HBR IdeaCast

As you advance in your career, you develop the skills to lead teams and manage direct reports. But no matter your role or seniority, you’ll always need to manage those above you and to develop the right relationships to progress. The secret to managing up, says Melody Wilding, is being strategic and thoughtful in several key kinds of conversations with your boss and boss’s boss—including finding a...

Whether you're a fan of Taylor Swift or not, no one can deny her success as both a music star and businesswoman. Her career has been a masterclass in everything from customer connection to innovation, decision-making to digital adaption, offering lessons for people in any industry. HBR senior editor Kevin Evers investigated Swift's rise and evolution for his new book, There's Nothing Like This: Th...

Many organizational leaders believe remote work is here to stay. Others are requiring employees return to the workplace. But Prithriwaj “Raj” Choudhury, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, says it’s not a simple managerial choice between two options. He explains three main variations of hybrid work: quarterly, monthly, and weekly. And he shares three key challenges to remote work: i...

Whether we’re interacting with colleagues, clients, friends, family members or strangers, conversations are the way most of us build — or break — relationships. And yet we don’t often think deeply about how to approach this type of casual communication.  Alison Wood Brooks, associate professor at Harvard Business School, has studied what it takes to create a great conversation and offers research-...

Sales commissions act as a crucial lever to increase revenue and customers. But sometimes those incentives bring unintended consequences. New research identifies eight ways that salespeople across industries cheat or bend the rules to maximize their gain—often at the expense of the company's bottom line and customer loyalty. Huntsman School of Business professor Timothy Gardner and consultant Coli...

What does it take to really energize people and motivate them toward a goal?  Inspirational leadership might seem idiosyncratic and hard to quantify, but, according to Adam Galinsky, professor at Columbia Business School, it involves three key elements: having a vision, setting an example, and mentoring. His research shows this is true across industries and geographies, and he offers advice on how...

There are all kinds of productivity tools out there promising to help you make the most of your day. Some people swear by timeboxing: the method of reserving time on your calendar each day for each task you want to get done, and then truly focusing on that one thing at a time. The return on merging your to-do list with your calendar like this, says Marc Zao-Sanders, is higher productivity, better...

In an age of rapidly changing technology, it’s more important than ever for organizations to effectively support employee learning. Gianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor at INSEAD, has studied leaders who do this well and says they fall into three categories: custodians, challengers, or connectors. He explains which type of learning leader works best in which contexts and how all three approa...

Despite all the ways that artificial intelligence promises to improve our lives, many consumers feel anxious and are averse to AI-powered products and services. For marketers and product managers, it’s vital to understand what is driving that resistance to adoption. Julian De Freitas is an assistant professor in the marketing unit at Harvard Business School. He has identified five main ways people...

Amid the backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the United States and elsewhere, leaders in both the public and private sectors are reevaluating their organizations' policies and goals. While many employers and employees still value and support DEI, a growing chorus argues that such programs run counter to meritocratic ideals. Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi of the Har...

Many consumers are buying electric vehicles, thanks to sportscar-like performance, government incentives, and personal motivations to minimize climate change. But the EV industry overall has revved and sputtered in unpredictable ways and offers a case study in managing innovation, regulation, and competition. Mike Colias, deputy bureau chief at The Wall Street Journal, explains the complex landsca...

As organizations and workers face a new wave of technological change, Deborah Perry Piscione argues that we're at a pivot point where old models of employment will be replaced by entirely new ones. Get ready for GenAI-assisted, decentralized, sometimes autonomous workforces, and “jobs” that span gigs, companies, industries, geographies, and the metaverse.  Piscione describes this new reality and h...

If you've ever tried to change things at work, you know the headwinds you face. Teams and processes are often trapped in longstanding, ineffective patterns that are hard to budge. Dan Heath, senior fellow at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, explains proven techniques to reset. Those include making the problem visible, jolting incremental progress to start gaining traction, and motivatin...

Our families, schools, and workplaces often train us to comply: taking on additional work when asked, agreeing with the group's consensus, and going along to get along with our bosses and colleagues. So, even when we're told to "think different" and "embrace conflict," we often hold ourselves back. But when individuals learn to say no more often, it can have huge benefits for their careers and org...

High standards, attention to detail, and self-control are invaluable qualities at work. They’re also aspects of perfectionism, something to which many high achievers credit much of their success. But Ellen Hendriksen, clinical psychologist at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, says being your own worst critic can also lead to constant dissatisfaction at work and alienati...

We all know the stereotypes of leaders who use charisma, manipulation, domineering behavior, or their status in the hierarchy to exert control. But there is another type of leader whose power isn’t necessarily related to their position on the org chart. Chris Lipp has spent years studying people who’ve developed this “personal power” that is rooted in their internal values. Lipp is a professor at...

Asking questions is a powerful way to build trust, exchange ideas, and unlock value in organizations. And it is a skill that can be honed to make work conversations more productive, say Leslie K. John and Alison Wood Brooks, professors at Harvard Business School. In this classic episode, they join former host Sarah Green Carmichael to talk through insights from behavioral science research. They sh...

Many companies make money by selling goods that need to be constantly replaced; think fast fashion, or tech devices that come out in new versions each year. But according to Vijay Govindarajan, professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, smart organizations are increasingly eschewing that strategy for one focused on products that grow with the consumer through creative design or software upd...

Hollywood is known for huge personalities and behemoth production studios taking big swings. But critics worry that the movie industry is playing it way too safe recently — by churning out remakes and fleshing out franchises, rather than dreaming up new things. And the same can be said of many established businesses in other industries. Larry Kasanoff, a movie producer and former studio head, has...

We all know that innovative thinking is vital to individual, team, and organizational success. But we still often put creativity in a box, assuming it's only for people in certain roles or best attempted once a year at an off-site brainstorming session. Marketing executives Kathryn Jacob and Sue Unerman argue that we all need to be exercising our creative muscles more regularly, especially in the...

Twenty-five years ago, a Harvard Business School case study featured the exceptional networking practices of Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist Heidi Roizen. This was before the rise of online social networks and the ubiquity of social media. But today, Roizen says that those developments have not fundamentally changed how she builds and maintains strong personal and professional r...

Palo Alto Networks is the leading global cybersecurity company. Over his six-year tenure there, CEO Nikesh Arora has expanded and reorganized the organization, including safely incorporating generative AI into all of its products. Nikesh explains how he’s managing new opportunities and risks in the age of generative AI – including the single cybersecurity risk that keeps him up at night. He also s...

This week marks a huge milestone for the HBR IdeaCast: our 1000th episode! Since the podcast launched in 2006, so much has happened. What hasn’t changed is our commitment to sharing in-depth conversations with expert thinkers on key business, management, and leadership issues. To celebrate, hosts Alison Beard and Curt Nickisch have scoured the archive for ten episodes with top-notch insights to gi...

Baidu launched in 2000 as a search engine platform. Two decades later, it’s become one of the few companies in the world that offers a full AI stack. Its core businesses span mobile, cloud, intelligent driving and other growth initiatives, and its products and services have attracted hundreds of millions of users and hundreds of thousands of enterprise customers. Leading all of that is co-founder,...

Imagine you’re leading a small organization, but you’re struggling to recruit and afford the senior talent you need to grow. You could hire a part-time executive. So-called “fractional leadership” is common in startups and is spreading to other businesses and nonprofits. But while a fast-growing number of senior leaders seek this work arrangement, many companies are unsure of how to go about it. T...