Decision making and problem solving

Executives know that a company's measurement systems strongly affect employee behaviors. But the traditional financial performance measures that worked...

As a matter of policy, we don’t review our own books, but we hope you will. Keep an eye out for the following Press titles in September, and let us know what you think of them in the comments. Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business by Josh Bernoff and Ted […]

Lessons from three CEOs facing crises.

Strategies for remaining gainfully employed in an era of very smart machines

Your people will have new roles and need new skills.

When to rely on algorithms and when to trust your gut

A close study of the real thing — seafarers’ insurrections during the Age of Discovery — might help you decide.

As the 1990s overtake us, public interest in ethics is at a historic high. While the press calls attention to blatant derelictions on Wall Street, in the defense industry, and in the Pentagon, and to questionable activities in the White House, in the attorney general’s office, and in Congress, observers wonder whether our society is […]

The information technology explosion was set off by visionaries who thrive on uncertainty. Today that innovation-fueling uncertainty is in danger, a victim of its own success and excess. IT producers have historically built platforms that are useless standing alone, inviting others to parlay them into a variety of useful applications. The first PC makers shipped […]

Using weak signals to spur innovation

During World War II, American military personnel noticed that some parts of planes were hit by enemy fire more often than other parts. They analyzed the...

Today's algorithms still largely lack empathy, ethics, and the ability to see the bigger picture.

The “silent majority” in the middle can make or break your business.

“The wise men were all fools…What to do?” So sings Bruce Springsteen in his searing rocker, “Last to Die,” a lament about the endless miscalculations that led to our endless war in Iraq. That line was ringing in my ears as I read this morning’s headlines about the fiascoes gripping almost every element of our […]

Don’t worry so much about being consistent.

When Congressman Jeff Flake recently proposed eliminating NSF funding for political science research, it marked the third time in the past 6 years that...

In most companies, strategic planning isn’t about making decisions. It’s about documenting choices that have already been made, often haphazardly. Leading firms are rethinking their approach to strategy development so they can make more, better, and faster decisions.

Seemingly well-planned “strategies” are often the result of random moments.

Burned once by groupthink, Kennedy came up with a process to root it out.

Andrew Jordan sat at his desk, absentmindedly watching a barge chug slowly upstream on the Thames. The dinner meeting he had scheduled with a select group of senior managers at Universal Products Company, Ltd. would begin in an hour. For three years, it had seemed enough to focus on the business problems of UPC’s Connectors […]