Once upon a time, leisure was a sign of prestige. Today that idea has been turned on its head, and busyness is the new status symbol. Busy people are considered important and impressive, and employees are rewarded for showing how "hard" they're working. Such thinking is misguided. It can cause organizations to overload their employees, base their incentives on the amount of time they put in, and excessively monitor their activities, all of which undermine productivity and efficiency, research shows. Meanwhile, reducing work to manageable levels can actually enhance them. This article explores both the downsides of busyness (employee turnover, reduced engagement, absenteeism, and impaired health) and the reasons for our obsession with it. It's partly human nature: The harder we work to achieve something, the more we value it; most of us hate being idle; and we think customers like to see us busy. The authors also present strategies for breaking away from this fixation: Reward output, not activity. Eliminate low-value work to make time for "deep work." Force people off the clock, and allow time for their minds to wander creatively. Model the right behavior, and build slack into your systems. Activity is not achievement, and the sooner companies recognize that, the better off they and their employees will be.

Empathy is all the rage pretty much everywhere. It's touted as a critical leadership skill, one that helps you influence others in your organization, anticipate stakeholders' concerns, respond to social media followers, and even run better meetings. But it has its limits. Empathy taxes us mentally and emotionally, and can even impair our ethical judgment. It's also a finite resource: The more we spend on one person or group, the less we have left for others. Expecting employees to continually drain their reserves can impair individual and organizational performance. Managers can prevent the ill effects of empathy and promote the good by using a few simple strategies. First, have people focus on certain sets of stakeholders, rather than asking them to understand and empathize with anyone and everyone. Second, help them meet others' needs in ways that also address their own so that they don't end up feeling depleted by every interaction. And third, give them empathy breaks, where they focus strictly on their own personal needs, to allow them to replenish their reserves.

In 2011, Sherry Hunt was a vice president and chief underwriter at CitiMortgage headquarters in the United States. For years she had been witnessing fraud, as the company bought billions of dollars in mortgage loans from external lenders that did not meet Citi credit policy and sold them to government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). This resulted in Citi selling to GSEs such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pools of loans that were considerably defective and thus likely to default. Citi had also approved hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of defective mortgage files for U.S. Federal Housing Administration insurance. After reporting the mortgage defects in regular reports, notifying and working closely with her direct supervisor (who was subsequently asked to leave Citi after alerting the chairman of the board to these issues) to stop the purchase of defective loans, leaving anonymous tips on the FBI's and the Department of Housing and Urban Development's websites, and receiving threats from two of her superiors who demanded that she change the results of her quality control unit's reports, the shy and conflict-avoidant Hunt had to decide who she should tell about the fraud, and how. The case gives students the opportunity to recommend how Hunt should proceed based on their analysis of the stakeholders involved. To aid instructors, the case includes Kellogg-produced videos of Hunt-the only on-camera interviews she has ever given-explaining what happened after she reported the fraud to Citi HR and, later, the U.S. Department of Justice. Within the case, students are also briefly exposed to legislation and bodies pertinent to whistle-blowing in the United States, including the Dodd-Frank Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the SEC Office of the Whistleblower.

Recently, technological advances have led neuroscientists to develop a new and more sophisticated framework. It shifts the focus of study from the activity of specific brain regions to how networks of brain regions activate in concurrent patterns. In this article, two experts in brain science explain important discoveries that have been made about four key networks: the default network, which is engaged in introspection and in imagining a different time, place, or reality; the reward network, which activates in response to pleasure; the affect network, which plays a central role in emotions; and the control network, which is involved in understanding consequences, impulse control, and selective attention. These discoveries hold major implications for managers. In particular, they shed light on: (1) the best way to generate "Eureka!" thinking; (2) what motivates employees; (3) whether you should trust your gut and listen to your emotions in decision making; and (4) the opportunities and pitfalls of multitasking. These insights are just the beginning, say the authors, who believe that a hugely productive dialogue between neuroscience and business will develop as more findings emerge.