WHEN SOTHEBY’S raised the gavel on the season’s biggest art auction on November 15th the sellers, Harry and Linda Macklowe, did not arrive as one to watch the proceedings from the discreet skybox above the auction floor, as those disposing of a collection often do. The couple can hardly stand to be in the same…
REED HASTINGS HAS built the culture at Netflix around it. Ray Dalio made it a founding principle at Bridgewater, a successful investment fund. “Radical candour” is the idea that bracing honesty is the best way to run a business: no one dances around the truth, and swifter feedback improves performance.Listen to this story. Enjoy more…
The oil major is looking for a less taxing energy transitionPITY BEN VAN BEURDEN. The boss of Royal Dutch Shell is an affable man steering a Scylla-and-Charybdis course between oil-loving shareholders on one extreme and carbon-hating ones on the other. His latest task is to convince investors that Shell’s strategy of doubling down on oil…
Soaring demand for guns and ammunition comes from a range of demographic groupsJUST TWO companies, Vista Outdoor and Olin Corp, meet the bulk of America’s demand for ammunition, and chiefly through two long-established brands. Remington, part of Vista, was founded in 1816, and Winchester Ammunition, owned by Olin Corp, started in 1866. Because of soaring…
A standard approach is to conduct exit interviews to understand why employees are resigning and devise a solution. But narrowing in on why people leave may extract a price: neglect of loyal and engaged employees who want to stay in the organization. Instead, managers should spend just as much time understanding why employees choose to…
The economic power of the middle market is immense. If it was its own country, the U.S. middle market would be the fifth-largest economy in the world. But when private equity (PE) tries to capitalize on the growth potential of the lower middle market, they face a challenge: cultural literacy. The fact is, the cultural…
Looking outside one’s own industry has resulted in many remarkable innovations and disruptions. But all too often managers lack the mandate, authority, or confidence to make it work. They can overcome these obstacles by building a team to execute the search for outside ideas; providing it with strong, empowered leaders; and carefully preparing the sales…
Legal scholar and author Cass Sunstein has coined the term sludge to refer to situations in which the design of a specific process consistently impedes individuals from completing their intended action. An enormous amount of sludge exists in health care processes. In this article, three senior managers at Ascension share how they identified four approaches that…
New research reveals that how we perform work as a team contributes more to resilience than external stressors. On resilient teams, individuals feel responsible for energizing each other. This is in stark contrast to teams who are challenged by frustrating ways of working and fractured relationships. As we move into the third year of pandemic…
Intuition is frequently dismissed as mystical or unreliable — but there’s a deep neurological basis for it. When you approach a decision intuitively, your brain works in tandem with your gut to quickly assess all your memories, past learnings, personal needs, and preferences and then makes the wisest decision given the context. The author offers…