Tsedal Neeley (@tsedal) is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration, Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Research Strategy, and Faculty Chair of the Christensen Center for Teaching and Learning at the Harvard Business School. Recognized as a Top Voice on LinkedIn in remote work and one of the 100 people transforming business who are innovating, sparking trends, and tackling global challenges by Business Insider, her work focuses on how leaders can scale their organizations by developing and implementing global and digital strategies. She regularly advises top leaders who are embarking on virtual work and large scale-change that involves global expansion, digital transformation, and becoming more agile.
She is the co-author of the book, The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms and AI, which introduces the "30% rule"--the minimum threshold that gives us just enough digital literacy to understand and take advantage of the digital threads woven into the fabric of our world. Her book, Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere, provides remote workers and leaders with the best practices necessary to perform at the highest levels in their organizations. Her book, The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations chronicles the behind-the-scenes globalization process of a company over the course of five years. She has also published extensively in leading scholarly and practitioner-oriented outlets such as Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Management Science, Journal of International Business, Strategic Management Journal and Harvard Business Review, and her work has been widely covered in media outlets such as CNBC, Bloomberg, BBC, CNN, Financial Times, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist. Her HBS case, Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, is one of the most used cases worldwide on the subject of virtual work.
Tsedal has popular online courses including Remote Work Revolution for Everyone and Leading in a Remote Environment (with Ronald Heifetz). She co-chairs the executive offering, Leading Global Businesses, which helps top leaders develop emerging and mature market strategies in a global and increasingly digital economy. She also teaches extensively in executive programs such as the Harvard Business Analytics Program. She has previously been the course head for the first-year required Leadership and Organizational Behavior course in the MBA program that focuses on how to lead effectively; the curriculum addresses group behavior and performance, organization design, change and how to align people behind a common vision.
Prior to her academic career, Tsedal spent ten years working for companies like Lucent Technologies and The Forum Corporation in various roles, including strategies for global customer experience, 360-degree performance software management systems, sales force/sales management development, and business flow analysis for telecommunication infrastructures. A sought-after speaker with extensive international experience, she is fluent in four languages. She holds a patent for her software simulation on global collaboration and is a member of Rakuten People & Culture Lab Advisory Board.
Tsedal is a recipient of the prestigious Charles M. Williams Award for Outstanding Teaching in Executive Education and the Greenhill Award for outstanding contributions to Harvard Business School (two-time recipient). She serves on the Board of Directors of Brightcove, Brown Capital Management, Harvard Business Publishing and the Partnership Inc.
Tsedal received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Management Science and Engineering, specializing in Work, Technology and Organizations. Tsedal was named as one of the Top Management Thinkers in the World by Thinkers50, honored as a Stanford Distinguished Alumnus Scholar and was a Stanford University School of Engineering Lieberman award recipient for excellence in teaching and research.
Insider’s most prestigious list profiles 100 business leaders across 10 distinct sectors who are innovating, sparking trends, and tackling global challenges.
Transformers nominated in these categories are the disrupters and thought leaders that are driving unprecedented change, both for their organizations and communities, and across the global business world.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I answered HBR subscribers’ most pressing questions about the sudden shift to remote work. Recently, I called on readers again to send me their questions about transitioning to hybrid work. I’ve answered the most frequently asked ones here. They cover everything from inclusive hybrid planning to onboarding; measuring performance to fostering connection and trust; and using digital tools effectively while also fortifying cybersecurity and transforming physical spaces. It’s an essential guide for any leader managing this transition.
There’s little doubt that how we work changed dramatically during the sudden, unexpected and extensive experiment in remote work brought on by the pandemic. Many employees, working at home, became more efficient, productive and happier; others struggled and desperately missed office life.
Now, as returning to the office becomes more feasible, the temptation for many managers is to consider the past year and a half as an aberration—a period that’s best left behind and forgotten. Or they will take some of the emergency pandemic practices and consider them a permanent fixture of the workplace.
Bosses do both of those at their peril. If managers ignore some of the lessons remote work has taught us, empty offices may remain the norm—but this time it will be because resentful employees have moved on to other companies that better serve their new needs.
Whether dealing with employees who are working in the office, remotely or on a hybrid schedule, here are some of the key mistakes that managers should avoid with returning employees.
