Martin Konopka/EyeEm/Getty Images The use of virtual file-sharing platforms like Dropbox, Google Docs, and others has become ubiquitous in business, academic, and other settings. But is your team using such collaborative platforms as effectively as they could be?...

Jan Stromme/Getty Images CEOs are known for their confidence. It is, after all, one of the reasons they’ve made it to the top. And yet, that confidence sometimes flags, as we at leadership advisory firm Egon Zehnder learned from a survey  of 402 CEOs from...

PhotoAlto/Matthieu Spohn/Getty Images A recent survey by Deloitte of “aggressive adopters” of cognitive technologies found that 76% believe that they will “substantially transform” their companies within the next three years. There probably...

Valerio Gualandi/EyeEm/Getty Images Most people I know have a to-do list so long that it’s not clear that there’s an end to it. Some tasks, even quite important ones, linger unfinished for a long time, and it’s easy to start feeling guilty or ashamed...

Hayon Thapaliya/HBR Staff If you ran a fancy restaurant, would you want the chef also to clean dishes and mop the floor? Of course not. You’d hire others to do these things and let the chef focus on producing delicious food. This simple idea — that one...

HBR Staff The world’s 230 million knowledge workers are frazzled. Modern life is an interminable cacophony of emails, notifications, messages, alerts, feeds, data and information. 70% of us look at our phones within 30 minutes of waking up. All this causes...

spiderstock/Getty Images One of the biggest challenges facing management scientists has been the struggle to produce knowledge that is both academically rigorous and applicable to practicing managers. In an Academy of Management Journal editorial, we described two...

Paul Garbett for HBR No, it’s not just you. If you’ve ever doubted that you had your boss’s full attention while her laptop is open in front of her, stop doubting. In spite of her protests that “I’m listening, go ahead…,” she...

Hayon Thapaliya/HBR Staff We know that controlling what we pay attention to is the key to living an intentional life.  According to an informal poll of my clients, one of the biggest impediments to attention management is “O.P.P.” — other...

Hill Street Studios/Getty Images Public speaking affects people in different ways. Some people get jittery and anxious before they talk; they need to spend time calming themselves down before they go onstage. Other people want to make sure they have extra energy when...

Westend61/Getty Images In countries like India, South Africa, Italy, and the United States, institutional trust is declining. People have less faith in businesses, governments, and the media. But this is not a global trend. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals...

Noam Galai/Contributor/Getty Images I’ve been following Netflix since 2005, when I first visited its headquarters in Silicon Valley and interviewed Reed Hastings, its founder and CEO. I don’t think I’ve learned more about strategy, technology, and...

Kristie Rogers, an assistant professor of management at Marquette University, has identified a free and abundant resource most leaders aren’t giving employees enough of: respect. She explains the two types of workplace respect, how to communicate them, and what...

Alexander Baumann/The International Photo Co./Getty Images Ignorance may be bliss for some, but ask anyone in commerce or finance, and they will make it abundantly clear: Ignorance is risk. For that reason, U.S. markets embrace reasonable regulation to ensure...

Michael Porter and Jim Heppelman explain how augmented reality will change how we work. from HBR.org https://ift.tt/2KY21wU

HBR Staff/YASUYOSHI CHIBA/Getty Images During Jeff Immelt’s tenure as CEO of General Electric, from 2001 until 2017, the company’s stock price fell by over 30%, a decline of roughly $150 billion in shareholder value. Since Immelt’s departure,...

John Fedele/Getty Images Today’s young professionals grew up in an age of mind-boggling technological change, seeing the growth of the internet, the invention of the smartphone, and the development of machine-learning systems. These advances all point toward the...

Walker and Walker/Getty Images Rivalry is everywhere. We see rivalries in sports, business, school, and basically any arena where there is competition.  Whether it is rivalry between people (Bill Gates versus Steve Jobs; Roger Federer versus Rafael Nadal),...

Walker and Walker/Getty Images Rivalry is everywhere. We see rivalries in sports, business, school, and basically any arena where there is competition.  Whether it is rivalry between people (Bill Gates versus Steve Jobs; Roger Federer versus Rafael Nadal),...

H.Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images When I speak to large groups about leadership, one question I often ask is, “How many of you have ever received a compliment from your boss that actually offended you?” Without exception, more than two-thirds...

Helen King/Getty Images Here’s a work scenario many of us know too well: You are in a meeting and your manager brings up a project that needs to be assigned. It’s not particularly challenging work, but it’s time-consuming, unlikely to drive revenue,...

Martin Barraud/Getty Images I remember the first time I felt old as a manager — more than 10 years ago now. It was at a lunch with my new team, when I mentioned the first “45” I bought with my own money as a kid. One of my direct reports, who was 10...

Martin Barraud/Getty Images I remember the first time I felt old as a manager — more than 10 years ago now. It was at a lunch with my new team, when I mentioned the first “45” I bought with my own money as a kid. One of my direct reports, who was 10...

Pat LaCroix/Getty Images Brad was leading a difficult turnaround of his company and had decided to fire his head of sales, who was a nice guy but wasn’t performing. Three months later, he still hadn’t fired him. I asked him why. His answer?...

With the announced nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, President Donald Trump has the privilege of nominating a second Supreme Court justice in his first term. But it’s an opportunity that...

Visuals Unlimited Inc/Science VU/Getty Images After a month with no new cases, the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) appears to be under control and weeks away from officially ending. Less than three months since it was declared, and after only...

HBR Staff/Douglas Sacha/Getty Images Sex-based harassment is pervasive in the workplace, and it’s disproportionately experienced by women. It can include sexual harassment but is more broadly defined, including any behavior that derogates, demeans, or...

HBR STAFF/wragg/Getty Images What’s the best way to boost creativity on your team? There’s really no simple answer. Even the research is split on the best approach to take. One view is that the key to creative breakthroughs is being able to combine or...

Are you struggling with the complications of working in a family business? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Ted Clark, who runs the Center for Family Business at...

Buda Mendes/Getty Images Technology is disrupting every industry and area of life, and work is no exception. One of the main career implications of the digital revolution is a shift in demand for human expertise. For instance, LinkedIn’s talent research shows...

HBR Staff/Image Source/Getty Images Cost-plus pricing is a lot like the romance novel genre, in that it’s widely ridiculed yet tremendously popular. Almost every manager I know will claim they hate pricing based only on costs. Yet cost-plus pricing remains the...

HBR Staff/Phatharapol Nopharat/EyeEm/Getty Images As a startup founder, I’m constantly struggling to recruit top talent without breaking the bank. We can’t always match market salaries, but we need exceptional (read: expensive) talent in order to build...

Panayiotis Tzamaros/NurPhoto via Getty Images There’s a fundamental contradiction when organizations ask employees to maintain a fast pace of work and be creative. What often happens in hectic workplaces is that employees resort to autopilot or habitual...

pm images/Getty Images Late last month, California passed a sweeping consumer privacy law that might force significant changes on companies that deal in personal data — and especially those operating in the digital space. The law’s passage comes on...

Tara Moore/Getty Images In a famous scene in the 1967 movie The Graduate, a family friend takes aside Dustin Hoffman’s character, Benjamin Braddock, and whispers in a conspiratorial tone, “Plastics… There’s a great future in plastics.”...

Patricia de Melo Moreira/bloomberg/Getty Images It’s widely believed that the most successful entrepreneurs are young. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg were in their early twenties when they launched what would become world-changing companies. Do...

Howard Yu, Lego Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD Business School in Switzerland, discusses how the industrial cluster in the Swiss city of Basel is a unique example of enduring competitive advantage. He explains how early dye makers were able to...

HBR Staff/Richard Newstead/Getty Images “Tell me about your career goals.” How often have you said this to a person you’re managing or mentoring, only to get a blank stare in return? Perhaps the person confides that they...

Tim Robberts/Getty Images There is a crying need for companies to enlist their supply chain management departments in the fight against cyberattackers. According to our research, over 60% of reported attacks on publicly traded U.S. firms in 2017 were...

Alexander Spatari/Getty Images Sometimes the wrong people get promoted. They might be deceitful and unscrupulously manipulative (what psychologists call “Machiavellian”); or impulsive and thrill-seeking without any sense of guilt (psychopathic); or...

hbr staff/matthew henry/unsplash The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements continue to create a tidal wave of media activity and increased awareness of sexual harassment and misconduct. But have they created positive changes in workplaces? Are people seeing healthy and...

HBR Staff/Image Source/Getty Images The stigma of asking for or being assigned an executive coach is vanishing quickly. The growth of the industry tells us so. In the U.S. alone, $1 billion was spent on business, personal and relationship coaches last year, according...

Dell Technologies surveyed 3,800 business leaders from around the world to uncover their forecasts for the next decade. The research revealed a divided vision of the future but common ground on the need to transform and how. Live from Dell Technologies World...

hbr staff/Yury Vinokurov/EyeEm/Getty Images Finding digital talent is one of the biggest challenges facing companies today. But it’s particularly difficult for large, traditional firms, especially those which operate in consolidated, non-growth industries (think...

baranozdemir/Getty Images There is a healthcare crisis in the U.S. which cries out for breakthrough healthcare delivery innovations that aim at significant cost reductions and wider coverage. In 2016, the U.S. spent a staggering $3.2 trillion, or almost 18% of its...

Karyna Aslanova/EyeEm/Getty Images Being laid off is one of the most difficult experiences that you can face in your career. As an executive coach, I’ve seen firsthand the shock, grief, and anxiety that generally accompanies this type of job loss....

Maskot/Getty Images Many efforts to apply machine learning get stuck due to concerns about the “black box” — that is, the lack of transparency around why a system does what it does. Sometimes this is because people want to understand why some...

Maskot/Getty Images Many efforts to apply machine learning get stuck due to concerns about the “black box” — that is, the lack of transparency around why a system does what it does. Sometimes this is because people want to understand why some...

afp/stringer/Getty Images Who killed GE? Of course, GE is not dead, and it may well revive and flourish as a company. After all, IBM came back from the dead in the 1990s. But the GE model is dead — and there’s a long list of possible suspects. The GE...

hbr staff/shannon miller/Getty Images There is a small, disheveled baby robin making her very first steps in my garden today. She looks a bit dazed and exhausted, her lovely yellow down all awry. I know exactly what she feels like. She looks like a lot of people I...

mattjeacock/Getty Images We all have life events that distract us from work from time to time — an ailing family member, a divorce, the death of a friend. You can’t expect someone to be at their best at such times. But as a manager what can you expect? How...

mattjeacock/Getty Images We all have life events that distract us from work from time to time — an ailing family member, a divorce, the death of a friend. You can’t expect someone to be at their best at such times. But as a manager what can you expect? How...

yagi studio/Getty Images Chun Hin is a senior manager at a Hong Kong investment bank. Every morning, he listens to Bloomberg radio on his way to work and used to read each issue of the Economist from cover to cover in an effort to continuously improve his English. As...

hbr staff/Benne Ochs/Getty Images Online reviews can play a big role in influencing people’s purchase decisions, but what makes a review most persuasive one way or the other? Certainly bad reviews can dissuade customers, but it turns out that some good reviews...