MIT Sloan Management Review

When generative AI’s capacity for strategy creation is put to the test, it reveals where its strengths lie — and where humans still have the edge. https://mitsmr.com/45BcbJw

CEOs almost never go it alone: They rely on a strong senior management team to succeed. Yet new CEOs frequently contend with top leadership teams that are poorly aligned and consume energy rather than propel the organization forward. This makes building a well-functioning team one of their first and most important tasks. Our research and experience suggest that the secret to establishing a good team lies in understanding and addressing a fundamental paradox of leadership. That is, the people who make it to the top are highly competitive and personally ambitious; but to be effective, they must also be able to collaborate for the good of the whole. https://mitsmr.com/3zcpBQZ

Managers in some organizations see the potential for analyzing highly granular physiological data to improve operational efficiency. Financial institutions Barclays and Lloyds use heat-sensing devices under desks to monitor which workstations are used frequently in order to improve office layouts, desk assignments, and resource allocation. Mining company BHP uses smart hats that measure brainwaves to detect and track truckers’ levels of fatigue, to protect them and improve company safety. These applications can benefit both the companies and their employees. On the other hand, even the most well-intended applications of biometrics can solicit heightened levels of creepiness, which, according to human-computer interaction researchers, refers to the feelings of unease when technology extracts information that users unknowingly or reluctantly have provided. This feeling is exacerbated when consumers fear that biometric information may be used to harm them or discriminate against them. Balancing these conflicting interests is tricky, and compromising one in favor of the other can have costly consequences for organizations. Public opposition to Amazon Fresh’s use of video surveillance at checkout, and accusations that video recordings of customers were being analyzed by offshore workers, contributed to the grocery chain eventually discontinuing video surveillance in its stores. Such examples give rise to an important conversation about whether and how organizations can deploy biometrics without being creepy and without violating people’s rights to be respected and treated ethically. Learn more: https://mitsmr.com/3XmFc9R

Four decision rights guardrails: 1. Putting purpose into action 2. Democratizing data 3. Establishing minimum viable policies 4. Providing appropriate resources ?? https://mitsmr.com/3XmFc9R

Effective leadership in a hybrid world requires different skills that go beyond traditional team leadership:https://mitsmr.com/3cXrcg6

Discover the latest strategies in our 2024 fall special report, where leaders can learn to inspire, activate, and trust their teams to execute strategic initiatives effectively. This report covers essential topics such as creating agile teams, shifting organizational culture to activate talent, balancing autonomy in the C-suite, and empowering ethical decision-making. These methods, combined with a clear vision, enhance alignment with change initiatives, enabling employees to contribute more significantly. Learn more: https://mitsmr.com/4ehWhri

The most limiting and dangerous mindset — the #Sociopath — can be found in individuals who exhibit a reckless disregard for anyone besides themselves Learn more: https://mitsmr.com/2LwPyNg

Leading organizational change according to the conventional management playbook is difficult and often frustrating, and such efforts rarely stay on track. Executives set out with the sound ambition to transform traditionally hierarchical and siloed organizations into more agile, collaborative, and innovative ones: They formulate a compelling vision, communicate it, and try to inspire employees to do what’s required to achieve it. But they often find that people resist change, even when they agree that it’s needed. The top-down approach rarely wins engagement and commitment to a new vision. In our hard-won experience in organizational transformation projects at several companies, we found that the idea of large-scale transformation can leave employees feeling overwhelmed and insecure about their ability to thrive in the new order. But we learned that by deploying a strengths-based approach at the individual level and then using it to constitute and manage diverse teams, we could win employee commitment to transformation. This approach can help reduce anxiety and burnout, increase inclusive and collaborative behaviors, and cut across hierarchical and functional boundaries. It creates agents of change with the power to contribute to a shared purpose and bold ambition rather than victims of change who feel powerless and fearful. Based on our experiences implementing the approach detailed in this article, we’ve distilled the following four steps for successfully driving transformation. Read more: https://mitsmr.com/3AZAbvh

In April 2020, COVAX was established to accelerate vaccine development and ensure global equitable access. It adopted the World Health Organization’s (WHO) fair allocation framework for proportionally distributing doses to participating countries and targeted groups to reduce mortality and protect countries’ health systems. Under this framework, the first recipients of the vaccines should have been healthcare workers, swiftly followed by the vulnerable and elderly — on a global scale. To better understand what motivated pharmaceutical companies to engage with COVAX—or not—we conducted research between November 2020 and early May 2021. During this period, we interviewed key representatives from the pharmaceutical industry and major stakeholder groups such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, WHO, and the World Bank. We also conducted a systematic media analysis and in-depth study of industry documents. Our findings revealed the key factors that facilitated or impeded pharmaceutical company engagement with COVAX. All of the internal factors were mediated to varying degrees by company leadership. Arguably, some external factors were too, such as lack of trust toward pharma, a long-standing problem that company leaders could do more to address. Learn more about what makes companies do the right thing: https://mitsmr.com/3AZ6TNc

What life stage is your company in — startup, growth and maturity, or decline? Perhaps the word “maturity” or “decline” made you wince. “While no leader wants to see their business in decline, the best response to aging as a business is to accept that it’s happening and run the company to reflect its age,” writes Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at NYU Stern School of Business. However, Damodoran notes, many companies mishandle aging. Some even fight aging by incentivizing managers to make low-odds growth bets using other people’s money. Companies can try to reverse the aging process through renewals, revamps, or rebirths. In the full article below, learn the ups and downs of each option, and how to redefine what success and failure will look like in a mature company.