Business management

Recently my fellow HBR blogger Daniel Markovitz suggested that stretch goals can be demotivating, and should be replaced by confidence-building "quick...

For most of us, starting at a new company brings up those same anxieties we felt when starting in a new school as a child. All of a sudden you don't have...

Here's a cautionary tale of cultural disempowerment: A number of years ago, one of my colleagues was asked to help reduce bureaucracy and speed up decision-making...

Your customers, employees, and investors all care about it.

Why you should broaden your organizational perspective.

A recent analysis of 35,000 manufacturing plants found that those with more-structured management practices were more likely to acquire ones with less-structured...

John and Peter are two salesmen for the XYZ corporation. John sells twice as much as Peter. John earns twice as much as Peter, right? Wrong. John may even earn less. The XYZ corporation’s sales compensation plan is not unique in the modern business world. In the past decade many companies have turned to sophisticated […]

The CEO wants to increase collaboration and cut costs with an open-plan work space, but the knowledge workers say they need their walls, their doors, and their privacy.

What do the Burroughs Corporation, Crown Cork & Seal Co., Inc., and the Union Camp Corporation have in common? Although none of them enjoys a dominant market share, all three earn quite respectable returns on their equity, have healthy profit margins, and continue to maintain strong sales growth year after year. In this article, the […]

Four lessons from the military on managing stress.

The literature on CEO succession planning is nearly unanimous in its advice: Begin early, look first inside your company for exceptional talent, see that...

Normally, the Olympic Games are a positive force in marketing. Worldwide marketing expenditures increase as official sponsors and unofficial free-riders attach themselves to the Olympic logo, to particular sports, national teams or individual athletes. Global brands, in particular, see the Olympics and World Cup soccer as the two most important international sporting events; brand linkage […]

Instead of focusing on who’s “ahead,” focus on who’s actually best-suited to the top job.

Three reasons almost every organization is so bad at holding people responsible.

Be fair and don’t panic.

How will consumers behave as we emerge from this downturn? Though recessions differ in their causes, depth, and duration, it's possible to anticipate...

I was just a year out of college, and interviewing for a sales assistant position at PaineWebber. One of my prospective bosses offered me $24,000. I countered with $27,000. He pulled out his calculator like a gun from a holster, punched in $3,000, divided it by 52, and in a clipped tone responded, “That’s only […]

Samsung’s Lee Kun-hee was in power, then out of power, and is now in power again. And that’s not making life easy for his former employee Kim Yong-chul. As reported today, the latter is in a form of career exile after accusing his boss and other top executives of corruption. The complaint got results: Lee […]

Annual spending on executive coaching in the United States is estimated at $1 billion. Yet, information about coaching's effectiveness is scarce and unreliable....

Findings from a study of more than 20 million online reviews.