Faculty News
May 22 2012
Are You Sleeping With Your Smartphone?
Do you check your wireless device when you're not working? What causes you to do so? Does the job require it? Do you like feeling needed? Yes, the client or customer might call. Yes, there are stresses from managing across time zones. Yes, there are real external and legitimate factors that affect how much we work. But, none of this adequately accounts for how much we are actually connected.
May 21 2012
Predictable Time Off: The Team Solution To Overcoming Constant Work Connection 
Reflecting on his relationship with his smartphone, one manager pronounced: "I love the thing and I hate it at the same time. The reason I love it is that it gives me so much power. And the reason I hate it is that it has so much power over me."
May 21 2012
How To Get A Celebrity Endorsement From The Queen Of England
The idea of signaling is not brand new. Companies have been signaling for decades, centuries even, using enticing packaging and pricey celebrity endorsements to showcase something special about their brand.
May 19 2012
Speaking out against the marriage amendment
Now that the debate over the Vikings stadium is settled, taking center stage is an issue that has far graver consequences for Minnesota's future: the marriage amendment. President Obama's unqualified support for same-sex marriage came on the heels of North Carolina's overwhelming vote to pass a constitutional amendment banning it.
May 16 2012
Good versus Bad, Rethinking Business Leadership
As Dean of Harvard Business School, I am privileged to meet amazing business leaders all over the world. Nearly every businessperson I meet inspires me. They are good people—committed to creating value through their businesses, bringing products and services to consumers, jobs and opportunities to employees, profits and returns for investors, and prosperity to their community.
May 14 2012
Message to Managers: Your Strategy Is Not What You Say It Is
If you study the root causes of business disasters and management missteps, you'll often find a predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. Many companies' decision-making systems are designed to steer investments to initiatives that offer the most tangible returns, so companies often favor these and short-change investments in initiatives that are crucial to their long-term strategies.
May 14 2012
Breaking the Smartphone Addiction
In her new book, Sleeping With Your Smartphone, Leslie Perlow explains how a small group of high-powered consultants made a concerted effort to disconnect from their mobile devices for a few predetermined hours every week—and how they became more productive as a result. This excerpt from the book introduces the idea the scheduled disconnecting process, dubbed "predictable time off," which helped these phone-addled employees to take better control of both their workdays and their lives.
May 14 2012
Clayton Christensen On How To Find Work That You Love
When we find ourselves stuck in unhappy careers, it is often the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of what truly motivates us, says Clayton Christensen, co-author of the new book "How Will You Measure Your Life?"
May 11 2012
Charlotte's competitive muscle
As America faces its most severe employment crisis since the Great Depression, business leaders in Charlotte are taking decisive actions to create sustainable jobs in this region. While the federal government has shown little progress in addressing the jobs issue, around the country local initiatives such as Charlotte's are demonstrating exactly what it takes to tackle these problems.
May 10 2012
Culture Takes Over When the CEO Leaves the Room
Here's a rough summary of our worldview: excellence = design x culture. Your job as a leader is to get both right. You must build a winning structure for your organization and then foster the often unspoken rules and values that will bring that structure to life.
May 09 2012
Stop Trying to Be the Super Manager: New Book
Bold, confident, visionary leaders who take their businesses in new directions are widely admired and sought after. Isn't that a key part of strategy and leadership? Yes, but: when confidence balloons into the belief that a good manager can win in any situation, the business is headed for trouble.
May 07 2012
Checking In with Employees (Versus Checking Up)
Recently we wrote about how managing for innovation requires balancing four critical factors to produce a highly motivated and creative workforce. Perhaps the most difficult of those balancing acts is ensuring that employees have clear, meaningful goals as well as considerable autonomy (PDF) in meeting those goals. It's not easy, but some companies have pulled it off — sometimes, rather ingeniously.
May 07 2012
Crush the "I'm Not Creative" Barrier
Did you know that if you think you are creative, you're more likely to actually be creative? This surprising fact pops up again and again in our research. In our database of over 6,000 professionals who have taken the Innovator's DNA self & 360 assessments, people (entrepreneurs and managers alike) who "agree" with the survey statement "I am creative" consistently deliver disruptive solutions...
May 07 2012
The Art of Haggling
When teaching negotiation skills, many educators now focus almost exclusively on an interest-based approach in which both parties openly collaborate to find a mutually satisfying solution. However, argues HBS Professor Mike Wheeler, it's important for students to know that there's still a time and place for old-school haggling.
May 03 2012
Does high stress trigger creativity at work?
Ask people how they feel about deadlines and you'll hear, "I hate them" or "I can't live without them." But quite often, it's both. So, what's the deal? My research team and I discovered the source of that ambivalence. On days with looming deadlines, people can feel both jazzed about their work and highly frustrated by distractions.
