working together can achieve high-quality outcomes that would not be possible working separately.
How to Answer “Walk Me Through Your Resume”
Many hiring managers will begin a job interview by asking: “Can you walk me through your resume?” They’re not looking for a laundry list of accomplishments or responsibilities. Instead, they want a focused narrative that highlights why you’re the perfect fit for the new role. You need to bold in drawing clear connections between your unique skills and the role you’re interviewing for, showcasing how your experience enables you to deliver exceptional value beyond what other candidates can offer. Connecting your experience to the job you are pursuing and showing progressive skills acquisition throughout your career in a succinct story will leave the interviewer satisfied that you can succeed in the new role. Highlighting your unique skill is the icing on the cake that not only sets you apart from the competition but also makes you a more memorable and compelling choice for the job. This article offers three steps to answer this question – and shows how to do it in under two minutes.
Research: How AI Helped Executives Improve Communication
A great way for executives to hone their communication skills is by having a coach listen in on their conversations and provide feedback. But given the increasing capability of AI-based tools to have meaningful conversations with people, researchers wondered whether AI-tools could be used as sparring partners and advisors to executives looking to improve their coaching and communication styles. To test this theory, researchers created a tool, powered by GPT-4, and ran an experiment with 167 global executives in a range of industries. They found that AI-based coaching interventions can be an efficient, accessible, potent way to improve essential leadership capabilities.
Research: When Is Leniency the Right Response to Employee Misconduct?
Managers often grapple with whether to be lenient or punitive when addressing employee misconduct. While leniency may seem like the empathetic or pragmatic choice, research suggests it has complex and often unintended consequences. Managers who choose leniency experience mixed emotions — pride in showing grace but guilt for deviating from rules — which can impact their energy and engagement. Meanwhile, employees closely observe managerial responses, often perceiving leniency as unfair unless there is a compelling reason for compassion. The key to effective leniency lies in balancing consistency, fairness, and context. Before opting for leniency, managers should: 1) Anticipate the presence of big emotions, 2) assess the individual’s needs, and 3) take a look from others’ perspectives.
The Risks of Underestimating Competition from China
Global executives in far too many industries are waiting to see Chinese products in their own markets before they take them seriously. But tariffs, geopolitics, and China’s evolving approach to global expansion mean that any company with a “wait and see” strategy will often be the last to recognize where things are headed. By the time executives have seen these products in their home market, many will already have been successful globally. BYD is a case in point: Most Americans have never heard of the company, even though it is the most popular maker of electric vehicles in many global markets. This article discusses China’s rapid emergence as a proving ground for innovative products with global appeal and then recommends four ways in which executives who hope to compete globally should respond.
The Hidden Toll of Meeting Hangovers
Over one quarter of workplace meetings leave employees with lingering negative effects such as lowered engagement and productivity that can last hours. This is called a meeting hangover . To avoid the effects of a meeting hangover, those running meetings should: facilitate meetings to bring in everyone’s voices, keep meetings small, create action plans instead of agendas, use time wisely and respectfully, demand accountability, and proactively identify steps to address any concerns. If you experience a bad meeting, to avoid a hangover: take a mental break; take a physical break, if you can; and meet with colleagues to discuss and explore what went wrong.
Recalibrate Your Strategy in China with This Framework
Despite challenges such as mixed policies on foreign investment, renewed tariffs, and economic slowdown, China remains a critical market due to its large economy and growing middle class. To better address the complexities, the author recommends a 2×2 framework for global business leaders to refine their China strategies based on Beijing’s priorities and the global political sensitivity of their business operations. It categorizes sectors into four quadrants and offers targeted advice for each quadrant along with real-world examples. These range from critical technologies, such as semiconductors and AI, that are high priority and highly sensitive to consumer-focused sectors that are both low priority and low sensitivity. By staying adaptable and vigilant, global leaders can navigate China’s uncertainties and position their companies for sustained success.
Design Your Transformation for Simplicity — Not Efficiency
The vast majority of organizations today attempt transformation by focusing on efficiency, following what can be described as a “minimum viable product” strategy. Business leaders taking this approach prioritize speed at every turn, trying to implement transformed workflows — and thereby the transformation itself — as quickly as possible to begin extracting value sooner to keep up with the pace of change they are confronting. While a seemingly common-sense approach, Gartner research found that in the context of functional transformation, the efficiency-focused approach has almost no impact on improving the success of a transformation. An alternate approach, which they call “designed simplicity,” improves the chance of transformation success while reducing the risk of unintended consequences.
When Activist Investors Ask for Board Seats
Activist investors are making frequent demands for board seats—and having more success in gaining them. To deal with this, companies and directors should take a set of proactive actions before they become a target, and be ready to utilize reactive strategies if they are targeted. Using these best practices will ensure better outcomes for all stakeholders.
6 Lessons for Startups from a Museum Dedicated to Failure
Recent data shows that U.S. startup failures have increased by 60% in the past year. And every failed product or company carries a price: wasted resources, lost jobs, tarnished reputations. To understand more about risk-taking and failure, Sean Jacobsohn has catalogued more than 1,000 failed products and businesses in a collection he calls the Failure Museum. He has identified six warning signs of failure, and offers lessons to ensure entrepreneurs learn from these mistakes.
5 Signs Your Optimism Is Hurting Your Team
Maintaining a positive outlook is critical for good leadership. Your optimism can inspire your team, drive creativity, and foster a productive work environment. But there’s a fine line between constructive positivity and its harmful counterpart: toxic positivity. It might sound like a made-up problem, but it’s a significant issue in lots of workplaces. When optimism becomes excessive or dismissive of real challenges, it can backfire, leaving your team feeling unheard and alienated. Recognizing the signs of toxic positivity in yourself can be tricky, but it’s key to building real connections and supporting your team. Here are five signs to look out for in how you act, talk, and behave — and better ways to respond.
Why DeepSeek Shouldn’t Have Been a Surprise
The Chinese startup DeepSeek shocked many when its new model challenged established American AI companies despite being smaller, more efficient, and significantly cheaper. However, management theory — specifically disruption theory — could have predicted that a challenger like this would inevitably come along. After all, disruptive innovation is all about low-cost alternatives that aren’t cutting-edge but perform adequately for many users. This, it seems, is exactly how DeepSeek has created the shockwave that it has. DeepSeek isn’t sui generis. It’s operating along similar lines to many other Chinese, which differ from their American counterparts in two significant ways: 1) They often use cheaper hardware and leverage an open (and therefore cheaper) architecture to reduce cost, and 2) many Chinese LLMs are customized for domain-specific (narrower) applications and not generic tasks. Management theory also offers insight on how companies should proceed from here. On the one hand, a benefit of having multiple LLM models deployed within an organization is diversification of risk. On the other hand, a benefit of working with a single supplier is reduced administrative costs and better understanding of capabilities on both sides of the partnership. Prior management theories also suggest a third possibility: plural governance, which involves using a combination of external suppliers and internal developers to leverage an emerging technology.
Research: What Explains the “Vibecession”?
Many reports have shown that Americans are pessimistic about the economy — and their place in it — despite indicators that the labor market is robust and the economy is thriving. In order to explore why this pessimism persists, researchers at data and technnology firm Numerator analyzed the spending habits of 150,000 customers from 2019 to 2024 and then surveyed a representative sample (over 4,500 people) to examine what’s driving that sentiment. They found that people are spending more and doing better than they were before the pandemic, but they’re also having to put in more effort, which leaves them frustrated and tired. Additionally the gaps in spending habits between income brackets has widened greatly since 2021—those in the highest income bracket are spending relatively much more than those in the lowest bracket, making those who earn less feel left behind.
How Deconstructing Jobs Can Change Your Organization
Many organizations are experimenting with “job deconstruction,” a new way of organizing work where employees’ skills are dynamically matched with specific tasks or projects rather than through fixed roles. While this is a potentially transformative organizing principle for enhancing talent deployment across organizations, its implementation is not without challenges. Research highlights three tensions in particular which, if left unchecked, risk alienating employees and failing to deliver the benefits of job deconstruction: Balancing autonomy and control, balancing detachment and belonging, and balancing growth and stability. Implementing guardrails that place the human experience front and center can buffer against the negative effects of these tensions.