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Asking questions is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards. But few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed-or consider how their own answers to questions could make conversations more productive. That's a missed opportunity. The good news is that by asking questions, we naturally improve our emotional intelligence, which in turn makes us better questioners-a virtuous cycle. The authors draw on insights from behavioral science research to explore how the way we frame questions and choose to answer our counterparts can influence the outcome of conversations. They offer guidance for choosing the best type, tone, sequence, and framing of questions and for deciding what and how much information to share to reap the most benefit from our interactions, not just for ourselves but for our organizations.

Most leaders view employee freedoms and operational controls as antagonists in a tug-of-war. They tend to focus on regulating workers' behavior, often putting a damper on commitment, innovation, and performance without realizing it. But freedom and control aren't zero-sum, argues the author. By giving people a clear sense of their organization's purpose, priorities, and principles--that is, by providing freedom within a galvanizing framework--leaders can equip employees to make on-the-ground decisions that are in the company's best interests. Gulati uses businesses as diverse as Netflix, Alaska Airlines, and Warby Parker to show how freedom can function in different settings. A coherent framework helps employees develop a deeper understanding of the business, which can lead to improved engagement, creativity, efficiency, and customer service.

Every leader knows the importance of the first hundred days or the first year in office--the period during which one must assess and diagnose, formulate a vision and a strategy, and achieve early wins. And guidance abounds for how CEOs in their final months on the job should approach their main responsibility: helping develop and select a successor and then smoothly handing over power. But little attention has been paid to the time between those stages. How can CEOs make the most of the middle years of their tenure? The authors conducted detailed interviews with high-performing former CEOs, asking, among other things, how their priorities, mindsets, and approaches evolved in their second act. Five themes emerged as essential to success. Leaders should keep raising the company's level of ambition, attack silos and broken processes, rejuvenate talent, build mechanisms for dissent and disruptive ideas, and spend their accumulated leadership capital on bold long-term moves. Beyond these specifics, the authors say, CEOs often benefit from viewing their tenure as a series of chapters rather than an undivided span.

Companies invest heavily in grooming star talent for leadership--but most of them haven't figured out how to manage the growing population of employees who care deeply about their partners' or spouses' careers at the same time that they want to advance their own. As a result, many high potentials are heading for the nearest exit. The author has seen this happen again and again in her research on dual-career couples in tech, health care, professional services, and other industries. She says the crux of the problem is that companies tend to have fixed paths to leadership roles, with set tours of duty and rigid ideas about what ambition looks like. That creates flexibility and mobility challenges for employees--and recruitment and retention headaches for employers. Organizations must adopt new strategies for managing and developing talent. They can remove barriers to advancement by allowing people to develop skills and networks in more-creative ways--through brief "job swaps," for example, or commuter-leader roles. But often a culture change is needed. Instead of stigmatizing flexibility, companies must learn to embrace it.

We're often reluctant to ask for help because of the social threats involved--uncertainty, risk of rejection, potential for diminished status, relinquishment of authority. But without support from others, it's virtually impossible to advance in your career. And studies show that most people are surprisingly willing to lend a hand--if you ask in the right way. The author provides three reinforcements that can be incorporated in requests: (1) "In-group." Assure the potential helper that you are on the same team and that the team is important. (2) "Positive identity." Create or enhance people's recognition that they are uniquely placed to provide assistance and that they routinely come to others' aid. (3) "Effectiveness." Be clear about what you need and about what impact the help will have.

Lessons on leadership.

Student spreadsheet for case W16933.

Ferrari is among the world's most powerful brands but how the company operates has remained mysterious. The case reveals the inner workings of the company - the Ferrari Way - from the way it designs, produces, and markets its cars, to how its leadership team is driving future growth. Central to Ferrari's strategy is its response to disruptive changes in the automotive industry and their impact on the company's products and brand.

In April 2016, the chairman of the partnership charged with building the $1 billion Highway 407 East Extension Phase 2 in Ontario was reviewing an e-mail from the procurement team that recommended allocation of more than $45 million in contracts for the purchase of granular base material for the highway construction. He knew that the procurement team had worked for several weeks to negotiate and analyze the supplier's quotes, but after reviewing the recommendation, the chairman wondered whether the team's recommendation captured the optimal supplier mix and the most cost-effective selection of suppliers. It was certainly a good solution, but was it the optimal solution? Even with an experienced team, this was a difficult optimization problem to solve.

In late 2017, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), Canada’s oldest retail company, was facing considerable pressure from activist investor Land & Buildings Investment Management (LBIM) after recording a CA$201 million loss in the second quarter of 2017. Immediately after posting the loss, HBC unveiled its Transformation Plan, which involved a significant restructuring of the company. However, continued clashes with LBIM revealed the plan’s inability to alleviate shareholders’ concerns. LBIM urged the company to tap into the value of its real estate holdings, which were undervalued relative to the current market capitalization. In the face of these concerns, HBC’s chief executive officer announced that he would be stepping down at the beginning of November 2017. How should HBC proceed?

Fabien Beckers, Founder and CEO of Arterys, walks through the creation of his medical / AI imaging company, including the equity struggles of the founding team, building the right team and final the right channel sales partners.

A management consultant had a bad experience at a globally branded luxury hotel in Zurna City, Lazistan. After writing a candid online review of the hotel, the consultant found himself embroiled in an altercation when the hotel management lashed out and tried to discredit him by complaining to his organization.

Debito Technologies s.r.o. was started in December 2014 to help creditors better manage their issued debt. The company provided a complete beginning-to-end service using a debt management application (app) that traced debtors by following their digital footprint. The whole process was managed with just the mobile app and had no upfront fees. In 2017, with success in the Czech market, the company was considering expanding its operations abroad. The company needed to first select a country that provided excellent market potential and product fit, and then develop an ideal market entry.

A management consultant had a bad experience at a globally branded luxury hotel in Zurna City, Lazistan. After writing a candid online review of the hotel, the consultant found himself embroiled in an altercation when the hotel management lashed out and tried to discredit him by complaining to his organization.

Lost Creek Angling Co. (LCA), a fly-fishing operation accessible by helicopter, operated off the grid in a remote location on the Wigwam River, in southeastern British Columbia, Canada. LCA’s clients were mainly middle-aged to retired businessmen from the United States. The company’s season consisted mainly of weekends in the summer months, from mid-July to mid-September. The owner, an eco-centred leader who allowed the river to rest between visits and provided nature education to his clients, had a strong reputation within the local community and was closely tied to the business’s brand. At age 70, however, he was considering a slow exit from his business. In the middle of 2015, he was approached by an angel investor but was concerned about losing control and abandoning the environmental mission of the business. In the meantime, LCA had the option of buying more permits to increase the number of guided fishing days (known as rod days) and grow the business in the near term. What was the best path forward for this unique organization and its laudable leader?

The Harvest City case describes the implementation of a cloud- and IoT-based intelligent procurement system at a new convention complex in the U.S. Midwest. The decision to build a convention complex is a strategic initiative for this city and involves extensive use of information technology. The risk of implementation failure is high. Such failures are costly, highly visible, and affect multiple stakeholders. This case explores the challenges of large-scale, computer-based system implementation by examining the events, decisions, and actions taken to implement the intelligent procurement system at Harvest City. This case helps students to reflect on and discuss the challenges of implementing IT-enabled change initiatives, especially those that requires streamlined and integrated inter-organizational processes. The case discussion gives students insight into what factors influence the success and failure of IT projects.

Individuals' judgement of probabilities-the likelihood of different events to occur, or the attribution of likely causes to what has occurred-is plagued by numerous biases and errors. This note focuses on Bayesian updating and the base rate neglect, and also provides a brief overview of other biases, including overconfidence, reversion to the mean, the law of small numbers, the conjunction fallacy, confirming evidence bias, hindsight bias, and the conjunction fallacy. Numerous examples illustrate the implications of the biases for managerial decisions.

Since being founded in 2006, Patanjali Ayurved Ltd. had emerged as a major player in India’s fast-moving consumer goods sector. The company differentiated its products with a unique mix of Indian nationalism, yoga spiritualism, social welfare motives, and natural/Ayurvedic ingredients. In combination with low prices and a low-cost position, this strategy challenged the incumbent multinational and conventional Indian competitors. As a result, competitors, including Hindustan Unilever Ltd., Colgate-Palmolive India, Dabur India Ltd., and Sri Sri Ayurveda, had to decide how to respond to this new competitor and capitalize on the growth opportunities in the Indian market.

Hawk Electronics ("Hawk") presents the problems that a company can encounter when its divisions have distinct strategies, especially when one division has been favored at another's expense. It also highlights how such problems can reflect cognitive biases, which influence resource allocation decisions by senior executives. Further, the case challenges students to develop an action plan for Hawk's CEO. The case begins with excerpts from a letter that Jorge Martinez, the president of Hawk's Peripheral Division and a member of Hawk's Board of Directors, has written to Sarah Chan, Hawk's CEO. Martinez is concerned about the resources that Chan has funneled away from his division to fund outside ventures. Martinez feels that this pattern of resource allocation, and the consequences ensuing from it, make his division unable to compete. He also believes Chan's decisions threaten Hawk's long-term viability. Chan needs to respond to the issues raised in Martinez's letter, but she believes her decisions have been largely correct.