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| March 06, 2014 By Best of the Issue
SpotlightManage Your Work, Manage Your LifeBoris Groysberg and Robin AbrahamsAn army of business school students fans out across the world, interviewing almost 4,000 executives to find out how they're prospering in the senior ranks without giving their personal lives short shrift. The answer is sobering – they're not. Achieving work/life balance appears at best to an elusive idea and at worst a complete myth. Those who were most successful set the bar fairly low for fulfilling personal goals (some even counting "providing for my family financially" as a personal goal), outsourcing what they viewed as the most "tactical" family responsibilities (cooking, dressing the children). They limited business travel and relocations. They worked hard to resist the temptation to use technology to address work and personal issues simultaneously (avoiding answering work e-mails at home or raising their children over the phone). And they ultimately depended heavily on the good graces of their life partners. At first the students couldn't believe that blending work and home responsibilities was really so hard. But as one sadly concluded, "Every single executive confirmed this view in one way or another, and I came to believe that it is the reality of today's business world." Managing YourselfWho Can You Trust?David DeStenoI've just met you, and we're about to sign a deal worth millions. Can we trust each other, or not? Decades of research has shown that most people's judgment will be only slightly better than flipping a coin. It's not that it's impossible to judge trustworthiness. Rather, people pay too much attention to some signals and not enough to others. They often use reputation as a proxy, assuming that past actions are a fair predictor of future behavior. But a better predictor is how much a person will benefit from cheating in the short term versus how likely he or she is to suffer in the long term -- most people will cheat if they think they won't get caught. People who feel they are in positions of power over you, even temporarily, will also be more likely to cheat you. What's more, we place too much stock in displays of confidence. We should instead give more weight to our initial gut reaction. (Too see why, watch the video in which the author takes us through clever experiments that reveal untrustworthy body language). FeatureAn Anthropologist Walks into a Bar...Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel B. RasmussenUsing a new kind of market research, a beer company finds out why its flagship lager sells well in stores but not in pubs. A medical device company realizes that a problem it thought it had solved decades ago is still a major issue for its customers. Lego finds out kids have more time to play with its toys than it had thought. The approach, dubbed "sensemaking," studies how people experience your offerings in much the same way an anthropologist would study an unfamiliar tribe. The process involves observing customers and salespeople where they live and work without preconceptions and then looking for patterns in the mounds of data collected to discover new insights. It's not simple or quick, and it requires training to pull off. But it can help solve tough business problems and enable business leaders to think creatively about what business they're really in. Watch Christian Madsbjerg explain how sensemaking is like choosing a fine wine in this video interview. CaseWhen the Twitterverse Turns on YouJana SeijtsCanadian Jet runs its first Twitter contest in this fictionalized case study, offering customers two round-trip tickets to the person who posts the most creative tweet. Tweets pour in, including those of the "You made me miss my daughter's wedding #CanJetLuxury" variety. This horrifies CanJet's CEO and puts its top PR exec in a bind. As the press inquiries stream in, the CEO lays the problem in her lap. Should she stop the contest, or can she salvage the situation? End it gracefully, says KitchenAid's real-life senior brand director, citing a crisis that unfolded with breathtaking speed from a single errant tweet sent by a hapless member of its social medial team. Don't be so touchy, advises McDonald's social media director. No company is liked by everyone -- focus on the positive comments. And HBR's readers offer more suggestions: give out two prizes -- for the best positive and the best negative tweet; and next time, frame the contest less broadly. |
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FEATURED PRODUCT HBR Guide to Office PoliticsHBR Paperback SeriesEVERY 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 |
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