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Although most managers believe that they give each of their team members equal attention, respect, and consideration, four decades' worth of empirical research says otherwise. Studies show that nearly all bosses have-or are seen to have-in-groups and out-groups. Employees on the wrong side of these divides experience a reduction in engagement, satisfaction, commitment, citizenship, innovation, and performance. Bosses usually argue that any differentiation is unintended and that their reports are reading too much into minor disparities. Both claims might be true. However, it is the view from below that counts. Perceived unfairness is real in its consequences. Managers should first acknowledge these issues and then work hard to head off or repair conflict. Those who don't may lose key contributors they'd prefer to retain, exacerbate the challenges presented by underperformers, ruin team performance and morale, and hurt their own reputations. Start by regularly reviewing your treatment of team members. Ask yourself: Did I seek everyone's company? Did I acknowledge their capabilities? Did I assist their growth? If you are routinely answering no for certain subordinates, they need more attention from you. When a relationship has already gone off the rails, it's important to rectify the problem: Prepare for a direct conversation, engage empathetically, and then make a plan for how you'll interact with one another in the future.

Too many companies are failing to innovate. One reason, say the authors, is the polarized approach companies take to innovation. At one end of the spectrum, corporate R&D efforts tend to focus on product refreshes and incremental line upgrades that generate modest growth for lower risk. At the other end, venture capitalists favor high-risk "transformational" innovations that seek to upend industries and generate outsize returns. But there's a better, middle, way. This article presents the growth driver model, a framework that partners corporations with outside investors to identify and develop innovation opportunities, drawing on corporate resources and talent and externally recruited entrepreneurs. The authors illustrate the model with a detailed case study of how it revived innovation at Cordis, a large medical technology device maker.

An increasing number of companies are using the E-liability carbon-accounting method as an important tool for tracking progress toward reducing global emissions in their supply chains. The system does not require formal accounting for downstream emissions-those occurring after a company sells its products to immediate customers, for several good reasons. Certain companies, however, are accountable for disclosing downstream emissions generated by consumers' use of their products. Three principles govern accountability: (1) Downstream accountability is limited to companies whose products are directly used by end customers. (2) Accountability for B2C companies is limited to cases where a reasonable causal link exists between product-design decisions and the downstream emissions generated by consumers. (3) Companies are accountable for disclosing emissions produced per unit of use, not for total emissions. This article presents the principles and explains how and to what standards of reliability the companies should disclose downstream emissions.

Activist shareholders are often seen as villains by managers and boards. Their demands for strategic and organizational shifts-which can feel personal to managers-often challenge the soundness of a company's strategy. However, leaders who treat activist shareholders solely as a risk or an annoyance are making a mistake. Although they may be aiming to protect their companies, they're missing out on an opportunity to tap one of the few free resources companies have to bring about value‑creating strategic change and build stronger business models. To better respond to-and take advantage of-the campaigns of activists, leaders must learn to think the way they do. Most activists tend to follow a predefined process to identify and engage target companies. This article presents the three main components of the activist playbook-linking performance failures to organizational weaknesses, developing a plan of action, and creating a narrative in support of change-and describes how managers can anticipate and respond to activist campaigns.

Today's software makes it easier to track patterns, trends, and even granular details of how customers use products. This data is collected in systems that support marketing, sales, finance, and operations. But many companies aren't sure how they can best support employees who are overseeing hundreds of unique relationships. They're grappling with how to manage and use all their data to improve customer retention. And they're wondering how they can assess the health of their customer relationships before it's too late. One solution is the use of customer‑health scores. In this article the authors introduce a model that any B2B company can use to measure and improve customer health. They identify three dimensions of customer health-customer-relationship quality, product usage, and value realization-and offer advice on how to measure and weigh relevant metrics. The authors then take an in-depth look at how BigCommerce, an e-commerce platform, developed and refined its customer-health model. They share five lessons the company learned through the process, including how to identify the relationship between health and churn, and that a flywheel effect occurs as health scoring matures.

Marketplaces are the quintessential type of business that can profit from network effects: The greater the number of buyers who join one, the more attractive it becomes to sellers, and vice versa. Indeed, marketplaces such as Amazon, Booking.com, and Apple's App Store have achieved some of the strongest competitive positions imaginable. That's why entrepreneurs are seeking to build, and venture capitalists are seeking to invest in, the next Airbnb, Uber, or Twitch. But not all marketplaces have the potential to realize strong network effects-the kind that make a marketplace defensible against wannabe competitors. Differentiation among sellers, fragmentation of the seller and buyer bases, the value added by discovery and transaction services, and the importance of seller ratings are all decisive in determining whether a marketplace can flourish. That's why it is extremely important, both for new and established companies trying to build marketplaces and for their potential investors, to dig deeper into those factors. Drawing on their more than two decades' worth of research and their own experience as angel investors in some 40 marketplace start-ups, the authors offer a comprehensive list of questions that anyone thinking of launching a marketplace should explore.

In this article, adapted from the forthcoming book Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms, the authors explain how economic analysis works in the real world. They lay out three principles for navigating the rising number of economic risks: (1) Don't put too much stock in any one economic model. (2) Ignore the doomsayers in the financial press. (3) Cultivate rational optimism and an eclectic form of judgment that draws on multiple sources. That involves identifying the critical drivers of potential risk, building a narrative, and pressure-testing it from multiple perspectives. The "dismal science" of economics and our clickbait culture of public discourse are a perfect match to fuel simplistic narratives of doom. To avoid false alarms and achieve a true assessment of macroeconomic risks, the authors write, leaders should look past both to reclaim their own judgment.

Dealing with the negative emotions of employees isn't easy, but knowing what to do or say can make a huge difference to their well-being, the quality of your relationships with them, and team performance. The trouble is, many leaders fail to respond at all because they think discussing emotions at work is unprofessional or worry they don't have the right to intervene in personal matters. That's a mistake. Research shows that teams whose leaders acknowledge members' emotions perform significantly better than teams whose leaders don't. In this article the authors offer a road map for providing employees emotional support. The right response depends heavily on context, in particular, whether someone (1) is working on a time‑sensitive goal and (2) seems to be coping. Sometimes you have to intervene quickly; sometimes you should simply validate the employee's feelings; sometimes you should validate and then offer advice; and sometimes you should give the person space and time. You need to assess each situation carefully and avoid the tendency to always jump in with solutions, bearing in mind that employees may not expect you to fix things; they may just need to be heard.

There's a widespread understanding that managing corporate culture is key to business success. Yet few companies articulate their culture in such a way that the words become an organizational reality that molds employee behavior as intended. All too often a culture is described as a set of anodyne norms, principles, or values, which do not offer decision-makers guidance on how to make difficult choices when faced with conflicting but equally defensible courses of action. The trick to making a desired culture come alive is to debate and articulate it using dilemmas. If you identify the tough dilemmas your employees routinely face and clearly state how they should be resolved-"In this company, when we come across this dilemma, we turn left"-then your desired culture will take root and influence the behavior of the team. To develop a culture that works, follow six rules: Ground your culture in the dilemmas you are likely to confront, dilemma-test your values, communicate your values in colorful terms, hire people who fit, let culture drive strategy, and know when to pull back from a value statement.

Over the several weeks that Paris will host the Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer, Sodexo will prepare and serve up to 40,000 meals a day to 15,000 athletes, their fans, and organizing committee staffers at 22 venues in and around the city. Catering an event on that level is quite a challenge. But so is the one the company has set for itself around sustainability. As one of the world's largest food-services companies-managing dining options at hospitals, schools, office buildings, and much more in 45 countries around the world-Sodexo has been spearheading a push toward more-sustainable consumption, and it intends to take that ethos to the Olympics. Ingredients will be sourced from eco-friendly suppliers and, where possible, local ones. Waste will be kept to a minimum. And as part of an ongoing effort to shift eating habits away from resource-intensive choices, menus will emphasize delicious plant-based dishes. The company has become a market maker in sustainability-not just to improve the efficiency and productivity of its value chain and ensure financial success, but also for the benefit of society at large.

Early-stage, developing, and mature companies have different marketing needs, which means that a chief marketing officer with a set of skills well suited to a startup environment might not excel once the business scales. To help ensure that their chief marketing officer can succeed as their company grows, leaders can prepare and upskill the CMO, change their expectations of the CMO, or hire a new CMO who already has the needed skills.

Pursuing decarbonization goals can feel like a frustratingly slow marathon with hidden curves. But leaders can learn by observing printer's running on the same track they are. The fast-paced decarbonization effort by the sustainability team of the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics is illuminating. As they raced to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by half compared with recent Games, the team had to learn on the fly. Here are key takeaways for organizations on their own sustainability journeys.

Leaders often resist engaging employees in strategic planning because they fear losing control or speed. A participative approach takes more time and is more complicated. However, if you exclude employees from strategic planning, you may hinder strategy adoption and leave valuable input behind. We need a new strategic planning playbook that actively loops in employees. This article examines four keys to doing this well, using real-world examples.

The scenario: Top managers see themselves as the parents of middle managers who never take initiative. Middle managers say the top managers don't trust them. Mistakes get covered up by everyone â€" and progress stalls. That is a parent-child dynamic in all its dysfunctional glory at the workplace. Is your organization falling into this damaging trap? This article explains how leaders can spot the trouble signs and move the culture toward a healthy, adult-adult dynamic.

Many companies have large stores of customer data that can be tapped for valuable insights via analytics. At the same time, cybersecurity tactics used to protect personal information within that data can render it less useful for analysis. Data science practices will increasingly require that teams collaborate with IT on each use case to identify which techniques will maximize data privacy while still exposing useful information in the data set for analysis.

Advanced analytics, such as predictive and prescriptive models to support business decisions, remain the primary drivers of data science value in the enterprise. How might the flashy, fluent, but not entirely reliable generative AI large language models contribute to traditional analytics practice? The author describes some experimental prompts that show potential for labeling data and explaining model predictions, and shares guidance on monitoring and verifying that output.

It is well known that a significant reason machine learning projects fail to deliver business value is data scientist's failure to adequately understand the business context. Development teams can avoid mistakes when they put aside any reticence to ask basic questions and engage with colleagues on the business side. The authors advise gaining input from all involved stakeholders and suggest some specific types of queries that might help ML developers get to the heart of the problem at hand.

Algorithmic auditing aims to identify and monitor potential harms caused by algorithmic systems. In these scenarios, diverse stakeholders consider specific use cases and collaborate to address critical questions about who could be harmed by such technologies, and how. The authors present two tools " the Ethical Matrix and the Explainable Fairness framework " that can help organizations identify these potential harms.

Leaders who keep their distance from the hard decisions and conversations that a workforce reduction requires miss an opportunity to mitigate the damage to morale and trust that such events can engender. Sanyin Siang advises top executives to get personally involved in the process and to model a people-first, humane approach.

Companies that can move quickly to capture new opportunities don't have greater foresight than the rest. What they do have, increasingly, is modularity: They have broken apart and exposed their core capabilities via digital technologies in such a way that partners can leverage them. That is key to expanding into new markets and creating a wider range of options for growth.