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We all occasionally hear comments potentially driven by intolerance or bias. They often come without warning, sometimes from someone you really like. This article is about how to react. Research suggests that managers and employees alike are often loath to tackle uncomfortable topics. However, when formal company programs discourage bias, but everyday interactions allow or even encourage it, bias lives on. The good news is that the small everyday moments of potential intolerance are wonderful opportunities to tackle the problem of bias and discrimination in the workplace. What we are calling for is engagement, which doesn’t involve shaming or blaming. The goal is one of perspective-taking, which can make a difference without creating conflict. Engaging can have a positive impact in terms of cultivating empathy, increasing understanding, fostering speaker insight, and setting an example for bystanders. While formal training programs that address equity, diversity, and inclusion issues are helpful, they rarely have the reach required to fight intolerance where it breeds—at the micro level. Workplaces that are effective at micro-level engagement may get fewer complaints about bias. In addition, when employees feel psychologically safe and valued, they are more likely to share their thoughts and idea, which can lead to higher levels of productivity, innovation, and adaptability.

When it comes to separating the roles of company CEO and board chair, many arguments—both for and against activist calls to do so—have been made. Arguments against the idea generally insist that separating the roles adds complexity to running a business by creating two armed camps with blurred responsibilities. Meanwhile, arguments in favour of separation tend to highlight numerous benefits, including improved executive oversight, diversity of thinking, and financial savings. The authors of this article argue that governance improvements alone justify separating the CEO and board chair functions. As investment industry professionals at one of Europe’s largest asset managers, they have long been concerned by a worrying pattern of companies only splitting these functions after a scandal. Separating the roles of CEO and board chair doesn’t just reduce costs along with the risks of bad behaviour—it can help companies achieve and maintain profitability, mitigate challenges, and focus on growth to create long-term value—even in times of crisis. The authors’ approach in advocating for better governance measures is twofold. On the one hand, they want to guide companies toward more responsible and sustainable behaviours; and on the other, they are acting out of self-interest to protect their shareholders as asset managers because they believe creating a more sustainable capitalist system is in the best interest of all investors.

When it comes to how decision makers understand problems, Nietzsche’s insights are as valuable to executives today as any lesson offered by modern business schools.

For people who aspire to drive change, studying the impact that character had on RBG’s judgment is as important as replicating her commitment and competence

The sole owner of the Gusto 54 Restaurant Group (Gusto 54), which owned and operated nine restaurant concepts in Toronto and Los Angeles, had grown the restaurant group into a huge success story. In a competitive, low-margin industry, Gusto 54 outperformed its peers and consistently achieved its desired profit margins. Gusto 54's strategy was grounded in innovative growth, the use of technology, and empowerment of all employees to take an entrepreneurial approach to their roles. The owner had grown the company strategically, making business decisions based on her belief that her most valuable resource was having the right employees. She focused on building culture, hiring employees who fit the culture, and investing in the employee experience to retain them. She also made efforts to keep the leadership team lean and to include all members in decision-making. While Gusto 54's strategy had fuelled its present growth, in 2020, the owner was concerned about the impacts of rapid expansion. She wondered how to balance growth plans with the need to hire and retain top talent and maintain an engaged, motivated workforce. How could she scale up without losing the family-style culture her employees valued?

Why today’s business leaders need to show that great stories about fighting for what really matters can exist beyond fiction.

People with higher rates of reported mental illness are entering the workforce and discovering that it has less accommodation for mental health issues than their high school or college did. As a result, a complex issue has become even more difficult because many people struggling with mental illness believe they have to hide it from their employer. Consider some findings from a recent Accenture study of almost 4,000 workers in Britain. Nearly half of the younger participants reported that they had experienced suicidal thoughts or feelings. They were twice as likely as older workers to be experiencing a mental health challenge. Yet they were also more hesitant than their older peers to tell employers what was going on. Employers shouldn’t underestimate the difference they can make, even by making a fairly modest (and low- or no-cost) effort to create a more supportive workplace. Numerous characteristics differentiate more supportive cultures from their opposite. But three stand out as being particularly significant—and they aren’t difficult to replicate. First, in more supportive cultures, 53 per cent of all workers note that senior leaders visibly support mental health at work. Second, in more supportive cultures, 87 per cent of workers can identify a senior leader they can approach for help with a mental health challenge. Third, it’s important that workers know about the supports that are already in place.

At the end of March 2018, the director of the Barcelona office of Street Child, a charity organization with headquarters in the United Kingdom, was looking back at the changes he had introduced in 2017. The Barcelona office was responsible for growing Street Child in continental Europe, so it was internally known as Street Child Europe. Since January 2018, the office had added a paid employee. This employee was also the director of Street Child Netherlands and a former program support officer in Sierra Leone. The office could now employ up to eight interns, twice as many as before. However, Street Child Europe still needed to accomplish five key tasks: address its governance structure, clarify its brand positioning, consolidate its fundraising strategy, increase the appeal of its international volunteer program, and sett up an internal system to use its network effectively. The director needed concrete and executable strategies to ensure stable and sustainable growth of the charity across Europe.

In 2018, iQmetrix Software Development Corp. (iQmetrix), a software development corporation headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, had experienced exponential growth and success over the past two decades. To preserve its innovative culture, iQmetrix restructured using the increasingly popular self-management system holacracy, which was intended to empower individual employees to plan, monitor, and regulate their own work tasks. One year later, iQmetrix’s head of People and Culture wanted to examine the outcomes of this implementation. To do so, she conducted a company-wide survey of employee perceptions of holacracy and several important indicators. The survey also collected qualitative feedback about the holacracy implementation. What would the survey responses tell her about employees’ perceptions of holacracy and about the effectiveness of its implementation at iQmetrix?

Student spreadsheet to accompany product 9B19C030.

The overarching vision of the global nongovernmental organization Transparency International was to free the world from corruption. Transparency International Ukraine (TIU) was founded in 2014, after three failed attempts, to tackle the high level of corruption that had taken hold of that country. Over the first two years, the chief executive officer faced significant organizational issues that hindered the organization’s performance; he appointed an external hire as chief operating officer to help facilitate a transition to a new, more professional team in Kyiv and to turn the organization around. As the two seasoned professionals worked collaboratively to revamp the organization, they realized they faced challenging external and internal pressures. Not only were they tackling highly corrupt public officers and colluding oligarchic elites, they were also faced with alienated volunteers, who questioned their ability to transform TIU. In 2017, they had made some progress but still faced many barriers. How could they reinvent the organization without risking burnout?

In 2018, Changsheng Bio-technology Co., Ltd. (Changsheng), a leading biopharmaceutical company and one of the market leaders in vaccines, was found to have falsified its production and inspection data and to have sold substandard vaccines in the Chinese market. The unethical conduct triggered widespread public anger and immediate government intervention. What actions could Changsheng take to mitigate the effect of this scandal?

In 2015, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) moved from target-driven sales, to a no-sales target regime. This change involved the sales incentives plan and performance measurement parameters of the front line medical sales force of the company. The executive director of Human Resources knew that challenges lay ahead in managing the company’s employees and reinvigorating the values of the organization. He was hoping to shift the focus of the sales force to ethical behaviour, dissemination of scientific knowledge among doctors, and customer and patient care. Many people were adapting to the new system while a few resisted, and some left the organization. Though management anticipated this turn of events and accepted the employee turnover, the director knew that more work needed to be done to make the new system more acceptable and functional. How should he address the subjectivity of the system, simplify it for his salesforce, and address the concerns of his managers? Would the new system motivate performance? Could he convince his employees of the potential benefits of the process- and competence-based pay system at GSK?

Student spreadsheet to accompany product 9B19C028.

Elon Musk was charged with contempt-of-court for tweeting that Tesla would produce about 500,000 vehicles in 2019. The lesson is obvious—even a rocket scientist can get into trouble using social media. However, seemingly rational social media interactions can also land a brand in hot water with consumers. While an organization can still exert some control over who speaks to the press, it is nearly impossible to control employees’ use of social media. Thus, the next best thing is a social media policy vetted and implemented by the board to provide guidelines. The goal of the authors’ research was to identify themes and elements of effective policies in order to offer a best-practice guide to help companies better manage the risks they face. Using corporate social media policies from 85 publicly traded firms in North America, they performed content analysis to identify keywords and phrases related to the use of social media by members of the firms. As the authors examined the social media policies, four themes emerged: representation, legal, control, and judgement. During a social media controversy, if it can be demonstrated that a) the employee was speaking on her or his own behalf, and that b) the employee was not following the company’s communicated policy, then the firm can limit its liability.

Sales managers need to understand that linear relationships may be the exception rather than the rule. These managers have the unenviable job of trying to perpetually improve team performance. To do this, they must hire people with the right skills and then provide training, evaluation, and compensation programs. We normally label these attributes “good” or “bad” in respect to sales performance—for example, providing sales training is good; hiring arrogant salespeople is bad. But to understand the drivers and inhibitors of a sales team’s performance, a more nuanced view is needed. Relationships between key drivers or inhibitors and the sales team’s performance are more likely to follow a non-linear pattern, where diminishing or negative returns are realized. For example, a certain number of training hours improves salesperson performance, but additional training may have no impact, which becomes an unnecessary expense. In this article, the author looks at four common statements using linear logic, sales management realities, and non-linear rationales for comparison. These are 1) the use of customer relationship management technology improves a sales representative’s performance; 2) the more customer oriented a sales representative is, the better; 3) give salespeople more product lines to sell and they will sell more products; and 4) role stress has a negative impact on a sales representative’s performance.

Older companies have weathered numerous tumultuous business cycles and other crises and, as a result, have some inherent smarts. Accenture performed research on 577 multinational companies from non-tech sectors. In this group of firms, all established before 2000, it found 69 companies that stood out for their strong growth in the digital age. A closer look revealed that each has developed the confidence to look dispassionately at disruption—even digital disruption. As a result, each has cultivated an immunity to market pressure. These companies invest prudently rather than impulsively follow trends. How can other mature firms turn their age into an advantage? The confidence and prudence displayed by the growing firms in the study stem from two behaviours born of experience. First, these companies keep investing in their core businesses—even when it would be tempting to let them coast. Second, older companies know how to pace themselves. If the time is not right, they do not sprint into new business activities, even if competitors do. Being aware of competition and context is paramount to marketplace success. But trusting your company’s strengths and teasing out the overarching lessons it has learned over the years can make an even bigger difference.

In February 2018, the dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the East Coast in eastern Canada was faced with the challenge of managing a protest by one of his professors. Tension had been brewing between the two for a few months because of inappropriate expense claims and complaints of sexual harassment. However, because of the way the dean had been appointed, he was in a weak position and could not depend on his superiors for help in solving the problem. As a result, donors were complaining, prospective students were changing their minds about applying, and department chairs were beginning to complain. The dean wondered what he should do to bring his faculty back to a normal functioning state. What should he do about the protesting professor, the apparent fraud, and the reactions of potential employers, potential students, and donors? How could he improve the image of his faculty and the university?

In 2012, JD.com had emerged as the biggest business-to-consumer e-commerce retailer in China. The company’s founder and chief executive officer, Qiangdong Liu, realized that he had to strengthen the company’s internal management in order to sustain rapid growth. In 2011 and 2012, he recruited several chief officers, including Yu Long, who became JD.com’s chief human resources officer and general counsel. Case A describes the challenges Long faced when joining the company in August 2012 and invites students to think about what her priorities should be when tackling these challenges.

Case B describes what Long decided to do and how, in the first year, she executed her priorities, which primarily consisted of two improvement projects: culture consolidation and talent review. Case B asks students to set priorities on tackling the remaining HR problems in the coming few years.