2023

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8 Essential Qualities of Successful Leaders

Harvard Business

Becoming a great leader is a journey of continuous learning and growth. It’s a process — one that thrives on embracing challenges, seeking feedback, fostering connections, and cultivating understanding. In this article, the author outlines the eight most essential leadership qualities, according to Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill, one of the world’s top experts on leadership.

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How to Create Partnerships Instead of Using Stakeholders

Johanna Rothman

Strategy and Product Feedback Loops About 20 years ago, I taught a project management workshop to IT people. Their products and services did not ship outside the building—their products and services enabled the organization to make money. During that workshop, the participants all had the same question, “How do we engage our stakeholders?

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How Product Risks Differ from Project Risks

Johanna Rothman

Up until now, when thinking about risks, I defaulted to the risks in the project pyramid. That's because each project offers different value over the product's lifetime. (See Product Roles, Part 4: Product Orientation and the Role of Projects for images of why we want ever-increasing product value, but why we might space the projects out.) If we understand our boundaries and constraints, we can trade off the various risks in the project.

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You Need More Than Data to Understand Your Customers

Harvard Business

Today we have more data than ever before, yet marketers still struggle to understand their customers. That’s because today’s marketers have mistaken information for intimacy. The author, who ran strategy for Wieden+Kennedy, describes an ethnographic research campaign his team conducted on behalf of McDonald’s. They produced a cultural bible of sorts that chronicled a series of beliefs, artifacts, behavioral rituals, and language that constitute the McDonald’s fandom.

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PowerPoint Best Practices for Creating Stellar Presentations

Mastering data visualization in PowerPoint will help accelerate your career because it positions you as someone who can present data that drives business decisions forward. think-cell's PowerPoint Best Practices eBook was created specifically for professionals aiming to master the art and science of data-driven storytelling. What’s inside: Practical Insights: Uncover valuable tips for crafting engaging and persuasive presentations.

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Charting the Emerging Geography of AI

Harvard Business

As the AI power centers emerge and shift around the world, they will shape which AI applications are prioritized, which societies and sectors of the economy get the most benefits, what data are used to train algorithms, and which biases get included and which get neutralized — and how we balance accelerating AI innovation against building in safeguards.

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10 Ways to Prove You’re a Strategic Thinker

Harvard Business

To get ahead in the business world, it’s not enough to think stategically. You also have to effectively communicate those ideas. There are several ways to do this, including elevating the conversation to focus on the big picture and broader context, being forward-looking in your comments, anticipating the effects of potential decisions, connecting disparate concepts, simplifying complex issues, using metaphors and analogies, stimultating dialogue with questions, showing you are informed, activel

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3 Traps to Avoid When Executing Your Strategy

Harvard Business

When executing strategy, companies typically fall into one or more of three traps: 1) They let too many people weigh in; 2)They plan a lot of activity but do not specify concrete actions; and 3) They tend not to build in accountability into execution. The result is that. lot a good strategies never take off. This article offers pointers on how to avoid the three traps.

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Leading Change May Need to Begin with Changing Yourself

Harvard Business

Behavior change is hard, but it’s a skill leaders who want to succeed amid near-constant organizational change need to develop. By increasing their self-awareness, committing to change, overcoming limiting thoughts, and deliberately practicing new behaviors, leaders raise the likelihood that the change initiatives they’re tasked to lead will be successful.

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The Rise of the Meta City

Harvard Business

New York and Miami, Dubai and Cairo, the Bay Area and Austin. Pandemic-era migrations have created strong new connections between cities — and companies need to update their location strategy to keep up.

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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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How to Evaluate a Job Candidate’s Critical Thinking Skills in an Interview

Harvard Business

The oldest and still the most powerful tactic for fostering critical thinking is the Socratic method, developed over 2,400 years ago by Socrates, one of the founders of Western philosophy. The Socratic method uses thought-provoking question-and-answer probing to promote learning. It focuses on generating more questions than answers, where the answers are not a stopping point but the beginning of further analysis.

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How to Get the Honest Input You Need from Your Employees

Harvard Business

Leaders often struggle to get complete, unfiltered information from the people around them. This wealth of unspoken information represents a great untapped resource for today’s leaders, and yet most remain at a loss for how to reliably access it. Common tactics for overcoming this problem, such as taking another’s perspective or reading their body language, simply aren’t sufficient.

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5 Ways to Develop Talent for an Unpredictable Future

Harvard Business

We may not know what tomorrow’s jobs will look like, but we can safely assume that when people are more curious, emotionally intelligent, resilient, driven, and intelligent, they will generally be better equipped to learn what is needed to perform those jobs, and provide whatever human value technology cannot replace. Rather than betting on specialists or forcing people into specific niches, organizations need to focus on expanding people’s talents.

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How Leaders Can Create a Purpose-Driven Culture

Harvard Business

Companies are increasingly emphasizing a corporate purpose beyond mere profitability. The success of this integration largely hinges on organizational culture. Leaders, spanning all tiers, need to genuinely exemplify and articulate the company’s values, as demonstrated by companies like Netflix and LUSH. It’s vital for employees to perceive their daily roles as contributing to this larger purpose, with firms like Atlassian and Cisco offering noteworthy models.

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Savings Consultants Are Needed in Today's Market More Than Ever

Savings Consultants are needed in today’s market more than ever. With an increase in expenses, businesses are looking for opportunities to save. Often unknown to businesses are savings in expense reduction, specialized tax savings, specialized savings including medical underpayments, health benefits cost reduction, zero cost processing, and more. Blue Coast Savings, with over 20 years in business, assists Savings Consultants in helping these companies move toward more profitable businesses.

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Help Your Employees Develop the Skills They Really Need

Harvard Business

The future of work will not be determined by technology, but by creating the right mix of education, exposure, and experience needed to develop skills and put them to work, creating a vastly more productive workplace and economy. In this article, the authors recommend a “70/20/10” learning model, in which only 10% of learning comes from formal instruction (education), 20% from social learning or mentorship (exposure), and 70% from hands-on, experiential practice with feedback (experience).

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Our Favorite Management Tips of 2023

Harvard Business

Our Management Tip of the Day newsletter continues to be one of HBR’s most popular newsletters. In this article, we list 10 of our favorites from 2023 — covering topics like how to get your mojo back if you’re feeling disengaged at work, questions to ask your boss in your next check-in, talking to your team about using AI, giving hard feedback, speaking with confidence when you’re put on the spot — and more.

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It’s Time to End the Battle Between Waterfall and Agile

Harvard Business

Too many project leaders think rigidly about Waterfall and Agile project management methodologies and believe that they need to choose between the two. But many projects — especially those with diverse stakeholder needs and complex structures — benefit from a hybrid approach that combines aspects of Waterfall and Agile. The rise of hybrid methods isn’t tied to a particular time or event; instead, they have evolved organically as a response to the needs of modern, complex projects.

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4 Skills the Next Generation of Data Scientists Needs to Develop

Harvard Business

As reliance on data and analytics continues to expand across industries from agriculture to manufacturing, health care to financial services, it stands to reason that the next generation of data leaders will have far-reaching roles that impact strategy, decision-making, operations, and countless other functions.

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TOOLS and METHODOLOGIES for developing DECISION SUPPORT PACKAGES

This White Paper targets opportunities for Management to develop proficiency in the Decision Framing and Analyses element of input to Decision, & Risk Analyses for Major Project Funding Decisions.

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How to Create Your Own “Year in Review”

Harvard Business

While the reality of work can feel especially overwhelming at the end of the year, reflection is the key to doing things differently in the year to come. Taking the time to pause and review your year increases your self-awareness and provides insights to improve. The authors present three steps to conduct your own learning “year in review.

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Talent Management in the Age of AI

Harvard Business

The world of work is changing fast and the most important thing to do is realize that the old playbooks, especially around talent management, will not work — now, it’s time to adapt. Leaders should focus on three big shifts that will set their businesses up for new levels of success in the age of AI. They should: 1) redefine jobs as a collection of a skills and tasks, not titles, 2) bring skills and workforce learning to the center of talent management, and 3) embrace AI to focus teams on human-

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How Generative AI Will Transform Knowledge Work

Harvard Business

Generative AI can be a boon for knowledge work, but only if you use it in the right way. New generative AI-enabled tools are rapidly emerging to assist and transform knowledge work in industries ranging from education and finance to law and medicine. Companies are starting to introduce generative AI-powered innovations into their processes, and to promulgate policies on how to use the tools safely.

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Project Managers, Unlock the Power of Timeboxing

Harvard Business

Modern work is inherently project-based and collaborative. We are all project managers to some extent. From film directors and restaurant owners to lawyers and accountants, many professions involve managing projects. For everyone, not just project managers, mastering timeboxing can be a gateway to bridging the gap between intention and execution. You’re probably already timeboxing, at least a little.

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Why You Need to Use Case Studies in Sales and Marketing (and How to Start Now)

Case studies are proof of successful client relations and a verifiable product or service. They persuade buyers by highlighting your customers' experiences with your company and its solution. In sales, case studies are crucial pieces of content that can be tailored to prospects' pain points and used throughout the buyer's journey. In marketing, case studies are versatile assets for generating business, providing reusable elements for ad and social media content, website material, and marketing c

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What the Next Generation of Project Management Will Look Like

Harvard Business

Traditional project management skills, such as project governance or project management methodology, aren’t sufficient to meet changing organizational needs. Gartner recently surveyed 373 project management leaders to identify the “next generation” skills — from organizational awareness to financial acumen — that have a disproportionate impact on performance.

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5 Types of Stories Leaders Need to Tell

Harvard Business

Storytelling is an important leadership skill, and executives who want to succeed should master five types of narrative: Vision stories, which inspire a shared one; values stories that model the way; action stories that spark progress and change; teaching stories that transmit knowledge and skills to others; and trust stories that help people understand, connect with, and believe in you.

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How to Self-Promote — Without Sounding Self-Centered

Harvard Business

Promoting your own accomplishments can feel uncomfortable, and poses a dilemma: It can make you appear more confident and capable, but can also make you seem less warm, less friendly, and more selfish. On the other hand, self-deprecation or deflecting credit, may make you seem approachable but it diminishes your competency. New research, based on a series of 11 studies, suggests that dual promotion — in which you compliment a colleague or peer while talking about your own accomplishments — can b

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5 Types of Manipulators at Work

Harvard Business

Lots of variables influence our day-to-day decision making — though perhaps none more potently than the attitudes and preferences of other people. The human instinct to seek belonging with others helps us collaborate and build systems and societies. But it also gives ill-intentioned people an opening to mislead, lull, and even coerce us into serving their interests instead of our own.

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The Art of Remote Collaboration: How to Successfully Whiteboard with Remote Teams

Just because we're working with a distributed team doesn't mean we have to abandon time-tested tools and methods like whiteboarding. Digital look-alikes often cramp creativity and all but eliminate the humanity of shared interactions. Hardware solutions are also limiting and, of course, expensive and immobile. In an increasingly digital and remote-first world, it’s important for us to select tools and processes that allow us to mitigate if not eliminate the above problems.