The Best of the September Issue

 

Are you having trouble viewing this email? If so, click here to see it in a web browser.

September 11, 2013 By Andrea Ovans Managing Yourself Make Time for the Work That Matters Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cohen How much time do you spend each day on the work that really matters? How much of the time are you doing something else — filling out expense reports, say, or going to meetings that don't really require your presence? The knowledge workers the authors interviewed in 39 companies spent a jaw-dropping 41% of their time on those low-value pursuits. But when the authors led 15 executives through a variation on the classic Start/Stop/Continue exercise — where they inventoried what they actually did each day, judged which tasks mattered most to them and their organization, and dropped or delegated the rest — they found they could free up as much as 20% of their time. That's a full day a week, without having to re-engineer any work processes or business models. Take the first step yourself right now with this interactive assessment of how you spend your time. Feature Triple-Strength Leadership Nick Lovegrove and Matthew Thomas Managing resource constraints, controlling health care costs, implementing smart-grid technologies — these are challenges that can't be addressed unless government, business, and NGOs work together. But how? Such problems need solutions designed and led by people who can bridge the vastly different cultures, incentives, and jargon separating the three sectors — what Kennedy School professor Joseph Nye has called "tri-sector athletes." Bill Gates is one, and so are Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Hormats, and Hank Paulson. But these leaders are a rare breed, the authors have found, at once pragmatic and idealistic. Drawn across sectors by a strong sense of mission, they are forging uniquely effective career paths by applying their widening range of cross-sector skills, sensitivity to context, open-mindedness, and powerful networks to some of the world's most intractable problems. Few people explicitly think of themselves as tri-sector leaders, but might you recognize yourself in the description? Spotlight Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers Herminia Ibarra, Robin Ely, and Deborah Kolb The barriers preventing your talented women from fulfilling their leadership potential are subtle. It's not that qualified women are being passed over for promotion so much as that they're not being assigned the high-profile projects they need to hone their leadership qualifications in the first place. Ambivalent supervisors further obscure the path forward by offering up contradictory remedial advice: "Be tougher!" they might say, but also "Don't set expectations so high." Women need to push for those stretch assignments even if they feel they're not quite qualified (as men typically do). As they rise, they need to seek one another out and form communities where they can safely compare notes about their perplexing challenges. And by rooting their leadership aspirations in a greater purpose, they can go a long way toward redirecting people's attention away from what they're wearing or whether they're likable toward how effectively they can lead the organization to fulfilling shared goals. For more a curated reading list on this complex issue, as well as an array of the latest research data, see HBR.org. Feature The Truth About Customer Experience Alex Rawson, Ewan Duncan, and Conor Jones Your customer service is awesome and you know it, since you track customer satisfaction levels every time the customer contacts you. But what if your customers feel they shouldn't have to be calling so often — or at all? Focus, as so many companies do, only on each service call, and you may be seriously overestimating how happy your customers are and leaving yourself vulnerable to poaching. You'll get a more realistic picture of how well your offerings are fitting the bill if you trace the entire path customers forge as they deal with you — the complete customer journey — and track how happy they are over time. Organizations that do the work to manage the entire experience reap enormous rewards: enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced churn, increased revenue, and greater employee satisfaction. They also discover more effective ways to collaborate across functions and levels, a process that delivers gains throughout the company.

BEST SELLERS HBR's 10 Must Reads: The Essentials | HBR's 10 Must Reads Boxed Set | HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations | HBR Guide to Better Business Writing | HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done

FEATURED PRODUCT The First 90 Days App for iPhone and Android MAKE YOUR NEXT CAREER TRANSITION A SUCCESS. Download The First 90 Days App today to help you stay ahead of the game. Download on the App Store » Download on Google Play »

FEATURED PRODUCT HBR Guide to Office Politics HBR Paperback Series EVERY ORGANIZATION HAS ITS SHARE OF POLITICAL DRAMA: Personalities clash. Agendas compete. Turf wars erupt. It can make you crazy if you're trying to keep your head down and get your job done. The problem is, you can't just keep your head down. You need to work productively with your colleagues--even the challenging ones--for the good of your organization and your career. How can you do that without crossing over to the dark side? By acknowledging that power dynamics and unwritten rules exist--and by constructively navigating them. "Politics" needn't be a dirty word. You can succeed at work without being a power grabber or a corporate climber. Whether you're a new professional or an experienced one, this guide will help you. Buy It Now

ADVERTISEMENT

HBR.ORG | THE MAGAZINE | BLOGS | BOOKS | CASES | STORE | SUBSCRIBE TO HBR UNSUBSCRIBE | NEWSLETTERS PRIVACY POLICY | CONTACT Copyright © 2013 Harvard Business School Publishing, an affiliate of Harvard Business School. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing 60 Harvard Way Boston, MA 02163 CUSTOMER SERVICE: 800-545-7685 (US/Canada) 1-617-783-7600 (outside the U.S. and Canada)