Pro-diversity messages are everywhere, whether you’re searching for a job, playing soccer, or watching the Oscars. Their point is simple: Diversity is good and we need more of it. In the business world, for example, we know that more-diverse groups tend to be more innovative, creative, hard-working, and better at solving problems. Yet despite the proliferation of interest in diversity and costly initiatives aimed at increasing it, discrimination continues to be a major problem in the labor market.

In trying to address discrimination, many organizations now explicitly advertise their dedication to diversity, identifying themselves as “equal opportunity” or “diversity-friendly” employers. The thinking, presumably, is that such statements will increase the diversity of their applicant pool and ultimately of their workforce. We know a lot about how effective these diversity statements are, and, unfortunately, the answer is “not very.” They can even...

Numerous reasons have been proposed for why gender inequality remains frustratingly stagnant. One persistent argument says it’s because of differences in men and women’s behavior. But do men and women act all that differently? An analysis of men and women’s behavior in one company suggests that the difference in their promotion rates wasn’t due to their behavior but to how they were treated. Women had the same number of contacts as men, they spent as much time with senior leadership, they had indistinguishable work patterns, and they scored equally in performance evaluations. Yet women weren’t advancing and men were.

Some executives thrive under pressure. Others wilt. Is the reason all in their heads? Hardly. Sustained high achievement demands physical and emotional strength as well as a sharp intellect. To bring mind, body, and spirit to peak condition, executives need to learn what world-class athletes already know: recovering energy is as important as expending it.

When people are faced with a deadline far in the future, they are more likely to think the assignment is difficult. This leads them to procrastinate, spend more money on completing the assignment, and even risk abandoning it completely. These patterns are important for managers and others setting deadlines to recognize, in large part because the author’s research reveals that people’s tendency to procrastinate on long-term assignments and finish less-important but urgent assignments reflects a basic psychological preference. We behave as if pursuing urgent tasks has its own appeal, independent of objective consequences.

Too many standing meetings are a waste of time. Better meeting techniques, such as distributing agendas, won’t fix a meeting that shouldn’t be happening at all. When it’s not clear who owns a meeting, why people are convening, and how a group’s work contributes to the company’s strategy, more-drastic measures are needed. First, make sure each meeting has a clearly articulated mandate with defined decision rights. Second, design a synchronized meeting cadence. It may seem obvious, but a meeting’s frequency and allotted time must be commensurate with its charter and decision rights. Finally, figure out the right composition. Too often leaders let hierarchy define who comes to a meeting. Instead, only those who have something specific to contribute should be included.

Diversity on corporate boards is an urgent priority, emphasized by company leaders and public policy agendas. For example, in 2021 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a rule requiring most companies on the Nasdaq exchange to have at least two directors from underrepresented groups—minority, female, or LGBTQ+—or to explain why they don’t. Such initiatives are laudable not only for reasons of fairness: Research shows that heterogeneity in groups boosts the quality of decision-making. Yet little evidence has persuasively linked increased board diversity with improved firm outcomes. A new study explores why and suggests conditions that can help.

The payments platform company Xendit came to life with a pivot. Its founders first built a product that would allow individuals to exchange funds—like Venmo but with more privacy—and then rolled out a simple business-to-consumer interface, similar to a pared-down version of Shopify. But they soon realized that such apps couldn’t be successful without an infrastructure for digital transactions and banking. They’d already built an internal system to ensure quick and seamless incoming and outgoing payments, so they decided to offer it externally to speed transactions from bank to business and business to business, easing a significant pain point for enterprises of all sizes in the region. In the years since, they’ve maintained month-over-month revenue growth of more than 10% and expanded from a few dozen employees to more than 1,000 distributed around the world. And in its latest funding round Xendit achieved a valuation of more than $1 billion. Its leaders are taking the...

Many DEI initiatives are scuttled because DEI leaders and legal teams feel themselves to be at odds over questions of acceptable risk. DEI leaders see lawyers as guardians of the status quo, whereas legal experts, trained to anticipate the worst, believe they are protecting the company from legal risk.

However, as the authors point out, businesses routinely choose to accept significant legal risk. In most situations they’re confronted with a risk-reward calculus that’s easy to quantify. But with DEI that’s harder, because the only thing on the balance sheet is the cost. Absent a foundation of trust and support, lawyers are skittish about signing off on initiatives, and the business is more likely to waste resources on performative exercises. And bad DEI poses a greater risk than does good DEI.

When it comes to establishing a productive partnership between DEI leaders and legal counsel, the key is to collaborate early and often. In this article, the...

Two decades ago, extensive research led Nohria, the former dean of Harvard Business School, to conclude that the hallmark of great leadership is the ability to adapt to the times. Today, he says, we’re in a period of significant change, thanks to global events, governmental responses, technological changes, and shifts in demographics, social mores, and labor relationships. Here he discusses those developments and the skills that CEOs will need to successfully steer through them.

The author, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, has studied the ways in which the lifestyle behaviors of CEOs—in particular, materialism and a propensity for rule breaking—may spell trouble for a company. Her research, which includes looking at executives’ criminal records and the costs of their homes and automobiles, has found some intriguing links: Firms led by CEOs with even minor traffic tickets or excessive spending habits are disproportionately prone to fraud, insider trading, and other risky business activities. In this article Dey outlines the evolution of this work and suggests that boards should pay attention to executives’ off-the-job behavior.

Organizations are pretty good at solving specific problems as they arise, but many lack a set of criteria and goals to meet in order to maintain their ability to compete and grow. The author identifies 10 research-backed principles from the field of organization development to guide companies: 1) Encourage cooperation, 2) organize for change, 3) anticipate the future, 4) remain flexible, 5) create distinctive spaces, 6) diversify your workforce — and create an inclusive environment, 7) promote personal growth, 8) empower people, 9) reward high performers, and 10) foster a leadership culture.

Many companies today fail to see the threats and opportunities that new digital technologies represent. They fail to recognize that customers are increasingly being drawn to data-driven services and experiences, and they fail to appreciate the growing value of data and digital ecosystems for their business. Five traps in particular create this digital myopia: the product trap, the value-chain trap, the operational-efficiency trap, the customer trap, and the competitor trap. The author discusses each, along with ways to avoid them.

Investment in what is typically called “FemTech” – defined as diagnostic tools, products, and services related to women’s health — has exploded over the past decade. Some of the most promising ventures have been focused on reproductive care. Then came the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The legal and policy restrictions on reproductive health care that result from this decision will not only have swift impact on people who can get pregnant and their families, it will also undermine critical areas of research, innovation, and progress toward more equitable health care outcomes. Among the areas of concern: fertility treatments like IVF; personal data collection and the ability to drive research; a limiting of new investment and curbing of health care innovation more broadly; and the introduction of new obstacles for women founders.

Nailing a job interview takes more than preparation and practice. If you want to get hired, you need to tell a story about why you’re the perfect person for the role. Here are five pieces of advice to help you.

Summer is here and, for many of us, it makes us nostalgic for our childhood vacations: long, carefree days spent by the beach, in the woods, or with friends and family.

However, as adults, those memories can seem all too far away.

If you’re American, you probably take drastically less vacation that workers elsewhere. First, most U.S. employers only offer 10 paid vacation days, versus the 28 in the UK and 30 in France. The US is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee vacation to its employees, and according to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, 1 in 4 Americans receives no paid vacation at all. What’s more, of those Americans who actually do take time off, most actually end up working on their vacation. The prevalence of smartphones and wifi makes it even harder to disconnect.

But the problem isn’t limited to the US. An Ipsos/Reuters survey across a number of countries shows that only two-thirds of...

Managers are often at a loss as to how to effectively motivate uninspired employees. Research indicates that managers first should identify the reason for an employee’s lack of motivation before applying a targeted strategy. These reasons fall into four categories called motivation traps. Namely, these are values mismatch, lack of self-efficacy, disruptive emotions, and attribution errors. Each of these four traps has distinct causes and comes with specific strategies to release an employee from its clutches. Identifying exactly which trap has ensnared your employee and applying the right targeted intervention can get things moving again.

One of the most challenging aspects of a virtual meeting is keeping people’s attention. It’s important to be thoughtful about how you engage attendees. In the first minute of your meeting, help participants experience the problem you want them to solve by sharing statistics, anecdotes, or analogies that dramatize the issue. Then emphasize shared responsibility for solving it. Define a highly structured and brief task they can tackle in small groups of two or three people and give them a medium with which to communicate with one another (video conference, Slack channel, messaging platform, audio breakouts).  Then have the groups report out. Never go longer than 5-10 minutes without giving the group another problem to solve. The key is to sustain a continual expectation of meaningful involvement so participants don’t retreat into an observer role. When that happens, you’ll have to work hard to bring them back.

Grief is a universal human experience, yet workplace culture is often inhospitable to people suffering profound loss. Managers come to work prepared to celebrate births and birthdays, and even to handle illnesses, but when it comes to death, they fall silent and avert their gaze. The default approach is to try to spare the office from grief, leaving bereaved employees alone for a few days and then hoping they’ll return expediently to work.

This article provides guidance on how to humanely help team members return to productivity. Grief rarely unfolds in a neat progression, and managers should understand the phases the bereaved will experience and the most helpful response to each. Immediately after a death, acknowledging the loss without making demands is the best a manager can do. After grieving employees are back on the job, managers should be patient with inconsistency in performance and attitude. And as workers eventually emerge from mourning,...

Failing to complete a task creates underlying cognitive tension, which is what makes you keep coming back to it. That’s why we find it easier to recall something that’s ongoing or incomplete than something that is done and over with. Rather than letting it be intrusive, we can actually use it to our benefit and get things done. There are four ways to make this work for you: 1) Reduce your tendency to procrastinate; 2) Get people to pay more attention to what you’re saying; 3) Memorize more information; 4) Get better with remembering tough names.

When Julie Zhuo, Facebook’s vice president of design, first began managing a team, it consisted of just  a handful of people. And then it doubled. Every few years, it doubled again. At each of these points, Zhuo felt like she had an entirely different job. While the core principles of management stayed the same, the day-to-day changed significantly. People often ask her what’s different about her job now than when she started. Looking back, she describes the five most striking contrasts between managing small and large teams: You Shift from Direct to Indirect Management, People Treat You Differently, You Context Shift All Day Long, You Learn to Pick Your Battles, and People-Centric Skills Matter Most.

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What are we really searching for when we say we want more “meaning” at work, and how does it differ from happiness? Philosophers, scholars, artists, and social psychologists have struggled to come up with an answer to that question for years. According to research by psychologist Roy Baumeister and colleagues, five factors differentiate meaning and happiness. The author describes them and then offers practical advice on ways to find more meaning in your work.

A new survey finds that 77% of workers have experienced burnout. What can organizations do about it?  Encourage real weekends and holidays so employees can rest and recharge. Expand wellness benefits to include stress management training and “mental health” days. And create a culture where contributions are recognized and gratitude is freely expressed.