Leadership

• August 2020
• Case

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Amy Hernandez Turcios

Mary Guerrero was a first-generation Latina and an investment banking analyst at a top tier bank on Wall Street—Bulge Bracket Bank (BBB). She was passionate about increasing representation of Latinx talent at her firm. She was already doing a lot of individual work to make this happen (e.g. reviewing candidate resumes at 2am after she had finished her assigned work). She wanted to scale her efforts and debated whether she should build a broader coalition to move the needle on Latinx talent representation despite having a demanding full-time workload.

More Research

• August 2020
• Case

By: Ryan Raffaelli

This multimedia case asks students to consider how leaders of non-profit organizations manage difficult financial, operational, and cultural turnarounds. Since its founding in 1947, St. Anthony Shrine had been a central partner in serving the Downtown Boston community. But in 2002, a steep decline in church attendance seesawed with a growing need to serve the poor and marginalized in the community. The group of Roman Catholic Franciscan Friars, who lived at and managed the Shrine, responded by making a strategic shift from a traditional ministry model to a social service model. However, the decision to focus on social services led to costly programming. After years of accumulated operational inefficiencies, financial missteps, and personnel problems, the friars faced a crisis that required drastic change. In 2013, Father Tom Conway, a Franciscan priest who held Ph.D. in accounting, was appointed the Shrine's new Executive Director. Upon arrival, Fr. Tom confronted a culture of fear that negatively affected the morale of the staff and friars. He also realized that the Shrine’s depleted finances and operational inefficiencies would require bold action to ensure its doors would remain open. The case examines Fr. Tom’s efforts to turn around the finances and operations at the Shrine while also bolstering low employee morale. The case is designed to help students explore how leaders manage a successful turnaround effort. This multimedia case requires minimal pre-class student preparation. In class, instructors show a sequence of video clips, followed by a series of discussions that unfold during the session.

More Research

• July 2020
• Case

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2005, Vineet Nayar, the former CEO and Vice Chairman of HCL Technologies, and his wife, Anupama Nayar, committed $100 million of their personal wealth to found Sampark Foundation—a grant-making philanthropy with a mission to transform learning outcomes for 20 million children in rural government schools by 2025. By 2013, it was clear that Sampark was never going to reach 20 million children by writing grants. Vineet stepped out of the corporate world and over the next six years, applied the lessons he learned about leading change at HCL to transform Sampark into a “disruptive design shop” that leveraged frugal innovation and a “Teachers First” model of change to revolutionize India’s primary education system. By 2019, at $1 per child per annum, Sampark’s 130 employees had touched the lives of over 7 million students and 200,000 teachers across 90,000 public schools—unprecedented scale in the Indian education context and evidence that their “Teachers First” strategy was working. Demand for Sampark’s program was growing rapidly and Vineet now had the opportunity to reach 50 million children. Vineet had always believed in the transformative power of technology and had to determine whether Sampark could transition to a “Digital First” model.

More Research

• July 2020
• Case

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2005, Vineet Nayar, the former CEO and Vice Chairman of HCL Technologies, and his wife, Anupama Nayar, committed $100 million of their personal wealth to found Sampark Foundation—a grant-making philanthropy with a mission to transform learning outcomes for 20 million children in rural government schools by 2025. By 2013, it was clear that Sampark was never going to reach 20 million children by writing grants. Vineet stepped out of the corporate world and over the next six years, applied the lessons he learned about leading change at HCL to transform Sampark into a “disruptive design shop” that leveraged frugal innovation and a “Teachers First” model of change to revolutionize India’s primary education system. By 2019, at $1 per child per annum, Sampark’s 130 employees had touched the lives of over 7 million students and 200,000 teachers across 90,000 public schools—unprecedented scale in the Indian education context and evidence that their “Teachers First” strategy was working. Demand for Sampark’s program was growing rapidly and Vineet now had the opportunity to reach 50 million children. Vineet had always believed in the transformative power of technology and had to determine whether Sampark could transition to a “Digital First” model.

More Research