Stanford University’s Charles O’Reilly has spent over 50 years studying organizational behavior. In his research on why companies fail, he’s observed something troubling: The same strong cultures that drive success often become the very thing that kills companies when markets shift. Adaption is key. In a conversation with MIT Sloan’s Donald Sull, O’Reilly breaks down…
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images In an age where artificial intelligence can generate presentation scripts, polish slides, and even give feedback to the tone of your voice during rehearsal, what sets presenters apart isn’t just content, it’s presence. When the moment matters, audiences still want a real person to show up. They want to…
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images Editor’s note: The author used GenAI tools as resources in the process of writing this article. In February, former Tesla AI director and OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy posted a casual humblebrag on X about his clever weekend coding approach: “There’s a new kind of coding I call ‘vibe coding,’…
Tenure. For many professionals in research and education, the word represents a major career milestone, offering them significant job security and status among their peers. “If you ask any professor or researcher, they will basically tell you that tenure is one of the most important moments, if not the most important moment, of their academic…
Change Needs More Than Vision Successful leadership during change is not defined by a bold vision alone, but by a leader’s ability to engage with complexity and lead with integrity. Understanding how to apply different forms of power and political skill enables leaders to manage resistance, build trust, and align diverse interests. Why Vision Isn’t…
Chris Gash/theispot.com The circular economy is a key enabler for businesses to achieve sustainability targets. However, traditional financial analysis models can be inadequate for evaluating circular business models. While circularity helps reduce waste, recover materials, and extend product lifespans, it also fundamentally changes how value is created and measured. Yet, most financial models remain rooted…
Amid great change and great demands, a strong workplace culture has never been more vital. Many people have endured negative work experiences: the monotony of uninspiring tasks, the absence of genuine camaraderie, or unclear, disjointed expectations that leave employees feeling unmoored. At the other end of the spectrum, the most powerful endorsement a workplace can…
Leadership experts have long championed the concept of a personal board of directors as a way for executives to surround themselves with a circle of trusted mentors, sponsors, and advisers. I’ve advocated for and practiced this model myself during the past several years. But here’s the twist: What if your board members didn’t have to…
Commercial digitalized talent management (DTM) systems promise to streamline talent decisions by providing best-practice frameworks for objectively identifying talent. But when we rely too heavily on these systems, we risk outsourcing critical strategic decisions to algorithms that don’t account for the nuances of your culture or strategic goals. So how can executives effectively design fit-for-purpose…
Over the last decade, business leaders have grown accustomed to weighing a business’s environmental, social, and governance situation when expanding into new foreign markets. But what about peace? “ESGP,” where the “P” stands for “peace,” recognizes the ways conflicts both threaten lives and inflict fallout on economies in the affected regions. Prices rise. Distribution runs…