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Since its introduction, in 2003, the Net Promoter System, which measures how consistently brands turn customers into advocates, has become the predominant customer success framework. But as its popularity grew, NPS started to be gamed and misused in ways that hurt its credibility. Unaudited, self-reported Net Promoter Scores undermined the usefulness of NPS. Over time its creator, Fred Reichheld, realized that the only way to correct this problem was to introduce a hard, complementary metric that drew on accounting results. In this article he and two colleagues from Bain introduce that metric: the earned growth rate, which captures the revenue growth generated by returning customers and their referrals. To calculate their earned growth rates, firms must have systems that gather data on the costs and revenues for each customer over time and must ask all new customers why they came on board. If the reason is a referral or recommendation, a customer is "earned"; if it's advertising, a promotional deal, or a persuasive salesperson, the customer is "bought." Earned growth rates reveal the real-world impact of customer loyalty. Because they're auditable, they can help firms validate investments in customer service and convince investors of their businesses's underlying strength.

Most companies aim for exceptional customer service, but too few are attentive to the subtle discrimination by frontline employees that can alienate customers, lead to lawsuits, or even cause lasting brand damage by going viral. This article presents research about the way bias occurs in the provision of core products and services ("exchanges"), the furnishing of help that exceeds the minimum required ("extras"), and the manner in which service is delivered ("etiquette"). By breaking customer service into these three dimensions, the authors offer a framework for identifying and addressing frontline bias in your own organization. They recommend talking to your customers, examining available data, and running experiments to get a better sense of what biases exist among your customer service workers. Armed with that information, you might try to mitigate prejudiced behavior by broadening employees' exposure to people of diverse backgrounds, giving them standard procedures to follow when they interact with customers, and encouraging a sense of responsibility to act fairly.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands such as Allbirds, Casper, Peloton, and Warby Parker have creatively found a weakness in the marketing citadel of incumbent brands. By using data gleaned from daily interactions with customers, these brands have been able to adapt how they serve their unique customer communities across a start-to-finish purchase journey. The best of them have parlayed that ability into a profitable business model applied across multiple channels and customer segments. But as successful DTC brands mature, they must recognize the need to evolve. The authors offer four principles for continued success: (1) Focus on deepening customer relationships, not just making comparisons with competitors. (2) Accompany the customer beyond the initial transaction. (3) Omnichannel is about value addition, not cost reduction. (4) Strengthen the core first; consider extensions later.

For decades, negotiators have been working out agreements by focusing on interests, not positions. But the messy problem of how to share the gains created by deals has remained unresolved--until now. The answer, argue Yale's Nalebuff and NYU's Brandenburger, lies in accurately identifying and sizing the negotiation "pie," which they define as the additional value produced by an agreement to work together. It's the value over and above the sum of the two sides' best alternatives to a negotiated agreement, or BATNAs. The pie most people have in their heads, however, is the total value available to be split. Because of this, they argue over the wrong numbers and issues, taking positions that they think are reasonable but that are in fact self-interested. Once the pie is properly understood, the allocation rule is simple: The parties in a negotiation have an equal claim on the pie, so it should be divided evenly. This is true regardless of what they can accomplish on their own, because both are equally needed to create the gains. This principle can be applied in a variety of increasingly complicated real-world scenarios, which the authors walk readers through in this article.

Corporations are facing growing pressure--from investors, advocacy groups, politicians, and even business leaders themselves--to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their operations and their supply and distribution chains. About 90% of the companies in the S&P 500 now issue some form of environmental, social, and governance report, almost always including an estimate of the company's GHG emissions. The authors describe these as "catchall reports that are often made up of inaccurate, unverifiable, and contradictory data." They propose a remedy: the E-liability accounting system, whereby emissions are measured using a combination of chemistry and engineering, and principles of cost accounting are applied to assign the emissions to individual outputs. The authors provide a detailed method for assigning E-liabilities across an entire value chain, using the example of a car-door manufacturer whose furthest-removed supplier is a mining company, which transfers its products to a shipping company, which transports them to a steel company, and so on until the car reaches the end customer.

Just as people can develop skills and abilities over time, they can learn to be more or less ethical. Yet many organizations limit ethics training to the onboarding process. If they do address it thereafter, it may be only by establishing codes of conduct or whistleblower hotlines. Such steps may curb specific infractions, but they don't necessarily help employees develop as ethical people. Drawing on evidence from hundreds of research studies, the authors offer a framework for helping workers build moral character. Managers can provide experiential training in ethical dilemmas. They can foster psychological safety when minor lapses occur, conduct pre- and postmortems for initiatives with ethical components, and create a culture of service by encouraging volunteer work and mentoring in ethics.

Innovators can be their own worst enemies, derailed by personal traits, such as confidence and optimism, that are essential to creativity but can be toxic when taken to an extreme, and by emotions such as fear, doubt, regret, and frustration, which are typical when trying something new but can too easily stall or destroy entrepreneurial efforts. And although practical advice abounds on how to innovate, in-depth guidance on conquering these mental challenges is harder to find. The authors draw on published interviews, videos, and speeches to describe the obstacles encountered by some high-profile entrepreneurs and illuminate the paths by which they moved forward. They explore practical tactics for overcoming the fear of getting started, the frustration of setbacks, an excess of creativity, and a tendency to go into hyperdrive. Innovators must become mindful of their habitual ways of thinking and behaving, the authors argue. Thus armed, they can reach out for feedback or mentoring--for help in becoming a more skillful version of themselves.

Four new books examine the challenges associated with Big Tech's dominance: "The Every," by Dave Eggers; "The Exponential Age," by Azeem Azhar; "The Raging 2020s," by Alec Ross; and "System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot," by Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami, and Jeremy M. Weinstein. Meanwhile, the podcasts "Sway," featuring the tech journalist Kara Swisher, and Pivot, which she cohosts with New York University professor Scott Galloway--tackle the widening gap between digital age haves and have-nots.

The prolific and best-selling novelist on creative inspiration, recovering from tragedy, and pulling countless all-nighters in pursuit of great stories.

Chief marketing officers are vital to international expansion--if given the right authority and limits.

A series of studies looked at how to market visually "atypical" produce--and found that honesty was the best policy.

An egocentric approach to defining ecosystems undermines the ability of everyone involved leaders, followers, and partners alike to see alignment hurdles and craft appropriate strategies. The authors discuss successful ecosystem strategies for companies positioning themselves as leaders, as well as key considerations for those that choose followership. Real-world examples from the mobile payment, electronic health record, and e-book ecosystems provide additional context.

The post-pandemic era requires a mindset change about jobs and managerial expectations. These considerations will influence decisions on whether and when to allow continued work-from-home arrangements; whether to customize rules for employees; where to locate the business; how to make work measurable and ensure employee focus; and how to position an organization to retain its best talent.

The ongoing global supply chain crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic shows no sign of abating. And although many media outlets have blamed pandemic shortages on companies' practice of just-in-time inventory management, abandoning it would do little to help current supply chain problems. The author points to two other overarching causes of product and parts shortages: suppliers' inability to adjust to soaring demand, and government interventions.

It's often difficult to access the real-world data needed to train models or gain insights, due to privacy and security concerns or simply process issues. However, new AI techniques for generating look-alike data sets can help data scientists develop machine learning models more quickly and at greater scale. This article explains the concept of synthetic data and outlines the benefits and concerns that executives should consider.

Managers of remote teams who improve their delegation skills can help solve the biggest impediment to their success virtual distance by closing physical, operational, and affinity gaps. New research has identified a number of habits to help managers build the crucial skill of delegation.

The Sustainable Apparel Coalition's Facility Environmental Module (FEM) is one of the world's most advanced "data-driven governance" initiatives. The FEM represents an important new strategy in the governance of Global Value Chains. This article reports on a multi-year study to evaluate how firms have implemented the FEM, and whether and under what conditions it leads to improvements in factory performance. It finds that while the FEM represents an important step in improving environmental measurement systems, the program currently acts like a "scale without a diet." Companies are now better able to measure performance, but many have not implemented the mechanisms needed to motivate systematic improvements. This article offers recommendations for how to strengthen data-driven governance systems and explores their implications for managers.

Many leaders of remote teams feel overwhelmed and isolated. One solution is to adopt an empowering leadership style, which involves delegating to team members, developing them so they can contribute more, and soliciting their input to solve problems. But leaders often resist this approach when managing remotely. They worry about ceding control and taking new risks in an environment where they can't observe people directly. Here's how to help leaders reap the benefits of sharing power.

Individuals' unique decision-making styles inform the choices they make when working with AI-based inputs. The authors explain how organizations can optimize AI and overcome flaws in human judgment by identifying and understanding the three types of decision maker: skeptics, interactors, and delegators. They also offer three strategies for integrating AI into organizational decision-making processes.

For AI deployments to succeed, the systems must be trusted and accepted by those who use their input and those who are affected by the decisions these systems make or support. That means being accountable for the use and outputs of AI technologies, and transparently communicating both the benefits and drawbacks to all stakeholders. The authors describe the three sources of stakeholders' trust in artificial intelligence and suggest four steps companies can take to earn that trust.