Harvard Business Review

Amy C. Edmondson

Marcus Buckingham

Laura Morgan Roberts

Peter Cappelli

A year's worth of management wisdom, all in one place. We've reviewed the ideas, insights, and best practices from the past year of Harvard Business Review to keep you up-to-date on the most cutting-edge, influential thinking driving business today. With authors from Marcus Buckingham to Amy Edmondson and company examples from Lyft to Disney, this volume brings the most current and important management conversations right to your fingertips. This book will inspire you to: Rethink whether constant, candid feedback really helps employees thrive Move beyond diversity and inclusion to creating a racially just workplace Adopt connected strategies that anticipate your customers' needs Navigate the challenges of dual-career relationships Understand when data creates competitive advantage—and when it doesn't Break through the organizational barriers that impede AI initiatives Lead in a new era of climate action This collection of articles includes “The Feedback Fallacy,” by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall; “Cross-Silo Leadership,” by Tiziana Casciaro, Amy C. Edmondson, and Sujin Jang; “Toward a Racially Just Workplace,” by Laura Morgan Roberts and Anthony J. Mayo; “The Age of Continuous Connection,” by Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch; “The Hard Truth about Innovative Cultures,” by Gary P. Pisano; “Creating a Trans-Inclusive Workplace,” by Christian N. Thoroughgood, Katina B. Sawyer, and Jennica R. Webster; “When Data Creates Competitive Advantage,” by Andrei Hagiu and Julian Wright; “Your Approach to Hiring Is All Wrong,” by Peter Cappelli; “How Dual-Career Couples Make It Work,” by Jennifer Petriglieri; “Building the AI-Powered Organization,” by Tim Fountaine, Brian McCarthy, and Tamim Saleh; “Leading a New Era of Climate Action,” by Andrew Winston; and “That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief,” by Scott Berinato.

The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review (with bonus article "The Feedback Fallacy" by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall)

HBR's 10 Must Reads 2021

Peter Cappelli, Wharton management professor and director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources, debunks the arguments and exposes the real reasons good people can't get hired. Named one of HR Magazine's Top 20 Most Influential Thinkers of 2011, Cappelli points the way forward to rev America's job engine again.

The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It

Why Good People Can't Get Jobs

The college marketplace today is bewildering. Many of the new developments mirror what has happened in healthcare: costs continue to rise with prices all over the map depending where you go, a barrage of advertising making us aware of options we never knew existed (degrees like “sports broadcasting” are the equivalent of treatments for “restless leg” syndrome in medicine) while confusing us about the quality of schools and degrees. For-profit providers are musclinginto the market, and the traditional not-for-profit colleges are acting like for-profits in their pursuit of dollars. The major concern for parents facing the enormous costs of college may be whether different degrees will pay off in the form of a job for their child at graduation. Reports in the media offer no help. Stories about employers complaining that they can’t get enough graduates with the right academic background are followed by others where recent grads struggle to find even unpaid internships. Specialized career degrees designed to get graduates into jobs in a particular industry like hospitality or fields like counseling have exploded in part because of this concern and because of the very real fact that employers have become reluctant to train new hires. It is up to the student, and often their parents, to get those entry-level job skills now. Business majors already outnumber liberal arts majors in the US eight-to-one, but the trend has been for even more focused programs targeted to ever narrower niches in the labor market. In my home town of Philadelphia, for example, local universities provide degrees in fields like pharmaceutical marketing and hospitality management with concentrations in casino management. Parents guiding their children through the college application process – and paying for the choices – have to be something of a venture capitalist to think through which programs are worth the money. How should you navigate these options? Assuming you’ve decided already that your child is going to college and that you care whether they will have a job when they finish, what I will be showing is what to bear in mind.

A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You'll Ever Make

Will College Pay Off?

Work from Home, Remote Work, and the Hard Choices We All Face

Future of the Office

Peter Cappelli confronts the myth of the skills gap and provides an actionable path forward to put people back to work. Even in a time of perilously high unemployment, companies contend that they cannot find the employees they need. Pointing to a skills gap, employers argue applicants are simply not qualified; schools aren't preparing students for jobs; the government isn't letting in enough high-skill immigrants; and even when the match is right, prospective employees won't accept jobs at the wages offered. In this powerful and fast-reading book, Peter Cappelli, Wharton management professor and director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources, debunks the arguments and exposes the real reasons good people can't get hired. Drawing on jobs data, anecdotes from all sides of the employer-employee divide, and interviews with jobs professionals, he explores the paradoxical forces bearing down on the American workplace and lays out solutions that can help us break through what has become a crippling employer-employee stand-off. Among the questions he confronts: Is there really a skills gap? To what extent is the hiring process being held hostage by automated software that can crunch thousands of applications an hour? What kind of training could best bridge the gap between employer expectations and applicant realities, and who should foot the bill for it? Are schools really at fault? Named one of HR Magazine's Top 20 Most Influential Thinkers of 2011, Cappelli not only changes the way we think about hiring but points the way forward to rev America's job engine again.

A critical study examines the talent management problem through a radical new lens and provides four new principles for ensuring that an organization has the skills it needs when it needs them.

Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty

Talent on Demand

managing talent in an age of uncertainty

Talent on demand

Michael Useem

Harbir Singh

Liang Neng

Fortune Makers analyzes and brings to light the distinctive practices of business leaders who are the future of the Chinese economy. These leaders oversee not the old state-owned enterprises, but private companies that have had to invent their way forward out of the wreckage of an economy in tatters following the Cultural Revolution. Outside of brand names such as Alibaba and Lenovo, little is known, even by the Chinese themselves, about the people present at the creation of these innovative businesses. Fortune Makers provides sharp insights into their unique styles -- a distinctive blend of the entrepreneur, the street fighter, and practices developed by the Communist Party -- and their distinctive ways of leading and managing their organizations that are unlike anything the West is familiar with. When Peter Drucker published Concept of the Corporation in 1946, he revealed what made large American corporations tick. Similarly, when Japanese companies emerged as a global force in the 1980s, insightful analysts explained the practices that brought Japan's economy out of the ashes -- and what managers elsewhere could learn to compete with them. Now, based on unprecedented access, Fortune Makers allows business leaders in the United States and the rest of the West to understand the essential character and style of Chinese corporate life and its dominant players, whose businesses are the foundation of the domestic Chinese market and are now making their mark globally.

The Leaders Creating China's Great Global Companies

Fortune Makers

Reid Hoffman

Ram Charan

How HR can lead. If you read nothing else on reinventing human resources, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones on how HR leaders can partner with the C-suite, drive change throughout the organization, and develop the workforce of the future. This book will inspire you to: Overhaul performance management practices to jump-start motivation and engagement Use agile processes to transform how you hire, develop, and manage people Establish diversity programs that increase innovation and competitiveness as well as inclusion Use people analytics to bring unprecedented insight to hiring and talent management Prepare your company for the double waves of artificial intelligence and an older workforce Close the gap between HR and strategy This collection of articles includes: "People Before Strategy: A New Role for the CHRO," by Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, and Dennis Carey; "How Netflix Reinvented HR," by Patty McCord; "HR Goes Agile," by Peter Cappelli and Anna Tavis; "Reinventing Performance Management," by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall; "Better People Analytics," by Paul Leonardi and Noshir Contractor; "21st-Century Talent Spotting," by Claudio Fernandez-Araoz; "Tours of Duty: The New Employer-Employee Contract," by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh; "Creating the Best Workplace on Earth," by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones; "Why Diversity Programs Fail," by Frank Dobbins and Alexandra Kalev; "When No One Retires," by Paul Irving; and "Collaborative Intelligence: Humans and AI Are Joining Forces," by H. James Wilson and Paul R. Daugherty.

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Reinventing HR (with bonus article "People Before Strategy" by Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, and Dennis Carey)

Jitendra Singh

Exploding growth. Soaring investment. Incoming talent waves. India's top companies are scoring remarkable successes on these fronts - and more. How? Instead of adopting management practices that dominate Western businesses, they're applying fresh practices of their ownin strategy, leadership, talent, and organizational culture. In The India Way, the Wharton School India Team unveils these companies' secrets. Drawing on interviews with leaders of India's largest firms - including Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, Narayana Murthy of Infosys Technologies, and Vineet Nayar of HCL Technologies - the authors identify what Indian managers do differently, including: Looking beyond stockholders' interests to public mission and national purpose Drawing on improvisation, adaptation, and resilience to overcome endless hurdles Identifying products and services of compelling value to customers Investing in talent and building a stirring culture The authors explain how these innovations work within Indian companies, identifying those likely to remain indigenous and those that can be adapted to the Western context. With its in-depth analysis and research, The India Way offers valuable insights for all managers seeking to strengthen their organization's performance.

How India's Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management

The India Way

The decision of whether to go to college, or where, is hampered by poor information and inadequate understanding of the financial risk involved. Adding to the confusion, the same degree can cost dramatically different amounts for different people. A barrage of advertising offers new degrees designed to lead to specific jobs, but we see no information on whether graduates ever get those jobs. Mix in a frenzied applications process, and pressure from politicians for "relevant" programs, and there is an urgent need to separate myth from reality. Peter Cappelli, an acclaimed expert in employment trends, the workforce, and education, provides hard evidence that counters conventional wisdom and helps us make cost-effective choices. Among the issues Cappelli analyzes are: What is the real link between a college degree and a job that enables you to pay off the cost of college, especially in a market that is in constant change? Why it may be a mistake to pursue degrees that will land you the hottest jobs because what is hot today is unlikely to be so by the time you graduate. Why the most expensive colleges may actually be the cheapest because of their ability to graduate students on time. How parents and students can find out what different colleges actually deliver to students and whether it is something that employers really want. College is the biggest expense for many families, larger even than the cost of the family home, and one that can bankrupt students and their parents if it works out poorly. Peter Cappelli offers vital insight for parents and students to make decisions that both make sense financially and provide the foundation that will help students make their way in the world.

In a prescient new book, The Future of the Office: The Hard Choices We All Face on Working from Home and Remote Work, Wharton professor Peter Cappelli lays out the facts in an effort to provide both employees and employers with a vision of their futures. Cappelli unveils the surprising tradeoffs both may have to accept to get what they want.

The Future of the Office

Bill Novelli

Your organization needs older workers more than ever: They transfer knowledge between generations, transmit your company's values to new hires, make excellent mentors for younger employees, and provide a "just in time" workforce for special projects. Yet more of these workers are reporting to people younger than they are. This presents unfamiliar challenges that--if ignored--can prevent you from attracting, retaining, and engaging older employees. In Managing the Older Worker, Peter Cappelli and William Novelli explain how companies and younger managers can maximize the value provided by older workers. The key? Recognize that boomers' needs differ from younger generations - and adapt your management practices accordingly. For instance: · Lead with mission: As employees age, they become more altruistic. Emphasize the positive impact of older workers' efforts on the world around them. · Forge social connections: Many older employees keep working to maintain social relationships. Offer tasks that require interaction with others. · Provide different benefits: Tailor benefits--such as elder-care insurance programs or discount medication--to older workers' interests. Drawing on research in management, psychology, and other disciplines, Managing the Older Worker reveals who your older workers are, what they want, and how to manage them for maximum value.

How to Prepare for the New Organizational Order

Managing the Older Worker

The COVID-19 pandemic forced an unprecedented experiment that reshaped white-collar work and turned remote work into a kind of "new normal." Now comes the hard part. Many employees want to continue that normal and keep working remotely, and most at least want the ability to work occasionally from home. But for employers, the benefits of employees working from home or hybrid approaches are not so obvious. What should both groups do? In a prescient new book, The Future of the Office: Work from Home, Remote Work, and the Hard Choices We All Face, Wharton professor Peter Cappelli lays out the facts in an effort to provide both employees and employers with a vision of their futures. Cappelli unveils the surprising tradeoffs both may have to accept to get what they want. Cappelli illustrates the challenges we face in drawing lessons from the pandemic and deciding what to do moving forward. Do we allow some workers to be permanently remote? Do we let others choose when to work from home? Do we get rid of their offices? What else has to change, depending on the approach we choose? His research reveals there is no consensus among business leaders. Even the most high-profile and forward-thinking companies are taking divergent approaches: Facebook, Twitter, and other tech companies say many employees can work remotely on a permanent basis. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and others say it is important for everyone to come back to the office. Ford is redoing its office space so that most employees can work from home at least part of the time, and GM is planning to let local managers work out arrangements on an ad-hoc basis. As Cappelli examines, earlier research on other types of remote work, including telecommuting offers some guidance as to what to expect when some people will be in the office and others work at home, and also what happened when employers tried to take back offices. Neither worked as expected. In a call to action for both employers and employees, Cappelli explores how we should think about the choices going forward as well as who wins and who loses. As he implores, we have to choose soon.

Peter Cappelli

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