Modern Global Leadership

Much capital has been lost by chasing false paradigm changes and earnings missed by dismissing real paradigm changes. How can we best identify when the hype is turning to mania or when it underestimates the long-term impact of new technology? We start by asking the right questions.

As a culture, we applaud proactivity. Just glance at job boards and you’ll see plenty of postings looking for “self-starters,” “innovators” and “go-getters” to join workplace teams. But are highly proactive people always a positive force in groups? Does loading your team with hustle help?

The effects of climate change are everywhere, yet a coordinated and cohesive response to the biggest threat to life on Earth is nowhere to be seen. While the scale of the crisis leads many to paralysis, experts at this year’s Jefferson Innovation Summit worked to find solutions both dramatic and pragmatic, naming five key opportunities.

Worker hotlines have long been used to identify and address grievances in the workplace. However, these complaint mechanisms can often suffer from a multitude of inefficiencies related to both the operation of the hotline itself and the usage by the workers. Research explores four central causes of the problem and potential solutions.

Something happens on the way from a strategy’s creation to its execution: the unpredictable, which can leave many a carefully crafted plan in tatters. Eastern philosophy offers paths to confronting inevitable uncertainty.

You’ve stepped into a leadership position, and leading diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) efforts is a priority. Where do you begin? How do you set yourself up for success? How do you effect positive change and tackle DEIB challenges?

For more than 50 years, organizational scholars have been documenting why employees are disengaged, why they “quit on the job,” and why they actually do quit. Only 32 percent of employees reported feeling engaged with their work in 2022. One way to improve the trend? Call “quiet quitting” what it often is: “calibrated contributing.”

The world of business has changed, and “tech” has everything to do with nearly every business role. Whether someone is technical or not, hypothesis-driven development helps workers get reliably good outcomes by working in discrete batches of testable ideas.

Darden Ideas to Action insights draw from faculty expertise, books, research, cases and white papers. Here: the most read stories of 2022. How can one build a brand? What happens when buzz turns to backlash? How does a strategist prepare for the unforeseeable? What inequalities to women face in feedback? And why is storytelling an essential skill?

Human beings are inherently biased. Our biases come from certain heuristics — shortcuts we take that help us distill information and make fast judgements. To combat this, organizations can implement standardized procedures that minimize the discretion that managers use in evaluating people. How?