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Although the hybrid work model has been widely adopted among many businesses, the complications involving peer relationships and connections that it has introduced linger on. Relying on results from The CMO Survey, the authors derived a set of strategies to help leaders navigate organizational culture and the socialization of new employees during this era of digital transformation.

Historically speaking, working together in the same space-what is known as 'co-located' work-has been fundamental to maintaining managerial authority and control. The COVID-19 pandemic challenged this assumption head-on. Organizations the world overturned to remote work out of necessity; and for many, it went remarkably well. So well, in fact, that we now find ourselves in an era of hybrid work, The author presents three tactics for driving effective management and employee engagement in a hybrid work environment: providing employees with greater autonomy, building authentic intergroup relationships and harnessing the power of shared identity. All three enhance 'voluntary compliance'-which will always be required of employees, whether they are co-located or remote.

What distinguishes people who consistently make smart, data-driven decisions? It's not just exceptional analytic skills. These decision-makers balance data, experience and intuition. The authors call this approach to decision-making Quantitative Intuition. 'QI' breaks the allure that an abundance of data is a crystal ball that leads to perfect decisions. They provide a set of tools to enable people to quickly interrogate and integrate data to make effective decisions.

Imagine a shadowy future, hovering at the edges of the present state of things; a map of all the various ways in which the present can reinvent itself. This, say the authors, is the ever-present state known as 'the adjacent possible'. In this excerpt from their book (The Upside of Uncertainty), they explain how to tap into this expansive field of opportunity. Their six principles for achieving this include questioning assumptions, considering the worst-case scenario and purposely recombining things. They argue that the adjacent possible is always expanding, both in terms of our own personal creativity and in terms of global innovation. In the end, they show that discovering adjacent possibles requires two things: a willingness to look for them and the courage to pursue them.

Today's emerging markets bear limited resemblance to the markets of decades ago. The boom-busts of the 20th century have been replaced with more sophisticated central bank policies and diversified industry bases. Everywhere from China to India to Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates, a growing consumer class has driven domestics and fueled these markets, replacing the dependence on commodities that we saw two decades ago. Emerging markets expert Asha Mehta describes three mega-themes that are transforming the world's emerging markets, creating a new investing paradigm. As these markets mature, she argues, the flow of capital will benefit the investors who invest in them early.

In the realm of business, many people have come to view disruption as a near-synonym for innovation. But is disruption the only way to innovate and grow? And is it the best way? In an excerpt from their latest book, the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy suggest the answer is No. They argue and that the overriding focus on disruption has led us to largely overlook another avenue of innovation and growth-one that is at least as important. 'Non-disruptive creation' involves creating new markets without disrupting or displacing other companies. Presenting examples including Sesame Street, the men's cosmeceutical industry and smartphone accessories, they show that this approach has immense potential to create brand new markets where none existed before.

Today's organizations have very little in common with those of the past few decades. Rather than focusing on progressing from point A to point B, successful companies have become complex adaptive systems that rely on the underlying dynamic of emergence-calling for a whole new set of priorities. The author presents five new 'first principles' for successfully adapting and transforming your business in a complex and uncertain world: scenarios over predictions; ambitions over masterplans; the wisdom of the many over the expertise of the few; homemade solutions over store-bought; and exploration over optimization. By embracing these principles, leaders can transition to a state of continuous transformation - and an understanding of what true adaptation entails.

As our world becomes increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA), leaders are facing never-before-seen challenges without an established toolkit to rely on. Deliberate calm is about recognizing what an external situation is demanding of you and being intentional about how you respond to it. The author of Deliberate Calm argues that, at its core, achieving this demands a synthesis of four skills: awareness, adaptability, learning agility and emotional self-regulation. He shows that as we face situations from day to day, we oscillate between two very different 'zones': the Familiar Zone and the Adaptive Zone. And what is required to thrive in each zone is markedly different. By adopting 'dual awareness', leaders can perform optimally in difficult circumstances. The dual aspect is about simultaneously being aware of the external situation you are facing and your own internal emotional state as you enter it. In the end, he shows that there are an endless number of situations in our lives where we can more effectively navigate life and work from a state of Deliberate Calm.

Leaders at all levels are now being asked to achieve a common goal: to make sure that everyone on their team feels like they belong. There is widespread recognition that, if they don't, employees will walk. On the other hand, if people do feel like they belong, they will not only stay and feel valued, they will perform better. The author, a Chair in Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Toronto, shows that belonging relates to many personal characteristics: racial and gender representation and sensitivity, sexual orientation, physical appearance and disability, to name a few. Going forward, she shows that senior leaders need to empower managers to address belonging by celebrating employees, creating space to let people show their whole selves and making time to hear about their negative experiences. Together, such actions can remove the burden of 'code switching' - of people feeling like they have to adjust the way they speak, dress, act, etc. in order to be accepted at work.

As the parents of two children with Down syndrome, the authors learned that 80% of people with disabilities in the United States are unemployed. They were determined that their children Bitty and Beau would not become part of that statistic. They decided to open a small coffee shop in their hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, and employed mostly people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Today they have 17 owned and franchised locations across 11 states and the District of Columbia-with four more slated to open in 2023-which collectively staff 400 people with disabilities. They believe that any organization can open its doors to such workers, and they've learned through experience how to get the best from these team members, how to overcome challenges, and how to capitalize on all the value they provide.

Lately companies have come to recognize the limitations of the view that they must create value only for shareholders. Recognizing that every stakeholder has an impact on other stakeholders-engaged employees improve customer satisfaction, which in turn spurs growth, and so on-many CEOs are pledging to generate benefits for all their constituents: customers, workers, suppliers, communities, and investors. But few leaders have explicit strategies for doing so; most seem to rely on intuitive approaches. The good news is, firms can use data to design and implement effective stakeholder strategies. They should start by exploring outside perspectives of the value they produce-specifically, the ratings of agencies like the Drucker Institute and Just Capital. Firms must then bolster data from such third parties with inside insights and gain an understanding of the interdependencies among their particular stakeholders. Armed with that, they can develop a clear description of their purpose, establish criteria for evaluating progress toward it, set priorities among stakeholders, and start measuring value creation for each group. The last step is sustaining the new strategy through cultural change and by developing supporting processes and organizational structures.

For the past 20 years "disruption" has been a battle cry in business. Not surprisingly, many have come to see it as a near-synonym for innovation. But the obsession with disruption obscures an important truth: Market-creating innovation isn't always disruptive. Disruption may be what people talk about. It's certainly important, and it's all around us. But, as the authors of the best-selling book Blue Ocean Strategy argue, it's only one end of the innovation spectrum. On the other end is what they call nondisruptive creation, through which new industries, new jobs, and profitable growth are created without social harm. Nondisruptive creation reveals an immense potential to establish new markets where none existed before and, in doing so, to foster economic growth without a loss of jobs or damage to other industries, enabling business and society to thrive together.

Advanced analytics can help companies solve a host of management problems, including those related to marketing, sales, and supply-chain operations, which can lead to a sustainable competitive advantage. But as more data becomes available and advanced analytics are further refined, managers may struggle with when, where, and how much to incorporate machines into their business analytics, and to what extent they should bring their own judgment to bear when making data-driven decisions. In general, humans are better at decisions involving intuition and ambiguity resolution. Machines are far superior at decisions requiring deduction, granularity, and scalability. How can you find the right balance? There are three common approaches to analytics: descriptive, where decisions are made mainly by humans; predictive, which combines aspects of the other two; and prescriptive, which usually means autonomous management by machines. This article describes when and how to use each approach and examines the trade-offs and limitations. Although the focus is on marketing and sales, the principles may be applied more broadly.

Internal talent marketplaces (ITMs), which organizations use to match workers and roles, can increase job satisfaction and engagement, reduce turnover, and allow executives to access diverse perspectives about key assignments. Users have an incentive and an opportunity to share information about their skills, interests, and ambitions, including valuable personal information that is usually omitted from résumés. ITMs take a variety of forms. Some function like social networks, where workers and managers interact to find matches. Others allow employees to rank their preferred assignments and use an algorithm to find optimal placements. But matching talent to opportunities requires balancing business objectives, agility, workers' desires for certain jobs, and the need to avoid disrupting existing work. Those challenges confound organizations from every sector. The authors have designed, implemented, and evaluated ITMs for more than a decade in the private, nonprofit, and public sectors, with partners across the globe. In this article they review the pros and cons of using an ITM, explain how to build and optimize one, and recommend ways to align employee preferences and the company's needs.

A paradox of business is that while leaders often employ a hands-on, directive style to rise to the top, once they arrive, they're supposed to empower and enable their teams. Suddenly, they're expected to demonstrate "people skills." And many find it challenging to adapt to that reality. To understand how leaders can successfully make this shift, the authors studied 75 CEO successions, involving 235 candidates. They discovered that the transformation is not a single event but unfolds over time and takes many twists and turns. It's a long journey with three stages: the departure, during which leaders recognize the need to change and leave behind their old ways of working; the voyage, during which they encounter obstacles and trials that teach them important lessons; and the return, when they arrive at a new understanding of what kind of leader they need to be. Completing this odyssey requires humility, self-awareness, and resilience. Several key practices will help executives along the way: understanding the extent of the change required, creating new contexts for learning, enlisting the help of advisers, learning from setbacks, and tapping the power of small wins.

The next era of competition is at hand. To succeed in an environment of high uncertainty, greater short-term pressure, and tighter resource constraints, companies must become even better and more efficient at developing options for future advantage while continuing to perform in the present. Embracing radical optionality, the authors contend, will allow firms to turn uncertainty from a disruptive threat into a potential source of advantage. Doing so requires upending some of the core tenets of strategy. For instance, they must eliminate the gap between thinking (strategy formation) and doing (execution). They should abandon the winner-takes-all approach, which has long been central to strategy and innovation, and strive instead for flexibility. And they need to achieve "polydexterity," the ability to exploit existing advantages in current markets while working toward multiple unknown future states. Companies must embrace complexity, learn to search and execute on ideas simultaneously, and engage with customers on their personal journeys. Accomplishing that will require new organizational forms and work practices, deeper integration between humans and technology, and next-generation performance metrics.

Marketers often worry that performance marketing and its focus on short-term sales is crowding out brand-building activities aimed at enhancing customer perceptions of their brand-and is sometimes working against brand strategy. Brand-building activities are typically measured using metrics that have no predictive or retrospective connection to financial returns. And performance marketing typically lacks measures that account for its impact on brand building, focusing only on sales, leads, and clicks. To achieve performance- accountable brand building and brand-accountable performance marketing, firms must create metrics that measure the effects of both types of investments on a single North Star metric: brand equity. That is then linked to specific financial outcomes-such as revenue, shareholder value, and return on investment-and deployed as a key performance indicator for both brand building and performance marketing. In doing so, companies are better able to make decisions that fortify the financial contributions of both and get them working better together.

Years ago the line between nonprofit and for-profit enterprises was clear, but that has changed. Nonprofits now offer products that compete with those of the best for-profits, and for-profits can deliver as much social value as charities. Despite the blurred distinction, all mission-driven start-ups will eventually face a stark choice about which legal structure to adopt, and they need to make it carefully, because it's hard to undo, say the authors, the CEO of a nonprofit accelerator and a partner in an impact investing fund. To guide their decision, social entrepreneurs should examine several questions: Is the market ready for a for-profit solution? Where is the available capital? And which structure would help the organization attract the talent and resources that it requires?

For better or worse, in today's world everyone is a brand. Whether you're applying for a job, asking for a promotion, or writing a dating profile, your success will depend on getting others to recognize your value. So you need to get comfortable marketing yourself. In this article a branding thought leader and a professional dating coach present a guide to creating your personal brand. It's an intentional, strategic practice in which you craft and express your own value proposition, and it involves seven steps: (1) Define your purpose by exploring your mission, passion, and strengths, and thinking about whom you want to make a difference to and how. (2) Audit your personal brand equity by cataloging your credentials, doing a self-assessment, and researching how other people view you. (3) Construct your personal narrative by identifying memorable, resonant stories that will best convey your brand. (4) Embody your brand by paying attention to the message you're sending in every social interaction. (5) Communicate your brand through speeches, social media, the press, and other channels. (6) Socialize your brand by getting influential people to share your stories. (7) Reevaluate and adjust your brand by doing an annual audit to find deficits to fix and strengths to build on. This process will not only allow you to better control your image and the impact you have on the world but also help you uncover and share the unique abilities you have to offer it.

In this fictional case, the CEO of a global pharmaceutical company based in Belgium with operations in Moscow is contemplating what to do in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The company is experiencing pressure from shareholders, Ukrainian and Belgium government officials, and the public to follow in the footsteps of many multinational corporations and cease operations in Russia. However, since the firm provides medically necessary products, the decision isn't straightforward. How can the CEO navigate the complicated political waters of this decision and make the most humanitarian decision? Should the company exit Russia completely, or should it continue to operate but on a smaller scale? Expert commentators respond.