2018 Rotman Management Fall 2018

Visionary
Leadership
For over two decades, the

Rotman Family has provided
enduring support, vision
and foresight to the Rotman
School of Management.
This continues with a generous new
$6 million gift towards healthcare and
the life sciences which further establishes
the Rotman School as a leader in the field.
We are honouring the gift by renaming

our centre the Sandra Rotman Centre
for Health Sector Strategy.
www.rotman.utoronto.ca
MANAGEMENT
FALL 2018: YOU 2.0
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg knows

more than most people about two things:
resilience and career success. Careers are
a jungle gym, she says, not a ladder. “Don’t
be afraid to move sideways or even back-
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
wards. Not everyone has to want to be a CEO

someday—but we should all be ambitious in
terms of making a difference in the world.”
Highlights from her recent discussion with
Martin Prosperity Institute Fellow Adam
Grant appear on page 68.
Features
6 18 26
Data Analytics: From Bias How Brilliant Careers are Navigating the Innovation
to Better Decisions Made—And Unmade Ecosystem
by Megan MacGarvie and by Carter Cast by Ajay Agrawal and Alberto Galasso
Kristina McElheran We all have blind spots and weaknesses. A thriving environment for innovation
Data can be a highly efective decision- The good news: By identifying and contains eight key characteristics.
making tool. But it can also make us addressing your own challenges, you Assessing them properly will set
complacent. Leaders need to be aware can accelerate your career. the stage for a start-up to lourish.
of three common pitfalls.
32 38 44
The Mindful Leader So, You Want to Be a CEO? Are You an Inspiring Leader?
by Rasmus Hougaard and by David R. Beatty by Mark Horwitch and
Jacqueline Carter Anyone with aspirations Meredith Whipple Callahan
Mindfulness helps us pause in to be a CEO one day needs to hone New research unveils 32 characteristics
the moment so we can make their skills around four essential of inspiring leaders. The good news:
more conscious choices and building blocks. You only need to possess four of them
take more deliberate actions. to be considered inspiring.
50 56 62
The Strategy Palette: A Theory of The Most Underrated Skill
Approaches to Strategy Workplace Anxiety in Management
for a Complex World by Bonnie Cheng and Julie McCarthy by N. Repenning, D. Kieffer and T. Astor
by Martin Reeves Anxiety at work is fueled by both The authors argue that one particular
The challenge for today’s leaders is to individual and job characteristics. skill has emerged as the most impor-
understand the environment in which On the bright side, the efects are tant — and underrated — skill in all
they are operating and choose the right not all negative. of management practice.
strategic approach accordingly.
68 74 80
Building Personal and How to Disrupt Bias— Meet Canada’s Most
Collective Resilience and Drive Value Powerful Women
by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Ripa Rashid Compiled by Karen Christensen
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg talks and Laura Sherbin A total of 16 alumni of the Rotman
to Wharton Professor Adam Grant Before you can disrupt bias in your School of Management were named
about how to build resilience — organization, you must determine to WXN’s Most Powerful Women
in ourselves and in others. precisely where and how it is being felt. in Canada ranking. We are pleased
to introduce you to seven of them.
Rotman Management
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From the Editor
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12 Editor-in-Chief
Thought Leader Interview: Karen Christensen
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McCarthy, Kristina McElheran, Anita
McGahan, Ingo Rauth, Dilip Soman
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FROM THE EDITOR Karen Christensen
IF YOU OPENED THIS MAGAZINE feeling conident about your lead- with the ‘schmuck’ in your oice on page 94; Silicon Valley ex-
ership skills, consider this: According to McKinsey’s study of ecutive coach Ron Warren discusses the importance of 360-de-
80,000 leaders, 77 per cent believe they do a good job of en- gree reviews on page 113; and Rotman faculty Dilip Soman,
gaging their people and fostering productivity; yet 82 per cent Roger Martin, Anita McGahan, Mark Leung and Ingo Rauth
of employees disagree. Worse yet, more than one third of em- discuss their latest indings.
ployees — 35 per cent (!) — would gladly forgo a pay raise to see In a world that is under the sway of unseen forces — from
their boss ired. demographic shifts to climate change and geopolitical tensions —
Clearly, leaders can do better. What if you could raise your increasingly, the only thing we can control is our own behaviour.
level of self-awareness exponentially? Learn to ask better ques- In the end, each of us must decide which professional and per-
tions and form better problem statements? Help the people sonal virtues we want to stand for and then make sure that every
around you build up their resilience? And banish bias from your action or decision — big or small — is based upon them.
organization? In this issue of Rotman Management, we examine Few would argue that AI, machine learning and other new
a variety of ways to take yourself to the next level as a leader and technologies are fundamentally changing every industry. But as
colleague — and make the most of your potential. indicated in this issue, for an organization to thrive, its leaders
We kick the issue of on page 6 with Big Data: From Bias must focus just as much on the human elements.
to Better Decisions, where Rotman Professor of Strategic Man-
agement Kristina McElheran and co-author Megan MacGar-
vie provide useful advice for getting the most out of your orga-
nization’s data.
Are you where you want to be, professionally? If not, is it pos-
sible that your personality has been slowing you down? On page
18, Kellogg School of Management Professor Carter Cast looks
at How Brilliant Careers are Made — And Unmade.
What problem are you trying to solve? According to MIT’s
Nelson Repenning and co-authors, for leaders, there are few
questions more powerful. They describe how to develop The
Most Underrated Skill in Management on page 62.
Elsewhere in this issue, we feature best-selling author
Daniel Pink in our Thought Leader Interview on page 12. On
page 80, we introduce you to some of Canada’s Most Powerful
Women — all of whom have a connection to the Rotman School.
And in our Idea Exchange, UC Berkeley Professor Morten Han-
sen explains what it takes to be great at work; the Executive
Director of the Rotman Self- Development Laboratory, Maja Karen Christensen, Editor-in-Chief
Djikic, describes the path to self-awareness on page 94; Univer- editor@rotman.utoronto.ca
sity of Pennsylvania Psychiatrist Jody Foster shows how to deal Twitter: @RotmanMgmtMag
rotmanmagazine.ca / 5
Data can be a highly efective decision-making tool. But it can also make
us complacent. Leaders need to be aware of three common pitfalls.
by Megan MacGarvie and Kristina McElheran
DATA ANALYSIS can be an efective way to sort through complex- There are three main cognitive traps that regularly bias
ity and assist our judgment when it comes to making decisions. decision-making, even when informed by the best data. We
But even with impressively large data sets and the best analyt- will examine each in detail and provide suggestions for avoid-
ics tools, we are still vulnerable to a range of decision-making ing them.
pitfalls — especially when information overload leads us to take
shortcuts in reasoning. As a result, in some instances, data and TRAP #1: THE CONFIRMATION TRAP
analytics actually make matters worse. When we pay more attention to indings that align with our prior
Psychologists, behavioural economists and other scholars beliefs, while ignoring other facts and patterns in the data, we
have identiied several common decision-making traps, many fall into the conirmation trap. With a huge data set and numer-
of which stem from the fact that people don’t carefully process ous correlations between variables, analyzing all possible cor-
every piece of information in every decision. Instead, we rely relations is often both costly and counterproductive. Even with
on heuristics — simpliied procedures that allow us to make de- smaller data sets, it can be easy to inadvertently focus on corre-
cisions in the face of uncertainty or when extensive analysis is lations that conirm our expectations of ‘how the world should
too costly or time-consuming. These mental shortcuts lead us work’ and dismiss counterintuitive or inconclusive patterns in
to believe that we are making sound decisions when in fact, we the data when they don’t align.
are making systematic mistakes. What’s more, human brains are Consider the following example: In the late 1960s and early
wired for certain biases that creep in and distort our choices — 1970s, researchers conducted one of the most well-designed
typically without our awareness. studies on how diferent types of fats afect heart health and
Organizations frequently reward employees who can provide
empirical support for existing managerial preferences.
mortality. But the results of this study, known as the Minnesota people who like to play ‘devil’s advocate’ or assign contrary
Coronary Experiment, were not published at the time — and positions for active debate.
a recent New York Times article suggests that this might have • Don’t automatically dismiss indings that fall below your
been because they contradicted the beliefs of both researchers threshold for statistical or practical signiicance. Both noisy
and the medical establishment. In fact, it wasn’t until recently relationships (i.e. those with large standard errors) and small
that the medical journal BMJ published a piece referencing this (i.e. precisely measured) relationships can point to laws in
data, when growing skepticism about the relationship between your beliefs and presumptions. Ask yourself, ‘What would it
saturated fat consumption and heart disease led researchers take for this to appear important?’ Make sure your key take-
to analyze data from the original experiment — more than 40 away is not sensitive to reasonable changes in your model or
years later. sample size.
These and similar indings cast doubt on decades of unchal- • Assign multiple independent teams to analyze the data
lenged medical advice to avoid saturated fats. While it is unclear separately. Do they come to similar conclusions? If not, iso-
whether one experiment would have changed standard dietary and late and study the points of divergence to determine wheth-
health recommendations, this example demonstrates that even er the diferences are due to error, inconsistent methods
with the best possible data, those looking at the numbers can ig- or bias.
nore important facts when they contradict the dominant paradigm • Treat your indings like predictions, and test them. If you un-
or don’t conirm their beliefs, with potentially troublesome results. cover a correlation from which you think your organization
Conirmation bias becomes that much harder to avoid when can proit, use an experiment to validate that correlation.
individuals face pressure from bosses and peers. Organizations
frequently reward employees who can provide empirical sup- TRAP #2: THE OVERCONFIDENCE TRAP
port for existing managerial preferences. Those who decide what In their book Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, behav-
parts of the data to examine and present to senior managers may ioural researchers Max Bazerman and Don Moore refer to
feel compelled to choose only the evidence that reinforces what overconidence as ‘the mother of all biases’. Time and time
their supervisors want to see or that conirms a prevalent attitude again, psychologists have found that decision-makers are too
within the irm. sure of themselves. We tend to assume that the accuracy of our
judgments or the probability of success in our endeavours is
OUR ADVICE: To get a fair assessment of what the data has to more favourable than the data would suggest.
say, don’t avoid information that counters your (or your boss’s) When there are risks, we bias our reading of the odds to
beliefs. Instead, embrace it by doing the following: assume we’ll come out on the winning side. Senior decision-
• Specify in advance the data and analytical approaches on makers who have been promoted based on past successes are
which you will base your decision, to reduce the temptation especially susceptible to this bias, since they have received
to ‘cherry-pick’ indings that agree with your prejudices. positive signals about their decision-making abilities through-
• Actively seek out indings that disprove your beliefs. Ask out their careers.
yourself, ‘If my expectations are wrong, what pattern would Overconidence also reinforces many other pitfalls of data
I likely see in the data?’ Enlist a skeptic to help you. Seek out interpretation: It can prevent us from questioning our methods,
8 / Rotman Management Fall 2018

Data can never truly ‘speak for itself ’. It relies
on human interpretation to make sense.
our motivation and the way we communicate our indings to opportunity to bring to the surface potential laws in the
others; and it also makes it easy to under-invest in data analy- analysis that you may otherwise overlook.
sis in the irst place. When we feel too conident in our under- • Keep track of your predictions and systematically compare
standing, we don’t spend enough time or money in acquiring them to what actually happens. Which of your predictions
more information or running further analyses. To make matters turned out to be true and which ones fell short?
worse, more information can increase overconidence without • Persistent biases can creep back into our decision-making,
increasing accuracy. That’s why more data, in and of itself, is not so make these practices part of your regular routine.
a guaranteed solution.
Going from data to insight requires quality inputs, skill TRAP #3: THE OVER-FITTING TRAP
and sound processes. Because it can be so diicult to recognize When your model yields surprising or counterintuitive predic-
our own biases, good processes are essential for avoiding over- tions, you may have made an exciting new discovery — or it may
conidence. be the result of ‘over-itting’. In The Signal and the Noise, Nate
Silver famously dubbed this “the most important scientiic prob-
OUR ADVICE: Here are a few procedural tips to avoid the lem you’ve never heard of.” This trap occurs when a statistical
overconidence trap: model describes ‘random noise’ rather than the underlying rela-
• Describe your ‘perfect experiment’ — the type of informa- tionship that you need to capture.
tion you would use to answer your question if you had lim- Over-it models generally do a suspiciously good job of ex-
itless resources for data collection and the ability to mea- plaining many nuances of what happened in the past, but they
sure any variable. Compare this ideal to your actual data to have great diiculty predicting the future. For instance, when
understand where it might fall short. Google’s ‘Flu Trends’ application was introduced in 2008, it
• Identify places where you might be able to close the gap was heralded as an innovative way to predict lu outbreaks by
with more data collection or analytical techniques. tracking search terms associated with early lu symptoms. But
• Make it a formal part of your process to be your own devil’s early versions of the algorithm looked for correlations between
advocate. In Thinking Fast and Slow, Nobel Laureate Dan- lu outbreaks and millions of search terms. With such a large
iel Kahneman suggests asking yourself why your analy- number of terms, some correlations appeared signiicant when
sis might be wrong, and recommends doing this for every they were really estimated due to chance. Searches for ‘high
analysis you perform. Taking this contrarian view can help school basketball’, for example, were highly correlated with
you see the laws in your own arguments and reduce mis- the lu. The application was ultimately scrapped due to failures
takes across the board. of prediction only a few years later.
• Before making a decision or launching a project, perform In order to overcome this bias, you need to discern be-
a ‘pre-mortem’ — an approach suggested by psychologist tween the data that matters and the noise around it.
Gary Klein. Ask others with knowledge about the project
to imagine its failure a year into the future and to write a sto- OUR ADVICE: Here’s how you can guard against the over-
ry about that failure. In doing so, you will beneit from the itting trap:
wisdom of multiple perspectives, while also providing an • Randomly divide the data into two sets: a ‘training set’, on
which you will estimate the model, and a ‘validation set’, on that the relationship you have uncovered is the right one—
which you will test the accuracy of the model’s predictions. or the only one.
An over-it model might be great at making predictions • Beware of the all-too-human tendency to see patterns in
within the training set, but raise warning lags by perform- random data. For example, consider a baseball player with
ing poorly in the validation set. a .325 batting average who goes 0-4 in a championship series
• Much like you would for the conirmation trap, specify the game. His coach may see a ‘cold streak’ and want to replace
relationships you want to test and how you plan to test them him, but he’s only looking at a handful of games. Statistical-
before analyzing the data, to avoid cherry-picking. ly, it would be better to keep him in the game than substitute
• Keep your analysis simple. Look for relationships that mea- the .200 hitter who went 4-4 in the previous game.
sure important efects related to clear and logical hypoth-
eses before digging into nuances. Be on guard against ‘spuri- In closing
ous’ correlations — the ones that occur only by chance, that Data analytics can be an efective tool to promote consistent de-
you can rule out based on experience or common sense. Re- cisions and shared understanding. It can highlight blind spots in
member that data can never truly ‘speak for itself ’. It relies our individual or collective awareness and ofer evidence of risks
on human interpretation to make sense. and beneits for particular paths of action. But it can also make
• Construct alternative narratives. Is there another story you us complacent.
could tell with the same data? If so, you cannot be conident Managers need to be aware of the common decision-making
Six Questions That Yield Better Decisions by Chip and Dan Heath
If you’re struggling with a decision, the following six questions can pro- 3. How can I dip a toe in this decision without diving in
vide a useful jolt to your thinking. All of them rely on a sudden impact headfirst?
— a quick shift in perspective or a forced re-framing of a dilemma.
WHY THIS QUESTION WORKS: When deciding what will be good
1. Imagine that the option you are currently leaning towards for themselves, people typically make a guess. Think of the under-
simply vanished as a feasible alternative. What else could graduate student who enrols in law school, thinking she’ll love the life of
you do? a lawyer, or the information worker who quits his job to get a graduate
degree in Social Work, convinced it will allow him to live a more mean-
WHY THIS QUESTION WORKS: A very common decision-making ingful life. But there is no reason to guess when you can know. The first
trap is “narrow framing”, which means we get stuck in one way of student can spend three months interning in a law firm (or better yet,
thinking about our dilemma, or that we fail to consider other options one month each in three different firms), and the information worker
that are available to us. By forcing ourselves to generate a second can shadow a real social worker on weekends or evenings. We call this
alternative, we can often surface a new insight. an ‘ooch’ — an experiment that arms you with real-world information
about your options.
2. Imagine that the alternative you are currently considering
will actually turn out to be a terrible decision. Where could you 4. What would you tell your best friend to do, if he/she was in
go looking for proof of that right now? the same situation?
WHY THIS QUESTION WORKS: Probably the most pernicious WHY THIS QUESTION WORKS: This may be the single-most
enemy of good decision-making is ‘confirmation bias’, which is our ten- powerful question we discovered for resolving personal decisions. It
dency to seek out information that supports what we want to be true, sounds deceptively simple, but we’ve witnessed first-hand the power
while failing to be as eager in hunting for contradictory information. of this question: We’ve consulted with people who were agonizing
This question compels you to search for disconfirming information. about a decision for months, and when we ask them this question,

pitfalls described herein and employ sound processes and cog-
nitive strategies to prevent them. It can be diicult to recognize
the laws in your own reasoning, but proactively tackling these
biases with the right mindset can lead to better analysis — and
better decisions.
Megan MacGarvie is an Associate Professor
in the Markets, Public Policy and Law group at
Boston University’s Questrom School of Busi-
ness, where she teaches data-driven decision-
making and business analytics. She is also a
Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Kristina
McElheran is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman
School of Management and a Digital Fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital
Economy. This article was published in the HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics
for Managers (Harvard Business Review Press, 2018). Prof. McElheran’s paper
“The Rapid Adoption of Data-Driven Decision Making”, co-authored with
MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson, can be downloaded online.
Rotman faculty research is ranked in the top 10 globally by the Financial

Times.
an answer pops out of their mouth in 10 seconds, often surprising them. And lastly, a bonus RED FLAG: Beware of ‘whether or not’ deci-
sions. If a friend or colleague comes to you with a ‘whether or not’
5. If you were replaced tomorrow, what would your successor decision — ‘I’m debating whether or not to quit my job’, ‘I’m deciding
do about your dilemma? whether or not to buy a new iPad’ — that’s a sign that they may be
caught in a narrow frame (they’re only considering one option when,
WHY THIS QUESTION WORKS: This is the professional version chances are, they have many).
of the ‘best friend’ question. Like that question, it relies on a simple Try prodding them with question #1.
shift in perspective to help you detach from short-term emotion
and see the bigger picture more clearly. In his autobiography, Andy
Grove, the former CEO of Intel, tells a great story about using this
question to resolve one of the most difficult decisions of his career.
6. Six months from now, what evidence would make me re-

treat from this decision? What would make me double-down?
One curious thing about our decision-making is that we treat our
choices as permanent when, in virtually all cases, they’re provision-
al. For example: We think (but don’t know) that a certain employee Chip Heath is the Thrive Foundation
is the right fit for an open position; we think (but don’t know) that for Youth Professor of Organizational
we’d enjoy starting our own business; we think (but don’t know) Behaviour at Stanford’s Graduate School
that John’s social media plan will be effective. So, given that our of Business. Dan Heath is a Senior Fellow
decisions are simply our ‘best guesses’ at a particular point in time, at Duke University’s CASE center, which
shouldn’t we pay more attention to the circumstances that would supports social entrepreneurs. The brothers are the co-authors of three
make us reconsider? New York Times bestsellers: Decisive, Switch and Made to Stick.
A best-selling author unlocks the scientific secrets of ‘perfect timing’,
showing that timing really is everything.
Thought Leader Interview:
by Karen Christensen
For those of us who thought Twin Peaks was just a weird TV While these peaks and troughs are internal, research indi-
show, tell us a bit about the hidden patterns of everyday life. cates that they have external implications. How so?
Behavioural researchers have found that we experience a con- One thing we know for sure is that the trough period is a terrible
sistent and strong bimodal pattern — ‘twin peaks’ — during the time for important tasks. For instance, hospital hand-washing
day. Our positive afect — when we feel active, engaged and goes down considerably in the afternoon versus the morning,
hopeful — climbs during the morning hours until it reaches an which leads to more hospital-acquired infections; physicians
optimal point around midday. Then our mood and energy plum- are much more likely to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics in
met and stay low throughout the afternoon, only to rise again in afternoon exams versus morning exams; and anesthesia errors
the early evening. Put simply, we move through the day in three are four times more likely at 3 p.m. than at 9 a.m.
PORTRAIT BY SUSAN HINOJOSA (msusanhinojosa@gmail.com)

stages: peak, trough and recovery, and this sequence is true for In the realm of education, research out of Denmark shows
most people. that kids who take standardized tests in the afternoon versus the
One important implication of this pattern is that we are bet- morning score as if they’ve missed two weeks of school. These
ter of doing certain types of work or activities at certain times results were mirrored in an L.A. Uniied School District’s study,
of the day. During the peak period, when we’re most vigilant, where kids who took math in the morning learned more than kids
we do better analytic work. Later, during the trough, we should who took it in the afternoon, as relected in their standardized
do administrative work, because that time isn’t good for much test scores.
else. Then, during the recovery period — when our mood is
higher but our vigilance is lower — we should do creative work Talk a bit about the efects in the business arena.
that requires a bit more looseness. One study from New York University looked at 26,000 earnings
This pattern also has a huge efect on work performance. calls from more than 2,100 public companies over six years,
There is evidence showing that ‘time of day’ explains about 20 examining whether ‘time of day’ inluenced the emotional
per cent of the variance in how people perform on cognitive tenor of these critical conversations. Their indings: Calls held
tasks. Timing is deinitely more of a science than an art. irst thing in the morning were reasonably upbeat and positive;

Kids who take standardized tests in the afternoon versus the morning
score as if they’ve missed two weeks of school.
but as the day progressed, the tone grew more negative and On the bright side, we can also embrace new beginnings
less resolute. Around lunchtime, mood rebounded slightly — to help us with our own behavioural changes, taking advantage
probably because call participants recharged their mental and of something called ‘the fresh start efect’. This was identiied
emotional batteries — but in the afternoon, negativity and com- by three researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, who
bativeness deepened again, with mood recovering only after found that we are more likely to start a program of behaviour
the market’s closing bell. change and sustain it if we start on a Monday rather than a
Perhaps more important, especially for investors, the time of Thursday; if we start on the irst of the month rather than on the
the call and the subsequent mood it engendered inluenced com- 13th; or if we start on the day after our birthday rather than the
pany stock prices: Shares declined in response to negative tone, day before.
leading to temporary stock mispricing for irms hosting earnings The New Year is the quintessential example of a fresh start
calls later in the day. Economic rationality, it seems, is no match date. In the media, we always read that ‘half of New Year’s reso-
for a biological clock forged over a few million years of evolution. lutions are broken’. To me, they are burying the lede. The real
story is, half of resolutions actually stick! That is huge when you
There is also evidence that biases and stereotypes are think about how diicult it is to change human behaviour.
affected by our daily rhythms. Please explain.
In one study, researchers asked participants to assess the guilt You have studied not just beginnings but middles and ends.
of a ictional criminal defendant. All the ‘jurors’ read the same Is the midlife crisis a myth?
set of facts, but for half of them, the defendant’s name was Rob- The midlife crisis is an idea with essentially no scientiic sup-
ert Garner, and for the other half, it was Roberto Garcia. When port. It’s based on an article from 1965, from a Canadian psy-
people made their decisions in the morning, there was no difer- choanalyst named Elliott Jacques. He looked at the biogra-
ence in guilty verdicts between the two defendants. However, phies of artists and noticed that a lot of them died at age 37, and
when they rendered verdicts later in the day, they were much he concocted this theory.
more likely to believe that Garcia was guilty and Garner inno- However, there is evidence of something else: in general,
cent. Mental keenness — as indicated by rationally evaluating there is a U-shaped curve of well-being. In the middle of our
evidence — was greater early in the day; and mental ‘squishi- lives, we are less happy. We don’t necessarily have a crisis or bot-
ness’ — as evidenced by resorting to stereotypes — increased as tom out, but well-being is higher earlier in life, dips in midlife
the day wore on. and then recovers — not unlike the pattern of daily life. Scientists
When our minds are in vigilant mode, as they tend to be in have found that this pattern of well-being holds across more than
the morning, we can keep distractions outside of our ‘cerebral 70 countries. The U-shaped curve is consistent with other things
gates’. But after ‘standing watch’ hour after hour, our mental we know about midpoints. When people hit a midpoint in any
guards grow tired and they sneak out back for a break. When this task, there is no question, their performance sags.
happens, interlopers — sloppy logic, dangerous stereotypes and
irrelevant information — slip through. Describe the difference between ‘larks’, ‘owls’ and ‘third
birds’.
Why do beginnings matter so much to us? We don’t all experience a day in precisely the same way. Each
Beginnings matter on many dimensions. One that is germane individual has a ‘chronotype’ — a personal pattern of circadian
to your readers is that the initial labour market conditions when rhythms that inluences when we hit our peaks and troughs.
you graduate from school have a huge efect on your lifetime Colloquially, we think of this as, are you a morning person or an
earning power. Studies in both the U.S. and Canada show that evening person? But these are actually fairly enduring biologi-
graduating in the midst of a recession shows up in your wages, cal traits.
even 20 years later. Also, people who get their MBAs during a re- Our built-in clock uses social cues (i.e. oice schedules
cession are less likely to become CEOs of a large company than or train timetables) and environmental signals (i.e. sunrises and
those who graduate in a better economy. sunsets) to make small adjustments that bring the internal and

Well-being is higher earlier in life, dips in midlife, and then recovers.
external cycles more or less in sync. The result is that human be- Early risers display the morning morality efect, but night owls
ings metaphorically ‘open’ and ‘close’ at regular times during are more ethical at night.
each day. In terms of distribution, we know that about 15 per cent
of us are pretty strong morning types: We like to get up early and What does it look like for someone to embrace these findings
go to bed early. Much of the research shows morning people to be in their daily life?
pleasant, productive folks — extroverted, conscientious, agree- I’ll give you a few famous examples. Composer Pyotr Ilyich
able and emotionally stable. Tchaikovsky was a classic lark. He would typically awaken
About 20 to 25 per cent of us are very strong evening types, between 7 and 8 a.m. and then read, drink tea and take a
who get up late and go to bed late. ‘Owls’ tend to move through walk. At 9:30 he went to his piano to compose for a few hours.
the day in almost a reverse order: recovery, trough, peak—but we Then he broke for lunch and another stroll in the afternoon.
still see the two spikes. Owls also display some darker tenden- He believed that walks were essential for creativity. At 5 p.m.,
cies: They’re more open than larks, but they’re also more neu- he settled back in for a few more hours of work before eating
rotic. They are more likely to smoke and are more prone to ad- dinner at 8 p.m.
diction, eating disorders, depression and inidelity. At the same Writer Joyce Carol Oates operates on a similar rhythm. She
time, owls display greater creativity, show superior working generally writes from 8 in the morning until 1 p.m., then eats
memory and post higher scores on intelligence tests. Two thirds lunch and allows herself an afternoon break before resuming
of us are in the middle somewhere — what I call ‘third birds’. The work from 4 o’clock until dinner around 7. Both Tchaikovsky and
problem is, our corporate and education cultures are conigured Oates are ‘peak-trough-rebound’ kinds of people.
for the 75 or 80 per cent of people who are larks and third birds. Others march to a very diferent drummer. Novelist Gus-
Owls are like left-handers in a right-handed world. tave Flaubert would typically not awaken until 10 a.m., after
Research from German Chronibiologist Till Roenneberg which he’d spend an hour bathing, primping and puing his
shows that chronotypes can even predict which profession peo- pipe. Around 11, he would join his family for a late-morning meal
ple go into. Teachers and surgeons, for instance, tend to be larks; that served as both his breakfast and lunch. He would then tutor
if you’re an owl who wants to be a doctor, it might be a good idea his niece for a while and devote most of the afternoon to resting
to work in an emergency department on the overnight shift. and reading. At 7 p.m. he would have dinner, and afterwards, he
However, if you’re an owl doctor, I do not want you operating on would sit and talk to his mother until she went to bed around
me at 7 o’clock in the morning! 9 p.m. That’s when he did his writing. Night-owl Flaubert’s
day moved in an opposite direction — from recovery to trough
What is the ‘synchrony efect’? to peak.
This is a positive efect that occurs when one’s chronotype, task
and time of day align. For instance, even though it’s generally Talk a bit about the power of restorative breaks.
more dangerous to drive at night, owls actually drive worse ear- What we know about breaks is pretty simple: We should all be
ly in the day, because mornings are out of synch with their natu- taking more of them and we should be taking certain kinds of
ral cycle of vigilance and alertness. Also, younger people tend them. We need to change the way we view breaks. There is this
to have keener memories than older folks, but many of these widespread belief that breaks are a deviation from performance.
age-based cognitive diferences weaken — or disappear — when When we see someone take a break, we think, ‘Oh, look at that
synchrony is taken into account. amateur; she needs a break,’ when in fact, we should recognize
Synchrony even efects ethical behaviour. One study identi- that breaks are key to strong performance. We should be looking
ied a ‘morning morality efect’, showing that people are less like- at that person saying, ‘Wow, what a pro; she’s a great role model.’
ly to lie and cheat on tasks in the morning than later in the day. With breaks, I think we are today where the science of sleep
Subsequent research found that one explanation for the efect was 15 years ago. At one time, we sort of respected people who
is simply that most people are morning or intermediate chrono- pulled all-nighters. We thought they were more committed
types; when you factor in ‘owliness’, the efect is more nuanced. than the average person — that they were iercer and better
If everyone would schedule a 10- to 15-minute break each day, we would
see massive boosts to productivity and engagement.
performers. But we now know from the science of sleep that your boss an update, or talking to an important customer, re-
people who pull all-nighters are probably hurting their perfor- member: bad news irst, good news last.
mance — and they might also be hurting the performance of Finally, no matter whether you spend your days moving
those who work with them. money around, treating patients or teaching children, beware of
There’s a lot of research showing that people perform very that middle period. The trough can be more dangerous than most
diferently after breaks. In that Danish study I mentioned ear- of us realize.
lier, the students who took the test in the afternoon scored as if
they’d missed two weeks of school; and one way to get their test
scores back up was to simply give them a 20 - to 30-minute break
to run around before they took that afternoon test. When a break
was given, scores went way up.
The research also shows that certain kinds of breaks are
better than others: We are better of moving around during our
breaks; we’re better of being outside; and we’re better of taking
a break with someone else, rather than alone. Perhaps most im-
portant of all, we’re better of fully detaching during our breaks
— meaning don’t talk about work and certainly do not bring
your phone.
If everyone would schedule just one 10- to 15-minute
break every day — and take the right type of break — we would see
massive boosts to productivity, engagement and happiness in
the workplace.
What can a leader do to embrace these findings, starting

tomorrow?
One thing that I would recommend is to schedule meetings
more strategically. When we schedule meetings, we typically use
only one criterion: availability. That’s a huge mistake. We don’t
think, ‘Hmm, is this a meeting where people need to be think-
ing analytically? Is this purely an administrative meeting, or is it
a meeting where people need to be brainstorming and thinking
creatively?’
If you think about how much time we spend in meetings,
this is a ginormous strategic loss. People scheduling meetings
need to ask a few fundamental questions: What kind of meeting
is this? What kind of thinking do we want people to do? Who is
going to be there? And then, use these factors to schedule the
meeting at the right time of day. Daniel H. Pink is the author of When: The Scientiic Secrets of Perfect Timing
Another tip is, if you have good news and bad news to de- (Riverhead Books, 2018), which has spent three months on the New York
liver, you should deliver the bad news irst. The research shows Times bestseller list. For the last six years, the Thinkers50 has named him
one of the top 15 management thinkers in the world. He has been a contribut-
that the vast majority of people prefer bad news irst and good
ing editor at Fast Company and Wired as well as a business columnist for
news next, because given a choice, we prefer ‘endings that ele- The Sunday Telegraph. His TED Talk on the science of motivation is one
vate’. And so, when you’re given a performance review, or giving of the 10 most-watched TED Talks of all time.

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Everyone has blind spots and weaknesses. By identifying and addressing
your own challenges, you can accelerate your career.
by Carter Cast
HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHY some careers lourish, while others Leadership, the Korn Ferry Institute and the Hay Group. All
stall? ‘Career derailment’ occurs when an individual previously three indicated that organizations prefer to focus on the positive
deemed to have strong potential is ired, demoted or plateaus and don’t even like to discuss peoples’ negative qualities. The
below expected levels of success. According to statistics, some- problem is, these personal weaknesses often override an indi-
where between 30 and 67 per cent of leaders involuntarily derail vidual’s strengths. Following are ive major career derailers that
at some point in their career. every leader should be aware of.
Not surprisingly, career derailment carries high costs: The
direct and indirect cost to organizations can be more than 20 DERAILER 1: INTERPERSONAL ISSUES. Researchers agree
times the derailed employees’ salaries. Given the stakes in- that this is the most prevalent and damaging derailer. Stuart
volved for individuals and organizations alike, I recently set Kaplan, the former global chief operating oicer of Korn Ferry’s
out to pinpoint the major causes of career derailment. In this leadership and talent consulting practice (now director of orga-
article I will share key indings from the research, lay out the nizational development at Google) put it this way:
behaviours that can stall a career and ofer remedies to help
people avoid derailment. “As you progress [in your career], your relationships with
others are more important than your knowledge of and re-
Career Derailment 101 lationship with data. This need kicks in as you move into
First and foremost, career derailment does not indicate a lack middle and upper management. It’s a mindset change. You
of managerial talent. Instead, it often alicts talented manag- have to let go of having the answer and embrace the rela-
ers who are either unaware of a debilitating weakness or inter- tional world. It becomes less about competencies and more
personal blind spot — or are arrogant enough to believe that the about trust.”
rules don’t apply to them.
As part of my research, I conducted extensive interviews To examine this derailer more closely, I broke it down into two
with three leadership consulting irms: the Centre for Creative categories: relational issues and dark-side personality dimensions.
Defensiveness leads the way in terms of career damage because
it often suppresses one’s ability to learn and develop.
On the relational front, Korn Ferry analyzed a tremendous • PERFECTIONISM: Get the little things right even if the big
amount of data from its 360-degree feedback instrument things go wrong.
(VOICES®) and found a total of 19 negative behavioural charac- • EAGERNESS TO PLEASE: Winning the popularity contest
teristics that reliably correlate to job performance lame-out. Ten matters most.
of them are related speciically to relational issues. The ive most
common are, in descending order: defensiveness; lack of com- According to Dotlich and Cairo, most managers possess
posure under stress; insensitivity to others’ feelings; excess am- at least two or three of these derailers. This statistic might
bition; and arrogance. Defensiveness leads the way in terms of seem alarming, but it needn’t be. The unknown enemy is the
career damage because it often suppresses one’s ability to learn most fearsome. By understanding our own derailment propensi-
and develop. ties, we can address them and mitigate their potential to cause
Looking at the second category, dark-side personality di- trouble.
mensions involve dysfunctional dispositions that are associated
with failure as a manager. Psychologists Joyce and Robert Ho- DERAILER 2: DIFFICULTY BUILDING AND LEADING
gan have conducted extensive research on derailment result- TEAMS
ing from personal factors and created an inventory assessment People who sufer from this derailer tend to do at least one —
tool that managers can take to test for these dimensions. David and sometimes all — of the following:
Dotlich and Peter Cairo put the Hogans’ model into practice
with their own tool, the CDR International Derailment Report, • THEY OVER-MANAGE. Those who over-manage don’t empower
which they have administered to thousands of managers and their team members and are over-controlling and meddling.
executives. In doing so they have conirmed the accuracy of As a result, team members ind their eforts thwarted and
the Hogans’ dimensions. In Why CEOs Fail, they write: can lose their sense of autonomy and their desire to take the
initiative. Those who over-manage are also poor delegators.
“Many leaders sabotage themselves, albeit unconsciously. Because they were often efective individual contributors,
We’ve found all leaders are vulnerable to 11 derailers— they tend to revert to that behaviour and try to do the work
deeply ingrained personality traits that afect their leader- themselves.
ship style and actions. Odds are that you possess at least
one of these traits.” • THEY FAIL TO BUILD AND LEAD THE TEAM. These leaders don’t com-
municate business priorities or provide the necessary stra-
Dotlich and Cairo’s 11 derailers are as follows: tegic context for assignments, so their team members fail to
• ARROGANCE: You’re right and everybody else is wrong. understand how their work its within the overall strategy of
• MELODRAMA: You always grab the centre of attention. the team, the department or the organization. They also ind it
• VOLATILITY: Your mood swings drive business swings. diicult to resolve interpersonal, resource-allocation or work-
• EXCESSIVE CAUTION: The next decision you make may low/process-related problems within the team in a timely
be your irst. manner, reducing its efectiveness, and they do a poor job of
• HABITUAL DISTRUST: You focus on the negatives. developing the functional and managerial skills of their direct
• ALOOFNESS: You disengage and disconnect. reports.
• MISCHIEVOUSNESS: Rules are made to be broken.
• ECCENTRICITY: It’s fun to be diferent just for the sake of it. • THEY DON’T MANAGE THE TEAM’S CONTEXT.Managing team mem-
• PASSIVE RESISTANCE: Your silence is misinterpreted as bers one-on-one isn’t the same as managing a team. Managing
agreement. a team means also managing the team’s context, which entails:

Those who over-manage don’t empower their team members
and are over-controlling and meddling.
1) Scanning the competitive environment and making adjust- curiosity; and preferring the status quo, even when faced with
ments to strategy based on an ongoing assessment; new challenges that necessitate a change in approach.
2) Lobbying for and securing resources for the team;
3) Ensuring strategic and project alignment with other internal DERAILER 4: LACK OF STRATEGIC ORIENTATION
functions; and This derailer can be broken into three components:
4) Ensuring that team objectives, goals and key performance
indicators (KPIs) are clear — and are met. • OVER-DEPENDENCE ON ONE SKILL. This means relying on the same
skill or small set of skills to get any job done and not recogniz-
DERAILER 3: DIFFICULTY ADAPTING TO CHANGE ing the importance of a broadened skill set, and it often comes
Almost two-thirds of managers who have derailed were de- with a bias for one’s functional area of expertise. The old adage,
scribed as being ‘unable to change or adapt’. As people rise ‘If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’ comes
through organizations and business situations become more to mind. For example, a chief inancial oicer trying to pin a re-
complex, adaptability becomes increasingly important. With ad- turn on investment to all projects, even those that are exploratory
ditional responsibility, more constituencies and political nuances or conceptual; or an enterprise sales manager saying, ‘Selling is
must be managed. As my colleague, Kellogg Professor Kevin selling; I don’t need to understand how our new client software
Murnane puts it: “As you progress, you need to move from the portal works’.
technical to the interpersonal and from certainty to ambiguity.” In the book Potential — For What?, the Hay Group lists such
narrowness as a critical derailer: “A narrow and short-sighted
This derailer can be triggered by three things: emphasis on immediate results and/or technical expertise —
this is the opposite of lateral thinking and taking a broader
CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES. The most common reason for derail- view.” All things change, and one of the requirements for
ment here is that a person gets promoted into a new position higher-level management and career fulilment is broadness
and doesn’t have the requisite skills or hasn’t taken the time to and diversity.
understand the job requirements — and continues to act and be-
have in the same manner as before being promoted. A common BEING NON-STRATEGIC. This often takes three forms:
issue after promotion is the diiculty of making the mental tran-
sition from being a ‘technical manager’ to a ‘general manager’ 1. Being a whirlwind of execution and not pulling back to exam-
and moving from ‘me’ to ‘we’. Some people also have great dif- ine and understand the strategic context surrounding the work.
iculty understanding and accepting fundamental shifts in the Given the propensity for this, when I worked at Walmart.com
macro environment and making the necessary adjustments. I frequently urged my team to remember to ‘zoom in’ or ‘pull
back’;
OVER-DEPENDENCE ON AN ADVOCATE. Another common reason for 2. Being too technically oriented, overly concerned with project
derailment within this category is over-dependence on a previ- details, getting mired in the tactics of the business and losing
ous boss or advocate. People frequently struggle when they lose touch with its over-arching objective; and
their old boss and gain a new one who has a diferent agenda and 3. Lacking a holistic understanding of how the pieces of the busi-
management style. ness it together — not grasping the value chain, the process or
activities by which a company adds consumer/customer value.
PERSONALITY TRAITS. These include not seeking input or being
unable to take direction from others; being fearful of change • HAVING A KEY SKILL DEFICIENCY. This issue concerns not having
(especially of appearing inept); having narrow interests; lacking a key skill necessary to be successful in a position. Some of the
When to Quit Your Job: A Guide
One of life’s biggest decisions is when to leave a job that just causal factors for this are: counting backwards to retirement and
isn’t working out. If you’re contemplating this option, here are
not taking on new challenges or learning new skills; younger
five questions to help you decide. If your answer to two or
more of these is No, it might be time to make an exit.
managers sufering from general inexperience; lacking technical
or functional skills; being new to the job or function and also not
1. Do you want to be in this job on your next work being interested in self-development.
anniversary?
People are most likely to leave a job on their one-year DERAILER 5: POOR FOLLOW-THROUGH
anniversary. The second most likely time? Their two-year This last derailer is an insidious one. When managers cannot
anniversary. The third? You get the idea. If you dread the be counted on to deliver on commitments, they lose their per-
idea of being at your job on your next work anniversary, start
sonal credibility and co-workers slowly but surely back away and
looking now.
avoid working with them. Following are ive reasons for poor
2. Is your current job both demanding and within your follow-through.
control?
The most fulfilling jobs share a common trait: They prod us • POOR PLANNING AND ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS. People sufering from
to work at our highest level, but in a way that we, not some- this derailer are often disorganized and are not detail oriented,
one else, control. Jobs that are demanding but don’t offer which can lead to unmet commitments.
autonomy burn us out. Jobs that offer autonomy but little
challenge bore us. And jobs that are neither demanding nor • TROUBLE PRIORITIZING WORK. Efective managers are able to dif-
in our control are the worst of all. If your job doesn’t provide
ferentiate high-impact work from busy work and prioritize their
both challenge and autonomy and there’s nothing you can
do to make things better, consider a move.
time accordingly. They use various heuristics to prioritize, plan
and execute their work. An aliction from which inefective man-
3. Does your boss allow you to do your best work? agers sufer is what I call ‘working in response mode,’ wherein
Stanford Professor Robert Sutton has researched the they allow interruption after interruption to impede their prog-
qualities that make someone worth working for: If your boss ress on important projects by responding, like Pavlov’s dogs, ev-
has your back, takes responsibility instead of blaming oth- ery time a text or email message comes in over the transom.
ers, encourages your efforts but also gets out of your way,
and displays a sense of humour rather than a raging temper, • BEING A PLEASER. People who have trouble delivering on promises
you’re probably in a good place; if your boss is the opposite,
are often pleasers who never say ‘no’ to a request for fear of dis-
watch out—and maybe get out.
appointing their co-workers. As a result, they over-commit and
4. Does your daily work align with your long-term under-deliver.
goals?
Ample research shows that when your individual goals align • NOT UNDERSTANDING DUE PROCESS. In my experience, managers
with those of your organization, you’re happier and more who execute poorly often lack an understanding of the due pro-
productive. So take a moment and list your top two or three cess required inside their business unit or company. They tend
goals for the next five and ten years. If your current employer to have a naive or inadequate understanding of the action steps,
can help you reach them, great; if not, think about an ending.
the work low, the functional and cross-functional dependencies,
and the necessary stakeholder approvals required to complete an
-Daniel H. Pink, from When: The Scientific Secrets of
Perfect Timing (Riverhead Books, 2018) initiative inside their company. As a result, they assume they can
accomplish activities or projects in an unrealistic time frame.
• SUFFERING FROM GRANDIOSITY. People who sufer from grandios-

ity often are creative, curious, highly conceptual people who are
spirited and full of big ideas. When this trait goes into overdrive,
however, their strengths can become weaknesses. They become
enamoured of their game-changing, high-concept ideas and are
distracted from following through on the mundane tasks or proj-
ects for which they are accountable.

The Seeds of Derailment: Strengths in Overdrive
EARLY STRENGTH ASSOCIATED EARLY PROBLEMS POTENTIAL FUTURE

TROUBLE AREA
Bright and driven Overly ambitious, abrasive, bruising Arrogant, insensitive

to others
Independent, self-directed Doesn’t develop direct reports, poor Can’t build a team, hasn’t developed
delegator a strong network
Loyal team player Doesn’t challenge others, hires in own Can’t make the tough call, can’t build
image a team
Results-oriented, controlling Gets irritated when things don’t go as Over-manages, poor adaptability,
planned lacks composure
Personable, relies on relationships Problems with rigorous analysis, over- Non-strategic, lacks learning agility
to get things done reliance on a single skill, non-strategic
Creative and highly conceptual Lacks attention to detail, disorganized Lacks follow-through, betrays trust
Has single notable strength Over-reliance on a boss/mentor, ‘has a Narrow — key skills defiency, over-
hammer, so everything looks like a nail’ dependence on an advocate, poor
adaptability
Contentious, takes strong stands Poor selling skills, lacks tact Poor adaptability, insensitive to others
and is often right
Derailment Remedies vulnerability, there is no better way to improve our performance.

All positive change — whether becoming a better leader, learn- The Hogan Personality Inventory and the Hogan Development
ing to be more adaptable, thinking less narrowly or improving Survey ofer a rich set of tools to understand bright-side and dark-
follow-through skills — begins with self-awareness. This trait is side personality traits.
mission critical. A lack of self-awareness is the single best indica-
tor of an individual’s impending derailment. For those who want GAIN A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF YOUR ‘STRENGTHS IN OVERDRIVE’.
to improve their self-awareness and proactively tend to their Do you know the circumstances in which you overuse your
blind spots, I recommend the following. strengths? Let’s say one of your strengths is ‘determination’: You
are widely known as a person who works hard and doesn’t stop
SEEK 360-DEGREE FEEDBACK FROM CO-WORKERS. A handful of orga- until the job has been successfully completed. Think of what
nizations do a ine job of administering, interpreting and coach- happens when that strength goes into overdrive — when you of-
ing managers and executives through some type of multi-source fer too much of it. Perhaps your determination turns into pushi-
assessment. I urge everyone — regardless of level — to go through ness. Then think about the challenge behaviour — the balancing
this type of assessment process. behaviour you’re leaving out. So with ‘pushiness’ you might be
missing ‘patience’ or ‘deliberation’.
GAIN A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF YOUR BLIND SPOTS AND SELF- Given your determination, do you have a bias against people
DEFEATING BEHAVIOURS.Although none of us likes the prospect of who demonstrate great patience and are deliberate? Perhaps you
hearing about, examining and addressing our areas of personal tend to associate these traits with being ‘lazy’ or ‘slow-moving’.
The key here is to examine the lip side of your biggest strengths. make sure they were aligned on what was important to accom-
By doing so, you can uncover behavioural areas that may be plish and make sure they received ongoing feedback.
holding you back.
BE EMPATHETIC AND COMPASSIONATE — AND STAY HUMBLE. One of
SEEK COACHING AND COUNSEL, ESPECIALLY DURING TIMES OF TRANSI- the best ways to avoid derailment is to be ‘other oriented’ by
TION. When I interviewed Smruti Rajagopalan, an organizational practising empathy and compassion. When you ind yourself in
design and talent management consultant at the Hay Group, she a charged situation with a peer, ask yourself, ‘Why might this
stressed the importance of self-awareness and self-management person be resisting my proposal?’ ‘What are her objectives, and
during times of change. Behaviour is a function of a person in how might I help her achieve them while still adhering to my own
a situation, she explained, and blind spots often act as derailers goals?’ Above all, practise humility. Staying humble is important
because they cause individuals to misjudge situations and their because the leading cause of interpersonal issues is arrogance.
approach to emerging challenges.
This is particularly true during times of change: A new job EMBRACE THE SHIFT FROM MANAGING SELF TO MANAGING OTHERS. Mak-
or assignment, new boss or other wildcard thrown into the mix ing the shift from being a ‘doer’ to managing through others is an
can heighten derailment risks. Diiculty adapting to changing enormous transition that is not always easy. When we’re good at
circumstances — especially a job change involving a new assign- something, we like to keep doing it. We see the tangible progress
ment or a promotion — can often derail promising careers. Peo- and receive the rewards, so we’re naturally reluctant to change
ple perform well when there is a match between their capabilities our approach. In Becoming a Manager, Linda Hill discusses the
and the requirements of their job. When that match gets out of importance of the mindset shift that occurs in this transition
balance, they struggle. from being a specialist to an orchestrator. She writes that this
While working with both middle and senior level managers shift literally involves a transformation of identity. To be success-
attending the Kellogg School’s continuing education program, ful, managers must not only learn their job requirements but also
I have asked hundreds of program participants, ‘When you were cultivate self-relection in order to motivate others.
promoted or transferred into a new assignment, how many of
you had a clear understanding of the skills required and the suc- In closing
cess factors of your new job?’ Only 10 to 20 per cent of people Your career is not a foot race. It is long. No one — you included
raise their hands. Then I’ve called on people who did raise their — will remember if you reached vice president by age 35 or age
hands, asking them how they went about understanding the 39. So, take the time to get really good at something; that’s your
job requirements and success factors of their new job and trying bargaining chip, your career leverage. And by all means, take a
to create a smooth transition into their new role. lateral move if it’s in a critical path area that’s important to un-
They have all reported taking one or all of the following derstand.
actions: First, taking the time to be crystal clear on what their Always remember: You will only go as far as your blind spots
new boss wanted, asking essentially, ‘What will I have accom- allow. Do whatever you can to increase your self-awareness and
plished in two or three years to make you say I did a great job in reduce the career-limiting efects of blind spots. The fact is, each
this role?’ From that conversation, they made a list of the three to and every one of us has derailment propensities. To understand
ive key deliverables and then worked with their boss to establish them is to empower ourselves to manage past them. The best
key performance indicators for each. Their goal was to be crystal news of all: By identifying and addressing your own issues and
clear on what success looked like. challenges, you can accelerate your career.
Second, if the new boss wasn’t able to provide clear direc-
tion, they developed their own goals and objectives, with clear
success metrics and then ran them by him/her to ensure align-
ment. Third, they sought advice from other employees who had
gone through the same or similar transitions, asking about chal-
lenges in the transition and what to watch out for. What did they Carter Cast is the Clinical Professor of Innovation and
learn? What caught them of-guard? Which other departments, Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management,
functional groups and resources were critical to their success? a venture partner at Pritzker Group Venture Capital and
author of The Right (and Wrong) Stuf: How Brilliant Careers
What three pieces of advice would they ofer?
are Made — and Unmade (PublicAfairs, 2018). He is the
Then, in the early stages of a job transition, they checked former CEO of Walmart.com and has held senior management positions
in with the boss on a regular basis — weekly or bi-weekly — to at PepsiCo and Electronic Arts.

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A thriving environment for innovation contains eight characteristics.
Assessing them properly sets the stage for a start-up to flourish.
by Ajay Agrawal and Alberto Galasso
FOR SEVERAL YEARS, Abraham Heifets had worked on applying ventures. Silicon Valley is widely celebrated as a start-up haven
recent advancements in artiicial intelligence to drug discovery. because of its abundance of experienced talent, capital and ex-
Developing a new medicine takes an average of 15 years, and perimental culture. However, the Bay Area is also well known
Heifets had devised a way to shrink the process to a fraction of for its high cost of living and ierce labour-market competition.
that time using advanced machine-learning algorithms running Thus, buying a one-way ticket to California makes sense only
on a supercomputer. if the beneits of relocating outweigh the costs. For Heifets, the
He enthusiastically pitched his idea to all the top venture move may well have saved his ledgling business; however, given
capital irms in his hometown of Toronto, but the reaction was the inancial and other costs of relocating, other high-tech entre-
always the same: Potential investors liked the idea, but weren’t preneurs might be better of staying put in their hometowns.
willing to commit their capital. They requested more evidence, What factors should be considered when making such a
wanted more-detailed business plans and demonstrated no momentous decision? Drawing on two decades of research in
sense of urgency. As his funds wore thin, Heifets became in- Strategy, Economics and Geography, we have developed a sim-
creasingly anxious, and eventually realized that he had to relo- ple framework that high-tech entrepreneurs can use to inform
cate his business to Silicon Valley, where investors would under- their location strategies. This framework — which takes into ac-
stand the potential of his idea and be willing to get involved at count the key forces that shape regional entrepreneurial success
an early stage. — is useful not only for start-ups, but also for large corporations,
The move proved to be a wise decision: By June 2015, because the location decisions of entrepreneurs are not only
Heifets’ company, Atomwise, had raised $6 million in seed shaped by, but also shape the location decisions of certain types
funding from ive leading science-focused venture capital irms, of large businesses.
and soon after, it announced collaborations with Merck, Nota-
ble Labs and Harvard Medical School. Eight Crucial Factors
The issues faced by Heifets are not uncommon among The entrepreneurial success of any region is shaped by eight fac-
high-technology entrepreneurs during the early stages of their tors that inluence the entry of new high-tech irms and create
Innovation productivity is greater where sizable
populations of both small and large firms coexist.
conditions that afect the growth of those irms. Entrepreneur- 4. LABOUR POOL. Start-ups must assess the presence of workers
ship tends to lourish in regions scoring high across multiple specialized in relevant ields as well as their own ability to attract
factors. Let’s take a closer look at each. key talent to the region. Larger labour pools have an impact on
the number, quality and difusion of entrepreneurial ideas. Stud-
1. INVESTORS. For high-tech entrepreneurs, the availability of ven- ies show that specialized workers tend to agglomerate in a lim-
ture capital across multiple levels of investing stages — angel, ited number of locations, and very often, their supply is shaped
seed, Series A and Series B — can be the diference between suc- by the presence of universities, hospitals and research institutes
cess or failure. Investors vary in terms of their tastes for certain in a region. It’s important to recognize, however, that universities
markets and technologies, their risk tolerance, their knowledge vary substantially in their propensity to cooperate with industry
about speciic sectors, and having other investments in their and support local entrepreneurship. One of Silicon Valley’s great-
portfolio that might present conlicts. An ample supply of ven- est advantages is that it has a disproportionately large labour
ture capitalists in a region therefore signiicantly enhances the force with experience in scaling start-ups.
probability that an entrepreneur will be able to ind a good match.
More than half of the venture-capital oices listed in the Pratt’s 5. COMPETITION. High-tech entrepreneurs must assess the com-
Guide to Private Equity and Venture Capital Sources are located in petitive landscape, paying special attention to other start-ups in
three centres: Silicon Valley, Boston and New York. It is impor- their region. On the one hand, there are clear beneits to being in-
tant to remember that venture capitalists are more likely to pro- sulated from competition; on the other, competition can play an
vide funding and serve on the boards of companies that are local important role in spurring innovation. When assessing a regional
because geographical distance constrains their ability to monitor environment, entrepreneurs should avoid having a narrow focus
their portfolio companies and coach the management teams of and considering as competition only irms with similar products
those businesses. and technologies. They should also assess the nature of compe-
tition in terms of inputs, talent and funding. Special attention
2. CUSTOMERS. It’s natural for new irms to start selling their prod- should be paid to large companies present in the area, which can
ucts locally before expanding to national and international mar- have a profound impact on a regional economy by stimulating
kets. Thus, the level and quality of local demand will inluence demand for new technology and attracting a skilled labour force.
the initial growth of a start-up. Signiicant local demand can lead Our research has shown that innovation productivity is greater in
to cost savings by allowing irms to spread their ixed costs over a regional environments where sizable populations of both small
larger customer base. Local customers may also provide crucial and large irms coexist.
insights to develop and ine-tune a product.
6. INSTITUTIONS.An efective location strategy requires careful as-
3. SUPPLIERS. Being located close to a dense network of suppliers sessment of the strengths and weaknesses of regional economic
is advantageous for a number of reasons. First, it reduces trans- and political institutions. In particular, high-tech entrepreneurs
portation costs and waiting times for inputs. CEO Jef Bezos’ should monitor local taxation levels, backlogs in regional courts
decision to locate Amazon in Seattle, for example, was primar- and trends in regional business legislation. Transport infrastruc-
ily because of the short distance from one of the country’s larg- tures such as airports, train stations and roads may also have an
est distribution warehouses for books. Second, the technological important impact on a irm’s ability to interact with customers,
needs of a start-up are often fully understood only with frequent suppliers, investors and competitors.
interaction with its suppliers. Third, the presence of multiple
suppliers in one area allows the entrepreneur to shop for the 7. CULTURE.Picking the right location requires a good grasp of the
best price, quality and product it. Lastly, some regions provide a cultural norms across diferent locales. Silicon Valley, for ex-
natural advantage related to inputs for certain industries, and be- ample, is known for its forgiving attitude towards entrepreneurs
cause oice space is a key variable, an assessment of the regional who have failed in previous ventures. Particular attention must
real-estate market should also inluence a location strategy. also be paid to the local acceptance of diferent demographic and

ethnic groups within a region, as this may inluence the ease with its residents are ‘early adopters’ who are eager to try new prod-
which foreign talent may be recruited to the region. ucts and services such as house sharing (Airbnb, for example)
and on-demand valet parking (Luxe, for example).
8. SOCIAL NETWORK. Individuals are embedded in local networks The geographic distribution of enterprise customers is an-
of social relations generated by their family, friends and civic other important variable. Consider inancial services. By various
ties. The social capital derived from these relationships can be measures, Toronto is the second-largest inancial centre in North
very important for entrepreneurs to raise capital and attract em- America, after New York City but ahead of Chicago, Boston and
ployees, suppliers and customers. As a result, the proitability of San Francisco. Not surprisingly, Toronto is home to a number
a move to Silicon Valley is less clear when entrepreneurs have of promising inancial technology (‘intech’) start-ups, such as
deep social networks in their home locations. Regions where Wealthsimple. To date, however, the highest-proile start-ups in
newcomers can quickly form and leverage social connections are this industry are not based in Toronto, but Silicon Valley (PayPal
more attractive than those where integration is more diicult. and Square, for example). Even in Canada, a surprising number
of prominent intech irms are based outside of Toronto: Shopify
Toronto vs. Silicon Valley (Ottawa), Verain (St. John’s), Lightspeed (Montreal), Block-
As indicated earlier, Abraham Heifets had trouble raising capital stream (Montreal) and Zain (Vancouver). This hints that even
for his promising technology breakthrough until he relocated his though there is a larger potential customer base for inancial
business from Toronto to the Bay Area. However, other Toronto- services in Toronto compared to the Bay Area or other regions
based entrepreneurs have been able to thrive in Toronto. Mike in Canada, the inancial services companies in Toronto may not
Serbinis, for example, was successful in raising a $25 million be suiciently engaged as customers of new innovations to give
Series A round of funding, largely from Toronto-based inves- intech start-ups in the region an advantage.
tors, for his digital health platform company, LEAGUE. To better
understand the crucial stay-or-relocate decisions made by en- SUPPLIER COMPARISON. Toronto has limited manufacturing of
trepreneurs like Heifets and Serbinis, let’s apply our eight-factor electronic products relative to the Bay Area. Furthermore, many
framework to compare Toronto with Silicon Valley. inputs that are not available locally are imported from the U.S.,
with non-trivial shipping and tarif costs. Moreover, many other
INVESTOR COMPARISON. The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is roughly inputs are imported from China. Thus, for hardware-related
comparable to Silicon Valley in terms of population size, but the companies, Toronto faces a supplier disadvantage relative to Sili-
level of funds available for entrepreneurial businesses is much con Valley. In contrast, Toronto ofers a greater supply of oice
smaller. In fact, the level of venture-capital investment in the space, which is signiicantly more afordable than in Silicon Val-
GTA is roughly one-tenth that of San Francisco and one-ifth that ley, and the region is attempting to capitalize on that advantage.
of Boston. Furthermore, regions with smaller pools of early-stage For example, Kitchener-Waterloo in the Greater Toronto Area
capital are likely to have thinner markets of investors with spe- (GTA) recently announced that it would build a large innovation
cialized expertise. complex speciically aimed at new hardware companies. This
complex — which will exceed the size of a similar pioneer facil-
CUSTOMER COMPARISON. Markets can be broadly classiied as either ity in Shenzhen, China — is designed to attract companies spe-
consumer or enterprise. On the consumer side, the population of cializing in contract manufacturing, radio frequency testing and
the GTA is only slightly smaller than that of the Bay Area (rough- certiication, and IT law.
ly six million compared to seven million), so for consumer-ori-
ented products, these markets are similarly attractive. However, LABOUR POOL COMPARISON. Two distinct types of highly skilled la-
the demographics and preferences of consumers may difer in bour are human capital that is either inexperienced or experienced
crucial ways across these regions. In the case of technology prod- with respect to scaling. Inexperienced highly skilled labour is well
ucts, even though Toronto is roughly the same size, many argue trained and may have years of experience working at small and
that the Bay Area is more attractive because a high fraction of medium-sized enterprises. However, these individuals have
Toronto-based talent is equally well trained yet
less expensive than its Silicon Valley counterparts.
not participated in the rapid scaling of an organization. Experi- credit, a Canadian innovation funding program that returns over
enced labour is not only well trained, but has also participated in CAD$3.4 billion to companies every year.
the rapid growth of an organization that has increased its mar- In addition, Toronto has been ranked as the best city to live
ket capitalization by, for example, one hundred times. Toronto in North America, according to the 2015 Safe Cities Index. Fi-
arguably has a more attractive environment than the Bay Area nally, healthcare is signiicantly more afordable in Canada than
for inexperienced highly skilled labour, because Toronto-based in the U.S. At the same time, several of the most dominant large
talent is equally well trained yet less expensive and less likely to industries in the GTA are heavily regulated and thus protected
be poached than Silicon Valley-based counterparts. However, from global competition — for example, banking, insurance and
Toronto has only a limited supply of highly skilled labour with telecommunications. As a result, these industries do not seem
experience in scaling — which involves growing a user base from to foster technology entrepreneurship at a level commensurate
zero to hundreds of millions of users, raising billions of dollars with their size. Thus, start-ups in these regulated industries are
in equity capital, taking companies public, recruiting thousands signiicantly more proliic in the Bay Area, despite there being
of engineers and software developers, and outsourcing hardware fewer established irms from those industries in that region.
manufacturing to China. Even when Toronto-based high-tech
companies do achieve product-market it, when compared to Sil- CULTURE COMPARISON. Like the Bay Area, Toronto is well connected
icon Valley start-ups, they often struggle to attract experienced to other prominent metropolitan areas in North America, given
talent to relocate. The reason? Prospects worry that if the oppor- its geographical location and its large international airport. Over-
tunity doesn’t work out, there might be limited other attractive all, Toronto has a vibrant, creative community and a number of
opportunities in the GTA. strong engineering and science programs linked to educational
institutions (such as the University of Toronto and the University
COMPETITION COMPARISON. Toronto is home to foreign tech com- of Waterloo) that are similar on most important dimensions to
panies such as Cisco, Google, Uber and Facebook, but the size those in the Bay Area (such as UC Berkeley and Stanford). Given
and nature of their operations (predominantly sales oices) are that foundation, it’s not surprising that the GTA has a healthy
modest and less conducive to meaningful contributions to the concentration of technology talent: About 55 per cent of technol-
entrepreneurship ecosystem relative to their presence in Silicon ogy workers in Ontario and about 26 per cent of all technology
Valley. More promisingly, General Motors recently announced workers in Canada are employed in Toronto.
plans to hire 750 people in the next two years to work on driver- Although Toronto has a vibrant and growing technology en-
less cars, particularly on cold-weather features. trepreneurship community, the dominance of this culture does
It should be noted that start-ups in the GTA have lourished not compare to that in Silicon Valley. The executive director of
where competition has been high: Over the past ive years, the C100, an association for Canadian entrepreneurs in San Francis-
region has emerged as a front-runner in the area of wearable co, recently had this to say: “Tech is everywhere [in Silicon Val-
technologies, led by start-ups such as Thalmic Labs, Nymi, ley]. It’s in the cofee shops, on street corners, and in everyone’s
PUSH, Muse and Magniware, and inspired by Steve Mann, conversations.” This relects not only the density of the technol-
who founded the Wearable Computing Lab at MIT and subse- ogy-oriented labour market in the Bay Area, but also a cultural
quently moved to the University of Toronto (and is widely re- mindset regarding risk taking, work ethic, growth aspirations and
garded as the Father of Wearable Computing). other characteristics.
INSTITUTION COMPARISON. The Ontario government has imple- SOCIAL NETWORK COMPARISON. Entrepreneurs leverage every as-
mented a variety of policies supporting small businesses—such set they have in their pursuit of opportunity. A wide and valuable
as the Youth Entrepreneurship Fund and the Starter Company local social network becomes an important asset to leverage for
Program — and ofers tax rates that are lower than the average of access to capital, key recruits, customers, suppliers and regula-
G20 countries. Moreover, tech companies also beneit from the tors. Although Silicon Valley is known as an open community
Scientiic Research & Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax where outsiders are able to establish social networks over time,

such establishment still takes efort and resources and thus may STAY AND LEAVE ARE EXTREMES ALONG A CONTINUUM OF POSSIBILITIES.
be relatively costly for individuals who already have strong social Entrepreneurs may also consider ‘straddling’ home cities and
networks at home. new locations, through frequent travel between the two sites, the
temporary rental of oice spaces or the opening of a satellite of-
Our Advice for Entrepreneurs ice. For instance, Karl Martin, founder of Toronto-based Nymi,
Our eight-factor framework indicates the key issues that high- lies to Silicon Valley every six to eight weeks to meet with his
tech entrepreneurs must examine to assess the desirability of po- U.S. investors. Venture-capital irms may also provide diferent
tential locations for their start-ups. In deploying that framework, mechanisms for straddling locations. California-based accelera-
entrepreneurs should also consider the following. tor 500 Start-ups ofers a program that allows selected start-ups
to connect with mentors and industry experts in Silicon Valley
THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL ‘BEST’ STRATEGY. The efects of a relocation without leaving their home location.
will difer across start-ups. Entrepreneurs should use a two-step
process when evaluating the framework presented herein. First, In closing
they should assess how important each of the eight factors is for The framework presented herein indicates the key issues that en-
their venture. For example, cash-starved start-ups like Atom- trepreneurs must examine to assess the desirability of a potential
wise should give more weight to investors than to suppliers. In location for their venture. Ignoring these factors may lead found-
contrast, start-ups that have secured capital and aim to scale up ers to pick the wrong location, resulting in diiculties in attract-
quickly should give more weight to suppliers and labour pools. ing the necessary funding, talent, suppliers, partnerships and
The second step is to contrast the local ecosystem with the new customers. However, assessing them properly sets the stage for
location by focusing on the key factors that were identiied in the a start-up to lourish.
irst step. Relocating is likely to be the right strategy for a venture
only if the new location signiicantly outperforms the local region
for the most salient factors.
MISPRICED FACTORS CAN UNDERMINE THE ANALYSIS. Picking a loca-

tion is a key strategic decision that is diicult to reverse — so it is
crucial to correctly price the various factors. Some entrepreneurs
overestimate the costs (both monetary and non-monetary) of
moving and treat their business sites as cast in stone, while oth-
ers underestimate those same costs. Particular attention should Ajay Agrawal is the Peter Munk Professor
be paid to the value of a local social network, which is one of the of Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School
most likely reasons for an entrepreneur to stay at home rather of Management and founder of the School’s
than move. Although Silicon Valley is well known as an open Creative Destruction Lab, which has expanded
to six locations including Vancouver (Sauder
community where outsiders can establish social networks over School of Business) and New York City (Stern School of Business). Alberto
time, establishing a network may be particularly expensive for Galasso is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management in the Depart-
individuals who already have strong social networks at home. ment of Management at the University of Toronto Mississauga, with a cross-
appointment to the Rotman School of Management.
Such was the case at Nymi, a Toronto-based start-up producing
wearable devices that deliver biometrically secured authentica- This article has been adapted from the authors’ chapter in Survive and Thrive:
tion. A strong local network gave Nymi an advantage in build- Winning Against Strategic Threats to Your Business — a collection of perspectives
ing a team and in obtaining early seed-stage funding. Doing the from the Rotman School’s world-renowned Strategic Management faculty that
is available at amazon.ca/com.
same outside Toronto would have been much harder and would
have required the irm to divert more time and resources away Rotman faculty research is ranked in the top 10 globally by the Financial
from its core business. Times.
Mindfulness helps us pause in the moment so that we can make
more conscious choices and take more deliberate actions.
by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter
LEADERSHIP PIONEER PETER DRUCKER once said, “You cannot man- get distracted. Just focus on one word for a full 60 seconds. No
age other people unless you manage yourself irst.” If this is true, cheating. Okay, go ahead.
most leadership education programs have it backwards. They How did it go? Were you able to maintain complete focus for
tend to start with skills like strategy, people management and a minute? Or did you question the purpose of the exercise? Did
inance, but from Drucker’s point of view, this approach starts you debate which word to focus on? Did the word catalyze new
at the end and misses the beginning. It’s like building a house thoughts, leading you to think of other things? The point is that if
by starting with the roof. you strayed from complete focus on that one word, you failed in
Like Drucker, we believe leadership begins with yourself. leading your own mind, even just for a minute.
More speciically, it starts with your mind. Here are a few facts If you failed, don’t worry: It just means you’re normal. Most
that every leader should know about their mind: people fail this test. Why? Researchers have found that on av-
erage, our mind involuntarily wanders for nearly half our wak-
• You do not control your mind. ing hours. While you think you’re managing your mind, you’re
• You are not rational. not. Think for a moment about the implications of your mind
• Your mind creates your reality. being distracted from what you’re doing nearly half of the time.
• You are not your thoughts. How might it impact your efectiveness? How could it afect
your ability to be present with others? How might it impact your
Let’s take a closer look at each point. well-being?
YOU PROBABLY DON’T CONTROL YOUR MIND AS MUCH AS YOU THINK. YOU ARE NOT RATIONAL. Sure, we like to think we’re rational beings.
To test whether this is true for you, focus on any word in this But in truth, we make choices based on emotions and rational-
sentence for a full minute. Don’t think about anything else. Don’t ize them afterward. For example, numerous studies conirm that
If leaders don’t manage themselves, they cannot lead others effectively.
our decisions are inluenced by how options are framed. In one tributes to focused attention — is strengthened. The brain takes
study, faced with making a medical decision, subjects chose the shape according to how we use it. Scientists and researchers call
risk-less option when outcomes were positively framed in terms this neuroplasticity.
of gains, and the risky option when outcomes were phrased nega- Neuroplasticity is great news for all of us because it means
tively in terms of losses. that we’re not limited by the faculties and aptitudes we’ve already
developed. On the contrary, we can keep learning and growing
YOUR MIND CREATES YOUR REALITY. Consider the last time you be- and can efectively rewire our brains throughout our entire lives.
lieved you led a meeting where everyone was perfectly aligned And as leaders, we can learn to better manage our minds.
— only to later ind out that some participants perceived it difer- But here is an important caveat for neuroplasticity: Just be-
ently. This happens all the time. We all have unconscious biases cause our brain is constantly changing doesn’t mean that it’s au-
that inluence and ilter everything we experience. Put more suc- tomatically changing in ways that are helpful to us. In fact, in our
cinctly: We don’t perceive things as they are, but as we are. Liter- distracted work environments, we tend to rewire our brain to be
ally, our mind creates our reality. even more distracted. If you just thought about your smartphone
or meeting schedule, you’re on to something.
YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS. In the vast majority of cases, If we’re constantly asking our brain to shift from one task to
thoughts arise randomly in the mind. We often identify with our another, its ability to focus on a single task will diminish. And if
thoughts, believing they are true and that they deine who we we allow ourselves to be constantly impatient and not particu-
are. And that’s a problem, since we have thousands of random, larly kind to others, these two characteristics can become the de-
repetitive and compulsive thoughts every day. They’re random fault operations of our brain. In this sense, we get the brain that
because they often come out of nowhere, and for no reason — we get based on how we use it — which means we should all place
such as thinking about a meeting you attended earlier in the day greater value on creating and managing our mind in ways that
while you’re trying to be present with your family. They’re repeti- are beneicial to us as leaders and the people we lead.
tive, because we often repeat the same thoughts again and again, Make no mistake, this process is not easy. It requires training
like a childhood memory that comes to mind thousands of times and efort. It also requires a deep understanding of yourself, your
throughout one’s life. And they’re compulsive, because they just values and your behaviours.
keep coming, lowing like a waterfall, even if we try to stop them.
These ‘mind facts’ should be concerning. If we as leaders The Road to Self-Awareness
don’t manage ourselves, how can we lead others efectively, and, The starting point for self-awareness is mindfulness. In a busy,
ultimately, lead our organizations? This challenge is best faced distracted work life, focus and awareness — the two central char-
by irst understanding more about the mind, how it works, and acteristics of mindfulness — are the key qualities for efective
how it can be trained. mental performance and self-management. As we become
First of all, the mind and the brain are not the same thing. more aware of our thoughts and feelings, we can manage our-
Your brain is the 85 billion neurons between your ears, as well selves better and act in ways that are more aligned with our val-
as the 40 million neurons around your heart and 100 million ues and goals.
neurons in your gut. In contrast, your mind is the totality of your Focus is the ability to be single-mindedly directed in what
experience of being you — cognitively, emotionally, physically you do. Focus is what allows you to inish a project, meet your
and spiritually. Neuroscientists have found that we can change goals and maintain a strategy. When you’re involved in an im-
the structure of our brain by training our mind. When this hap- portant conversation, focus is what enables you to stay present
pens, we can become more focused, kinder, more patient — or and not mentally wander of; and awareness is the ability to notice
any other qualities that we train for. Simply put, what we do is what is happening around you as well as inside your own mind.
what the brain becomes. Focus for ten minutes every day for two When you take part in a conversation, self-awareness allows
weeks, and your prefrontal cortex — a part of our brain that con- you to know what you’re thinking, recognize how you’re feeling

Training for Mindful Awareness
1. Set a timer for 10 minutes.
2. Sit in your chair with a straight back and relaxed neck,

shoulders and arms. Close your eyes and breathe through
your nose.
3. For a minute, direct your full attention towards your

breathing. Simply observe your breath neutrally. Don’t
and understand the dynamics of the conversation. Awareness is try to control it. Allow your mind to stabilize and settle.
also the quality that informs you when your focus goes astray and
4. Now, let go of your attention to your breath and open
helps you redirect it back on track.
your awareness to whatever arises — a sound, a thought,
In 2015, we wrote an entire book about mindfulness (One
a physical sensation or anything else. Just be aware of it.
Second Ahead: Enhance Your Performance at Work with Mindful-
ness), so we won’t repeat ourselves here. Instead, we’ll focus on 5. Observe it neutrally. Don’t think about it. Don’t engage
the mindful characteristic of awareness and how you can culti- with it. Don’t try to make it stay or go away. Simply
vate self-awareness as part of your own leadership practice. observe it.
The First Step: Shut Of Autopilot
Scientists estimate that 45 per cent of our everyday behaviours 6. New experiences will arise, change or fade away. What-
are driven by reactions below the surface of our conscious ever occurs in your awareness, just be aware of it.
awareness. This may sound like bad news, but it’s actually nec-
7. If you find it challenging to observe without engaging your
essary and extremely valuable. Imagine trying to drive a car experiences, give the experience a label — for example,
if you consciously had to remind yourself to push the pedal to thought, email, task — and let it go.
speed up or ask your hands to move when you needed to turn
the wheel. You’d be overwhelmed — and you probably wouldn’t 8. If you find you get caught up in thinking about and
get very far. analyzing your experiences, return your focus to your
In certain circumstances, these autopilot actions, reactions breath. Then open your awareness again.
and behaviours are vital. These unconscious processes allow you
to perform tasks without having to think about them. But not all
your autopilot actions and behaviours are useful in leading your-
self or others.
As leaders, we impact the people we lead more than we
know. They pick up on every subtle cue we send, whether we 1. Let go of this magazine. For one minute, sit still.
send it consciously or unconsciously. And many of the cues we 2. Whatever comes into your mind, be aware of it. Simply no-
send can be discouraging, distancing or confusing. This is not tice it.
necessarily due to bad intentions, but rather because these be- 3. Let go of any inner commentary of why you are doing this
haviours, actions or reactions happen while we’re operating on exercise.
autopilot. Therefore, gaining greater awareness of our subtle ac- 4. No analyzing, no judging, no thinking.
tions and behaviours and eliminating autopilot behaviours that 5. Simply be aware.
are detrimental can be highly beneicial. 6. Just be.
Mindfulness training enables us to expand our awareness of That is awareness: A direct experience of what is happening for
what is happening in the landscape of our mind from moment to you, right now, and paying attention to it helps us understand
moment. It also helps us pause in the moment, so we can make ourselves.
more conscious choices and take more deliberate actions. These After Jacob Larsen, vice president of The Finance Group,
are powerful skills for a leader. completed one of our mindfulness programs, we asked him what
Fortunately for all of us, our awareness can always be en- he had gained. His answer: “One second.” He explained that
hanced. We can change the ratio of our conscious to unconscious mindfulness gave him a one-second gap between his thoughts
behaviours, which can make the diference between good or bad and his actions, between his impulses and his reactions — and
decisions. that gave him greater control over his decisions and his respons-
But what is awareness, really? Do you know what awareness es. In any given situation, he said, he could better manage him-
feels like? Take a moment to experience it: self — all because of a single second. In this way, mindfulness
We get the brain that we get, based on how we use it.
The One-Second Mental Map

Mindful Conscious
strategy response
1 Second
This question should be front and centre for any leader. Be-
ing self-aware of what constitutes true happiness helps us tap into
what really drives other people. True happiness bolsters feelings
of fulilment, engagement and commitment, and as a result, it is
time for the practice and science of true happiness to enter basic
Input
leadership knowledge.
Take a moment to consider the following: How often do you
wake up in the morning wishing for a stressful day? Now ask an-
other question: How often do you have a stressful day? The point
is, we humans do a great job of messing things up for ourselves.
We desire lives with few worries, harmonious relationships, bal-
ance and joy. And in our developed world, we have the means
to make this happen. We have advanced systems of education;
FIGURE ONE state-of-the-art healthcare; plentiful food; and resources and
amenities that our ancestors could only dream of. Yet we man-
age to fall short of creating deeply meaningful, satisfying and
joyful lives.
Why do we fall short of being happy when we have so much?
can provide the moment-to-moment awareness needed to make As leaders — and as humans — we’re generally mistaken about
better choices and take more productive action. happiness. The things we generally look to for happiness don’t
One second can also be the diference between making a good actually provide it. Research conducted at the London School
or bad decision. It’s the diference between saying the words that of Economics, Harvard Business School and leading neuro-
motivate an employee and the words that disengage him/her. research centres around the world and brought together by the
One second is the diference between lashing out at someone for United Nations in its annual World Happiness Report shows our
an error or turning an unintentional mistake into a learning mo- biases about happiness. We are generally mistaken about hap-
ment. One second matters. Especially for you as a leader. piness in two ways:
Take a moment to consider which automatic behaviours
you have that sometimes hinder your leadership. What inter- 1. We believe happiness comes from the outside; and
feres with your team member’s feelings of engagement? What 2. We mistake pleasure for happiness.
makes people feel insecure or disregarded? Ask yourself these
questions from time to time to gradually increase your self- Research shows conclusively that true happiness doesn’t come
awareness and spur changes in your automatic reactions and from external sources — and this is particularly true of exter-
responses. Doing so will not only make you a more efective nal factors like money. For more than 50 years, researchers
leader, it will also help you better understand, align with, and act have looked at the correlation between happiness and wealth
on your own personal values. in the United States and other countries. Their inding: Wealth
has more than doubled, but the level of happiness has actually
True Happiness: It’s Not What You Think decreased.
Self-awareness helps us answer one of life’s biggest questions, One study found that winning the lottery increased par-
one that is foundational for leading other people: What makes us ticipants’ moods signiicantly, but after a while they returned to
truly happy? their normal baseline of happiness. Another showed that while

Parting Tips and Reflections
• Commit to practising 10 minutes of mindful awareness

training on a regular basis.
• Identify one autopilot behaviour that you would like to

change; set an intention to notice when the old behaviour
arises, pause and choose a new response.
• Write down the values that are most important to you in

your work life and as a leader; consider when these might
be challenged and how you will respond.
experiencing diicult situations such as a job loss or major ill- • Consider what the difference between ‘pleasure’ and ‘hap-
ness, participants’ happiness decreased signiicantly; but even- piness’ means for you and what insights this might have for
tually, they also returned to their original baseline. In each of how you lead yourself.
these instances, outside events had a short-term efect on happi-
ness but did not inluence long-term happiness. The takeaways? • Commit to one thing that you will start, stop or continue
doing to increase your genuine happiness.
EXTERNAL EVENTS AND EXPERIENCES DO NOT CREATE TRUE HAPPINESS.
Nor do diicult events and experiences create lasting unhappi-
ness. This should be considered great news. It means that we
as individuals can be in control of our own happiness. We may
not get the desired promotion, the fancy car, or the magnii-
cent house, but our happiness is not dependent on those types help you avoid your compulsive reactions and replace them with
of things. more useful behaviours; and it will help you stay true to your val-
ues. These are foundational skills for efective leadership, for be-
PLEASURE ISN’T THE SAME AS HAPPINESS. We generally equate plea- ing authentic and for increasing team engagement.
sure with happiness. We think that if we get enough pleasure, The mental strength and freedom you will develop through
we’ll be happy — but we’re wrong. The two experiences are com- awareness training cannot be overstated. Through it, you will
pletely diferent. In a way, pleasure is pure chemistry. When we come to know yourself in the moment, to know what you think,
get or do something we like — a promotion, praise, a new car — what you feel and what is important to you.
dopamine is released in our brain, giving us a sense of pleasure. Bring these insights to how you perceive yourself, and you
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s will feel more at ease. Bring them to how you perceive others,
reward and pleasure centres. However, dopamine can lead to ad- and you will ind it easier to lead them. Bring them to how you
diction: The more pleasure we allow ourselves, the more we risk lead your organization, and you will ind that you need to exert
becoming addicted to it. much less efort and control. By reading this far, you have al-
Pleasure is a momentary experience that quickly fades as the ready taken the irst step.
neurochemicals subside. True happiness, in contrast, can’t be so
easily located or pinpointed in the brain. It’s not in a speciic re-
gion, and it can’t be found in a single hormone, neurotransmit-
ter or molecule. True happiness is an experience of fulilment
and of lasting well-being. True happiness is a long-term experi-
ence of a meaningful, purposeful and positive life. It’s a deeply
felt existential experience that can be maintained irrespective of
the ups and downs of life.
Rasmus Hougaard is the Founder and
Take a moment to consider how these facts about happiness
Managing Director of the Potential Project,
might inform your leadership. Are there things you could do dif- a leading global provider of leadership efec-
ferently to help your people be happier and more engaged? tiveness solutions based on training the mind.
Jacqueline Carter is the North American
Director of the Potential Project. They are the co-authors of The Mind of the
In closing
Leader: How to Lead Yourself, Your People, and Your Organization for Extraordi-
Mindfulness training will help you increase your self-awareness nary Results (Harvard Business Review Press, 2018), from which this article
and become more aware of what makes you truly happy; it will has been adapted.
Anyone with aspirations to be a CEO one day needs to hone
their skills around four essential building blocks.
by David R. Beatty, C.M., O.B.E., F.ICD, CFA
AT SOME POINT IN THEIR CAREERS, most — if not all — executives recently transitioned to a consumer products CEO, Emma
aspire to become the CEO of their organization. And why not? Walmsley, to succeed its pharma CEO, Sir Andrew Witty. Yet
These individuals tend to be highly ambitious, not just for them- other companies might need radical cost cutting, as was the case
selves but for their business — and increasingly, for society. at Canadian Paciic Railway before the late Hunter Harrison
However, as with most things in life, aspiration is one thing, and came on board.
execution is another.
To increase your odds of becoming a viable candidate, you 2. RECOGNITION THAT THE JOB OF THE CEO IS SUBSTANTIALLY DIFFERENT
will need to evolve yourself in some dramatic ways. You might FROM ANY OTHER JOB. In my experience, the important diferenc-
well be a successful CFO, Chief Marketing Oicer or head of an es in the CEO’s job are signiicantly under-appreciated by most
important operating division with a solid track record of achieve- boards — and they should be top of mind for any CEO aspirant.
ment. But such experience — while likely necessary to be consid- Indeed, these elements of the role provide a sort of developmen-
ered — is not suicient to make you ‘CEO material’. tal template for the would-be CEO. Four ‘directional’ respon-
Based on my 40 years of experience working closely with a sibilities make this role substantially diferent from any other
wide variety of CEOs as a board member and chair, two major C-suite job:
considerations demand attention from a board as it comes to
terms with succession planning — and attention from would-be • Upwards: CEOs assume total responsibility upwards, to the
CEOs as they plan their careers: board of directors and/or to the founder or the family owner.
Therefore, every CEO is also the Chief Relationship Oicer
1. THE CAREFUL DETERMINATION OF ‘WHAT THIS ORGANIZATION NEEDS (CRO).
NOW’. Some companies might require a completely new direction.
Just think of the challenges now facing General Electric. Oth- • Downwards: CEOs make key resource allocation decisions
ers are trying to shift their focus. GlaxoSmithKline, for instance, downwards with respect to capital allocation in all its forms.
Every would-be CEO should seek experience
on a board of directors.
Therefore, every CEO is also a Chief Strategy Oicer (CSO). chasm’ is a critical challenge if the board is going to add any value
— and it is the CEO’s challenge.
• Outwards: CEOs communicate outwards to their stake- Achieving this will depend upon the CEO building a strong
holders and the public at large as the company’s persona, set of open and transparent relationships with all the key play-
which means the CEO is also the organization’s Chief Com- ers. In a family-company setting, the founders and heirs must all
munications Oicer (CCO). trust the CEO completely, as they have entrusted unto him/her
nothing less than the family legacy. In a publicly-traded corpora-
• Outwards-In: CEOs are responsible for bringing external tion, the CEO must build a similar set of relationships with the
insights about their industry and business(es) inwards to the board chair and to a meaningful but lesser extent, with each of
company. As a result, the initials CEO could also stand for the directors. A CEO who is unable to build strong bonds with
Chief External Oicer. these individuals will more than likely fail and be replaced.
Assuming normal operating conditions and no extraordi-
Whatever the pressing corporate needs may be as perceived by nary stresses, a CEO is likely to have to invest at least 20 per cent
the board, every CEO candidate needs to become expert at each of his/her time working with the Board of Directors. This is a
of these four responsibilities. Let’s take a closer look at each. considerable time investment, and one with its own unique char-
acteristics for success. The CEO must regard the board chair/
1. Upwards Responsibility (Chief Relationship Oicer) founder/family leader as his or her most important relationship
The CEO of a publicly-traded irm, family-owned company or — period. Nothing should be held back or disguised. Everything
non-proit enterprise is the individual who ultimately links the must be communicated in an open and completely transparent
operations of the business to the Board of Directors, the family manner.
and/or the founder. He or she has the ultimate responsibility for In addition, the CEO — along with his/her senior-team
building bridges across what can often be wide chasms. Think of colleagues — must organize and manage the operations of the
the Grand Canyon — some 20 miles across from rim to rim and committees of the Board. In most public companies there are at
a mile deep; on one side you have the management team led by least three such committees: audit, HR/compensation and gov-
the CEO. This group of C-suite executives likely invests 3,000 ernance — but there are often many more.
hours a year at their jobs and is also likely to have a lifetime of
experience in their chosen industry. On the other side, in the case ATTRIBUTES REQUIRED: The attributes required to succeed in the
of a widely-held, publicly-traded company, you have the board Chief Relationship Oicer role include a high level of emotional
of directors, who might spend 250 to 300 hours per year at their intelligence (EQ) and the ability to trust your board colleagues.
tasks — a small fraction of the C-suite team (eight to ten per cent You have to know when it is time to listen; understand what you
of the time commitment). hear; and then act where you deem appropriate. Also, use your
While generally successful as business leaders, directors judgment to ignore what you deem not to be as important. This
often have no direct knowledge — prior to becoming a director type of judgment — knowing when to act and when to remain
— of the company or the industry in which it competes. They quiet — will be a critical determinant of your success in commu-
are also likely engaged in many other activities, so gaining their nicating upwards.
attention can be a challenge. Getting across this ‘information One recently retired CEO of a widely held, publicly-traded

corporation told me: “This is tricky territory, because it is a bal- ciated in most businesses. Further, putting people into positions
ance between a willingness to absorb and perhaps then act on where they can demonstrate these capabilities and build up their
directors’ insights and the ability to resist weak arguments and strengths is just as important as the capital allocation decisions
unsubstantiated perspectives. Directors often ly at 25,000 feet, themselves. The CEO leads and ultimately decides on these two
while the business is run on the ground.” critical allocation decisions — which will determine the future of
the company. This is a profound and vital responsibility.
HOW TO GET THE EXPERIENCE: To gain this experience, every would-
be CEO should seek experience on a board of directors. The type ATTRIBUTES REQUIRED: Making efective resource-allocation deci-
of organization is less important than the position itself, but ide- sions requires proven business judgment and an ability to ‘see
ally, to become a viable candidate for CEO in a publicly-traded around corners’ to anticipate what is coming next. There are
corporation, you should attempt to get on another publicly-trad- hundreds of books about strategy and many consultants to help
ed board. Most companies will allow their senior executives to with strategy formulation and cultural renewal. However, at the
sit on one other publicly-traded corporation as long as it is not a end of the day, the inal assignment of talent and cash rests with
competitor of any kind. the CEO. Hopefully, candidates will have had experience with
At the very least, the aspirant CEO should join a not-for- both strategic ‘brakes’ and ‘accelerators’ — i.e. failure and ramp-
proit board in an area of endeavour that he/she cares deeply ing up.
about. Experience on the other side of the boardroom table will
prove to be invaluable. HOW TO GET THE EXPERIENCE: It will be necessary to have line ex-
It is also the virtually unanimous opinion of sitting CEOs perience in making these types of allocations. Approximately 45
that a mentor is a huge beneit. Try to ind someone with experi- per cent of CEO selections are people with a background in op-
ence in the aforementioned boardroom trade-ofs who has per- erations. A C-suite position in inance (25 per cent) or sales and
spective and wisdom; and someone with whom the CEO shares marketing (20 per cent) can also provide the needed exposure, as
the irm’s most delicate-yet-challenging pressures. CEO-type actions can be appraised, evaluated and learned from.
One former CEO advised a group of senior aspirants from other
2. Downwards Responsibility (Chief Strategic Oicer) companies: “Get to be a truly global expert at something. Have
In addition to upwards responsibilities, the CEO is the chief strat- some speciic knowledge base that has been acquired over time
egist for his/her company. As they say, ‘The buck stops here’. that makes you a global guru.” Put simply, watch, absorb, learn,
He/she must understand the critical value drivers of the business then act.
and each of its segments, and thoroughly grasp the competitive
environment. Only then can intelligent decisions be made about 3. Outwards Responsibility (Chief Communications Oicer)
capital and talent allocation. In many ways, becoming the external persona of a company is
Capital allocation is particularly critical. In the recent McK- the easiest part of the CEO’s job. Doing this well involves talking
insey-authored book Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, to stakeholders on a regular basis, listening carefully and hearing
Probabilities and Big Moves to Beat the Odds by Chris Bradley, them clearly — all skills that are reasonably easy to acquire and
Martin Hirt and Sven Smit, the authors clearly prove that dra- develop. The CEO must work with key shareholders and analysts
matic changes in capital allocation are signiicantly under-appre- to explain the company’s progress, its future directions and its
Aspiring CEOs should become keen students
of disruptive change.
plans to achieve them. In addition, he/she must understand the It is a truism today that the ability to handle disruptive
concerns and interests of growing communities of stakeholders. change is of ever-increasing importance. We all know that no
In the age of social media, previously ignored groups of stake- company will survive for long without responding to and adapt-
holders are becoming increasingly important to maintaining a ing to externalities. There are many examples of this, but think
‘social licence to operate’. Indeed, given how fragile the licence of Amazon in retailing or Uber in the taxi business. It would
to operate has become, some companies now refer to it as a social have been correct for all boards of directors in these industries
privilege to operate. to make the assumption that their business would be radically
transformed over the next three to ive years.
ATTRIBUTES REQUIRED: A high degree of emotional intelligence,
an ability to listen carefully and understand fully. Also required: ATTRIBUTES REQUIRED: A passionate curiosity and relentlessly
stamina and discipline. Dominic Barton, the recently retired inquisitive mind are the hallmarks of success in interpreting
leader of McKinsey, made it his business to meet with at least the changes going on around the globe. Making judgments on
two CEOs per day, 50 weeks of the year, for each of his nine years such ‘fuzzy’ matters requires a mental ability to synthesize vast
in oice. Elsewhere, the recently retired CEO of a large publicly- amounts of data in order to discern patterns that could poten-
traded inancial institution visited 200 investors per year glob- tially change the competitive dynamics of an industry. One CEO
ally, regularly met with the heads of all the compliance agencies described this attribute to me as an ability to ‘graze’ a wide va-
and visited widely with other stakeholder groups. In total, this riety of news sources daily. He concluded: “By grazing across a
CEO invested some 25 per cent of the working year in such ex- spectrum of sources, diferent perspectives on common issues
ternal meetings. were easier to comprehend and ultimately act upon.”
Making judgments on ‘fuzzy’ matters requires not only
HOW TO GET THE EXPERIENCE: The mantra here is practise, prac- a passionate curiosity, but an ability to cope with uncertainty.
tise, practise. As CEO, your time investment decisions will When to act, how to act and with what level of commitment are
be the most important investment decisions you will make. all wide-open variables. At the end of the day, it will be the CEO’s
Peter Drucker captured this precept many years ago when he judgment that will determine the actions needed, the intensity
wrote: “If you can’t manage your own time, you can’t manage of such actions and the organization of the actions. Withholding
anything.” judgment until directions are suiciently clear is a critical attri-
bute of a competent CEO mind.
4. Outwards-In Responsibility (Chief External Oicer)
A.G. Lafley, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble, literally HOW TO GET THE EXPERIENCE: To gain experience and improve judg-
translated his designation as CEO into Chief External Oicer. He ment in such matters, aspiring CEOs should become keen stu-
once said: “I have a dozen executives who run multibillion-dollar dents of disruptive change and closely study the examples around
global businesses and I am unlikely to help them improve their them. In a dramatically changing world, there are no guaranteed
performance. My job is to understand what is happening outside answers. There are only tests, trials and experiments. One Silicon
of this company and make judgments as to when we should move Valley mantra that should be held closely by all leaders is ‘Fail
to make changes inside to respond to external realities.” fast, fail often, fail forward.’ Gaining experience in this domain

is not easy, but it is critical for the would-be CEO. Ask yourself 100 companies out of a global sample of 1,200 showed that an
this question regularly: Have you increased your propensity for amazing 86 CEOs came from within the company. The same
risk-taking within your own operation today — in cases where analysis two years later showed essentially the same result: 81 out
you will bear the consequences of those risks? of 100 had been promoted from within.
To increase the odds of successful succession, boards must
Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM, has changed her evaluatory take the lead in transforming their mid-level executives into
metrics for senior executives to include the following: CEO-ready candidates by investing signiicantly more of their
time and attention in mentoring their promising leaders. And as
1. What lessons did you learn this year? indicated, these potential leaders must invest much more of their
2. How were those lessons learned? Were any learned from time relecting on the four CEO leadership dimensions and their
failure? true capabilities to be high-potential successors.
3. What is your learning plan for the coming year?
This is not about failure that counts against you. The focus is on
building agility. This is why the word ‘pivot’ has become a new
managerial mantra — as in, ‘We were going northwest, but now
we are pivoting to head southeast’.
To be efective, you must also be relective. All aspiring
CEOs should allocate at least 10 per cent of their time — some
300 hours per year or six hours per week — to relection. At least
half of this investment should be made in learning about exter-
nalities that might seem distant, but could become relevant.
In closing
For middle and senior managers with aspirations to reach the
C-suite one day, paying close attention to the four requirements
discussed herein will help to pave the way to this much-desired
leadership position and increase the odds of success. David R. Beatty, C.M., O.B.E., F.ICD, CFA, is the Conway
Director, Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics & Board
For boards seeking to ensure that there are competent
Efectiveness and Professor of Strategic Management
and capable succession candidates in their companies, a much at the Rotman School of Management. Currently, he serves
greater time investment in succession planning is needed. One as a Director of City Financial and FIO (a private healthcare
estimate is that boards invest only ive per cent of their time company operating in the developing world). Over his career he has served
on over 39 boards of directors and been Chair of nine publicly-traded compa-
in top management succession planning; if true, this is totally nies. He was the founding Managing Director of the Canadian Coalition for
inadequate, given that the next CEO is highly likely to come Good Governance (2003-2008). He recently received a Lifetime Achievement
from within. A Harvard Business Review assessment of the best Award from the International Governance Network.
Research from Bain & Company has unveiled 32 characteristics
of inspiring leaders. The good news: You only need
to possess four of them to be considered inspiring.
by Mark Horwitch and Meredith Whipple Callahan
WHAT MAKES A LEADER INSPIRING? According to research we recent- a lucky accident of talent management but year in and year out?
ly conducted with the Economist Intelligence Unit, companies To help answer that question, we have been conducting com-
that can answer this question have a powerful tool to increase prehensive research since 2013, using select clients as a test bed.
their competitive edge. We found that inspired employees are Speciically, we designed an analytical approach to deine, mea-
more than twice as productive as satisied employees. sure and develop inspirational skills. Three key questions guided
The power of a company with leaders who inspire at every our research:
level up and down the organization is hard to overstate. These
are the companies that consistently pull of innovative or he- • What characteristics matter most when it comes to inspiring
roic feats in business because so many of the people who work others?
there are motivated to make them happen. Companies spend • How many inspiring behaviours does someone need to dem-
billions of dollars on leadership training to reinforce and en- onstrate reliably in order to inspire others, and what pattern of
hance the soft skills that inspire, motivate and create engage- behaviours is the most powerful?
ment, but most have found that it is deceptively hard to do • How can we calibrate the strength of those characteristics in an
these things. individual?
Few rigorous methods exist to measure someone’s ability
to inspire, to systematically develop that intangible quality or While inspiration may seem dificult to decipher, we have iden-
to embed those skills throughout an organization. As Barbara tiied 33 distinct and tangible attributes that are statistically
Kellerman, founding executive director of the Centre for Pub- signiicant in creating inspiration in others. The good news:
lic Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, has observed: Having just four of these attributes as distinguishing strengths
“Leadership as an area of intellectual inquiry remains thin, and is suficient to make someone highly inspiring. Our indings
little original thought has been given to what leader learning in also demonstrate that people who inspire are incredibly diverse,
the second decade of the 21st century should look like.” and that any combination of distinguishing strengths can work.
What does it take to foster inspiring leaders, not just through There is no ixed archetype of an inspirational leader.
Possessing even one distinguishing strength nearly doubles
your chances of inspiring others.
The Characteristics That Matter The High Value of ‘Centredness’

To understand what inspires people, we surveyed employees at all Of all 33 elements, centredness was the skill that employees most
levels, not just formal leaders or HR experts. Why? Because peo- wanted to develop. Centredness is a state of greater mindfulness
ple at all levels of an organization seek inspiration, and employees that is achieved by engaging all parts of the mind to be fully pres-
themselves can best judge what inspires them. It is the collective ent. While a growing number of companies ofer optional mind-
voice of all these ‘followers’ that matters in validating which char- fulness programs to promote health and workplace satisfaction,
acteristics are inspiring — not what leaders themselves say they our research shows that centredness is fundamental to the abil-
do or what human resources managers assert to be important. ity to lead. It improves one’s ability to stay level-headed, cope
Because inspiration is subjective, it helps to understand with stress, empathize with others and listen more deeply.
the basic shape of our analysis. Starting with an initial survey Centredness is the ability, acquired through learned prac-
of 2,000 Bain employees, we asked respondents to rate how in- tice, to apply a set of physical and mental skills that help cre-
spired they were by their colleagues. We also asked them to rate ate a state of greater mindfulness. Mindfulness is attained by
what was important in contributing to that sense of inspiration. paying non-judgmental attention to one’s thoughts, feelings
To do this, we selected a list of attributes to test based on data and surroundings, and then adjusting one’s thinking, decisions
gathered from multiple disciplines — including Psychology, Neu- and actions in a non-habitual, creative and positive manner.
rology, Sociology, Organizational Behaviour and Management Though many people reach centredness through exercises in
Science — as well as extensive interviews. personal mindfulness, including meditation, we recommend
Using followers’ responses, we conducted a conjoint analy- practising centredness in the moment, as you move through
sis to assess the relevance of a range of attributes contributing your professional and personal lives.
to respondents’ feelings of inspiration. The result was a set of 33 There are three sequential steps to becoming centred in the
characteristics that are statistically signiicant in inspiring others. moment: settling into our physical bodies, sensing our felt emo-
We then used this set of behaviours to create the Bain Inspira- tions and shifting into a position of neutral observation. The re-
tional Leadership Model (see Figure One). sult: We are brought into a state characterized by full attention
The 33 characteristics that inspire vary widely. Self-regard, and equanimity. Centredness is the key to replacing automatic
for example, means holding a conident yet realistic assessment reactions with thoughtful, strategic and authentic responses.
of one’s abilities; expressiveness means conveying ideas and emo- Why does centredness matter so much? The concept of
tions clearly and compellingly; and empowerment is allowing and mindfulness has been around since the Buddha introduced
encouraging the freedom to stretch. Other attributes may also it 2,500 years ago. However, it is not inherently religious;
inspire, but collectively, the 33 behaviours we identiied were the mindfulness has increasingly been supported by scientiic and
most powerful in contributing to inspiration. medical research, beginning in the mid-20th century. Since
We grouped the characteristics that inspire into four quad- the 1970s, Dr. Herbert Benson, a professor at the Harvard
rants that highlight the setting in which they tend to apply. One Medical School and director emeritus of the Benson-Henry
quadrant, for example, contains the qualities related to leading a Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts Gen-
team, and another cluster includes behaviours that develop one’s eral Hospital, has used mindfulness techniques as the core of
inner resources, such as stress tolerance, optimism and emotion- his well-known stress mitigation programs. Benson called the
al self-awareness. physiological state evoked by these techniques the ‘relaxation
Our research demonstrates that each of the elements is response’. Subsequent studies have shown that mindfulness
important to the collective ‘inspirational health’ of an organi- practices are useful in treating eating disorders, addiction,
zation and that no combination is more powerful in contribut- anxiety, depression, pain and weakened immune systems.
ing to an individual’s capacity to inspire. Other key indings: In recent years, corporations and academic and military
It’s not necessary to have one attribute from each quadrant to organizations, as well as the medical community, have includ-
be efective; and one particular attribute proved to be the most ed mindfulness in their training programs to improve listen-
important attribute of all. ing skills, increase empathy and help people cope with stress.

The Bain Inspirational Leadership Model: 33 Traits That Inspire
Stress Self- Emotional Flexibility Humility Expressiveness Listening Development

tolerance regard self-awareness
Emotional Independence Self- Optimism Vitality Commonality Assertiveness Empathy

expression actualization
DEVELOPING INNER RESOURCES CONNECTING WITH OTHERS

CENTREDNESS
SETTING THE TONE LEADING THE TEAM
Worldview Shared Follow- Responsibility Vision Direction Co-creation Sponsorship

ambition through
Openness Unselfishness Recognition Balance Focus Empowerment Servanthood Harmony
FIGURE ONE
Harvard Law School, for example, employs mindfulness in its We believe that centredness is essential to unleashing
curriculum on dispute resolution; the U.S. Marine Corps and the our inspirational leadership potential. Centredness improves our
Army teach mindfulness and stress resilience through an initia- ability to stay level-headed, to cope with job stresses, to empa-
tive called Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training; a number thize with others and to listen more deeply — all of which are
of corporations, such as First Direct and Taj Hotels, ofer work- important components of modern leadership. Centredness is the
place meditation to employees; and Google’s popular Search nexus of the other 32 elements. Just as leaders need to be able
Inside Yourself program has spawned a best-selling book and a to meet their performance objectives to be rated as satisfactory,
non-proit organization. for example, leaders need to be able to stay centred in order to
Recent research conducted by professors at two of Singa- inspire. Put simply, being centred is a precondition to using one’s
pore’s top business schools, Lee Kong Chian School of Busi- leadership strengths efectively.
ness and NUS Business School, and London’s Imperial College
Business School shows a strong positive correlation between a Building an Organization That Inspires
leader’s mindfulness and employee well-being. Findings show How many of the 33 inspiring behaviours does one need to pos-
that under leaders who scored high for mindfulness, employ- sess in order to reliably inspire others? We used our database
ees had higher performance ratings, fewer instances of nega- of more than 10,000 assessments to correlate the proile of
tive behaviour, lower emotional exhaustion and higher satis- strengths and weaknesses with the level of inspiration stated by
faction with work-life balance. an individual’s colleagues.
The Most Inspiring Leaders Demonstrate Strength in at Least 4 Traits
ale
t i o n Sc
a
In spir 91%
82%
67%
62%
33%
0 1 2 3 4+
Number of distinguishing strengths
Source: Bain Inspirational Leadership 360 survey
FIGURE TWO
We deined an individual’s ‘distinguishing strengths’ as Why create a leadership program focused overwhelmingly
those that rank within the top 10 per cent of one’s peer group. We on strengths? A growing body of research indicates that encour-
labelled the characteristics ranked between the 70th and 90th aging people to bolster their strengths is more efective than
percentiles as ‘potential distinguishing strengths’ and those in striving to ix their weaknesses. According to Gallup research,
the bottom 10 per cent as ‘weaknesses’. The characteristics fall- the odds of employees being engaged are 73 per cent when an
ing between the 10th and 70th percentiles are ‘neutral’ charac- organization’s leadership focuses on the strengths of its employ-
teristics, because one’s level of skill neither detracts from nor ees — versus nine per cent when they do not.
contributes to the diferential efect on others. “One of the things we know is that when things are nega-
The result was surprising: Even one distinguishing strength tive, people see fewer options, [and] they’re less able to problem-
nearly doubles your ability to inspire — and the more dis- solve. It shuts down the brain,” says business psychologist Jen-
tinguishing strengths you have, the more inspirational you nifer Thompson, an associate professor at the Chicago School
can be. In fact, more than 90 per cent of those demonstrating of Professional Psychology. “When people have positive environ-
distinguishing strengths on four or more of the 33 elements are ments, they’re more creative and productive.”
inspirational to their colleagues (see Figure Two). This inding Since inspiration is relevant to every employee, calibrat-
underscores the power of authenticity: No combination of ing an individual’s strengths requires feedback from above, be-
strengths is statistically more powerful than any other. Inspira- low and across the organization. To rate a person’s strength on
tional leaders come in many varieties. a given attribute, we have developed a 360-degree assessment
The key developmental insight from these indings is that an based on the views of co-workers at every level. This input is then
individual can increase his/her inspirational leadership ability by compared with an individual’s peers’ results to igure out his/her
excelling at just a handful of intrinsic strengths and converting relative strengths.
weaknesses to neutral traits. The data also shows that it’s more Anyone can start developing the ability to inspire by discov-
efective to develop a distinguishing strength than to neutralize ering and cultivating his/her inherent talents. Our own Inspira-
a weakness. On average, investing in adding a distinguishing tional Leadership System includes structured relection, input
strength is one and a half times more powerful at building inspi- from 360-degree surveys and self-assessments. Each employee
ration than neutralizing a weakness. selects four or ive characteristics out of the 33 based on their ex-

Centredness Exercises
Each of the three steps of centeredness will allow you to

interact more proactively with your physiology, addressing
each aspect of your triune brain in succession.
• STEP 1: Settling into your body signals to your primi-

tive brain that you are safe and mitigates the automatic
fight-flight-freeze response. To practice this, first, balance
yourself, creating physical stability in your body. Second,
ground yourself to firmly connect yourself to the earth.
Third, breathe deeply to bring attention to your centre of
gravity and to calm yourself.
isting strengths and what feels authentic to them. That combina-
• STEP 2: Sensing is the ability to notice the physical in-
tion of skills becomes one’s ‘rock pile’, or inspirational leadership formation that your limbic brain (especially the heart and
brand — something each person can target for personal develop- gut brains) transmits in reaction to emotional stimuli, such
ment and practice on a daily basis. as a tight chest, shortness of breath and butterflies in
Typical leadership programs target a limited number of your stomach. Sensing enables you to name the emotion
people within an organization — the traditional constituencies connected to that physical sensation, and identifying the
of senior executives and ‘high potentials’. Those who are exclud- emotion allows you to begin managing your response. By
ed, including the vast majority of employees, never get a chance sensing, you are gaining access to and using your limbic
brain system, rather than allowing it to operate entirely on
to develop their skills. But to function as a true system and build
autopilot.
inspiration into an organization’s ways of working, leadership
programs need to reach deeper. And the sooner people get start- • STEP 3: Shifting is the mental process of creating
ed, the stronger and more valuable their skills will be as they rise distance between your emotions and actions through a
in the organization. change in perspective, in essence adopting a position of
The majority of our employees use Bain’s Inspirational neutral observation. Neutral observation occurs when you
Leadership System, and the number of colleagues cited as in- move back and step up from the emotions you noticed
spirational grew by 18 per cent over a 12-month period. Their and named while sensing. This shift is the circuit breaker
inluence is spreading: The percentage of employees who de- that allows your neocortex (the executive brain) to enter
the process and control your responses.
scribe themselves as ‘inspired’ has grown since the start of the
program, along with corresponding measures of employee en- Learning and practising each of these three steps will
gagement and the strength of our culture, according to our Net allow you to wisely choose your course of action and guide
Promoter System®. your behaviours in situations of stress or emotional inten-
Of course, Bain is not alone in its quest to understand what sity. Furthermore, these three steps will enable you to bring
sets inspiring leaders apart. Many companies are experiment- your full set of inspirational leadership skills to bear in your
ing with programs of their own. Aetna, for example, has imple- everyday life.
mented a company-wide focus on mindfulness, sponsored by its
CEO; and Telefonica Germany has launched empathy training
for its employees in an efort to improve customer satisfaction.
While these types of programs are valuable, many stop short of
achieving their full potential. Our research shows a more com-
prehensive, analytical approach can create a powerful system
that increases inspiration throughout an organization.
In closing
As the nature of work grows increasingly collaborative and self-
directed, inspiration can make the diference between teams that
outperform and those that lag. Leadership systems that system-
atically build inspiration work because, at their core, they honour Mark Horwitch is a Partner with Bain & Com-
the complexity of human relationships, foster authenticity and pany and director of Bain’s leadership pro-
grams, based in Boulder, Colorado. Meredith
create a common platform for every individual to make unique
Whipple Callahan is a Senior Manager with
contributions. Companies that tap into this powerful combina- Bain’s leadership group in San Francisco and
tion will gain a competitive advantage that few can match. the author of Indispensable: How to Succeed at Your First Job and Beyond.
The challenge for today’s leaders is to understand
the environment in which they are playing and choose
the right approach to strategy accordingly.
by Martin Reeves
IN OUR WORK WITH CLIENTS IN RECENT YEARS, my colleagues and I Today’s strategists face factors like globalization, changes in geo-
have noted considerable confusion and stress around the role politics, technology, Millennial values, and connectivity com-
of strategy and the efectiveness of the annual planning process. bined with cheap computing power — to name just a few. Howev-
So much so that we decided to take a serious look at ‘the state of er, it became clear that one of the most important characteristics
strategy’ in an ever-changing world. of modern business is that the diversity of strategic environments
When we looked at the literature, we found several views. has grown substantially.
One was that ‘strategy has been eclipsed by technology’; another We realized that we were asking the wrong question. The
was that ‘the possibility of even having a strategic plan is killed by question was not, ‘Which approach to strategy is most relevant
the velocity of the modern world’. Many practitioners were also today?’ but rather ‘Which approach to strategy should be used
asserting that what makes the diference between a mediocre under which circumstance?’ Modern companies, we found, need
company and a great one is not strategy at all, but execution. to adopt a contingent approach to strategy that depends on three
We began to wonder: Is strategy still relevant? We set out characteristics of the business environment they face: predict-
to analyze 135,000 U.S. companies over a 65-year period, ask- ability, malleability and harshness. Companies facing high un-
ing, What is the diference between successful and unsuccessful predictability, for example, will require a diferent approach to
companies? strategy than the one employed by traditional players facing a
A clear pattern emerged: When we compared the top more stable environment.
quartile of all companies to the bottom quartile, we found that To help discriminate between diferent types of strategic en-
whatever constitutes ‘doing things in a diferentiated way’ is be- vironments, we have constructed a tool called the Strategy Palette
coming more important — not less. There is actually increasing (Figure One), which measures three characteristics of the com-
inequality between the highest-performing companies and the petitive environment. The vertical axis for unpredictability repre-
lowest-performing companies in each industry, and this tells us sents the question, ‘Can we plan?’ If you can plan, you should,
that strategy is deinitely still important. but if you can’t, you will be wasting your time. The horizontal axis
Of course, much has changed since the early days of strategy. tracks malleability — in other words, your ability to shape your
The Strategy Palette
Renewal
Adaptive Shaping
UNPREDICTABILITY
Classical Visionary
NE SS
HA RSH
MALLEABILITY
FIGURE ONE
environment, rather than treating it as a given. Clearly, if you can Mars. Because its competitors are likely doing the same thing,
shape the environment you should, but if you can’t, you will be some innovation is required, even within the classical form of
wasting your time. strategy. For instance, one of Mars’ innovations concerns the
The third axis, harshness, concerns how attractive the busi- simplicity and communicability of its strategy. Very few people
ness is in terms of proitability, cash low and growth. If you are are involved in the strategic process, and they submit themselves
in a position where the emphasis is on short-term survival, that to the discipline of being able to explain its outcomes to anyone
entails one approach to strategy; whereas if you have plenty of in the company in under 20 minutes. The reason: Strategy is not
growth options, diferent approaches apply. efective unless it is understood by all and is well executed. Even
This line of thinking gives rise to ive possible approaches to within the classical approach to strategy, innovation is a must.
strategy, which make up the strategy palette.
2. Adaptive Strategy
1. Classical Strategy Moving on to increasingly exotic forms of strategy, Tata Consul-
In environments that are stable and predictable, we can employ a tancy Services (TCS) — the world’s second largest IT services
classical planning-based approach to strategy, whereby the algo- company — is in a doubly unpredictable business: Not only is it
rithm is ‘analyze, plan and execute’. Despite the claims made by hard to forecast which technologies companies will employ go-
some, this approach is not dead — it is just no longer a panacea. ing forward, but individual clients exhibit high variation in their
For example, one place where traditional planning still applies is actual use of the technology. This led TCS to conclude that it is
in the confectionary industry. When we spoke to Paul Michaels, better of not trying to plan, but instead, to regard its business as
then-president of the Mars Company, he told us that candy ‘a portfolio of experiments’. Every customer deployment is, in a
sales grow with GDP and people tend to stick with their favourite sense, an experiment, and it yields a successful or unsuccessful
childhood brands. So, within a reasonable margin of error, one outcome. If the experiment is successful, they try to codify the
can in fact forecast the future — and therefore strategy is all about learnings and then scale and apply them to other clients. Impor-
scale, economy, eiciency and execution. tantly, TCS does this continuously. Clearly, this approach is quite
That doesn’t mean that things are easy for a company like diferent from traditional planning; it’s more like an evolutionary

process in Biology. The algorithm here is ‘create variance; select and medium term. We found that the biggest cause of this fail-
what works and then scale it up; and continuously iterate on this ure is a failure to pivot from the early stages of a renewal process
process’. — where cost reduction and cash low are key — into successfully
creating growth and long-term value.
3. The Visionary Approach
The third approach is the one used by entrepreneurs in situations The New Strategic Skills
where a market does not yet exist and is therefore wide open to For any large organization, the ability to concurrently run the
being shaped. This is what entrepreneurs have done for centu- business and reinvent it has become a determinant of long-term
ries: They create a vison, realize that vision and then scale the re- success. It is not suicient for every organization to pick one of
sulting business model. When I began my career in consulting in these approaches to strategy; instead, you need to pick the right
1989, most of the time I was advising large companies on how to approach for each part of your business. The key for today’s lead-
compete with other large companies. We had lots of decade-long ers is to understand in which environment(s) they are playing,
battles between the number 1 and number 2 in an industry; but what the bases of competition are, and then choose the right ap-
today, I more commonly ind myself advising large companies proach to strategy and execution accordingly.
defending against disruption caused by small upstart companies For most large organizations, it’s the trio of adaptive, shap-
leveraging some new technology or business model. What is new ing and visionary strategies that is both under-represented and
here is that today’s large companies must be able to create new hardest to get their minds around. Furthermore, incumbents are
spaces too — and disrupt themselves by creating new businesses faced with the challenge of mastering the art of running multiple
before they are disrupted by outside visionaries. This approach approaches to strategy under the same roof. Embracing the con-
works best when you have an opportunity to create or re-create tradiction between the analytical discipline of a classical strategy
an industry single-handedly by applying a bold vision at the right and the more creative adapting, shaping and visionary approach-
moment. es requires strategic ambidexterity.
Not surprisingly, each approach also entails a diferent
4. The Shaping Approach approach to execution. For example, let’s contrast the classical
This approach involves platforms and ecosystems, and it has approach with the adaptive approach. The classical approach be-
yielded some of the most stunning examples of business suc- gins with an analysis of a market environment, creating a plan
cess today. Amazon, Alibaba and Red Hat are essentially cul- and executing that plan, which is usually stable over a period of
tivating ecosystems and leveraging the capabilities and assets time — the ‘planning horizon’. An adaptive approach, in contrast,
of other companies to reshape their industries. The shaping centres on experimentation: You create variation, select the in-
approach contains elements of malleability because it involves novations that are successful, and then scale them up.
orchestrating ecosystems, but also elements of unpredictability, These two approaches are very diferent. In the classical ap-
because the strategists don’t actually control or own all of the proach, there will likely be a binder called The Strategic Plan. And
assets. Shaping strategies are essentially strategies of co-evolu- there will only be one of these for an entire business unit or com-
tion. The algorithm here is one of ‘creating inluence, cultivating pany. In the adaptive approach, there may not even be a written
an ecosystem and co-evolving with that ecosystem’. The trick, plan. Instead, there will be a widely understood general direction
of course, is to have a platform that somebody wants to join, and the plan will emerge from a population of experiments and
so there must be mutual beneit in the economics of the ecosys- will constantly shift.
tem. This approach works best in unpredictable and malleable In the case of the classical approach, if we ask, ‘Which comes
environments. irst, the planned strategy or the execution?’ the obvious answer
is that the plan comes irst, because only when we have a strategy
5. Strategic Renewal do we get to execute it. But in the case of an adaptive strategy, it is
Because of the rate of change today, literally hundreds of large the trial and error — in other words, the execution — that comes
companies are embracing this approach to strategy, which entails irst, and strategy emerges from execution.
preserving organizational viability by ixing an acute mismatch If large organizations want to apply the right approach in the
between your current business model and the competitive en- right circumstance, they must develop three key capabilities:
vironment. Although many companies have been through this
several times, the rate of failure is very high: About 75 per cent of ADAPTIVE CAPABILITY.The irst is the ability to undertake ‘disci-
companies that set out to renew themselves actually fail to restore plined experimentation’. Running a portfolio of business ex-
their proitability to sector-median levels of returns in the short periments requires every bit as much discipline as does classical
For every business, ‘doing things in a differentiated
way’ is becoming more important — not less.
Are You in a Renewal Business Are Your Actions Consistent

Environment? With a Visionary Approach?
You are facing a business situation that calls for renewal if You are embodying a visionary approach if the following
the following hold true: are true:
• Your industry or company displays low or negative • You observe gaps in the status quo offering of the
growth. industry.
• Your industry or company is losing money. • You create a vision of what could be.
• Your industry or company suffered from an internal or • You build a high-level plan towards the end state.
external shock. • You persist in realizing your vision.
• Your situation poses a viability risk for you. • You adapt flexibly to obstacles along the way.
• Your industry or company is subject to restricted ac-
cess to capital.
execution — albeit of a diferent type. First, it requires the disci- need to think hard about possible mutual beneits for those in the
pline to understand the environment well enough to be able to ecosystem, and what it takes to be an orchestrator. The key ques-
target your experiments. Second, it requires you to stay very close tion for anyone running an ecosystem is, ‘Why would anyone
to your customer, because it is at the customer interface where want to join our club?’ There must be some signiicant beneit in
experiments and learning most often take place. Third, it requires terms of brand elevation or risk mitigation, systems cost or cost
the capability to run an evaluation process, so that unsuccessful of accessing customers, or the ecosystem also won’t make sense.
bets can be closed down and resources constantly recirculated to Running an ecosystem requires leaders to be comfortable
other experiments. Fourth, it requires an ability to delegate and with not controlling all variables, and to recognize that the sys-
decentralize — because the initiative-taking itself is local — but tem will continuously evolve. Companies that are successfully
also to scale and share knowledge of successful experiments running platform businesses often have what you might call
across the enterprise. Last but not least, being adaptive requires a ‘selectively-managerial’ cultures; in other words, they know
culture that tolerates failure in individual cases and values speed when to trust a marketplace mechanism and when to trust a
over accuracy, since the strategy will slowly emerge through con- managerial mechanism. And they tend to keep managerial
tinuous experimentation and innovation. mechanisms away from marketplaces, because marketplaces
are self-organizing.
SHAPING CAPABILITY. This entails an ability to shape the external
environment and create new spaces — and in our experience, AMBIDEXTERITY. This is the ability to adopt diferent approaches
this is typically a bottleneck for large organizations. One might to strategy and execution at the same time in diferent parts of
think that the biggest companies with the most inluence, inan- your company. What most companies measure most of the time
cial resources and scale would be in the best position to shape is their current productivity or current inancial results, and they
their environments; but in our experience, that is not the case. measure those using backward-looking accounting measures.
In the vast majority of cases it is the mavericks at the edges of an Of course, measuring performance is very important because
industry — who have no choice but to challenge the status quo — ‘today’s performance pays for tomorrow’s growth’; but at the
who end up reshaping an industry. same time, you need to be generating future growth options
So, how can a large company fully deploy its potential inlu- through innovation. Companies tend not to have very good met-
ence and shape its environment? First, its leaders should really rics for this.
start thinking about ‘mutualistic ecosystems’, rather than think- We have found that only about three per cent of compa-
ing only about the company itself and its customers. Leaders nies are truly ambidextrous. By coincidence, about the same

The ability to concurrently run your business and reinvent it
has become a key determinant of long-term success.
Are You in a Classical Business Environment?
You are facing a classical environment if the following hold

true:
• Your industry’s structure and basis of competition are
stable.
• Your industry is not easily shapeable.
• Your industry displays moderate but constant growth.
• Your industry is marked by high concentration.
• Your industry is mature.
proportion of the human population is able to write luently with • Your industry is based on stable technologies.
both hands. When we asked ourselves, ‘How can companies • Your industry’s regulatory environment is stable.
gain the ability to both run and reinvent their business at the
same time?’ we weren’t able to ind a single company that
had enough ambidextrous talent so that every team could in-
dividually run and reinvent its business. On the bright side,
some of the companies we spoke to had organizational ixes In closing
for their lack of ambidextrous talent. We were able to identify Strategy is far from dead. In fact, it has become more multifac-
four distinct ways in which you can structure your organization eted and dynamic than ever. The key for leaders is to understand
for ambidexterity: where each part of their business sits on the Strategy Palette, and
then embrace an approach to strategy and execution accordingly.
SEPARATION. Many irms, like PepsiCo, determine which ap- At its very essence, strategy is about problem solving, and in
proach to strategy its for each subunit (be it a division, geo- both our professional and personal lives, we have opportunities
graphic location or function), and they run these approaches every day to choose between alternate approaches. By engaging
independently of one another. This is the most common with each opportunity with the right framing and awareness, you
approach to ambidexterity, but it may not always work, be- can accelerate your own personal learning journey — and gener-
cause a company’s structure tends to be semi-permanent, ate value for your organization.
while its environment may not be.
SWITCHING. In these cases, irms manage a common pool

of resources and the pool switches between approaches
over time or mixes them appropriately at a given moment.
Switching is a more diicult approach to manage, because it
requires both lexibility and efective oversight. When lead-
ers decide to change styles, resource conlicts may erupt.
SELF-ORGANIZATION. In these situations, the irm’s units self-
organize, and each chooses the best approach to strategy
when matters become too complex to manage these choices
in a top-down manner.
Martin Reeves heads up The Boston Consulting Group’s
EXTERNAL ECOSYSTEMS. In the most complex and dynamic Henderson Institute worldwide. He is the co-author (with
Knut Haanaes and Janmejaya Sinha) of Your Strategy Needs
of cases, when a irm cannot create or manage the full suite
a Strategy: How to Choose and Execute the Right Approach
of required strategy approaches internally, companies may (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015). This article was
need to orchestrate a diverse ecosystem of external parties. adapted from his recent HBR Webinar.
Anxiety at work is fuelled by both individual and job characteristics.
On the bright side, the efects are not all negative.
by Bonnie Hayden Cheng and Julie M. McCarthy
WAY BACK IN 1948, W.H. Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for a book- On the one hand, it shows that anxiety can conjure up distressing
length poem titled ‘The Age of Anxiety’. Little did he know how thoughts and have detrimental efects on performance. On the
pervasive anxiety would become in the next century. This topic other, it shows that anxiety can also drive actions and have posi-
has never resonated more strongly with respect to the work- tive efects on performance. We recently set out to reconcile these
force. Workplace anxiety — deined as ‘feelings of nervousness, indings and develop a comprehensive model that includes both
uneasiness and tension about job-related performance’ — is the dark and bright sides of anxiety at work.
inluenced by both individual diferences and contextual fac-
tors, and therefore it appears at both dispositional and situation- The Roots of Our Theory
al levels. Two key types of anxiety are of particular interest in a workplace
ILLUSTRATION BY SUSAN HINOJOSA (msusanhinojosa@gmail.com)
Research indicates that 40 per cent of Americans report feel- setting: ‘dispositional anxiety’ and ‘situational anxiety.’ Dispo-
ing anxious during the work day, and 72 per cent of people who sitional workplace anxiety manifests itself in general feelings of
experience daily anxiety report that it interferes with their work nervousness, uneasiness and tension about one’s job performance,
and personal lives. These statistics raise serious concerns, as gen- and levels of such anxiety vary between individuals. Employees
eral levels of workplace anxiety have substantial implications for who experience anxiety across situations are more likely to view
employees and organizations in terms of lower levels of job per- situations as threatening and, as such, dispositional anxiety is more
formance, risk-taking and unethical behaviour. Daily luctuations likely to play a pivotal role with respect to long-term outcomes such
in anxiety are also a concern, as they can lead to higher levels of as health and well-being, job performance and productivity.
counterproductive behaviour and turnover. Situational workplace anxiety, on the other hand, is a tem-
To date, the literature on anxiety has focused on its dark side, porary state of nervousness, uneasiness and tension about a par-
showing that anxious individuals possess ‘cognitive schemas’ ticular task or activity. There can be several such episodes within
or ways of thinking that deine certain situations as threatening. a given work day, such as when meeting an important deadline
These individuals constantly scan the environment for signs of or receiving an unexpected meeting request from a supervisor.
threat, making them prone to heightened distractibility. As with dispositional anxiety, these situational episodes can
However, the research also presents an interesting puzzle: afect task performance signiicantly.
72 per cent of people who experience daily anxiety report
that it interferes with their work and personal lives.
Given the performance implications of both types of anxi- ened workplace anxiety. In fact, the increase of women in the
ety, our Theory of Workplace Anxiety is divided into two levels workplace since the 1960s has been identiied as one of the most
of analysis: Relations between workplace anxiety and job perfor- important societal trends afecting stress research.
mance at a dispositional level; and relations between workplace Women have faced discrimination at work since their entry
anxiety and job performance at a situational level. into the workforce, which has led to wage disparity, low-level
Importantly, we make a distinction between typical and epi- jobs, glass ceilings and higher levels of anxiety. Women also face
sodic performance. ‘Typical performance’ refers to routine tasks inequitable family demands, as they are often expected to meet
on a day-in, day-out basis and entails carrying out multiple tasks the majority of family obligations while balancing their careers.
over an extended period of time. These tasks often become ha- In turn, the struggle to balance work and family roles has been
bitual and require employees to draw on various cognitive and consistently associated with heightened anxiety.
personal resources such as attention, efort and persistence. In An employee’s age and job tenure also play important roles
contrast, ‘episodic performance’ represents task performance in workplace anxiety: Older and more experienced workers are
over short periods of time and demands an individual’s undi- likely to exhibit lower levels of anxiety. Employees become adap-
vided attention for a relatively short duration. Examples might tive and proicient in their work as their tenure and experience
include facilitating a meeting, giving an important presentation increases. Also, research has demonstrated a positive relation-
or solving a technical problem. ship between organizational tenure and performance. Over
We will now take a deeper dive into dispositional and situ- time, challenging tasks become routinized and employee-based
ational anxiety and their positive and negative efects. uncertainty is reduced, lowering anxiety.
Dispositional Anxiety SELF-EVALUATIONS. The appraisal of one’s own worth is another

Research indicates that there are three key determinants of core determinant of workplace anxiety. Core self-evaluations
dispositional workplace anxiety. include self-esteem, self-eicacy, emotional stability and sense
of control. Employees with high core self evaluations tend to
DEMOGRAPHICS. The core demographics related to workplace anx- perceive themselves in a positive manner and assess themselves
iety are gender, age and job tenure. In terms of gender, research as ‘capable’, ‘worthy’ and ‘in control’. This provides the strength
consistently reports higher levels of anxiety among women than and stability to feel less overwhelmed and to meet corporate
men. Women also have reported higher levels of anxiety in par- challenges.
ticular work contexts, such as prior to contract negotiations and In contrast, employees with low core self-evaluations are
during job interviews. more likely to internalize their experiences and attribute failure
There are a number of reasons why women experience to their inabilities, thus elevating anxiety. Empirical evidence
higher levels of anxiety. First, biological factors such as genetic supports these propositions, such that low self-esteem has been
predispositions, physiological reactivity and hormonal inluences found to relate to high anxiety levels. Similarly, self-eicacy has
may predispose women to experience higher levels of anxiety been found to be negatively related to general anxiety levels and
across diferent contexts. Second, evolutionary factors such as when low, to predict the onset of anxiety disorders. Considerable
the need for women to nurture their family may also contribute evidence also suggests that the external locus of control — the
to increased levels of anxiety in the face of threat. Finally, histori- belief that important outcomes are uncontrollable — often pro-
cal and cultural conditions faced by women may lead to height- ceeds dispositional anxiety.

PHYSICAL HEALTH. Workers with high levels of physical well-being Situational Anxiety
are likely to exhibit lower levels of workplace anxiety. Indeed, Four situational characteristics are key determinants of this form
physical itness and exercise have been found to improve self- of workplace anxiety:
concept and mood, stimulate positive afect and protect against
major illnesses. Relatedly, research has found that poor physical EMOTIONAL LABOUR DEMANDS. The ‘emotional labour’ required for
health is related to higher levels of anxiety and that exercise is an a task is a direct determinant of situational anxiety. For example,
efective method for reducing anxiety. the demand for ‘service with a smile’ may be particularly ex-
As indicated, dispositional workplace anxiety represents a hausting in hectic jobs with a high turnover of customers, which
chronic experience of workplace anxiety. Given the longer term would lead to higher levels of experienced anxiety.
nature of this form of anxiety, it is likely to have a stronger impact The acceptance of facial displays of anxiety difers accord-
on typical job performance than situational anxiety. ing to the task. For example, conducting an audit or working in
Given that ‘typical’ job performance entails the sustained emergency medical situations may entail ‘display rules’ that sup-
execution of daily tasks and requires efort, the long-term nature port anxiety, because in such cases, hypervigilance is rewarded.
of dispositional workplace anxiety reduces employee motivation In contrast, giving a speech that requires conidence or serving
to perform efectively, distances employees from their work and customers does not carry display rules that support anxiety. In
subsequently lowers performance. general, high situational anxiety is likely to manifest in tasks re-
quiring high emotional labour demands.
The Upside of Dispositional Anxiety: On the bright side,
anxiety can signal to an individual when a discrepancy exists TASK DEMANDS. Stressors such as deadlines, task diiculty and
between desired and actual progress towards task completion task ambiguity also contribute to workplace anxiety. There is
— and this can lead to greater efort and an increase in task en- also evidence that employees tend to overestimate the negative
gagement. In general, dispositional anxiety is likely to facilitate impact of task demands to themselves as compared with others.
typical performance by encouraging a slower, more relective Given that situational workplace anxiety is a function of indi-
and unemotional self-regulatory system that searches carefully vidual cognition, high-task demands (i.e. a high workload) will
for information, deliberates on decisions and anticipates con- increase short-term feelings of anxiety.
sequences of actions before acting. This allows employees who
experience chronic levels of workplace anxiety to plan for and JOB CHARACTERISTICS. In particular, job type, job demands and job
strategize goal-oriented behaviours and actions. autonomy are most directly linked to situational workplace anxi-
As a result, employees with dispositional anxiety are more ety. The irst job characteristic, job type, is likely to trigger high
likely to commit to goal achievement and delegate behaviours levels of workplace anxiety, as fast-paced and competitive corpo-
and actions to meet desired outcomes. Moderate levels of anxi- rate environments have been found to foster high-stress cultures.
ety should lead to the highest levels of relective processing be- Stressful work environments are characterized by unpredictabil-
cause individuals at this level have the optimal amount of arousal ity, ambiguity and uncontrollability, all of which contribute to the
to monitor their progress towards completion of the task. At low experience of anxiety.
levels of anxiety, individuals lack the arousal necessary to do this; The second characteristic, job demands, is deined as psy-
while at high levels of anxiety, extreme levels of arousal make it chological, social, physical and/or organizational characteristics
impossible to monitor task progress. that exert frequent pressure on employees. Examples include
Theory of Workplace Anxiety (TWA)
• Ability
Between-Person
• Motivation
Dispositional (Trait-Based)
• El
Emotional
Exhaustion
Employee Dispositional Job Performance
Characteristics Anxiety (Typical)
Demographics, (individual differences U
Core Self-Evaluation in anxiety; trait-like) Reflective Self-
Regulatory
Processing
Within-Person
Situational (State-Based) Specific Performance Episodes
Cognitive
Situational Characteristics Situational Interference
Emotional Labour Demands, Anxiety U
Task Demands, (Transient feeling of Job Performance
Organizational Demands anxiety; affect; U (Episodic)
state-like) Reflexive Self-
Regulatory
Job Characteristics Processing
Job Type, • Ability
Job Demands, • Motivation
Job Autonomy • El
FIGURE ONE
impending deadlines, high workloads and role conlict. Job de- mental processes required of performing a task, leading to fewer
mands have been found to be signiicantly related to situational resources for task completion, which decreases performance.
anxiety in a number of ield studies, including daily diary studies.
The third characteristic is perceived autonomy, which re- The Upside of Situational Anxiety: As indicated, elevated lev-
lects the extent to which employees feel they have control over els of situational workplace anxiety are accompanied by a cor-
how to accomplish their work as it relates to tasks, decisions and responding elevation in arousal, which can propel workers to
use of resources. A wide body of research indicates that employ- facilitate task completion by promoting behaviours that help
ees who feel they have low levels of control have a tendency to them monitor their progress on the speciic task at hand. Specii-
experience higher levels of anxiety. For example, job autonomy cally, employees direct more resources to supervising their prog-
has been found to lead to job anxiety in call centre employees. ress during task performance, and this self-evaluation serves as
As indicated, situational workplace anxiety represents a a ‘cross-check’, comparing current states with ideal future goal
temporary emotional state. When employees feel high levels states. Importantly, feelings of anxiety during speciic perfor-
of situation-based anxiety, it is diicult for them to focus on mance episodes (e.g. making an important presentation to a cli-
the task at hand, leading to subsequent performance issues. ent) are likely to trigger the lower-order self-regulatory system
They may experience thoughts that are self-deprecating, self that is intuitive and emotional, as this system responds to emo-
preoccupying, or insecure in nature. This intrusive thinking tions such as anxiety that arise based on situational cues.
prevents full concentration on work tasks and causes cognitive Inducing arousal in threatening situations has been found
overload and mental distraction. In turn, this interferes with the to lead to higher levels of task performance in speciic activities

The core demographics related to workplace anxiety
are gender, age and job tenure.
such as singing and public speaking. Recent research has also linked to many negative outcomes in the workplace, including
demonstrated that situational anxiety leads to increased efort lower performance and citizenship behaviours.
in self-regulation behaviours such as self-control efort, en- Fortunately, EI is an ability that can be learned, and this
abling employees who are anxious about their performance to type of training has been extremely popular in companies such
overcome motivational deicits and facilitate performance as Google. Other organizations should consider providing simi-
through additional efort. lar training to anxious employees, as they are likely to reap the
beneits in recuperating resources that are currently being spent
Implications of Our Theory worrying about work.
Our theory has notable implications for both employees and or-
ganizations, particularly those associated with stressful occupa- In closing
tions such as police oicers, senior executives, public relations Today, more than ever, the experience of workplace anxiety is
executives and airline pilots. prevalent and carries signiicant consequences for employees
The key lies in being cognizant of how to leverage one’s own and organizations. We hope that our work can provide the foun-
anxiety and knowing how to guide employees’ anxiety towards dation for both understanding and future research on workplace
efective performance. From a managerial perspective, lead- anxiety and its complex relationship with job performance.
ers need to recognize that employees are motivated by difer-
ent needs at diferent times and are also likely to be at diferent
stages of self-actualization. It is thus essential for managers to
acknowledge the diferent needs of their team members — par-
ticularly those who are prone to anxiety and who are experienc-
ing heightened situational anxiety.
Our theory also has important practical relevance for per-
sonnel selection practices, promotions, goal-setting initiatives
and work-life integration programs. For example, ability is a criti-
cal variable identiied in our model that carries important prac-
tical relevance for organizations and employees. Both cognitive
ability and continuous training can help to mitigate the poten-
tially detrimental efects of anxiety, and thus, anxious employees
are encouraged to be proactive in their learning and continuing
education. Learning a new technique for accomplishing a task Bonnie Hayden Cheng (Rotman PhD ‘13)
or taking professional development courses are investments in is an Assistant Professor of Organizational
one’s career that should help reduce worries and raise anxious Behaviour & Human Resource Management
and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Lead-
individuals’ conidence on the job.
ership & Innovation at Hong Kong Polytechnic
Finally, we found that emotional intelligence (EI) can help University. Julie M. McCarthy is a Professor of Organizational Behaviour &
to minimize chronically anxious employees’ experience of emo- HR Management in the Department of Management, University of Toronto
tional exhaustion, minimize cognitive interference for situation- Scarborough and holds a cross-appointment to the OB/HR Management area
at the Rotman School of Management. This article summarizes their paper,
based anxious employees, and maximize self-regulatory pro-
“Understanding the Dark and Bright Sides of Anxiety: A Theory of Workplace
cessing behaviours for both chronic and situation-based anxious Anxiety”, which was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (2018).
employees. This is critical, as emotional exhaustion has been This paper can be downloaded online.
Here’s how to up your game — and avoid some common
mistakes — as you go about developing what we believe
to be the most underrated skill in management.
by Nelson Repenning, Don Kieffer and Todd Astor
OVER THE PAST TWO DECADES, we have worked with dozens of orga- yourself, let’s take a quick look at something that often gets in the
nizations, helping them with everything from managing beds in a way: the workings of the human mind.
cardiac surgery unit to sequencing the human genome. While the
work itself has been highly varied, one thing has become clear to Resisting the Associative Machine
us: Problem formulation is the single most underrated skill in all Research indicates that our brains have two primary methods
of management practice. for tackling problems, and which method dominates — and thus
There are few questions more powerful than, ‘What prob- determines the inal answer — depends on both the surrounding
lem are you trying to solve’? In our experience, leaders who can context and the current state we are in.
formulate a clear problem statement get more done with less
efort and move more rapidly than their less-focused counter- CONSCIOUS PROCESSING. As the name suggests, conscious process-
parts. Before we describe how to improve this capability within ing represents the part of your brain that you control. Whenever
Mentally comparing a desired state to the current
one is likely to lead to the desired change.
you are aware of your mental efort or tell someone that you are 1. IT REFERENCES SOMETHING THAT YOUR ORGANIZATION CARES ABOUT
thinking about something, you are using conscious processing. AND CONNECTS THAT ELEMENT TO A CLEAR, SPECIFIC GOAL. You should
This type of cognition can be both powerful and precise. It is the be able to draw a direct path from the problem statement to your
only part of the brain capable of what psychologists call cognitive overall mission. Too many eforts to introduce new tools like
decoupling and mental simulation — the abilities to form a men- those embodied in TQM, Six Sigma and Lean have failed because
tal picture of a situation and then play out diferent possible sce- their considerable power was directed at irrelevant problems.
narios, even if those scenarios have never occurred before. Con-
scious processing is the domain of logic, in that it uses knowledge 2. IT CONTAINS A CLEAR ARTICULATION OF THE GAP BETWEEN THE CUR-
about the world to construct possibilities that extend beyond our RENT STATE AND THE GOAL STATE. Research shows that mentally
own experience. comparing a desired state to the current one — a process known
as mental contrasting — is likely to lead to the desired change. In
AUTOMATIC PROCESSING. We cannot control this type of thinking or contrast, focusing only on the future state or on the challenges
even ‘feel’ it happening; we are only aware of the results — such in your way is less productive. Research also shows that people
as hitting the brakes when someone stops suddenly on the road draw signiicant motivation from the feeling of progress — the
in front of us. If a piece of long sought-after information has ever sense that their eforts are moving towards an important goal. A
just ‘popped’ into your head days later, you have experienced the clearly articulated gap will help you plan and focus your eforts.
workings of your automatic-processing function. Because we
lack direct access or control, the workings of the automatic pro- 3. THE KEY VARIABLES—THE TARGET STATE, CURRENT STATE AND GAP—
cessing function sometimes feel magical and we use words like ARE ALL QUANTIFIABLE.
‘gut instinct’ and intuition to describe them. Being able to measure the gap between the current state and your
Not surprisingly, our automatic processing functions tackle target will support an efective project. However, not everything
problems very diferently than their conscious counterparts. that matters can be measured accurately. Structured problem
When we tackle a problem consciously, we proceed logically, try- solving can be successfully applied to settings that do not yield
ing to construct a consistent path from the problem to a solution. immediate and precise measurements. Even if they cannot be
In contrast, the automatic system works based on associations or objectively measured, most attributes can be ‘subjectively quan-
‘pattern matching’. When confronted with a problem, the auto- tiied’. This simply means that the attribute you are following has
matic processor tries to match the challenge to a previous situa- a clear direction and that you know that more or less of it is better
tion and then uses past experience as a guide for how to act. Be- or worse. For example, organizations often struggle with ‘soft’
cause automatic processing is reliant on patterns from our past variables like customer satisfaction and employee trust. Though
experience, it can bias us towards the status quo. these can be hard to measure precisely, they can be quantiied: In
As you attempt to improve your problem-formulation skills, both cases, we know that more is better.
it is important to be aware of these two very diferent types of
thinking. If you don’t take the time to formulate a clear problem 4. IT IS SUFFICIENTLY SMALL IN SCOPE THAT YOU CAN TACKLE IT QUICKLY.
statement, you are essentially relying on your brain’s automatic A good problem statement is ‘scoped down’ to a speciic mani-
processor, which is a lot faster but only reaches into your own li- festation of the larger issue you care about. Many organizations
brary of past experiences for solutions. have become overly enamoured of large-scale change initiatives
— often labelled with acronyms that are enshrined on T-shirts
The Art of Problem Formulation and cofee mugs. But this approach to change is a bad match
A powerful problem statement has four key elements. with our natural propensity for pattern matching. As indicated,

Project Tracking Framework (Inspired by Toyota’s A3 Approach)
Problem Statement Target Design
Improvement Goal
Background Leadership Guidelines
Curent Design (based on seeing the work) Execution Plan Track Results
Date Target Actual
Root Causes What Did We Learn & What’s Next?
FIGURE ONE
our brains love to ‘match’ new patterns — it quite literally feels efective problem statement, because they don’t reference goals
good — but we can only do so efectively when there is a short or targets that the organization cares about. The overall target is
time delay between taking an action and experiencing the outcome. implicit and the person formulating the statement has jumped
Well-structured problem solving capitalizes on this by focusing straight to a diagnosis as to why that target is not being met. Al-
on decomposing big problems into little ones that can be tack- lowing diagnoses to creep into problem statements means that
led quickly. Put simply, you will make faster progress if you do 12 that you have skipped a step in the logical chain and missed an
one-month projects rather than one 12-month project. opportunity to engage in conscious cognitive processing. In our
experience, this mistake tends to reinforce existing disputes.
Having researched and taught this material for over a decade,
we have observed two common failure modes. Avoiding them is A Hybrid Approach
critical to formulating efective problem statements and focusing We have developed a hybrid approach to structured problem
your attention on the issues that really matter. solving that is both simple and efective. The framework is es-
sentially a simpliied version of Toyota’s renowned A3 approach
ERROR 1: ‘WE ALREADY KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM IS’. The most com- to structured problem solving and continuous improvement.
mon mistake is skipping problem formulation altogether. Some-
times people assume that because they ‘agree’ on the problem, STEP 1: ARTICULATE THE PROBLEM STATEMENT. The irst step is to for-
they should just get busy trying to ix it. Unfortunately, such clari- mulate a clear problem statement following our guidelines. In
ty is usually unfounded: Without explicit attention to and discus- the Background section of the framework, you should provide
sion of various problem statements, we all rely on our individual enough information to clearly link the problem statement to your
past experience to guide our actions. If you are in a meeting that organization’s larger mission. Much of structured problem solv-
seems to wander, chances are that the lack of a clear problem ing is simply stating assumptions that would otherwise be implic-
statement is at the root. Nothing brings aimless conversation to it—thereby hopefully engaging more conscious processing. The
a halt faster than our favourite question: What problem are we Background section gives you the opportunity to articulate the
trying to solve? ‘why?’ for your problem-solving efort.
ERROR 2: PROBLEM STATEMENT AS DIAGNOSIS OR SOLUTION IN DISGUISE. STEP 2: EXAMINE THE CURRENT DESIGN. When tackling a problem in
A problem statement that presumes the diagnosis sounds some- the ield, the most relevant knowledge resides in the heads and
thing like, ‘The problem is, we lack marketing capability’, or ‘the hands of the people doing the work. The challenge is that, due to
problem is that the people in manufacturing are poor communi- automatic processing, most people cannot accurately describe
cators’. Both statements could easily be true, but neither is an how they actually execute their work. They have developed a set
of habitual actions and routine responses of which they are not linked features of the work system to the problem you want to
entirely aware. As a result, when you begin digging into a problem, solve, you now propose an updated system that will generate
you cannot rely on self-reports. Instead, you must get as close to the less of the problem. In this step, you map out the structure of an
locus of the problem as you can and watch the work being done. updated work system that would function more efectively. This
Of course, as you analyze the results of your investigation, your might be as simple as saying, ‘From now on, we will always print
own automatic processing functions will be mapping the observa- the general ledger code on the invoice form’ or ‘Make changes to
tions made onto past experiences in ways that are consistent with the employee training qualiication program’. The changes should
your existing beliefs, making it diicult to ind new solutions. be speciic, targeted modiications to the existing system that are
To ofset this tendency, the next task in this step is to built on your root cause analysis.
analyze root causes. Toyota Industries Corporation founder A good goal statement builds directly from the problem
Sakichi Toyoda suggested asking ‘the ive whys’: For each statement by predicting both how much of the gap you aim to close
observed problem, the investigator should ask why ive times. and how long it will take. Thus, if your problem was ‘24 per cent of
Why won’t the car start? The battery is dead. Why is the battery our service interactions do not generate a positive response from
dead? The alternator isn’t charging it. Why isn’t the alternator customers — greatly exceeding our target of ive per cent or less’,
working? etc. — in the hope that ive levels of inquiry will reveal then a target statement might be: Reduce the number of negative-
the fundamental cause. ly related service interactions by 50 per cent in 60 days.
STEP 3: CREATE A TARGET DESIGN.In some sense, this step is just a STEP 4: EXECUTE THE PLAN. In the upper portion of the project
mirror image of the previous step’s root-cause analysis. Having framework, you lay out a plan for implementing your proposed
How to Ask Better Questions: A Q&A WithTom Puthiyamadam
Karen Christensen: Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to time the fourth question is answered, you will have developed a
solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I forward-looking point of view, and you can then consider what
would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper actions are required today so your organization can put the
question to ask, for once I knew that, I could solve the transformation process into motion.
problem in less than five minutes.” What is involved in
determining ‘the proper question’? KC: What can leaders do to get better at asking questions?
TP: If you’ve ever spent any amount of time with a four-year-old,
Tom Puthiyamadam: The right question to ask is one that will you know they love to ask ‘why?’ We can learn a lot from their
allow you to gain more insight and break through issues that are insatiable curiosity. I advise people to make a habit of question-
hidden beneath the surface. In a disruptive business environ- ing their questions. Just as children question all of our answers,
ment, there are four questions we recommend business leaders question why you are asking the initial question, and try to peel
ask regularly: back the layers on what it is that you are seeking to uncover.
1. What are the big trends that will reshape the business envi-
ronment? If, say, a retail executive’s company is suddenly losing market
2. How will these trends disrupt our industry and business? share, the question to ask isn’t the most obvious one, such as
3. What are the highest-impact, most uncertain issues these ‘Why is our competitor picking up market share?’ You have to dig
disruptions bring — and what possible future scenarios do deeper and ask things like:
they suggest?
4. What are the implications of these scenarios? • Why might today’s customers expect in-store services unre-
lated to what they’re buying?
We’ve found that executives get energized by the insight sharing • Why are some competitors adjusting prices in real time?
and debate that takes them through the first three questions, but • Why do Internet shoppers want alternatives to home
the real payoff comes in pushing through the fourth question. I delivery?
advise people to get really specific about implications. By the • How will technology turn shopping aisles into showrooms?

When tackling a problem in the field, the most relevant knowledge
resides in the heads and hands of the people doing the work.
design. Be sure that the plan is broken into a set of distinct ac- embracing the principles outlined herein, you will be on your
tivities (e.g. ‘Have invoice form reprinted with the GL code’ or way to developing what we believe to be the most underrated
‘hold a daily meeting to review quality issues’) and that each ac- skill in management.
tivity has an owner and a clear delivery date. Even as you start
executing, you are not done, because you will need to absorb all
of the associated lessons along the way. Track each activity rel-
ative to its due date and note when activities fall behind. These
gaps can also be the subject of structured problem solving.
Keep in mind that in the realm of manufacturing, service
design and new product development, ixing one problem typi-
cally reveals three or more other pressing issues. Close out your
project form by outlining the next problem that you need to fo- Nelson Repenning is the Associate Dean
of Leadership and Special Projects and the
cus on.
Distinguished Professor of System Dynamics
and Organization Studies at MIT’s Sloan
In closing School of Management. Don Kieffer is a
Formulating a good problem statement is a skill that anyone Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at the Sloan
School. Todd Astor, M.D., is Medical Director for Lung
can learn, but in our experience, it takes continued practise and
Transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital. A longer
discipline. More than 15 years after we began this work, we still version of this article recently appeared in MIT Sloan Manage-
sometimes ind ourselves devolving to automatic processing. By ment Review (www.sloanreview.mit.edu).
The answers to questions like these can offer guidance on how people who can reach deeper insights together. For example,
to boost market share, which is what you really want to do. when we work with clients, we might bring together user experi-
ence specialists, designers, financial experts and advertisers, all
KC: Talk a bit about the skill of ‘framing’. of whom shed their titles and work shoulder-to-shoulder to cre-
TP: Think about what a frame does for a picture: It focuses at- ate the best solution for the problem at hand. By viewing an issue
tention to produce the greatest impact. Generally speaking, you through multiple lenses, the goal is to drive true transformation,
probably know where and why you have a concern, but brain- rather than just incremental change.
storming the right ‘framing questions’ can lead to more powerful
solutions. As you probe deeper into a problem and decide how
to frame it, you may find a new, better solution than what you
originally considered.
For example, a home appliances company may try to build a
customer bond with its products by launching a smart home app.
However, when the business leaders ask probing questions, such
as the questions listed earlier, they may re-frame the problem
and discover that what customers really want is personalized,
on-time service calls. That company could respond by better
training service technicians and providing them with digital tools
to troubleshoot customers’ problems faster and more effectively.
Tom Puthiyamadam is Digital Global Leader and U.S.
KC: Talk a bit about the role of diversity in coming up with Advisory Markets and Competencies Leader at PwC, based
good questions. in New York City.
TP: It’s critical to view a problem from more than one angle.
Every group of decision-makers should be made up of diverse
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg talks to her friend,
Wharton Professor Adam Grant, about how to build
up individual and organizational resilience.
Adam Grant: People who know your story are amazed by how incarceration rates for these young people have gone way down.
you have managed to thrive in the face of adversity. What has As a society, we have a responsibility to do a lot more than
been the key for you? we’re doing. You have joked that there is a whole section in book-
Sheryl Sandberg: The fact is, I got through [the sudden death of stores for self-help books, but there is no ‘Help Others’ section.
my husband] because you and others in my life have been un- I would really love for our book and what we’re doing with op-
believable friends. You were right there for me emotionally, pro- tionb.org to launch a help-others category.
cessing it all with me in real time. As a result of this experience,
I know for a fact that we can build resilience in each other. AG: I remember being stunned by some of the comments
This is not just about me and my experience. We can also you faced when your husband died. One ‘friend’ said to you,
help to build ‘collective resilience’ in our organizations and in “You’re just too angry and sad; it’s hard to be around you”.
our communities. We have a deep responsibility to help prevent Can you talk a bit about what you learned about being a sup-
hardship, because it is not evenly distributed. People who face portive friend?
poverty and racism have more violence in their lives, more death SS: Before we lost David, if someone I knew was going through
and more job loss, and all of these things lead to more illness. something diicult, the irst time I saw them I would say, ‘I am so
A great example of turning that around is a program called sorry about X’; then, I wouldn’t bring it up again. I igured, if the
the Nurse-Family Partnership, which empowers irst-time person wanted to talk about it, they would tell me. Also, I didn’t
mothers from low-income families to create better futures for want to keep reminding them about it. I now know that this mind-
themselves. Nurses from this organization start visiting when the set is ludicrous: You can’t ‘remind me’ that I lost Dave. Trust me,
woman irst gets pregnant, and this continues until the child is I know that. And, you can’t remind someone that she went for
two years old. The results have been amazing: 15 years later, the chemotherapy this morning, or that his dad is in jail. They know.
Happiness is really about the daily stuff —
all the small things.
I’m not saying that every person will want to talk about it every what was wrong with me; I just felt strange. I had been experienc-
time, but you can always say, ‘I know you’re sufering, and I am ing grief for four solid months, and I suddenly realized, ‘Oh, my
here if you want to talk’. God, I feel happy!’ The guilt totally overcame me. How dare I be
The other thing I learned was the power of not just ofering on a dance loor?
to do something, but actually doing something. That’s another Around that time, my brother-in-law called and said: “All
thing I got wrong. I have said to many people over the years, ‘Let Dave ever wanted was for you and the kids to be happy. Please
me know if there’s anything I can do’ — and I authentically meant don’t take that away from him”. That was the permission I need-
it. The problem is, when you say that, it shifts the burden to the ed. Often in life, we think ‘happiness’ is getting into a certain
person who needs the help. ‘Doing something’ doesn’t have to school, or having a child, but happiness is really about the daily
be a huge gesture. Two of my dear friends tragically lost a child, stuf — all the small things. I remember one day, you said to me,
and were in the hospital for many months. One day, a friend of ‘You have to start doing things that are fun again’. I took your
Dan’s texted him out of the blue and asked, ‘What do you want advice. Even things that reminded me of Dave, I took back. The
on your burger?’ kids and I started playing Settlers of Catan again, even though
Another friend of mine read our book before it came out. Dave and I were playing it right before he died. And I started
She had a friend — not a close friend — whose child had leukemia watching TV again.
and had to return to the hospital. She said to me, “Before I read
the book, I would have done nothing, because she isn’t one of my AG: Hold on. Sheryl Sandberg watches TV?
best friends. How dare I impose on her when she’s dealing with SS: Dave and I used to watch together, every night — but then I
a sick child?” But because she read the book, she went to the toy didn’t, because it reminded me of him. Everything fun reminded
store and bought a stufed animal; then she went to the hospital me of him, so I did none of it. But slowly, I began to take things
lobby and texted her friend: ‘I’m down here in the lobby; if you back. I took back Game of Thrones, even though I don’t really
want to come down, I have something for you, but I have to leave understand it now that Dave’s not there to explain. I took back
in 15 minutes.’ The woman texted her back right away and said, Scrabble, which Dave always played with his brother, Rob. Now,
‘Please, come up!’ She gave the stufed animal to the four-year- Rob and I play.
old and the mother was standing behind her crying, mouthing It was you who suggested that each night, before I go to bed,
the words ‘Thank you!’ I write down three ‘moments of joy’ from the day. I started doing
You don’t have to be someone’s best friend from the irst that, and I still do it. They weren’t big things: I had a really great
grade to show up with a burger or a teddy bear, but the fact is, cup of cofee; someone told a hilarious joke; my son gave me a
a lot more ‘showing up’ and acknowledging would help a lot of hug, without being asked. But, because I was recalling these mo-
people. ments and writing them down, I savoured them more. There is
still a lot of grief. But, there is also pure joy now. And I know that
AG: Shortly after Dave died, you wrote in a Facebook post: “I Dave would want that.
will never feel another moment of pure joy again”. Talk a bit
about how you got past that. AG: I remember you saying to me, “I don’t think I can do any-
SS: It wasn’t easy. One of the sentences in the book that I love thing”. Can you talk a bit about that feeling?
is, ‘Joy is a discipline’. It takes work at the best of times — and it SS: After Dave died, I felt the grief, the anger and the sadness —
takes even more work when there is loss or grief. all of which I expected. Not in the amounts that they came, but
About four months after Dave died, I went to a Bar Mitz- I wasn’t shocked by them. What did shock me is that his death
vah. A childhood friend pulled me onto the dance loor, and we totally trashed my self-conidence. Obviously, having writ-
started dancing like high school kids. But after about a minute, ten Lean In, I had thought a lot about self-conidence. As I put
I broke down crying and had to be taken outside. I didn’t know that book together I learned a lot from the data, which shows

that overall, women feel less self-conident than men. I started employee at Facebook once asked me about this, and I just
giving women advice about how to feel more self-conident, looked at him and said, “Look, if we’re biased in favour of wom-
and I took that advice myself. I was feeling really good — like en and minorities, we must really suck at it, because we still
I deserved my job and I could be a good mother and work. My don’t have nearly enough of these people in our senior ranks”.
conidence was solid. When 95 per cent of Fortune 500 CEOs are male, it’s diicult to
Then, Dave’s death just trashed it. I was now mothering by imagine that there is bias against male leadership. And, based
myself, with two grieving children. I had no idea how to do that. on a recent Lean In-McKinsey survey of over 100 companies,
When I went back to work I could barely focus through a meeting 30 per cent more irst promotions last year were for men rather
and not think about Dave — let alone contribute. than women. So, if there is bias in the other direction, it certain-
Before, when someone at work was going through some- ly isn’t showing up in the data.
thing painful, I would ofer them some time of. At Facebook, We need to recognize that biases are real, call them out and
we are really good at that. Other companies need to step up and explain what they are. A man can be competent and liked, and
we need better public policy for those who are not covered by as he gets more powerful and is considered more competent,
their companies. So, I would ofer the person time of and say we like him even more. But women face a trade-of: As they get
something like, ‘Don’t worry; of course you can’t fully focus more powerful, research shows that we like them less. Also, re-
right now — look what you’re going through’. The thing is, when search [by Rotman Professor Sonia Kang et al.] shows that you
the shoe was on the other foot — and people were saying that to can send in the same résumé with a white-sounding name or a
me — all it did was prove what I already knew, which was, ‘Oh black-sounding name, and, the white-sounding name will get
God: I can’t do my job; I’ve lost Dave and now I’m going to lose 50 per cent more callbacks. It’s basically worth eight years of
everything’. It was very scary. experience to have a White-sounding name over a black-sound-
Mark Zuckerberg is 15 years younger than me — so I have ing name.
no idea how he knew to do this — but he started saying things The data is very clear on this: We have to be willing to call
to build my conidence back up. He would say, “Oh don’t worry out biases and we have to recognize that a world where people
Sheryl, you would have made that mistake before this happened”. are given equal opportunity — without regard to race or gender
That was very comforting. When I fell asleep in my irst meeting — will be a better world for all of us. We will be more productive,
on the irst day back, he said to me afterwards: “You made two our companies will be better-run, our kids will be happier and
really good points in there today”, and he named them. they will do better in school.
Now, when someone at work is going through something,
I will proactively take the time to compliment some of the little AG: As a leader, what’s the best way to manage your ‘personal
things that might have gone unnoticed before. This is really im- brand’?
portant, because to help someone get through a trauma, we need SS: I get this question a lot, particularly from young audiences,
to comfort them and show up; but we also have to take steps to and every time, I shudder. If you are putting efort into building
build them back up, remind them that they can do their job, and up your personal brand, please stop. You are not a brand. Crest is
give them permission to laugh and live. a brand. Perrier is a brand. Branded things are packaged up and
marketed. People are not that simple, and we can’t be packaged.
AG: On to some other topics that you’ve written about. Some When we are, we are inefective and inauthentic.
people question whether women still face biases in the work- I would say to people, you don’t have a brand, but you do
place. What is your take on this? have a voice. Unlike a brand, it is not consistently ‘wrapped up’
We know from the data that white men — and particularly young in the exact same way. I have used my own voice to help build my
white men — believe that the deck is stacked against them be- company, to speak out on women’s issues and lately, to talk about
cause of all the talk about diversity and inclusion. A young grief and try and help others break out of the isolation I felt.
Don’t package yourself. Just speak honestly, and whenever be sitting here today. What you do need to have is a meaning-
possible, speak with some data behind you. Speak from your ex- ful long-term dream. Think about what that is, and make it big
perience, in an authentic way. Work on developing your voice, and ambitious — particularly if you’re a woman or an under-rep-
not your brand. resented minority. Not everyone has to want to be a CEO some-
day, but we should all be ambitious in terms of making a difer-
AG: A lot of people ask me what I think of their ‘12-year career ence in the world. Ask yourself what you would do if you weren’t
plan’ or the ‘15-year path’ that they’ve mapped out for them- afraid; then, ask, ‘what am I doing in the next year or two to get
selves. What would you say to these people? there?’ Don’t try to connect your short-term plan to your long-run
SS: Those plans should go in the trash can with the personal dream, because you will miss out on a lot of opportunities. Face-
brand documents. If I had mapped out my career, I would not book didn’t even exist when I started out.
How to Take Your Coaching Skills Up a Notch by Daniel Markovitz
Are there any coaches or teachers in your background that you Infrequent observation. Most managers don’t see and there-
cherish and think of often? If so, I’d be willing to bet that they are fore can’t observe their direct reports every day. Unfortunately,
from your youth—and not supervisors or managers from your research shows that sporadic coaching—even if the interac-
work life. Even in companies that pride themselves on making tions are lengthy—is far less effective than shorter, frequent
coaching an essential part of each manager’s job, the quality sessions.
and impact of corporate coaching seldom compares to our for-
mative coaching experiences. Great coaches—the ones who Ad hoc coaching. High-potential employees often have long-
shape lives—share some common characteristics. range development plans to lead them to the executive suite.
But what about the rank and file—people who aren’t consid-
They provide continuous, on-site observation. Great ered superstars? These employees are typically coached only
coaches go and see first-hand how an athlete performs at when there is a need for corrective action.
practice and in games, so they have up-to-date knowledge of
each individual’s current situation. They use these direct obser- It’s all about the individual. The fact is, a company—or any
vations to provide continuous feedback and to address specific organization, for that matter—is no less a team than an NHL
shortcomings. hockey team. And yet, coaching in a business setting almost
exclusively focuses on the benefits that accrue to the individual
They have a structured, long-range plan for each indi- learner, rather than to the organization as a whole.
vidual. It’s not just about winning the next game or race. Great
coaches aim for the long-term, teaching their athletes progres- There is one point of commonality between athletic and work-
sively more complex skills—or, in the case of endurance sports, place coaches: Both rely heavily upon directive coaching rather
gradually building up the athlete’s strength, endurance and than developmental coaching. In directive coaching, the coach
speed. advocates for a certain course of action: ‘Run the play this way,
not that way’; ‘Format your spreadsheet like this, not like that’.
They connect the individual to a greater purpose. Usually, Basically, the coach is doing the thinking. Directive coaching
this greater purpose is the accomplishment of the larger team is most useful when you want rapid action (for instance, in the
goal. The athlete recognizes that she isn’t only training for indi- middle of a game) and when the problem being addressed is
vidual glory; in fact, individual success is secondary, and often simple.
subsumed, to attainment of the overall team goal. By contrast, developmental coaching is more Socratic.
The developmental coach asks questions that lead the individ-
In contrast, the typical manager/coach tends to operate as ual to greater awareness and understanding. In this dynamic,
follows: the learner is prompted to do most of the thinking. Develop-

Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder. Don’t be afraid to
move sideways or even backwards. Be willing to try new things,
but don’t tie yourself up in knots building the perfect long-term Adam Grant is the Saul P. Steinberg Professor
of Management, and Professor of Psychology
plan, because it will hold you back.
at the Wharton School of Business, University
of Pennsylvania and a Fellow of the Martin
Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of
Management. Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operating Oicer at Facebook
and founder of Leanin.org and the Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family
Foundation. They are the co-authors of Option B: Facing Adversity, Building
Resilience and Finding Joy (Knopf, 2017). This conversation took place recently
at the Wharton School of Business.
mental coaching is more effective when you’re trying to create development can be connected to the welfare of the orga-
long-term behavioural change or solve complex problems. nization as a whole, the behavioural changes will be more
Unfortunately, most workplace coaching today is directive: likely to stick.
‘Jane, I think you should address it in this manner’; ‘Jose, what if
you tried doing it this way?’ This is a shame, because directive 5. Know that the greatest gift a coach can provide is
coaching fails to take advantage of the greater cognitive capa- the ability to adapt and learn. Since we can’t know what
bilities of adult learners. skills will be needed in the future, a general approach to
So, how can you become a coach and mentor that people problem solving is the keystone skill to achieving challeng-
will remember throughout their careers? ing goals throughout our lives.
1. Follow the athletic coach’s lead and make time to The athletic coaches of our youth and our favourite teachers
provide consistent observation. The best workplace will live forever in our hearts. By adopting some of the core fea-
coaches observe people in their natural environment on tures of those relationships and emphasizing the developmental
a regular basis, so they can see for themselves what the coaching mindset, you can take steps to elevate the typically
person is doing well—and not as well. uninspiring workplace coaching function.
2. Take a long-range view of employee development.

Rather than coaching for correction, adopt a proactive
approach. Treat each person as a lifetime employee, and
consider the skills that will be needed over an entire career.
3. Create a long-term learning plan that strategically

builds skills and experiences. Even if the employee
doesn’t stay until retirement (and today, it’s unlikely that
he/she will), you will reap the benefits of a more motivated,
and capable, worker.
Lean expert Daniel Markovitz is the founder of Markovitz
Consulting and author of Building the Fit Organization: Six
4. Connect the employee’s development to the welfare Core Principles for Making Your Company Stronger, Faster,
of your organization as a whole. In the case of a team and More Competitive (McGraw Hill Education, 2015). His
sport, the ‘why’ is obvious to players, but it’s not always clients include Pizer, Microsoft, New York Presbyterian
obvious to employees in an organization. If the individual’s Hospital and Intel. He blogs at markovitzconsulting.com/blog.
Before you can disrupt bias in your organization, you must
first determine precisely where and how it is being felt.
by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Ripa Rashid and Laura Sherbin
IN 1952,the Boston Symphony Orchestra famously introduced In recent years, companies have focused a great deal on im-
‘blind auditions’ to test for gender bias in hiring, by having musi- plicit or unconscious bias. In 1995, social psychologists Mahza-
cians audition behind a screen. At irst, the screen made no dif- rin R. Banaji and Anthony Greenwald pioneered the theory
ference in who made it past the irst round of auditions. Then, of ‘implicit social cognition’ and created the IAT (Implicit As-
suspecting that a click-clack of high heels from female musicians sociation Test) as a means of understanding bias. The IAT asks
as they entered the room rendered the screen inefective, the hir- test takers to quickly sort words and images into positive and
ing committee had the musicians remove their shoes when they negative categories. Then, it generates instant results that tell
entered. In the absence of gendered footfalls, the judges trained test takers whether they had more trouble associating positive
their acute ears on the music itself. characteristics with a given identity — in other words, whether
Other orchestras began adopting the Boston Symphony’s they are biased against a certain social group.
approach in the 1970s, and by the 1990s, many saw increases in Talent specialists across industries have embraced the IAT
the number of female players. The New York Philharmonic, for ex- as a solution to tackling the thorny issue of bias in the work-
ample, reached 35 per cent female musicians by 1997 — a dramatic place. Each year, tens of thousands go through training based on
increase over having had zero female players for decades. One its theoretical framework and learn about bias from Professor
study of 11 major orchestras found that up to 55 per cent of their in- Banaji herself. The IAT provides a clear explanatory framework
crease in new female hires could be attributed to blind auditions. for interpreting a corporate reality: We all make rapid decisions
Today, this case serves as a parable for bias-busting and has informed by biases we hold in our unconscious minds.
helped many business leaders understand the enormous role that Anti-bias training is particularly popular in Silicon Valley,
bias can play in how they hire, evaluate and promote employees. where tech titans like Facebook and Google mandate it, al-
Hiring decisions in particular have attracted scrutiny, with study though a similar trend is on the rise among Fortune 500 corpo-
after study demonstrating that the identity implied by the name rations. According to one consultant, by 2019, half of the diver-
on a résumé often sways decisions. sity strategies at large U.S. employers could be built around it.
Meanwhile, companies have also begun to recognize the However, despite all these eforts, gender representation in the
positive links between diverse leadership and business outcomes. top ranks of large corporations has remained roughly the same
As the workforce becomes increasingly diverse, busting bias is a since 2000, and the numbers for minority executives in the
business-critical priority. private sector aren’t much better.
In decisions affecting talent development and progression,
bias is harder to detect.
The Problem: Bias Training Has a Blind Spot bias in hiring decisions. But in decisions afecting talent devel-
We have uncovered a signiicant blind spot in implicit bias train- opment and progression, bias is much harder to detect, let alone
ing, which deeply afects companies’ ability to map, measure and disrupt — and far less progress has been made in this area. That’s
disrupt bias: The IAT and related training focus on individuals because determining who should advance depends not just on
who harbour bias. At irst blush, it’s easy to see why, since man- assessing performance, but on assessing potential as well—a no-
agers and leaders are the ones making hiring, iring and promo- toriously subjective exercise.
tion decisions — and who are in the position to see potential in Such assessments take place in the thousands of spot deci-
and grant opportunities to the employees reporting to them. Yet sions leading up to an annual performance review. Every day,
focusing on those who hold unconscious biases doesn’t allow us week and month, managers make decisions about which tasks,
to understand how bias is actually showing up in a company from clients, projects and roles are assigned to a given team member,
day to day. and these seemingly minor judgments inform bigger determi-
There is scarce evidence to show how much individuals ac- nations: Who will be awarded opportunities for learning and
tually act on their unconscious biases when they make decisions. development, international rotations and stretch assignments?
A manager who, according to the IAT or any other such measure, Indeed, lifetime career outcomes are the culmination of mo-
harbours a host of biases may or may not act upon these in the mentary assessments of individual potential — assessments that
workplace — in other words, there is no proven correlation be- often depend on subjective assumptions — a ripe breeding
tween IAT scores and actual decision-making behaviour. Relying ground for bias.
on the IAT, companies are left without a clear understanding of To help root out bias in judgments of potential, we have de-
how bias is experienced in their organization — or the cost it lev- veloped ACE, a framework that codiies employee potential so
ies on their bottom line. that we might then use it to analyze bias in assessments of po-
Companies do have other ways of tracking how employ- tential. ACE is comprised of six areas commonly used to assess
ees experience bias and discrimination. Many ofer channels — an employee’s potential in both day-to-day and cyclical decisions
human resources, hotlines, ombudsmen—for employees to re- — and all six areas can be prone to deep subjectivity.
port such instances. Yet these channels are disparate, scattershot
and primarily geared towards legal protection for the company. 1. ABILITY: An employee who went to a reputable school, for in-
They do not comprise a robust dataset from which to analyze stance, might be perceived as more capable of taking on new
bias’s true cost — or to surface efective solutions to remediate it. responsibilities.
All too often, the ‘solution’ for mitigating bias is light-hand- 2. AMBITION: An employee who volunteers for extra work or has
ed: Asking individuals who go through training to try to resist a lead role in special projects is likely to be perceived as ‘driv-
their own biases, or to call others out on their biases in the mo- en to advance.’
ment. This ignores the culture and processes that govern behav- 3. COMMITMENT: An employee who is seen putting in long days
iour — which might themselves be biased. Asking individuals at the oice or making herself available nights and week-
to ix their own biases fails to address systemic pressures that ends is likely to be perceived as ‘committed to the job’.
reward ‘fast thinking’ or gut decision-making—pressures that en- 4. CONNECTIONS: An employee involved in esteemed organiza-
sure current leadership archetypes are replicated. tions or social circles outside of work is likely to be perceived
Decades of research airm that when systems, processes as having relationships that will beneit the business.
and culture are changed, individuals are curbed from making 5. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: An employee who senses what oth-
relexive or biased decisions. For example, say orchestras had, ers need from him and modiies his interactions accordingly
instead of installing screens, asked hiring committee members is likely to be perceived as having self-awareness, cultural
to consider their own biases when auditioning musicians? The awareness, and appreciation for diference.
results would not likely have been nearly as dramatic. 6. EXECUTIVE PRESENCE: An employee who looks, sounds and
acts like top company leaders is likely to be perceived as hav-
A New Approach to Bias ing the ability to command a room.
Armed with software that ‘blinds’ the vetting of job candidates
and with rigorous protocols to codify the interview process, some To better understand the experience and impact of bias against
talent specialists have made signiicant progress in disrupting each ACE dimension, we charted our survey indings into a ‘heat

map’. The Bias Heat Map (see Figure One) shows negative bias THEY BLOW UP. The most extreme reaction employees can have
by talent cohort against each of the ACE framework’s six areas of when they perceive ACE bias is to engage in small (or large)
potential. The order of the talent cohorts relects the prevalence acts of sabotage. That can mean intentionally failing to follow
of ACE bias among our survey respondents: those least likely to through on an important assignment or speaking negatively
report ACE bias are at the far left, on the yellow end of the scale. about their company in public — for example, on social media.
Those most likely to report ACE bias are at the far right, on the Blowing up is rare, but it carries enormous costs. Just think of the
red end of the scale. So, what does the Bias Heat Map tell us? damage whistleblowers have inlicted on their employers over
the years when they ind their companies lack the systems and
Expected Findings: In some key ways, the heat map conirms processes to respond to their concerns. The same is true when
traditional hypotheses around bias and diversity. For instance, bias goes unchecked.
among our survey respondents at large companies, black, La-
tino, and Asian cohorts are more likely to report ACE bias than Disrupting Bias: A Three-Part Strategy
white cohorts are. Employees with disabilities — a group for How can we determine which interventions disrupt bias? By
which exclusion is well-documented — are on the far right of the looking at which interventions ‘cool down’ our Heat Map. We
Heat Map, along with employees born outside of the U.S. tested several potential solutions, and discovered three to be
particularly efective in minimizing ACE bias across talent
Surprising Findings: Further scrutiny of the Heat Map reveals cohorts.
some distinct surprises. In our sample of employees at large
companies, men were more likely to report ACE bias than wom- 1. DIVERSIFY LEADERSHIP. To measure diversity in leadership, we
en, and lex workers (male and female) were less likely to report asked survey respondents, ‘Which kinds of diversity do you see
ACE bias than men as a whole. When we dug into intersection- in your company’s leadership?’ Then, we asked them to check
alities, even more surprises emerged: Asian men are more likely any of the following that apply:
than Asian women to perceive ACE bias, especially on ambition • Gender
and ability; black women are less likely to perceive bias than • Race/ethnicity
black men; and gay or bisexual men are more likely than lesbian • Age
or bisexual women to perceive bias. • Religious background
As any professional who has experienced bias knows well,
its impact can be profound. Feeling misjudged on one’s profes- We consider the leadership of a respondent’s company to be in-
sional potential damages productivity and commitment. Re- herently diverse if there are at least three types of diversity repre-
member, ACE bias is the employee’s perception that superiors sented. Diversity in leadership is crucial to disrupting ACE bias.
mis-assess their potential. Perception of bias can lead employ- Inherently diverse executives demonstrate that diference is val-
ees to behave in ways that cost their companies. Indeed, we ued at their companies. They are in a position to endorse ideas
found that employees who perceive ACE bias behave in three from diverse employees. They also provide a ‘counter-stereotyp-
very costly ways: ical’ example for all employees, expanding their notions of who
successful top leaders are, undercutting deep-seated biases.
THEY BURN OUT. Employees who perceive ACE bias are more
likely than those who don’t to burn out. They’re also more likely 2. ADVANCE AN INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP CULTURE. In order to truly see
to feel alienated at work, withhold their ideas and lack pride the potential of diverse employees on teams, leaders have to get
in their companies. In other words, they’re more likely to be beyond gut-level assumptions. They can do so by fostering a
disengaged. ‘speak-up culture’ where everyone feels welcome and included,
free to share their ideas and opinions, and conident that their
THEY BUST OUT. ACE bias is linked to costly decreases in retention. ideas will be heard and recognized. With that kind of culture, in-
Those who perceive ACE bias, demoralized by limited prospects dividuals of all backgrounds have the opportunity to subvert oth-
for advancement due to negative assessments of their potential, ers’ assumptions or biases about them. In other words, they are
are far more likely to start looking for another job, or to want to inclusive leaders.
leave their companies within the year. Indeed, our data shows that with inclusive team leaders,
A Heat Map of Bias
The Bias Heat Map shows negative bias by talent cohort against each of the ACE Framework’s six areas of potential. Those least
likely to report ACE bias are at the far left, on the yellow end of the scale; those most likely to report ACE bias are at the far right.
Employees at Large Companies Who Perceive Negative Bias in their Superiors’ Assessment of ACE Elements
US
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en
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ith
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ac
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LG
Bo
As
La
Bl
W
W
Fl
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Ability
Ambition
Commitment
Connections
Emotional
Intelligence
Executive
Presence
ACE Bias
0% 1% 2% 3% 4% 5% 6% 7% 8% 9% 10% 11% 12% 13% 14% 15%+
ACE BIAS is an employee’s perception of negative bias in the assessment of potential in two or more of the following areas:
Ability, Ambition, Commitment, Connections, Emotional Intelligence, and Executive Presence.
FIGURE ONE
employees at large companies are 87 per cent less likely to composition of their teams and on their inclusive approach. “It’s
perceive ACE bias and 39 per cent more likely to be engaged. extremely important to show we are willing to put our money
For example, every manager at Sodexo is expected to prioritize where our mouth is on inclusion,” says Stephen Dunmore, CEO
diversity and inclusion (D&I) — and that expectation is backed of North America Schools at Sodexo.
by compensation incentives. Fully 10 per cent of managers’
compensation is determined by their ratings on a D&I Score- CONNECT DIVERSE TALENT TO SPONSORS. How can companies
card — based on both their ability to meet diversity targets in the diversify leadership if talent that doesn’t it narrow leadership

archetypes continues to experience bias and stall on the way to A Playbook for Disrupting Bias
the top? Five of our own studies conducted since 2010 point to
the solution: Diverse employees need sponsors or senior-level
1. DO YOUR OWN DIAGNOSTIC
advocates to lever them into leadership, efectively bypassing or
• Field a survey among your employees, using ACE or your
negating the efects of managerial bias.
own criteria for assessing potential.
Top talent isn’t sponsored equally: Men are 46 per cent • Identify respondents whose assessments of their own
more likely than women to have a sponsor, and Caucasians are potential are higher than the assessments from their
63 per cent more likely than employees of colour to enjoy such managers.
advocacy. Sponsors advocate for their protégés’ advancement
— and they see furthering a protégé’s career as an important 2. UNDERSTAND WHAT THE DIAGNOSTIC IS
investment in their own. Like inclusive leaders, sponsors turn TELLING YOU
out to have a profoundly mitigating efect on the ACE bias that • Examine talent cohorts of interest to your company
(e.g. foreign nationals, African Americans, veterans) to
employees perceive. Why? Because sponsors see their protégé’s
learn where bias lurks.
potential clearly — and are willing to ight to make sure others • Conduct an inquiry to get the context for counterintuitive
see it as well. With sponsors, employees at large companies are findings.
90 per cent less likely to perceive ACE bias and 21 per cent more • Apply filters to test whether employees with sponsors,
likely to be engaged. inclusive leaders and/or diverse division leaders are least
To ensure more women and people of colour circumvent likely to perceive ACE bias in your corporate context.
bias to break through to leadership, organizations have crafted
programs that get senior leaders to feel comfortable advocating 3. DISRUPT
for diverse individuals. The results are truly bias-busting: At one Prioritize the roll-out of interventions based on the cohorts
with the deepest needs.
Fortune 100 inancial services irm, 62 per cent of participants in
its women’s sponsorship program have reported a change in their Expand leadership archetypes
level of responsibility as a direct result of the program. • Hire and promote candidates who embody difference.
Elsewhere, Intel’s Extend Our Reach program for women • Codify and socialize company standards and expectations.
and people of colour has culminated in mobility for 40 per cent • Implement a ‘tone from the top’ that endorses a variety of
of participants since its inception in 2011, with 16 of them attain- acceptable approaches to leadership.
ing vice-president level promotions and one attaining the level of • Create role model videos and playbooks of executives in
corporate vice president. action, featuring a diversity of leadership styles and back-
grounds.
In closing
Train managers to be inclusive leaders
For most organizations, the solution set for eliminating bias • Introduce managers to the six behaviours that prompt
will be more complex than putting up a screen and asking everyone to contribute ideas and communicate openly
applicants to remove their shoes. It will have to target both man- with managers and colleagues.
ager behaviour and the culture that shapes the employee expe- • Ensure everyone gets heard: train managers in dialogue
rience. But irst, it requires individuals to understand precisely skills.
where bias is felt, so that organizations can map, measure and • Build accountability and incentives into annual perfor-
disrupt bias where costs to individuals and the organization are mance reviews on the six inclusive leader behaviours.
the greatest.
Build a culture of sponsorship
• Educate and incentivize leaders to sponsor others.
• Educate rising stars on how to be stellar protégés.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett is the founder and CEO • Create opportunities for diverse talent to show their leader-
of the Centre for Talent Innovation, and co- ship potential.
director of the Women’s Leadership Program • Make leaders who sponsor diverse talent more visible.
at Columbia Business School. Ripa Rashid
is co-president at the Centre for Talent Innova- 4. RE-FIELD THE DIAGNOSTIC
tion. Laura Sherbin is Co-President, Chief Financial Oicer
Identify where your map has ‘cooled’, and where bias
and Director of Research at the Centre for Talent Innovation
and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. They are
lingers. Disrupt again.
the co-authors of Disrupt Bias, Drive Value: A New Path Toward
Diverse, Engaged, and Fulilled Talent (Rare Bird Books, 2017).
WXN’s ‘Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Awards’ celebrates
the achievements of strong female leaders across the country in the
private, public and not-for-profit sectors. A total of 16 Rotman alumni—
six MBAs, two Commerce grads and eight graduates of Rotman
Executive Programs—were named to the list for 2017-18. We are pleased
to introduce you to seven of them.
Compiled by Karen Christensen
LESLIE E. WOO are a magnet for others to follow. They enable others to achieve
Chief Planning Oicer, METROLINX things that they never imagined.
Alumnae of The Judy Project
What is the best advice you ever received?
What is your greatest challenge in Over my career I have received three really important pieces of
your current role? advice. First, relationships are more critical to success than in-
Developing a seamless and efective tellect or technical aptitude. Second, it’s very important to know
transit and transportation system is yourself and ind a way to play to your strengths. This requires
ultimately about enabling residents self-care, relection and seeking out honest feedback. Third, fail-
to live, work and play well. Meeting ure is a gift from which we learn and grow.
the needs of many people from all walks of life requires making
complex choices in a constrained iscal environment under con- How do you create value for business and society?
ditions of high public expectations. This is a signiicant challenge My work aligns with my values in that I strive every day to en-
that requires systemic, interconnected solutions. Navigating this sure that I am leaving this city and region in better shape that I
complexity is what energizes and excites me about my work. found it. This means attention to creating beneits for society,
not just buildings and hard structures.
What unique combination of skills got you here?
My early professional work as a practising architect provided What are you most proud of?
foundational skills that bridge between creative vision and prac- I am so proud of the successes of the mentees, former staf
tical delivery. My career has extended amongst public, not for and students, family and friends who I have coached or sup-
proit and private sectors, and as well, between municipal and ported over the years. While only they can take credit for their
provincial roles. This diversity of perspectives enables me to successes, it is with great pride that I get to witness their growth
work with deep empathy for others and an ability to ind consen- and accomplishments.
sus on diicult issues. I am also proud of the recognition I have received for my
leadership roles, internationally, professionally and in my volun-
What does being ‘powerful’ mean to you? teer capacities. When you are busy with your head down always
There is power by title (e.g. CEO or President), but power that ‘doing’ and moving things forward, it’s easy to forget what has
is gained through trust is more long lasting and impactful. been accomplished. These acknowledgements encourage me to
Being powerful to me means being inluential. Powerful leaders go even further.
“Being powerful means having the ability to give people opportunities,
influence decisions and change outcomes.”
PATTI PERRAS SHUGART required to succeed. I use my position to help inluence outcomes
(MBA ’88) both at work and through the organizations I support.
Managing Director & Global
Head, Corporate Banking and What is the best advice you have ever received?
Global Credit, RBC Capital There are a few pieces of advice that I have carried with me
Markets throughout my career:
1. Follow your heart and your passion when choosing a career
What is your greatest challenge and don’t focus on barriers along the way.
in your current role? 2. Be true to yourself; authentic leadership is so powerful.
Given the complexity of the glob- 3. Surround yourself with people who express their views, and
al business that I run, being able those who are always willing to put the goals and objectives
to adapt to changing market con- of the team irst.
ditions and pivot quickly is really 4. Connect with people. Your relationships will get you in the
important. Ensuring that I use my door and your knowledge and expertise will win the lead, so
time wisely to balance the needs of the business, our clients and make both a priority!
employees, and my community commitments is also a challenge
each day. Visiting clients in many countries while managing the How does your company create value for business and
deal volume on the road requires a strong leadership team to society?
share the responsibilities. Being organized and having great Helping Clients Thrive and Communities Prosper is how we deine
technology helps me balance my work and family commitments. our purpose at RBC. Diversity and inclusion is a core value of
My family has been incredibly supportive throughout my jour- the organization and one that diferentiates us from many other
ney. Our son and daughter play NCAA hockey in the U.S., so workplaces. I love to connect, coach and advocate for women in
travelling to watch them on weekends is a top priority and smart the capital markets, and encourage them to feel empowered to
scheduling is critical. take control of their careers. My role as Executive Sponsor for
the Toronto RBC Race for the Kids and the United Way’s Wom-
Describe the unique combination of skills that got you to en United help me to advance my support for children’s mental
where you are today. health initiatives and enable women to lift themselves out of
Conidence, strong communication skills, good analytics and poverty.
judgment have all helped to deine my leadership style and busi-
ness acumen. Anticipating questions or issues that we might What are you most proud of?
face is important, and preparation is key. Understanding our I am very proud of my team and the corporate lending business
clients’ needs and being able to structure the best solutions for we have built over the past decade. It has been a real privilege to
them has enabled me to build strong relationships over many provide the opportunity for so many people to develop and grow
years. My upbringing also helped to shape me as a leader. I was their careers. I have always been a big proponent of promoting
the youngest of six, with four brothers — great preparation for from within, because it leads to a positive work environment
a career in the capital markets! My mother was an incredible and a strong team culture.
role model who juggled a successful career and a large family, Promoting diversity within my business has also been an
and my father was far ahead of his time in his support of women’s important priority. Today, women and visible minorities repre-
careers. sent 40 per cent of my division. We have also made progress
with 21 per cent of women and 16 per cent of visible minorities
What does being ‘powerful’ mean to you? in Managing Director roles within my division. I would like to
Being powerful means having the ability to give people opportu- see these numbers continue to increase and am working to en-
nities, inluence decisions and change outcomes. To be a good hance both groups’ representation in the business. Personally,
leader you need to create a culture where people can drive their I am very proud of my family and how we have supported each
own careers, but also ensure they have the support and mentoring other to achieve success.

JOANNA ROTENBERG focused on helping women leaders and entrepreneurs succeed,
(JD/MBA ’01) to our commitment to the environment, we embrace the philoso-
Group Head, Wealth Manage- phy that doing good work comes in many forms.
ment, BMO Financial Group
What are you most proud of?
What is your greatest challenge We are only as good as the company we keep, and I feel so lucky
in your current role? to be surrounded by people who inspire me. My family, my hus-
Managing the unexpected — which band and my kids are a great source of pride. I also get to work
is a fact of life for everyone in busi- with so many talented colleagues at BMO, and together we ac-
ness today. Things never go quite complish great things for our clients and shareholders while also
as planned, even when you’ve cov- having some fun. I’ve also gotten involved in the community and
ered all your bases and anticipated problems. You have to build learn so much from many great role models at Mount Sinai Hos-
resilience and agility to tackle the unexpected — and be able to pital, Rotman and elsewhere.
make strong decisions without all the facts.
ANDREA STAIRS (JD/MBA ’00)
Describe the unique combination of skills that got you here. GM, eBay Canada & Latin America
I would say it’s as much about mindset as skillset, and for me,
that means a few things. First, empathy. I try to put myself in oth- What is your greatest challenge in
er peoples’ shoes, whether it’s a colleague or a client. Second, be- your current role?
ing curious (which is both a blessing and a curse!) and courageous I’ve been at eBay for 12 years and,
enough to take on big opportunities and challenges when they until recently, my work was focused
present themselves. One essential skill that I continue to work on on the Canadian market. I recently
every day is communication. As humans, we are hard-wired for took on the added responsibility of
interaction, and that means being able to articulate where we’re eBay Latin America. In my new role,
going and why. Being open to healthy debate on a regular basis is I’m responsible for engaging and
incredibly important to success. growing eBay’s community of buyers and sellers across more than
40 countries, four languages and three sites. I’m also charged
What does being ‘powerful’ mean to you? with leading the teams that are responsible for these regions.
It means being at your best while wearing many hats. I am a My immediate challenge is to quickly get up to speed on these
mother, a wife, a business leader and I’m also committed to giv- new markets and get to know the people. Next, I’ll have to quick-
ing back to my community. Each of these roles is powerful in its ly start developing a big-picture, long-term strategy that will ac-
own right. When people come together for a common purpose celerate our business in this region’s rapidly developing market.
— whether it’s family, a leadership team or a fundraising com-
mittee — the results can be thrilling. Describe the unique combination of skills that got you here.
With a BA in Medieval History, I don’t bring any STEM skills to
What is the best advice you have ever received? my role. My ‘soft’ or transferable skills are what have enabled
A mentor of mine once said, ‘Act like the role you want to have’, me to build my career. One under-appreciated quality that has
which means stepping up and not waiting to be asked. In a busy served me very well is curiosity. My love of learning has helped
world where everyone has so much on the go, sometimes you me thrive in management roles where I lead diferent depart-
need to tap yourself on the shoulder. Don’t wait for someone else ments, receive a wide range of information, and need to under-
when you see that next opportunity or challenge. stand a business from start to inish. Having work that feeds my
curiosity has kept me motivated and has made the work fun and
How do you create value for business and society? rewarding. However, perhaps the most important quality in a
Balancing commitments to all stakeholders as we pursue our leader — and one I’m continuously learning about — is the ability
business strategy and strive to fulill our broader social respon- to engage and motivate a team. A collaborative and highly efec-
sibilities is something that is engrained at BMO. The strategic tive team is critical to success, and that starts with learning all
priorities that guide our decision-making and desire to deine you can about engagement and motivation.
great customer experience sit side-by-side with our social, eco-
nomic and environmental commitments to drive sustainable What does being ‘powerful’ mean to you?
growth. We walk the talk: From our community-building activi- Being powerful means having a platform and a responsibility
ties across North America, to our BMO for Women initiatives to lead and inluence. This is something I take seriously and
“Part of my role as a leader is to be ready
for what’s around the corner.”
manage actively. As part of a small group of visible female tech tract and retain great talent. We have to welcome the right people
leaders in Canada, I appreciate my ability to inluence women’s through the door, give them amazing opportunities, and empow-
consideration of careers in STEM. I make an efort to share au- er them to contribute their expertise and ideas. It’s important
thentic stories about the realities, rewards and challenges of a for our leadership team to support people and create a learning-
career in tech, and I focus on broadening the deinition of what oriented culture that embraces change and can adapt to future
a tech career can be, so it’s more inclusive of diverse passions, challenges.
interests and skill sets.
Describe the unique combination of skills that got you here.
What is the best advice you have ever received? A big part of it is being future-oriented, combined with an abil-
As basic as it may sound, it’s that no one is in charge of your ity to get things done. I’ve always been one to look ahead and try
career but you. This means that if you’re looking to be promoted to igure out how various technological, social, political and eco-
or to gain new opportunities, you need to create the conditions nomic shifts will transform our lives. Part of my role as a leader is
and line up the support. Don’t wait for it to come to you. to help create a vision of where our business needs to go in order
to be ready for what’s around the corner.
How do you create value for business and society? The second piece is tactical understanding — an apprecia-
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone tion for what it takes to execute on our vision. That includes lay-
of the Canadian economy and are vital to accelerating our ing out a path to an objective and picking the right moment to
growth. At its core, eBay is a platform that connects millions of move and take calculated risks; studying how stakeholders will
buyers and sellers around the globe. As such, it creates incred- be impacted by decisions, and inding solutions that create value
ible opportunities for Canadian SMEs looking to grow and scale for everyone; and choosing the right team of people and mobiliz-
beyond our country’s borders. Thanks to ecommerce platforms ing and energizing them. It also means knowing where to push
like eBay, a small business in a remote Canadian community and where to adjust, and being relentless in moving towards the
can sell its goods to customers around the world. It’s amazing to goal. When setbacks occur, I need to help people problem-solve
witness — on a daily basis — the power of technology to enable and stay focused on the things that will drive the greatest value.
business and level the playing ield, in commerce and beyond.
What does being ‘powerful’ mean to you?
What are you most proud of? Power means you’re in a position to open doors, to inluence
I’m really proud of the life that my husband and I have built to- what people do and shape important decisions that impact peo-
gether. We have two amazing children and we both have careers ple’s lives. It’s both a privilege and a humbling responsibility.
that are challenging and meaningful. Despite the hectic nature of
our life, we have a lot of fun together as a family. While I’m really What is the best advice you have ever received?
proud of how far we have come, I’m super excited to see where Manage to your strengths and don’t take yourself too seriously.
this journey will take us. Those are two pieces of advice that resonate for me. My dad en-
couraged me to always be positive and believe in myself, and to
CATHERINE WOOD (MBA ’08) never feel defeated. He also taught me to build people up—to
Senior VP, Head of Online & lead with kindness and humanity at the core. And my mom was
Digital Wealth, Chief Marketing & a role model for discipline, hard work and setting high expecta-
Innovation Oicer, Aviso Wealth tions for yourself.
What is your greatest challenge How do you create value for business and society?
in your current role? We do something incredibly meaningful and important: We help
In an industry that is continuously Canadians achieve inancial well-being. Through the network
evolving and highly competitive, of professional advisors that we support and our digital wealth
success depends on being innova- services, we help people become more inancially literate, and
tive and competitive, so I would leverage their hard-earned money to become better of. We
say the greatest challenge is to at- also strive to create a great place to work, with a diverse team of

“As a leader, understanding what you lack isn’t
a sign of weakness; it’s a strength.”
people that values doing the right thing for our partners and to diagnose what truly needs to be done amidst all the noise and
clients. I think good companies take responsibility for all the getting to the root of the issue has helped me and my team take
impacts of their activities and look to connect their solutions to calculated risks and come up with solutions.
challenges facing society — which is why I’m so proud that our
company is a leader in providing responsible investing solutions. What does being ‘powerful’ mean to you?
No matter what I have accomplished in my career, I couldn’t
What are you most proud of? have done it without my family and extended support system. My
Our team. I’m proud of how we’ve grown and created value for parents, like many new immigrants, came to Canada for a bet-
our business and for society. In the beginning, we were a scrap- ter life. They were never afraid of hard work and taught me the
py little online brokerage with an unbelievable team. Against all importance of humility and not taking anything for granted. For
odds, through commitment, passion, ingenuity and hard work, me, the word powerful is about creating positive change — us-
we consistently outperformed much bigger competitors. We con- ing your inluence to support the next generation and being part
tinually earned the right to build our digital capabilities, and add of an extended network that helps them succeed and leaves an
products and services to provide an increasingly comprehensive organization in good hands long after you’re gone.
wealth ofering. Today we are an industry leader that has inlu-
enced the agenda of wealth management — especially digital What is the best advice you ever received?
wealth — in Canada. Knowing where you’re headed is important, but so is recogniz-
ing that the journey is rarely a straight line. When something
VENI IOZZO changes or there is a shift, view it as a chance to pause and see if
Executive Vice-President, Com- you need to adjust your approach or goals.
munications & Public Afairs,
CIBC Graduate of Rotman/ICD How do you create value for business and society?
Directors Education Program CIBC supports economic growth and prosperity in many ways,
but chief among them is by creating employment opportunities,
What is your greatest challenge supporting businesses big and small and enabling our clients to
in your current role? reach their inancial goals. We are irmly intertwined with and
CIBC announced last year that committed to the inancial success of more than 11 million cli-
we’re moving 14,000 of our team ents. We also invest in social issues that matter. In 2017, CIBC
members to a new global head- invested more than $70 million in community organizations
quarters called CIBC Square. In addition to my current role, I across Canada and the U.S., including our longstanding commit-
was asked to take on accountability for the transition to CIBC ment to the CIBC Run for the Cure and supporting those living
Square as well as our Global Workplace Transformation. The op- with cancer. Our value goes well beyond our corporate invest-
portunity is to make this less about the new building and more ments: Our bank is made up of 45,000 people who are the heart
about further entrenching our client-focused culture. It’s an of the bank and the face of CIBC to our clients. Thousands of our
amazing opportunity. team members volunteer in their communities, fundraise and
focus on serving our clients every day.
Describe the unique combination of skills that got you here.
I’ve built my career by taking lateral roles that helped me learn What are you most proud of?
about a variety of disciplines, tested my ability to adapt and I had a lot of help along the way, so for me, it’s about paying it for-
helped me grow my skillset. As I’ve taken on more responsibility ward. I’m particularly proud when I see someone I’ve supported
and larger teams, I’ve been keenly aware of the importance of get an opportunity to tackle a new challenge, get promoted or
hiring to lesh out my own gaps. As a leader, understanding what generally do great things. Over my career, I’ve worked to ensure
you lack isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a strength. From there, you that people are empowered and supported. It’s very rewarding
can create high-performing teams. It’s also important to know when everything comes full circle and you have played a small
when to jump in and go deep when problems come up. Being able part in helping the next generation reach their potential.
“Seize the opportunity when it arises—
not when you think you’re ready for it.”
CLAIRE KENNEDY What is the best advice you ever received ?

Partner, Corporate Tax & Trans- Seize the opportunity when it arises — not when you think you’re
fer Pricing Lawyer, Bennet ready for it. If it’s an interesting and rewarding assignment, it’s
Jones Graduate of the Rotman/ probably a stretch assignment. Go for it. If you don’t get a queasy
ICD Directors Education Program feeling from time to time, you’re probably not pushing yourself
hard enough.
In your current role, what is your
greatest challenge?
If there is one constant today, it is
change. The legal marketplace is OTHER ROTMAN GRADS ON THE MOST POWERFUL LIST
adapting as AI and other technol-
ogies change the way we deliver services and the expectations Karen Adams, President and CEO, Fundserv (Alumnae of
of our clients, whose businesses are also being afected by tech- The Judy Project)
nology. A key challenge is to see the opportunities amidst the
disruption and hone our business model to ensure we are deliver- Carol Banducci (BCom ’82), Executive Vice President and
ing the highest value possible to our clients. CFO, IAMGold Corporation
Describe the unique combination of skills that got you here. Valerie Mann, Partner, Lawson Lundell LLP (Alumnae of
Being an engineer has been a great help in my legal career. En- Rotman/ICD Directors Education Program)
gineers approach issues with an analytical mindset and aim to
solve problems within a set of constraints, whether they are the Sandy McIntosh, Executive VP, People and Culture and
laws of thermodynamics or a federal statute like the Income Tax CHRO, Telus (Alumnae of The Judy Project)
Act. I use the skills I learned as an undergraduate Engineering
student every day as a lawyer. My engineering and law skills also Kathleen O’Neill (BCom ’75), Corporate Director, Ontario
help me bring value to boards. Having both governance exper- Teachers’ Pension Fund, ARC Resources, Finning Interna-
tise and domain expertise makes me a good it. Being on a vari- tional, Invesco Canada (Alumnae of Rotman/ICD Directors
ety of boards — regulatory, corporate, industry association and Education Program)
academia — helps me do everything I do better. It give me an
even broader perspective on what my clients are facing. Sherry Peister, Board Chair, Green Shield Canada and The
Green Shield Canada Foundation (Alumnae of Rotman/
What does being ‘powerful’ mean to you? ICD Directors Education Program)
Being powerful means having inluence to improve outcomes
for people and organizations I believe in. Jennifer Reynolds, President and CEO, Toronto Financial
Services Alliance (Alumnae of Rotman/ICD Directors Edu-
How does your company create value for business and so- cation Program)
ciety?
We help clients solve some of their most complex business prob- Kim Shannon (MBA ’93), President and Co-CIO, Sionna
lems, which means synthesizing legal expertise and business Investment Managers
acumen. We do this in a collegial environment where we un-
derstand our clients as well as the larger business environment Kim Van Der Son (MBA ’86), Managing Partner, Global
in which they operate. Being a successful business gives us the Board Practice, Egon Zehnder
platform to create value in society that we otherwise wouldn’t
have. We are able to support worthy causes, help lead volunteer WXN [Women’s Executive Network] creates and delivers inno-
initiatives and advocate for change. Personally, I was able to far vative networking, mentoring, professional and personal devel-
exceed my fundraising goal for the True Patriot Love (TPL) ex- opment to inform, inspire, connect and recognize women and
pedition to climb Vinson Massif in Antarctica thanks to the gen- their organizations in the pursuit of excellence. The Network
erosity of my colleagues. TPL is a national charity that supports enables its Partners and Corporate Members to become employers
military families and funds community-based programs, and my of choice and leaders in the advancement of talented women.
work with them is ongoing.

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0,7605·V)URQWLHUVLQLWLDWLYH helps executives envision and prepare themselves for the future
craft of management, particularly as it is being shaped by digital innovation.
How will you and your organization contend with and prosper from continual advances in cognitive technology?
Are you ready for the concept of software algorithms as colleagues or even managers? What should leaders be
thinking about as they consider the impact of technological innovation on humans and humanity?
READ ABOUT PDQDJHPHQW·VQHZGLJLWDODJHQGDLQHYHU\LVVXH·V)URQWLHUVVHFWLRQ

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90 MORTEN HANSEN how top performers achieve more
94 MAJA DJIKIC the path to mindfulness
98 JESSE SOSTRIN on measuring success
101 JODY FOSTER on dealing with the ‘Schmuck’ in your office
104 ROGER MARTIN on the big lies of strategy
107 NANCY ROTHBARD on two types of workoholics
110 A.M. McGAHAN + M. LEUNG on stakeholder-centric design
113 RONALD A. WARREN the drivers and derailers of great leadership
117 MARGARITA MAYO on authentic leadership
120 INGO RAUTH how to design your life
123 D. SOMAN + K. LY on the growing market for self control
126 RYAN JACOBY how to lead innovation teams
130 ANNIE MCKEE how to be happy at work

QUESTIONS FOR Morten Hansen, Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
In the workplace, most people believe that by taking on

more, they will accomplish more—but your research in-
dicates otherwise. Please explain.
We studied 5,000 managers and employees—across corpo-
rate America, seeking to answer a fundamental question:
Why do top performers perform better in their job than oth-
ers? What we found surprised us: The top performers across
A UC Berkeley Professor organizations actually worked less hours. We identiied seven
and author describes characteristics of their approach to work, and they all relate
to being highly selective as to what they engage in.
the route to greatness Top performers very carefully select assignments,
at work. tasks, projects and collaborative activities, and as a result,
they do a fewer total number of things, but they totally obsess
Interview by Karen Christensen about doing an amazing job on the things they do focus on.
They go all in and provide targeted, intense efort to excel in
a few chosen areas.
Instead of adding projects to their plate, these people
subtract projects; and instead of saying Yes to all new en-
gagements, they often say No. The fact is, ‘doing more’ does
not lead to better performance. We need to embrace a ‘do
less, but do it better’ paradigm.

One of the most important professional skills
today is the ability to say No.
What does this approach look like in practice? means you are going to have to learn how to say No.
It can take many forms, depending on your line of work. For From a management point of view, this should actually
the salesperson at Nordstrom, it means calling ive other be welcomed news. If your people are saying No to you be-
stores to ind the exact size and colour of the sweater a cus- cause they want to focus on delivering amazing results, that
tomer wants, having the item delivered to the customer’s is something you should want to encourage. When a strong
home and then calling afterwards to ask how it it. For a real performer pushes back, it is usually for the right reasons.
estate agent, it means spending an hour poring through 100 Pushing back in an appropriate way entails communi-
photos of the house she is listing, looking for the best 10 im- cating why you are saying No: It’s not that you don’t want
ages to feature on her company’s website. For the elementa- to do the work, that you aren’t a team player or that you’re a
ry school teacher, it means preparing for the next day’s class slacker. You should make it clear that you are saying No be-
by rehearsing the lesson plan one more time, even though cause you really want to focus on the things that matter most
he has taught the class for 20 years. These are people who in terms of your contribution to the organization — and that
strive to produce work of exceptional quality, and stellar cannot happen if you are spread too thin.
quality requires both prolonged efort and a fanatic atten- If your boss comes to you and says, ‘I know you’re work-
tion to detail. ing on these two projects; could you add a third?’, the appro-
priate response is, ‘I can’t do all three of these at the same
What does it look like when someone is ‘spread too thin’ time and do them all exceptionally well; which two are the
at work? most important?’ That puts the burden back on the boss to
One red lag that someone has too much on their plate is that prioritize, which is totally fair because that is the job of a
the quality of their work sufers. Maybe they’re not as pre- manager.
pared as they should be for an important meeting; their Pow-
erPoint presentations aren’t what they used to be; or they Experts advise us to tear down ‘silos’ and collaborate
are delaying things and missing deadlines. You see these whenever it is humanly possible. Again, your research in-
people working hard every day, coming in on time and look- dicates that this is not always the best approach.
ing stressed out whenever you see them. These are warning By believing that more collaboration is always better, we are
signals. As a manager, if you see this you need to say, ‘Wait actually creating an opposite problem: over-collaboration.
a minute: How is it that this employee is putting in all this In many cases we are collaborating just for the sake of col-
efort, and yet his work is mediocre at best?’ Of course, there laborating, and this leads to over-extended organizations
might be a skills gap that needs to be addressed, but that where everyone is so busy going to meetings and working
aside, these are signs that someone is spread too thin — and on multiple initiatives that there is too little focus on the
the responsibility for speaking up about it is shared by the most important tasks.
employee and the manager.
You have found that there are two particular ‘sins’ of col-
When does it make sense to say No to your boss? laboration. Please describe them.
I truly believe that one of the most important profession- The irst sin is ‘under-collaboration’, where we truly do have
al skills today is the ability to say No. If you believe in the too many silos and people are not talking to each other at
premise that hyper-focus and ‘going all in’ on a few select all. In a hospital, for example, you might have seven or eight
things will lead to the best results for your organization, that diferent departments failing to coordinate care around
By believing that ‘more collaboration is always better’,
we are creating an opposite problem: over-collaboration.
Seven Practices for Being Great at Work
1. Select a tiny set of priorities

and make a huge effort in those
chosen areas.
2. Redesign your work by focusing you are collaborating in each case, and to collaborating only
on creating value, not just reaching
MASTERING when a business case exists. Top performers say No to all the
pre-set goals.
YOUR OWN rest — and that requires discipline.
WORK 3. Eschew mindless repetition
in favour of better skills practice With all the teamwork required today, there are more
(‘quality learning’). meetings than ever. But multiple studies indicate that
people are really unhappy with meetings. Why is that?
4. Seek roles that match your passion We all need to get better at both running meetings and par-
with a strong sense of purpose.
ticipating in them. In a Microsoft survey, 69 per cent of
people said their meetings were not productive, and a Har-
5. Shrewdly deploy influence and ris poll showed that almost half of respondents would prefer
inspirational tactics to gain the to do almost anything but sit in a status meeting — includ-
support of others. ing watching paint dry (17 per cent) and having a root canal
(eight per cent).
MASTERING 6. Cut back on wasteful team meetings Meetings should be for one thing only: debate and rig-
WORKING and make sure the ones you do run
WITH OTHERS orous discussion. If all you are doing is getting status up-
and attend spark vigorous debate.
dates or sharing information, you can put that in an e-mail.
7. Carefully pick which cross-unit You don’t need to assemble 10 people in a room for an hour.
projects to get involved in, and say Managers really have to think about the hard costs of doing
No to less-productive collaborations. that. Even when a rigorous debate is justiied, we found that
a lot of people are not very good at holding productive dis-
cussions. That’s where our idea of ‘ight and unite’ comes in.
When you strive for consensus, it’s often because you don’t
want to rock the boat and you want everyone to agree — but
that is not always the best thing. The ‘ighting’ part means
having heated, rigorous debates that allow the best ideas to
chronically-ill patients. Of course, that is a terrible way to emerge, enable often-unheard voices to come through and
practice medicine. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the assumptions and biases to be scrutinized. Every organiza-
second sin is over-collaboration, whereby, as indicated, too tion needs more ‘good ights’.
many people collaborate on too many things without any Of course, this is not the only important thing, because
clear focus on what is truly valuable. you can’t get stuck in an endless cycle of debate. As a leader,
The top performers we studied embrace what we call you also need to foster unity. You need to orchestrate the
‘disciplined collaboration’ — neither too much nor too little. debate, ask non-leading questions, ensure that everyone
That means having a very clear business case around why has a voice — then come to a decision and have people

unite behind it. Sometimes that will mean committing to work/life metrics.
an idea that you utterly disagree with; it can also mean con- The bottom line is, if you can apply the seven practices
fronting prima donnas who monopolize meeting time and and work smarter, not harder, to increase your performance,
silence the introverts in the group, and putting an end to you will also have a better work/life balance, a lower chance
oice politics that get in the way of good decisions. of burnout and better job satisfaction. Our research proves
that it is possible to have both: great work performance and
For people who want to redesign their work to follow a great life.
these principles, what are the first steps?
I would advise people to consider the seven practices care-
fully and think about where they are strong personally, and
where their team is strong. That will make it clear where
you need to improve. For example, you might note that your
team is not very good at deciding, so you can ‘zoom in’ on
getting better at that irst. As indicated, we found that to
improve performance, you can’t work on too many things at
once. You need to pick a skill or area and home in on it. I call
it ‘ The Power of One’: Take on one thing at a time and focus
on becoming the very best at that thing. Only once you start
to see signiicant improvement can you move on to the next
priority. When you want to improve — individually or as a
team — do not try to do too many things at the same time.
Can we embrace the seven principles to become great

at life, too?
The conventional thinking is that if you want to be a top per-
former, you will have to sacriice your personal life, because
you’ll be in the oice 70 hours per week. But, as indicated,
the people who embrace a ‘do less’ paradigm are very selec-
tive as to what they work on — and they work fewer hours
as a result. We asked these top performers three questions: Morten Hansen is a Professor of Management at the University of
What is your own subjective experience on work/life bal- California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. He is the author of Great
at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More
ance? How are you feeling in terms of burnout? And, what
(Simon & Schuster, 2018) and the co-author (with Jim Collins) of Great
is your job satisfaction level? On all three questions, those By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck: Why Some Thrive Despite Them
who did best on the seven scales also did best on these three All (HarperBusiness, 2011).
FACULTY FOCUS Maja Djikic, Director, Rotman Self-Development Lab
Interview by Karen Christensen
Self-awareness is not standard material in MBA pro- Former Medtronic CEO Bill George has called self-aware-
grams — and yet you teach it here at Rotman. Why is it ness “the starting point for leadership”. How do you react
such an important attribute? to that statement?
When we go out into the world and try I completely agree. In leadership positions, peoples’ actions,
to solve a problem, we create a model in motivations and emotions — everything about them—is
our mind of what the problem ‘looks like’ ampliied and seeps into the organization. If you have some
— the issues involved, the context, the dysfunctional interpersonal behaviours, that is normal; we
stakeholders, etc. Most people don’t think can’t expect people in leadership positions to be perfect. The
about it much, but each of us is a sort of key is to be aware of your issues and to understand the ways
‘modeling machine’, constantly trying to make sense of the in which you are imperfect. By ‘leading yourself ’ in this way,
world and igure out what’s happening. The problem is, if you will be much more efective in leading others.
we don’t model ourselves very well, it’s like having a map and
knowing what you’re looking for, but not knowing where you How do you define mindfulness, and how does it relate to
are on the map; you’re never going to ind it. Self-awareness self-awareness?
provides a map of oneself and therefore, a more accurate Mindfulness is an attentional state in which you are accu-
map of the world that increases the likelihood that your rately gauging reality in the present moment. Being mind-
modeling of problems is efective. ful means paying full attention to what is right in front of

Self-awareness provides a map of oneself and therefore,
a more accurate map of the world.
you — rather than ruminating on the past or focusing on the an existential model, wherein we have two sets of in-
future. Self-awareness is an outcome of being mindful. The stincts. The irst is primal survival instincts. If you think
knowledge that you have about yourself — your motivations, of what primates worry about, they worry about status,
emotions and ‘how you are’ in the world is an accurate place bananas, safety and the parameters of their territory. In the
from which to interact with the world. same way, people worry about status, money and how big
their house is. This is the primal part of us. We think we’re so
Could you talk a bit about ‘perceived control’, and its role sophisticated, but money is nothing but the modern version
in achieving mindfulness? of bananas.
Perceived control is a double-edged sword. We know from The second set of instincts are around human develop-
the research that feeling like we have some control in a ment, and they are unique to humans. If you ask 50 people
situation tends to yield positive outcomes. However, this is if they would like some free money, they will all say yes. In
only the case if what you’re trying to control is yourself and that sense we are all very similar, and we can predict each
your own perceptions. Any outcome that involves anything other’s behaviour. But the second set of instincts are very
beyond ourselves has a multiplicity of inputs. The double- individual, because they involve our potential. If you put a
edged sword aspect is that people are so oriented towards seed into the ground, it is in the nature of the seed to want
achieving a particular outcome that they often try to control to fully develop into whatever it is; and if there are no huge
things that are not under their control — including other peo- obstacles, it will do so. Each of us contains a multitude of
ple and circumstances — and that can be very destructive. ‘seeds’ of potential. Some are emotional or spiritual, some
We see this in the research, where patients who have intellectual, some pertain to our career — there are all these
cancer who have a high sense of perceived control about diferent seeds inside us, pushing for development.
their own symptoms and emotional reactions tend to do The crux is this: We need to make choices as to which
much better; but if they start feeling a sense of control over seeds to water. Sometimes, in order to grow and develop
the course of the illness, that often leads to negative out- one potentiality, you have to take a hit to another one,
comes. like wealth and status. Our MBA students are wonderful
examples of this: They choose to leave behind security,
You have said that as human beings, we face a conflict safety and wealth for two years in order to grow and develop
between a survival instinct and a developmental instinct. intellectually.
Can you touch on how they afect us? Of course, once they arrive at the Rotman School,
Many of us were brought up on Maslow’s Hierarchy of a degree of competitiveness is only natural, so the pri-
Needs. I think what’s so loveable about his pyramid of needs mal part of the self is still active. When you start asking
is that it gives us a sense that if we work on the basic stuf in questions like, Am I learning fast enough? Am I going to
our lives, we can build up from there and reach a stage of have better opportunities than the person beside me? —
self-actualization. It provides hope. it’s all about comparisons, and that’s how you know you
The problem is, that’s not how the motivational sys- are in survival mode. The argument I make is that learning
tem works. I think Maslow recognized this; he started and creativity naturally belong on the developmental side.
talking about it at the end of his career, when he wrote On the survival side, the dominant emotion is fear, and we
that there is a tension between self-actualization needs don’t learn or create very well when we’re afraid. From day
and survival needs. I took that idea and developed it into to day, we are always caught between these two systems.
Self-awareness is an outcome of being mindful.
People have so completely bought into Maslow’s hierar- to the question, ‘Tell me about yourself ’. It’s a story, and we
chy that they can’t understand why they are very successful tend to forget that it’s not reality. It’s basically just one line
and have the perfect career and family — and yet they feel through many, many points of our experience. We tend to
a lack of joy. The reason is, all of their happiness is being mistake ourselves for our story, and that can be very limiting
sought on the survival side. Joy is process-based, and it’s a to our creativity.
signal that we get when we are developing, not when we’re The third part of the Self is a second piece of baggage
in survival mode. that represents everything we’ve ever experienced. We tend
It’s also helpful to know about this conlict because then to think of the past as a sort of temporal space that exists ‘out
you can proactively decide which side to choose. Whereas there’, but really, it doesn’t. The only place where the past
Maslow’s theory promises the possibility of reaching the top, exist is in the body. This is our experiential self.
providing hope for the future, this more existential model is So we have these three parts, the conscious mind, our
hopeful immediately. You can achieve self actualization right story of the self and our experience as it’s coded in the body.
away — not once you get the perfect job, the right spouse, or Based on their interaction, we end up either being a congru-
you have achieved something particular. ent, creative self — or not. The issue is, until recently our
perceptions and our learning have evolved for a very stable
Is there always a conflict between these two systems? environment, so that when we learned something once,
Actually, there is very small number of people who hit what we could repeat it and our children could repeat it for hun-
I call the motivational jackpot. These people choose to focus dreds of years. We don’t live like that anymore, which is why
on their development side, and it ends up being a great suc- creativity is so important today.
cess. There is no fear of not surviving. Say you start a busi-
ness because you love it, and it ends up doing very well; or Why is perceiving reality in an accurate way a prerequi-
you choose a partner because you love them and it becomes site for creativity?
a great relationship. The trick is to have the courage to pick Most of us think of creativity as a special quality that only
that side, when you really don’t know how it will turn out. certain people have, but in fact, creativity is just an adaptive
You can either choose to do things that you love or you can response to a reality that is continually changing. If we see a
choose things out of fear. The beneit of choosing things that problem accurately, the solution to it will come much more
are good for your development is that it might actually turn easily. The problem is, our own narrative and experiences
out really well — whereas if you remain on the primal/surviv- are projected onto the ‘screen’ of reality. The weight of the
al side, you can be happy about your outcomes, but it really experiential self is such that it will keep bringing up ideas
does nothing to help you reach fulillment. from the past. If we can loosen the efect that our experi-
ence and our learning have on us, and loosen the narratives
Tell us about your Weary Voyager Model. we hold about ourselves, diferent kinds of thoughts will
This is my model of self, and it’s a visual metaphor (see Fig- come to us.
ure One). Instead of thinking of our Self as one thing, I ar- My mentor, [Harvard Professor] Ellen Langer did a
gue that it is actually three things. The head in this model study in which she presented some children with a pen and
is the continual conscious perception and awareness of the said, ‘This could be a pen’; for the other group, she said, ‘This
world. In my model, the conscious ‘I’ is carrying two pieces is a pen’. This introduced a bit of uncertainty into the cat-
of baggage. The irst is the Narrative Self. This is our answer egory that is ‘pen’. The children who were told that this could

The Weary Voyager Model
be a pen ended up using the pen much more creatively than

those who were told this is a pen. What this shows us that
the categorizations we hold so close — of ourselves, of oth- Experiential Narrative
Self-deception
self self
ers and of the world — need to be more lexible and easily let
go of. If this simple ‘letting go’ of categorizations opens up
creativity with a simple object like a pen — imagine what it
can do for a complex problem?
As you have indicated, one way to improve our creativity

is to cultivate accurate perceptions of the self and the
world. What’s a good way to get started?
Observation. Particularly, observation of one’s behaviours
and emotions when things happen that we don’t expect. FIGURE ONE
The next time you have an emotional response that you do
not understand, become more observant and tolerant of
it. Usually when we have an uncomfortable experience it’s
because we expected something else would happen. If we
learn to have tolerance, patience and to observe these states,
they can tell us about the ‘bits’ that we are missing — bits of
reality that we are not paying attention to. Uncomfortable
situations can be some of the best learning experiences of
our lives.
Secondly, I often ask people how comfortable they
are with silence in their own mind. When you’re not think-
ing about anything — not listening to anything, not reading
or studying or whatever — what is that experience like for
you? Most people don’t have very positive experience with
silence, but it is extremely important, because creative
thought can only emerge into a silent mind. This is why
people have so many creative ideas when they are taking a
shower or before going to sleep.
If you have an uncomfortable relationship with si-
lence, there is going to be nowhere for creative thoughts to
emerge. You’re going to keep illing up the silence by snack-
ing on news and music to cover it up. My advice is, cultivate
uncomfortable moments. Understand what they are for you
and what they make you feel. Maja Djikic is an Associate Professor, Faculty-at-Large and Director
of the Self-Development Lab at the Rotman School of Management.
QUESTIONS FOR Jesse Sostrin, Leadership Expert, PricewaterhouseCoopers
In your work with senior leaders you have found that suc-
cess often leaves people feeling empty. Why is that?
In many cases, what people thought was a ‘meaningful pur-
pose’ was merely their pursuit of success — and these are
An author and PwC two very diferent things. Once we reach a career milestone,
leadership expert the gap between what we expect to feel and what we actually
feel can come as a surprise. Emerging leaders often make
explains why success basic assumptions early in their careers about what is driv-
leaves so many people ing them, but these drivers aren’t well deined and they are
often prescriptive in nature: ‘land that job’; ‘snag a promo-
feeling empty — and what to do tion’; ‘make a name for myself ’, etc. As a result, milestones
about it. achieved along the way — which you assumed would be in-
trinsically valuable and personally motivating — turn out to
Interview by Karen Christensen be empty successes.
The role of purpose in organizational life is receiving a
lot more attention these days, and for good reason. Whether
it’s from an enterprise-wide perspective or from an individ-
ual vantage point, aligning values and purpose to create results

A focus on external achievements alone tends
to leave us asking, ‘What’s next?’
with integrity is squarely on the minds of today’s leaders. are things that provide a day-to-day sense of connection
Of course, achievement still matters, but the impact of any with people and the world around you and have relevance
achievement will only be one dimensional if it is disconnect- and meaning to you. Think about some of the routine events
ed from a personally-relevant reason as to why it matters. A that are meaningful to you, such as devoting time to things
focus on external achievements alone tends to leave us ask- you enjoy and making a positive diference for others.
ing, ‘What’s next?’ In my case, I feel totally renewed when I am able to get
out into nature and go for a run on a trail or along the coast.
What is involved in separating meaning from achieve- That is one thing that achieves my little-p purpose on a regu-
ment, and why is it important to do that? lar basis. It doesn’t set my life on a new course, but it allows
Our focus on external achievements can distract us from the me to connect with something meaningful.
day-to-day experiences that could provide us with a deeper
sense of meaning. When we narrowly deine meaning or For readers who don’t know how to articulate their pur-
purpose as a singular ‘thing’ to pursue, it becomes separate pose, what is your advice?
from us, and we alienate ourselves from the everyday expe- This may sound counterintuitive, but one of the most efec-
riences that can deliver the very meaning we seek. tive ways to start is to stop reading, listening to podcasts,
I advise people to write down the ‘thing’ that they’re and looking for answers from external sources. Instead, look
pursuing. What exactly is it? Then, ask yourself, ‘Why do I within. Nobody else can deine your purpose for you. You
care? What is meaningful about that?’ This will enable you must do it for yourself.
to tease out your motivations — and possibly realign them. If First, select the scale you want to focus on. If it’s little
you focus only on the external side of things, achievements p’s, try a simple thought experiment. On the right-hand side
will elevate you, but they won’t necessarily evolve you. of a sheet of paper, have a column called ‘Achievements’ and
There’s a big diference between the two. on the left, ‘Meaningful Experiences’. Start listing items on
the right-hand side irst, including the important accom-
What is the diference between ‘big P’ and ‘little p’ pur- plishments, milestones, and tangible achievements that are
pose? important to you in both the short and long term. Once that
It’s useful to think about purpose in two dimensions. The column is complete, consider what is personally meaningful
irst is that over-arching orientation to what matters most — to you about each achievement, and document that on the
I call it (big P) Purpose. The other is a smaller, more speciic left-hand side.
connection to everyday experiences that are meaningful in If it’s big-P purpose that you want to focus on, I sug-
some way, and I refer to that as (little p) purpose. gest committing to a question. Not a simple question to be
As a leadership coach, I am constantly working with answered through some analytical process, but a deeper
people who feel pressured to have their big P purpose de- question that is intended to provoke your relection and in-
ined — that epiphany that ‘gets you up in the morning’ and ner debate. For example: In my life and work, what is the one
has the gravitas to build your life around it. Those are won- thing I can’t go without and why does that matter? Whether it’s
derful when they happen, but if that’s all you’re trying to pur- this kind of ‘bottom line’ question or another one, write it
sue, you will miss out on a lot of little-p opportunities. These down and look at it from diferent perspectives. Set it aside,
You can’t be true to yourself if you don’t know what you care about.
and then return to it to see how your thinking evolves. Deep you strengthen your integrity, and that translates into a more
personal relection and meaning-making are essential ele- consistent, authentic expression of who you are in the mo-
ments of moving closer to your purpose. ments that matter. It also gives people a reason to follow you.
If you’ve never clariied your values — or if you haven’t
What is the role of self-awareness in all of this? refreshed them lately — try this simple exercise: Write down
If you can be a student of your own experience and selec- the ive to 10 words or phrases that relect the internal cares,
tively apply what you learn to future situations, you will concerns and priorities that drive you in life. I recommend
exponentially raise the ‘ceiling’ of your potential impact. creating a irst draft, taking some time to relect, and then
Without this, we tend to develop blindspots and avoidance writing a second draft to validate that the list is really your
zones that make us inlexible and less likely to notice and truth, and not what others expect or value.
act upon areas of potential growth. But, with transparency You may ind a few of your top values are pretty univer-
and a growth mindset, you can learn from anyone, any- sal — for example, honesty, transparency and integrity. How-
where, anytime — which is the path to great leadership. For ever, you may ind that this process leads to novel concepts
me, self-awareness is the glue that holds all of this together. and simple-but-powerful principles such as making a mean-
It is a critical diferentiator between leaders who are efec- ingful contribution to others; doing my best work, every time;
tive in a particular environment and leaders who are efec- or making someone’s day a little bit better. There is no right
tive in any situation. or wrong answer. In the end, the real measure of success is
the clarity you have around what matters to you, as well as
What does it look like when a person is able to ‘curate’ the capacity to express those things in all of your tasks and
their attributes, skills and capabilities? relationships.
It looks a lot like curiosity in motion, and self awareness is
the key to achieving it. For example, you might notice that
some people linger around after a meeting for ive or ten
minutes longer, because they want to follow up with people,
ask questions and make connections. And when there are
opportunities for self-directed learning, such as new train-
ing or certiication, their hand is the irst to go up, because
that curiosity and willingness to invest is part of their path
to becoming more capable. These people don’t wait for per-
mission to grow and they don’t need to be told; they natu-
rally look for ways to go beyond the job description and keep
themselves relevant.
Talk a bit about how our personal values provide a

framework for finding our authentic leadership voice.
You can’t be true to yourself if you don’t know what you care Dr. Jesse Sostrin is a Director in the U.S. Leadership Coaching
Centre of Excellence at PricewaterhouseCoopers and an adjunct faculty
about. The way a leader communicates and interacts with
member at California Polytechnic University’s College of Business.
others is the evidence of what matters to him or her. By in- He is the author of The Manager’s Dilemma (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
creasing the alignment between your values and behaviours, and Beyond the Job Description (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

QUESTIONS FOR Dr. Jody Foster, Psychiatrist, University of Pennsylvania
No one wants to experience disruptive behaviour at

work, and the vast majority of people don’t want to cause
it. So why is it so pervasive?
I think it’s ubiquitous because conlict comes in a million
shapes and sizes, and whenever you put two or more people
together, you have an opportunity for conlict. Each of us
moves through the world diferently and behaves in what-
ever ways are most comfortable. Sometimes, we just don’t
mix well, and this gets particularly accentuated under stress.
A leading psychiatrist Talk a bit about the diference between personality traits
describes some of and personality disorders.
A personality disorder is a series of traits and symptoms that
the different types of interfere with an individual’s social or occupational func-
‘schmucks’ that inhabit tioning. We don’t actually see many severe personality dis-
orders in the workplace, because in general, the disorders in-
organizations. terfere too much with the individual’s overall performance.
Personality traits are what we see all the time, and these are
all the things that make us ‘us’. Each of us has a diferent col-
lection of traits, and some are more lexible than others.
As to whether a particular trait is a problem, it is often
about where we place ourselves. If I have a series of traits
that work perfectly well in one setting, and then I expose
myself to another setting where my way of navigating the
When presented with their disruptive behaviour, an overwhelming
number of people will simply stop doing it.
world is unacceptable, I am likely going to be considered dis- fear being abandoned above all else. So, they will test you by
ruptive. If you take certain personality traits to an extreme in doing things to make themselves so unappealing that they
these settings, they can look a lot like disorders. actually make you want to abandon them. The best way to
deal with them is to not allow yourself to get caught up in
Tell us about the diferent types of drama kings and their drama, and to create clear boundaries in your interac-
queens that we run into at work. tions with them. You need to limit their ability to suck up
I have arranged the types of people who get into interper- your time and energy.
sonal trouble at work into clusters, and this is what I call the With Narcissists, on the one hand they’ve been told by
seductive cluster. In general, these people are very charis- their parents that they are amazing and they can do any-
matic and appealing. Initially, you believe that they can take thing; but inside, they don’t believe it .There is therefore
you where they say they’re going to take you, but then things this dichotomy of manifested high self-esteem with an ac-
fall of the rails. There are three types within this cluster. The tual core of very low self-esteem. If you have a Narcissistic
irst is Narcissus. This is someone whose basic healthy nar- colleague or boss, they’re always worrying that you will ig-
cissism has gone too far — to the point where they act en- ure out that they really aren’t as great as they’re trying to put
titled, self-centred, condescending and attention-seeking. forth. The best approach is to treat them with kindness and
This is a very common personality type. compliment them whenever you have a chance. This will
The second type is the Venus Flytrap, and they can cause help them feel safe and think, ‘Oh good, this person isn’t
a lot of chaos. These people are seductive and appealing up trying to burst my bubble.’ This will make them less defen-
front; but they are emotionally unstable, and after they draw sive — and easier to get along with. These are very fragile
you in with their intensity, they will eventually chew you up egos, so anything you can do to preserve their ego is going
and spit you out. At irst, they place you on a pedestal and to be helpful.
you are lattered, but you can pretty much guarantee that in Where the Swindler is concerned, my advice is that if
time, they will knock you of of it. and when you smell a rat, don’t ignore it. If you’re interview-
The third type in this cluster is the Swindler, and they ing someone and something seems of, or too good to be
range from the guy who consistently cuts corners, isn’t trust- true, do your due diligence. And if you’re aware that you’re
worthy and doesn’t follow through on promises, all the way working with a Swindler, the best thing to do is try to igure
up to people who embezzle funds from companies or get in- out how to move them out of your sphere.
volved in organized crime — or worse. These are the people
you read about when you pick up the paper and see a story Apparently, Bean Counters aren’t only found in the Ac-
about someone who was a successful trader on Wall Street counting Department. Describe this type.
but got caught embezzling millions of dollars. In general, It is great to be detail-orientated and to cross your t’s and dot
people really like Swindlers at irst, and they feel completely your i’s. Everyone wants to do things right, but with these
betrayed when they learn about what they’ve been up to. individuals, there is an almost irrational efort to control
their environment. They frequently pursue jobs in medi-
What are some efective ways to deal with these people? cine, law, engineering, accounting, computer programming
The best way to get along with these personality types is to or other rule-based ields where they can feel in control of
make an efort to understand the anxiety that is driving their the algorithms. They tend to micro-manage everyone else’s
behaviour. Venus Flytraps, for instance, feel unlovable and work and think that they are the only ones who can do things

properly. They will make you correct your work repeatedly for months or years. By the time people call me, they are so
— and even then, they might crumple it up and do it them- angry with these people for acting this way. Yet I ind out that
selves. they never bothered to stop and say, ‘Hey. You’re doing this,
It’s important to keep in mind that these are very anx- and it’s a problem. Please stop.’ It’s really unfair not to tell
ious people who have an incredible fear of losing control of people and give them a chance to correct their behaviour.
themselves or their environment, so they attempt to overlay
artiicial rules and laws upon life. Of course, we can’t do that, What is your advice for readers who fear that they might
because ‘life happens’ — but they try so hard to control what- be the schmuck in their oice?
ever they can control that it ends up being torture to work The fact is, it’s pretty diicult to get through an entire career
for them. without being considered a schmuck on a few occasions.
You can’t just walk in and say to this person, ‘Hey, Like I said, we are all diferent, and whenever you put people
you’re being totally obsessive. Stop it,’ because that’s going together you have an opportunity for conlict. But if some-
to cause even more trouble. Instead, help them see that you, one clariies for you that you are indeed a schmuck, or if you
too, can do a great job and be careful. Appreciate their dedi- get an inkling of it, it’s really important not to freak out. In-
cation, but also emphasize your own, so they will consider stead, view it as an insight and a gift, and start on a path to-
trusting you. Be careful though: If you promise more than wards self-improvement.
you can deliver, the Bean Counter will never trust you again. We all want to do better. We all have good intentions.
And if somebody has allowed you to see your problem areas,
One study found that 60 per cent of doctors eliminated you have basically been given a roadmap of what you need
their pattern of disruptive behaviour after it was simply to work on. If you embrace the challenge, it will make you a
pointed out to them. What does this tell us? better colleague, leader and human being.
Actually, it’s somewhere between 60 and 80 per cent. When
they are presented with their disruptive behaviour, an over-
whelming number of people will simply stop doing it. This
gets back to what I said at the beginning, which is that peo-
ple don’t wake up in the morning and set out to disrupt the
workplace. It’s just that we behave in ways that indicate how
we’ve learned to navigate the world. If we ind out that our
behaviour is causing trouble, in general, most people are
appalled. They will say, ‘Oh no, I had no idea I was upset-
ting you!’ And they stop. Or, they might say, ‘This is the only
way I know how to be’, and in those cases, it could be that
they’re not in the right culture or that they need help with Jody Foster, M.D., MBA, is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in
some tools to make change. As indicated, there is usually no the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania,
malice there. Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Pennsylvania Hospital, and
Vice Chair for Clinical Operations in the Department of Psychiatry
Unfortunately, it is so uncomfortable to confront peo-
at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. She is the author
ple with their behaviour that in most cases we don’t say any- of The Schmuck in my Office: How to Deal Efectively with Difficult People
thing — or we talk to other people about it, which can go on at Work (St. Martin’s Press, 2017).
FACULTY FOCUS Roger Martin, Rotman School of Management
THOSE WHO KNOW ME WELL know that I have thing very important: Some of these items are completely
a love/hate relationship with all things within the company’s control, while others are not — at all.
strategic. On the one hand, I hate ‘stra- Expenses are completely within a company’s control. A
tegic planning’ and traditional strategic irm can decide exactly how much in the way of raw materi-
plans; but on the other, I absolutely love als to purchase, how many people to hire, how many square
strategy. At heart, I’m a ‘strategy guy’, but feet of oice space or manufacturing space they need; all of
the practices involved in strategic planning leave me cold those are completely within the company’s control, so you
— and the reason is, the typical strategic plan isn’t terribly can actually plan for these things. On the other hand, sales
useful. targets are entirely dependent upon customers. You can
Most strategic plans have three sections. The irst is hope for future sales. You can say, ‘We want to hit one bil-
some lofty vision or mission statement, and the middle lion dollars in sales this year’, or $10 billion — as much as
section tends to be a list of initiatives: ‘Here are a bunch of you want; but that is not going to make it happen.
things we’re going to do’. Sometimes that’s good, because it The problem is, these ‘two sides’ of the income state-
is action-orientated, but if you look at most strategic plans — ment are treated similarly, as if we can plan for sales and ex-
at least the ones I’ve seen — you can almost see how the list penses in the same way. But in reality, you can’t. Sales will
of initiatives came to be. There is a little bit in there for mar- come from making choices that compel customers to want
keting and a little bit for manufacturing and a little bit for to buy your products. Yet we never see any mention of that
inance; it is basically a list of compromises that were made in any strategic plan.
by a bunch of people sitting around a table saying, ‘We want The last thing I’m not nuts about is the popularity
to do this’, and ‘We want to do that’. Then lastly, there are of a couple of self-referential frameworks for ‘doing’ strat-
the inancials, which I often refer to as ‘a budget written in egy. One is ‘emergent strategy’. Henry Mintzberg — one of
prose’. I don’t ind any of this very helpful in terms of laying the inest management scholars of all time — came up with
out the key choices that a irm needs to make. the notion that strategy is more ‘emergent’ than we might
The second aspect of strategic planning that I’m not like to think. What he observed was that with strategy, com-
nuts about is that it is so cost-driven. If you think about a typ- panies may think that they’re going to predict and organize
ical income statement, it indicates revenues and then there the future, but often, when you look backwards, your actual
are a bunch of categories and expenses, cost of goods sold, strategy changed and shifted, based on emergent conditions
R&D and depreciation, to get your proit-before-taxes, and in the marketplace. This is a great insight.
then taxes and net proit. Because all of these categories ap- Unfortunately, some strategic planners have taken it
pear on one statement, they are implicitly thought of as ‘one to mean that ‘You shouldn’t bother planning ahead’. That
thing’. But if you break it down, you come to realize some- is not what Mintzberg meant, and it is an unhelpful view of

Waiting until ‘what to do next’ becomes crystal clear
is like waiting for Godot.
the world. What he meant is that the world will forever be their money; and if they don’t do that, you’ve got nothing.
emergent, and as a result, waiting until ‘what to do next’ be- My most important rule around the ive choices is this:
comes crystal clear is like waiting for Godot. He will never If the opposite of your choice is patently stupid, then it isn’t
show up. You have to make some choices. a valuable choice at all. For instance, if your choice is to ‘be
The second theory that causes a lot of confusion is the customer-centric’, the opposite of that would be to ‘ignore
resource-based view of the irm that is currently popular customers entirely’ — which is unquestionably stupid. All
among strategy scholars. This theory focuses on capabilities you’ve really done is made a choice to be non-stupid, and
rather than customer-driven investment. Simply put, you that is never a useful strategy choice.
identify your capabilities and say, ‘Hopefully they are valu- However, if you say, ‘We are going to deine customer
able, rare and non-substitutable, and therefore we will be service in a new way that is entirely diferent from our com-
successful’. This mindset makes it easy to think about invest- petitors, because we believe that an important segment of
ing in capabilities; but a capability is only useful to the extent customers care very much about that’ — that is a real choice.
that customers value it, and as a result, this is unhelpful. My second takeaway is that strategy is not about perfec-
It might make leaders feel very comfortable to believe tion. It is not meant to be an analytical exercise that gets you
that they can organize everything to their liking and plan for the facts, so that once you’ve analyzed ‘what is true’, you just
future revenue. It feels good to think, ‘If we build resources, have to do X and you will be successful. Strategy is about the
good things will happen’ and ‘If we have a long-term stra- future, and the future is never going to be exactly the same
tegic plan, we have a good strategy’. But in my experience, as the past. That’s why you’ve got to combine analytical
that’s not how it works. rigour with creativity to get to the best possible answer.
The irst thing to keep in mind about strategy is that it is Of course, there are still parts of the world where, as
not all that complex. You should keep it simple and always Aristotle said 2,500 years ago, ‘things cannot be other than
remember that, put simply, strategy is about choices. After they are’. In these cases, it is true that the strategist’s job
years of working closely with leaders of large corporations, is only to analyze, because things are not going to be any
I have come to the conclusion that strategy is actually about diferent next year than they are today. Water will continue
a set of ive choices that must be made: to low downhill — forever. You can make choices with cer-
tainty when they are based on things that you know to be
1. What is our winning aspiration? 100 per cent true.
2. Where will we play? However, there is a whole other part of the world where
3. How will we win? things can — and likely will be — other than they currently
4. What capabilities must be in place? are. If you look around today, many of us are attached at the
5. What management systems are required? hip to our smartphones. And yet, prior to 1999, there was no
such thing. This is a prime example of the part of the world
The very core of any strategy is the world of question #3 — where things can be other than they are, and in this part of
the ‘how to win’ choices: Where are you going to place your- the world, you cannot analyze your way to a perfect answer.
self on the playing ield, and how are you going to win there? You can’t say, ‘We have done the analysis, and we have come
Answering that question is the hardest part of strategy. up with the right answer’.
You don’t need a 100-page strategic plan. In fact, there What you can do is imagine possibilities and make
is no good reason why your strategy can’t be written on one choices that you believe to be the most compelling you can
page. No amount of number crunching and forecasting will make. Sometimes you will be right, and sometimes you
help if you don’t make these ive choices. Only by making will be wrong. That is the nature of strategy, because that is
them will customers ind themselves compelled to give you the nature of life. If you insist on perfect planning, you are
Strategy’s 5 Key Questions
What What
What is our
Where will How will capabilities management
winning
we play? we win? must be in systems are
aspiration?
place? required?
FIGURE ONE
deluding yourself into thinking that the future will be the changed oice chairs forever. Initially, when shown the
same as the past. Sadly, in my experience, this is a mistake chair, people hated it. The issue was, with its mesh backing
that many companies make. and prominent adjustment knobs, it didn’t really look like a
My third takeaway principle is to always make your stra- chair. The company’s leaders realized that it was up to them
tegic logic explicit. When you are looking at a few particular to teach people to love this chair. And they did. It went on to
possibilities, rather than asking, ‘Which is most true?’, you become the best-selling oice chair in history, and that came
should ask, ‘What would have to be true about the world in from asking, ‘What would have to be true?’, and then igur-
order for this to be a great idea?’ That is how to make your ing out how to make it true.
logic explicit. So, stop aiming for perfection and creating long stra-
Analysis is all about applying facts or data to logic, and tegic documents, and focus instead on the few key choices
people often think of strategy as being mostly analytical. But you need to make. Don’t try to be perfect in a world where
when they do, they often forget about testing their underly- perfection is impossible. And ask the question, ‘What would
ing logic. The challenge is to igure out ‘What 10 things must have to be true?’ rather than ‘What is true?’. When you so
be true for this strategy to be a great one?’ Your answers these things, strategy is what it should be: simple, enjoyable
might be things like, ‘Customers will have to behave this and efective, rather than complicated, arduous and inefec-
way; the distribution channel will have to value X; competitive.
tors will have to not do Y’, etc.
Once you’ve completed this exercise, you can then
igure out which of the things that ‘have to be true’ are the
most worrisome, and igure out how to address them. How
Ranked #1 on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s most inluential man-
can you make it true that customers will value your product? agement thinkers, Roger L. Martin is the Premier’s Research Chair in
Well, you could go out and work directly with them, give Productivity and Competitiveness and Academic Director of the Martin
them more information about the beneits, gather more Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management. The former
Dean of the Rotman School (from 1998 through 2013), he is the author
data, etc.
of several best selling books, most recently, Creating Great Choices:
One of my favourite assignments ever was working with A Leader’s Guide to Integrative Thinking (Harvard Business Review Press,
Herman Miller when it launched the Aeron chair, which 2017), co-authored with Jennifer Riel.

QUESTIONS FOR Nancy Rothbard, Professor and Chair, Management Department, The Wharton School
The boundaries between work life and family life are blur-
ring for many people. Are we working more than ever—or
does it just feel like it?
I do think many people are working more than ever because
with today’s tools, they can. Communication technology
has made it possible to work from anywhere, anytime. But
even for those of us who are not actually working more, it
feels like we are. That’s because work can just ‘pop up’ at any
time of the day or night on our smartphones. This blurring
A leading Wharton of boundaries is great in some ways. For instance, it means
professor describes two that you can go to your kid’s soccer game and still be reach-
able if something arises at the oice. But it also makes us
types of workaholics and more preoccupied with our work at times when, historically,
the blurring of boundaries we have been able to completely ‘shut it of ’—and there is
evidence that this makes it more diicult for us to recover.
in modern life. It is important to understand the health consequences of
long work weeks.
You have identified two distinct types of workaholics.
Please describe them.
Workaholism is a mentality — the compulsive inner drive
to work hard. These individuals have a continuous inlux
of work demands because they often seek high-pressure
When we are in groups with people who are similar to us,
we don’t deliberate as much on decision-making.
jobs and create additional work for themselves. They stay In your most recent paper, you show that friendships in
psychologically attached to work and take little time for re- the workplace are not always a good thing. Can you high-
covery. As a result, they are likely to experience debilitating light the pros and cons for us?
stress. I did that research with my doctoral student, Julianna Pil-
My colleagues and I set out to study the efects of work- limer, and a couple of things stood out to us. I want to em-
aholism in general; but we soon realized that there are two phasize that we’re not saying friendships at work are a bad
distinct types of workaholics. The irst is ‘engaged worka- thing, per se. There are many positive beneits that derive
holics’ — self-described workaholics who love their work, from having friends at the oice. But friendship at work is
are completely engaged with it and get positive energy from complicated, for a couple of reasons.
it. These people connect with their work in a way that is Friendship relationships are voluntary, and they en-
meaningful and inspiring to them. The second group is ‘un- tail certain norms of need-based exchange. So, if you need
engaged workaholics’. These individuals feel guilty when something from me, as a friend, I’m there for you. This el-
they’re not working, which compels them to work a lot; but ement of friendships can be in tension with organizations,
unlike engaged workaholics, they do not love their work. where we have formal roles and duties that need to be per-
They derive very little joy, purpose or meaning from it. formed. At the individual level, if you’re trying to deal with a
friend in need, you can be distracted from your work. Inter-
What are some of the physical and mental health efects role conlict can also arise between the informal and formal
of being a workaholic? roles that we have; for instance, there can be tension in my
In our research we focused on the negative health efects role as a friend vs. my duty as your boss.
caused by Metabolic Syndrome, which covers a cluster of Furthermore, a lot of research shows that when we are
conditions — increased blood pressure, high blood sugar in groups with people who are similar to us — which is of-
and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels — that tend ten the case with friends — we don’t deliberate as much on
to occur together, increasing the risk of heart disease, stroke group decision-making. Maybe we don’t prepare as much
and diabetes. We found two key diferences in the health as we should for a meeting because we think it’s going to be
outcomes of engaged versus unengaged workaholics. First, easy and we’ll get through it. And in groups, we might not
even though workaholism was related to more self-reported be willing to challenge our friends — even when we should.
psychological and physical health complaints regardless of At the organizational level, friendships can lead to per-
the level of engagement, health complaints were only as- ceptions of ‘cliques’, which can inhibit knowledge sharing
sociated with actual negative health outcomes when work and make people concerned about procedural justice in an
engagement was low. organization. If I’ve got a really close friendship with some-
I want to be clear that there are people out there who one senior in the organization and people see that, they
work long hours but are not workaholics — and they do not might make the inference that I’m going to be favoured by
get any of the negative health efects that we see for worka- my friend. Social media is only amplifying some of these
holics. That was one of our key indings: it’s the individual’s tensions.
attitude towards work that predicts negative health outcomes,
rather than simply the behaviour of working long hours. For readers who are sensing they might be non-engaged
Our second key inding was that there is a ‘bufering ef- workaholics, what is your advice?
fect’ for people who are engaged workaholics. These folks One thing we found is that engaged workaholics have more
didn’t face the negative health outcomes either. Engaged social support than non-engaged workaholics, and it comes
workaholics — and engaged employees in general — report- from two sources: family and co-workers. If you feel like
ed more personal resources like better time management you’re not engaged, one thing that is really important to do
and communication skills. They were intrinsically motivat- is to seek out more support, both at work and at home. Also,
ed in their jobs. The non-engaged workaholics fared worse try to rethink what your job looks like and why you are not
on all of those factors. engaged in it. Is it the wrong job for you? Is the work itself

New from Rotman-UTP
Publishing
The Internet Trap

Five Costs of Living Online
by Ashesh Mukherjee
just boring? Is there a way to make it more interesting?
The Internet Trap provides a new
My colleagues Jane Dutton at the University of Michi- perspective on the dark side of
gan, Amy Wrzesniewski at Yale and others have pioneered the internet, and gives readers the
the concept of ‘job crafting’. Job crafters can alter the bound- tools to become smart users of the
aries of their jobs by taking on more or fewer tasks, expand- internet.
ing or diminishing the scope of tasks or changing how they
perform tasks. I think this concept can be a really powerful
resource in terms of taking charge of what your job looks like
and inding ways to become more engaged in it.
On a personal note, you were recently named as the Working in a Multicultural

first woman to lead the Management Department in the World
Wharton School’s history. What are your key goals? A Guide to Developing Intercultural
Competence
When you are the irst of your type in any role, it’s really im-
portant that others see you as doing the job well and giving by Luciara Nardon
it your all. That is really important to me. My second goal In Working in a Multicultural World,
is around issues of diversity. I want to make sure that we Nardon offers a comprehensive
framework for understanding
are meeting our goals in terms of both gender diversity and
intercultural interactions and
underrepresented minorities. I want to ensure that this is a developing skills for successful
great place to work for everybody. intercultural situations.
From Wall Street to Bay

Street
The Origins and Evolution of
American and Canadian Finance
by Christopher Kobrak and
Joe Martin
Why did the American banking
system experience massive losses
but the Canadian system withstood
the 2008 financial crisis? This book
traces the roots and different paths
taken by the two banking systems.
Nancy Rothbard is the David Pottruck Professor, Professor of Manage-

ment and Chair of the Management Department at the Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania. Her paper, “Beyond Nine to Five: Is Working utorontopress.com
to Excess Bad for Health?”, co-written with Lieke ten Brummelhuis and
Benjamin Uhrich, was published in Academy of Management Discoveries.
FACULTY FOCUS Anita M. McGahan and Mark Leung, Rotman School of Management
design thinking
OVER THE PAST 15 YEARS, 4. PROTOTYPE IDEAS. The team then prototypes the best
has had an explosive impact on innova- possibilities into tangible concepts. These may take the
tion and commercialization, especially form of physical models, storyboards or visualizations.
within established irms. The Rotman
School’s former Dean, Roger Martin, has 5. TEST WITH USERS. The end products of Step 4 are then
contributed mightily to these advances, tested with actual potential users. Their feedback is
notably through his book, The Design of used to iterate on the idea — and sometimes, to re-
Business. Other authors, including David frame the problem to be solved.
Kelley, founder of IDEO, have developed
and popularized the approach both in While this approach to innovation has been heralded for its
principle and in practice. efectiveness in product and service design, it has sometimes
The methods and approaches of this been criticized when applied to strategy problems. The cri-
discipline are varied, yet they generally boil down to un- tiques have come on a number of levels. One is that the kind
leashing creativity through an iterative series of steps: of blue-sky thinking involved in conceptualizing user needs
often leads the team toward ideas that are ultimately infeasi-
1. UNDERSTAND AND EMPATHIZE WITH END USERS. In a typical ble or unviable. Another critique is that the process of design
design-thinking approach, practitioners get out of the thinking can stir excitement for change, but doesn’t always
organization and into the ield to better understand lead to a roadmap for its fulillment. Yet another is that the
their customers, employing ethnographic research cross-functional working groups at the heart of the design
techniques such as user observation and open-ended thinking process don’t have the authority or ability to drive
inquiry to identify unmet needs. implementation of their ideas.
In this article, we take up themes that were irst in-
2. DEFINE THE PROBLEM(S) TO SOLVE. Armed with this prima- troduced by Roger Martin and former Procter & Gamble
ry research data, they then synthesize diferent ‘prob- CEO A.G. Lafley in their Harvard Business Review article,
lem frames’. “Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy.” In this article,
the co-authors suggest a design thinking-like approach as
3. IDEATE POSSIBILITIES. A cross-disciplinary team then a more efective process for conceptualizing and imple-
brainstorms possible solutions based on the framing in menting strategy. They begin by recognizing that strategy
Step 2. processes in organizations are often strong on the analysis

Addressing the challenge of disruptive innovation requires rethinking
the way that all stakeholders associated with the organization.
of established trends and problems, but lacking in novel As a result, addressing the challenge of disruptive inno-
hypothesis generation and experimentation. vation requires rethinking the way that all stakeholders asso-
Martin and Laley then describe how design thinking ciated with the organization — both directly and indirectly —
can be implemented most efectively: By generating and are relevant to value creation, and then assessing how value
evaluating strategic options in an efort to resolve core stra- can be allocated to each stakeholder in a way that is both fair
tegic problems in organizations. For instance, Step 1, under- and afordable.
standing users, is likely to contribute additional strategic op- The essence of our argument is that the greatest po-
tions not previously considered by the team. tential for the process of design thinking in strategy lies in
By dedicating a number of cross-functional teams to expanding beyond users to an orientation toward each of
work independently on each of several options generated in the major stakeholder groups. All too often, novel strategies
Step 3, an organization can beneit from the creativity and and user-centric ideas never get implemented because they
energy of dedicated enthusiasts working in parallel: Each fail to meet the needs of the organization and the people
team focuses on a distinct option that is designed to be in- associated with it. Hence, we see massive opportunities to
compatible with the others. A critical insight in their analy- apply design thinking at a much broader scale.
sis is the idea that, once options are generated and leshed This shift raises questions about which stakeholders are
out, the strategy process then seeks to clarify the assump- relevant to the ongoing mission of the organization — and
tions that would have to be true in order for each option to particularly, as to whether some stakeholder groups that
be robust. Thus, instead of engaging in advocacy-driven were previously involved must now be let go, while other
arguments about the various options, the process again be- groups are enfranchised. Put simply, the unit of analysis
comes primarily analytical, with each option resting on as- moves from the user to the mission of the organization, with
sumptions that can be stress-tested. Once assumptions are the strategy process grounded in the question, What will it
veriied, the strategy process concludes with a commitment take to succeed in fulilling our mission?
to a design-based option. After a comprehensive analysis of the possible answers
The Martin and Laley advances constitute a remark- to this question, the design thinking efort addresses not
able breakthrough because they demonstrate the relevance only user-based concerns, but the challenges facing every
of design thinking to the process rather than only to the sub- stakeholder group that is engaged with the organization —
stance of strategy. Blending art with science, they show that as well as those that must be engaged in the future.
organizations can beneit from both creativity and analysis. We would argue that the same kind of empathic un-
Instead of pursuing useless arguments about the ‘luiness’ derstanding that is at the heart of user-based design is
of intuitive reasoning, strategists can integrate design think- relevant for every organizational stakeholder, including
ing and analytics to achieve more than what can achieved employees, distributors, suppliers, customers and inves-
on each independent path alone. These ideas are important tors. The goal is to use the process of design thinking to
because the process that they outline overcomes the three put yourself in the shoes of each stakeholder — and to
objections that we outlined earlier: infeasibility, dead ends, think about the same questions of business value, user ex-
and lack of authority. perience, and actualization that have characterized user-
We seek to build on this success by pointing to the im- based design thinking.
portance of design thinking for addressing strategy at an- This means broadening our application of design think-
other level — one that has emerged recently as central to the ing to a more inclusive and participatory model, as follows:
ield of strategy, and that we believe will become even more
important in the near future. It is becoming abundantly clear 1. Empathize with key stakeholders and users
that a large class of strategy problems involve challenges to 2. Deine the problems to solve from multiple perspec-
the fundamental architecture of organizations. Many of tives
these problems (and solutions) are described as ‘disruptive’, 3. Ideate possibilities with key stakeholders
and are equally disruptive to the people associated with the 4. Prototype Ideas, strategies and models
organization. 5. Test with stakeholders and users
A large class of strategy problems involve challenges
to the fundamental architecture of organizations.
Although more complex, this expanded process generates linkages that were previously unarticulated — ultimately
insights not only into the options available to an organiza- lowering uncertainty and risk.”
tion, but it also addresses one of the crucial challenges of This approach lends depth to the analysis and experi-
conventional design thinking, which is the viability of the mental concepts when assessing the range of possibilities,
options available to the organization for achieving transfor- she says, and beyond the quantiiable outcomes, “the cohe-
mation. This is because empathic consideration of the needs sion people develop in a collaborative working model is a
of each stakeholder group generates an assessment of each true beneit of a stakeholder-centric approach.”
stakeholder’s next-best alternative to participation. By ana-
lyzing the results across all stakeholder groups, the strategist In closing
can then assess whether suicient value is created to com- By applying processes of design thinking across all stake-
pensate all stakeholders in ways that are fair and sustainable. holder groups relevant to the fulillment of your organiza-
Most importantly, design thinking drives a irm towards tion’s mission, the toolkit available to the strategist expands
an external orientation during crucial periods of strategiz- signiicantly. The result: A strategic outcome that is much
ing. Instead of seeking compromise on internal issues that more likely to succeed.
are often political and personal, the process stresses value
creation, with the fulillment of the enterprise’s mission
front and centre. As Laley and Martin suggest, analysis and
creativity can be integrated through iterative processes that
take the output of working groups as fodder for experiments
that generate information that can be analyzed rigorously.
Exhibit A: TELUS
TELUS is a Canadian telecommunications company that
prides itself on its customer centricity, as evidenced by its
customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics. The company’s
Service Design Innovation and Strategy Group helps its mul-
tiple product line divisions deliver an integrated and seam-
less customer experience.
‘Stakeholder-centric design’ is at the core of what Ser-
vice Design Director Judy Mellett and her group do. This
entails irst understanding the current strategy and the
needs of internal stakeholders — whether it be supply chain,
repairs or retail; then going out into the ield to observe
customers in their homes and in stores to understand their
perspective; running co-creation sessions with users and
key stakeholders to generate and test new ideas; and experi-
menting within the business to validate new strategies and
solutions.
This multi-stakeholder approach drives both internal Anita M. McGahan is the Rotman Chair in Management and Professor
buy-in and new perspectives and has led to the redesign of of Strategic Management at the Rotman School of Management,
many of the internal processes and external experiences at with cross-appointments to the Munk School of Global Afairs and
the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine. Mark Leung (Rotman
TELUS. According to Mellett, “Broad stakeholder engage-
MBA ‘06) is the Director of Rotman DesignWorks, the Business
ment not only garners diversity of input and builds advo- Design Centre at the Rotman School of Management — his expertise
cacy for resulting solutions and strategies, it also identiies is in design and innovation.

QUESTIONS FOR Ronald A. Warren, Organizational Psychologist and Creator, LMAP 360
You have attributed leaders’ personalities to some ma-

jor corporate catastrophes, including the downfall of AIG
and issues at Apple. How does this happen?
The actions and interactions between individuals have
a huge impact on outcomes in the workplace, and this is
played out every day, in every profession—sometimes with
extraordinary results and other times with disastrous re-
sults. We have found that personality style has a greater
A prominent Silicon Valley impact on leadership efectiveness than IQ or educational
psychologist describes achievement.
It’s never about one individual trait; it’s about combi-
the drivers and derailers nations of personality traits. We have identiied the 13 most
of leadership. important traits, and it is the diferent combinations of them
that can be wonderful or dangerous.
Tell us what happened at AIG.
The AIG story is consistent with what we know about ‘why
planes crash’ and ‘why medical errors occur’: In 75 per cent
of cases, it’s human error. There are breakdowns of leader-
ship, teamwork and communication that stress people and
systems — and we see the same patterns in the inancial
arena. Before the global inancial crisis hit, a guy named
People who rank high on Dominance tend to be inflexible,
self-absorbed, controlling and competitive.
Joe Cassano was overseeing AIG’s Financial Products We also identiied some behaviours that lower perfor-
group, selling hundreds of billions in credit protection in the mance, and they fall under two dimensions: Dominance and
form of CDS’s [credit default swaps]. He was a real worka- Deference. People who rank high on Dominance tend to be
holic and known to be very aggressive, stubborn and self- inlexible, self-absorbed, controlling and competitive. Some
absorbed. In our framework he would rank high on Rigidity, — like Joe Cassano — have a high degree of Hostility as well,
Hostility and Need to Control. which is the ultimate self-absorption trait and the trait most
People around Cassano could see that AIG was invest- highly correlated with low performance. When those who
ed too much in these risky mortgages, and they repeatedly rank high on Hostility see that the world isn’t behaving the way
asked him to stop. But he was convinced he was right. He they want it too, they get aggravated and blame the world.
actually berated people when they challenged him. ‘Look The second derailing dimension is Deference, which
how many people are getting houses!’, he would say; ‘Now, entails being approval-seeking, passive, avoiding conlict
even a janitor can buy a $500,000 house’ — which obviously and having a low-risk orientation. A high degree of Defer-
didn’t make much sense. ence is negatively correlated to leadership efectiveness, but
When AIG needed a bailout from the U.S. government there are positive aspects to it, too. While these individuals
— to the tune of $182 billion — it wasn’t because the entire prefer that others take the lead, they also show high levels of
company went south. Some areas of AIG were actually do- humility and loyalty.
ing well. The issue was that the head of this key division re-
fused to listen to feedback from his team and failed to recog- How prevalent are these dimensions, and how do they fit
nize the power of collective intelligence. together?
I want to be clear that this is not about being smart. All of the
Your framework groups the 13 personality traits into four people we studied in developing the framework were highly
categories or ‘dimensions’. Please describe them. intelligent. They were all program participants from either
There are two dimensions that generate high performance. Harvard Business School executive programs or Yale’s CEO
The irst is Social Intelligence and Teamwork. Traits that College. These people didn’t get to the top of their organiza-
fall under this dimension include Openness to Feedback, tions by not being too sharp. The issue is that many of them
Helpfulness and Sociability. These people value the input tended to believe that being smart was enough of a competi-
of others and have decent interpersonal skills. The second tive advantage for them — which is a common false notion,
dimension associate with high performance is Grit and Task by the way.
Mastery. This is a combination of three traits: Achievement We have found that about 75 per cent of profession-
Drive, Conscientiousness and Innovation. People who rank als have one or more derailers to contend with, and only
high on these dimensions will become bored if they don’t 20 per cent have that highly-desired ‘top-heavy’ combina-
have challenging work. At their core, they are driven to tion of high grit and high EQ, without any prominent de-
achieve and innovate. railers. These individuals are rated in the top 10 per cent of

The LMAP 360 Profile
Innovation Openness to feedback
Achievement Drive Helpfulness
Social
Conscientiousness Grit and Task Intelligence
Mastery Sociability
and Teamwork
Competitiveness Approval Seeking
Dominance Deference
Need to Control Dependence
Hostility Tension
Rigidity
FIGURE ONE
leadership due to exceptional abilities to drive projects and who he was as a person, as a personality.
results and they work well with others. Their feedback raters We juxtapose Jobs with Steve Wozniak, a classic ‘right
say things like, ‘The best boss I’ve had in my career’; ‘A real sider’. Wozniak was a high-grit guy, but also high on Def-
role model’; and ‘She really is that good and handles it all erence. He was innovative and achievement orientated
with ease and grace.’ in terms of products, but he never embraced the capitalist
model like Jobs — which in business, is pretty important.
What does it mean to have a ‘mixed efectiveness profile’? Wozniak was very deferential. His father was an engineer,
These people have prominent Grit or Social Intelligence and the mindset was that ‘engineers do great things in the
and prominent Deference and/or Dominance traits. We world, and leaders are suits — they just take advantage of
call them ‘right siders’ and ‘left siders’, and in terms of what engineers do’. He didn’t want to be in a leadership role,
leadership efectiveness, they can be described as one di- so he never confronted Jobs when he was being really domi-
mensional. They excel with either people or projects, but neering and hostile with people.
not both.
The traits on the left side of the framework are related You created the LMAP 360 assessment tool to include
to Grit and Dominance. When these are combined, you get both self-ratings and ratings from multiple colleagues.
a hard-driving conident, sometimes arrogant person with a Why was that so important?
lot of belief in themselves and poor social skills. A classic left Self-ratings are notoriously dubious, due to a range of self-
sider would be Steve Jobs. When I was developing my irst assessment biases. People overestimate their own qualities
assessment, we were invited to use it on Apple’s executive and abilities in relation to the same qualities and abilities of
team. Everyone did the assessment — except for Jobs. He re- others. For instance, the vast majority of us believe that we
fused to participate or make any efort to resolve some of the are excellent drivers and have great social skills; clearly, that
team’ and irm’s issues — many of which were a genesis of is not the case.
We’re most interested in how behaviours — whether That’s why we try to explain to people why they should care.
they be drivers or derailers — afect performance. When How is this behaviour impacting how you execute on your
I started out in the ield, I felt it was critical to know about job? We appeal to people’s insight and intellect around, ‘Hey
how other people experience you, and how it impacts job there is an upside for me in addressing this; it’s not intended
performance. I’m not saying that self-concept doesn’t mat- as punishment’. Most people are interested in improving
ter, but it isn’t anywhere near as related to outcomes and their performance, and if you’re like most people, there’s
performance. Some leaders do have insight into how their room to improve.
behaviour is perceived by others, but many do not. That’s When an entire organizational culture embraces im-
why we obtain feedback from 15 colleagues of the leader be- provement, we’ve seen it lead to a signiicant morale change.
ing assessed. The goal is not to become a master of behaviours that do not
come naturally, but to improve enough to not be working
How do you advise people to react if they get bad news from a deicit position.
from an assessment?
We don’t actually position feedback as being good or bad. How changeable are we?
Instead, we position it as ‘what is efective and what is inef- Many 20th century psychologists believed that personal-
fective.’ People go through all kinds of trials and tribulations ity was ‘hard wired’ and unchangeable. Lay people who
on their way to becoming an executive, and certain habits adopt this perspective do so to their detriment, as the belief
develop. They don’t make you a good or bad person — but provides a ready excuse for not managing one’s externalized
they are more or less efective for the job you’re in. We’ve behaviour. Even if you can’t stop feeling the urge to interrupt,
studied aviation accidents closely, and there are often mis- stop the behaviour, please. We compare modifying such be-
communications and cases of people being ofended or not haviours to picking low hanging fruit, because they are the
responding to direct questions. These are things you see in most easily modiied and controlled.
meetings every day, in every organization, but when it adds Advocates of strengths-based training discount the val-
up in the realm of aviation, it can lead to a catastrophe. We ue of improving behavioural weaknesses. They argue that,
have also studied how this leads to medical errors, industrial at best, improvement leads to average performance in that
accidents and turnover in organizations. particular behaviour. But behaviours interact, so replacing a
If you don’t have a perfect proile, you’re what we call deicit with even average skills can have a huge synergistic
normal. Sometimes I show my proile to a group but I don’t impact.
tell people it’s me. I’ll say, ‘Okay, what do you think of this
individual’s proile?’ After they’ve torn me to shreds, I put
up my face up on the screen with my eyes blacked out. The
fact is, human beings are built with derailers. Some of them
are probably genetically driven and some result from our
experiences.
Of course, I also have some assets, but like most people,
I’m muddling through life. When people appreciate that, it
builds up their propensity for humility, and then they can
look at their feedback more openly.
Do you find that most people are open to the feedback

Psychologist Ronald A. Warren is the author of Personality at Work:
and want to get better?
The Drivers and Derailers of Leadership (McGraw Hill Education, 2017).
It’s challenging to hear about what we’re not good at, and He developed the LMAP 360 assessment used by Harvard Business
people aren’t great at giving negative feedback, either. School, Yale University and other leading organizations.

POINT OF VIEW Margarita Mayo, Professor, IE Business School (Spain)
“To thine own self be true, and it must fol- lective identity, creating a community that changes with the
low, as the night the day, thou canst not times and achieving a balance between agency and commu-
then be false to any man.” nion.
As Shakespeare indicates in this
quote from Hamlet, being true to oneself Authenticity has been historically considered by psycholo-
— being authentic — is a pre-condition of gists as the very essence of well-being. However, despite its
being true to others, and has been a sign of moral authority importance to the human condition, the empirical research
throughout history. on authenticity is patchy. Only recently have scholars devel-
One of the most pressing issues we face today is a lack of oped validated measures to assess feelings of authenticity,
trust in our leaders. People are increasingly unlikely to trust and the lack of it — inauthenticity.
a person just because they hold a senior position. Leadership A group of researchers led by Alex Wood at the Univer-
scholars agree that authenticity—or a lack thereof—lies near sity of Manchester conducted a series of studies to develop
the heart of the crisis of conidence in contemporary leader- a measure of authenticity and test its relation to well-being.
ship. In a nutshell, says Wood, authenticity involves “being true
In my work I have identiied three characteristics that to oneself in most situations and living in accordance with
set authentic leaders apart. one’s values and beliefs.” This is what the researchers label
‘authentic living’. The team also developed a scale to mea-
HEART. Emotional authenticity includes ways to increase sure inauthenticity or feelings of self-alienation, which refers
your self-awareness through unbiased processing of your to the ‘subjective experience of not knowing oneself, or feel-
strengths and weaknesses, cultivating your passion and ing out of touch with the true self.
transmitting it to others with humility, as well as using parts In one study, the researchers explored the relationship
of your life story to underscore the truth of your leadership. between feelings of authenticity and inauthenticity based
on two indicators of subjective well-being: stress and hap-
HABIT. Behavioural authenticity means consistently acting in piness. They asked participants to indicate how often in the
accordance with your principles while fostering an optimis- previous month they found their lives unpredictable (‘upset
tic outlook and staying in control of your destiny. The habit about something that happened unexpectedly’), uncontrol-
of learning is a key behavioural element of authentic lead- lable (‘unable to control irritations in your life’) and over-
ers, who embrace a growth mindset and proactively seek out whelming (‘felt that you were not on top of things’), and
honest feedback in order to adapt and progress. asked them for their perception of happiness.
An interesting pattern emerged: Authenticity was posi-
HARMONY. Social authenticity entails building authentic tively related to happiness and negatively related to stress.
teams and organizations with a caring mentality and col- But the correlations of inauthenticity with less happiness
A Model of Authentic leadership
HEART
Emotional
Authenticity
Following are a few typical responses that indicate a

high degree of autonomy:
• I am not afraid to voice my opinions, even when they are in
AUTHENTIC
LEADERSHIP opposition to the opinions of most people.
• Being happy with myself is more important to me than hav-
ing others approve of me.
• People rarely talk me into doing things I don’t want to do.
HARMONY HABIT
Social Behavioural • I have conidence in my opinions, even if they are contrary
Authenticity Authenticity to the general consensus.
• I am not the kind of person who gives in to social pressures
to think or act in certain ways.
• I judge myself by what I think is important, not by the val-
ues of what others think is important.
FIGURE ONE
The team also found that ‘environmental mastery’ is signii-
cantly correlated to authenticity. Following are a few state-
ments from the study that relect environmental mastery:
• In general, I feel I am in charge of the situation in which I
live.
and increased stress were particularly notable. This prin- • I am quite good at managing the many responsibilities of
ciple also held for other measures of subjective well-being my daily life.
such as self-esteem and gratitude. The researchers found • If I were unhappy with my living situation, I would take ef-
that people who subjectively felt authentic reported higher fective steps to change it.
levels of self-esteem and gratitude. • I generally do a good job of taking care of my personal i-
Subjective feelings of inauthenticity were more strongly nances and afairs.
correlated with reduced positive emotions towards both the • I am good at juggling my time so that I can it everything in
self and others. People who subjectively felt inauthentic re- that needs to get done.
ported lower self-esteem and less gratitude. In general, the • My daily life is busy, but I derive a sense of satisfaction from
researchers found that feeling good, happy, interested, ex- keeping up with everything.
cited and enthusiastic about life is more widespread among • I have been able to build a home and a lifestyle for myself
people who feel authentic; and conversely, inauthenticity that is much to my liking.
reduces all of these positive feelings.
In a second study, the Manchester University team used Clearly, autonomy and environmental mastery are impor-
the psychological well-being test developed by Psychologist tant elements of authenticity. But a true assessment of au-
Carol Ryf of the University of Wisconsin, to ind out more thenticity must involve evaluating the gap between one’s
about the link between authenticity and happiness. In 1989, own perception of oneself and third-party feedback.
Prof. Ryf identiied six elements of happiness: autonomy, The fact is, research shows that most of us think a little
environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations too highly of ourselves: We tend to overestimate our own per-
with others, purpose in life and self-acceptance. formance and skills; and we think we are nicer and smarter
Prof. Wood’s team found that feelings of authenticity than others see us. This creates a challenge for us when ac-
are strongly related to autonomy. Authentic people have a cepting critical feedback. Because receiving feedback from
strong sense of being true to themselves, but they are also peers calls into question our self-views, it is very likely that
independent, resist social pressures to act or think in con- some of us will develop psychological defence mechanisms
ventional ways, and adjust their behaviour from within. to avoid ‘emotional fallout’.

Who is most open to honest feedback? We addressed yourself. Then, relect about your reactions to the feedback
this question in a study I conducted with my research team, you have just received. What is the gap in feedback and your
involving 169 men and 52 women with an average age of 30 self-perceptions? Are you an over-estimator or an under-
and with around six and a half years of work experience who estimator?
were assigned to ‘learning teams’ as part of an MBA pro-
gram over the course of an academic year. At the end of each In closing
term, students’ peers provided feedback on their leadership Authentic people feel good about themselves. They live by
qualities. their own standards and seem to choose and create contexts
As later published in Harvard Business Review, the re- that it their personal strengths.
sults revealed that all students started of by rating them- The making of an authentic leader is a work in progress,
selves higher than they were rated by their peers. Everyone but a few principles can be applied. Authentic leadership is
thought more highly of themselves than their peers did. But not just about ‘being yourself ’; it is about growing into your
with each assessment, getting critical feedback encouraged best self while at the same time, being true to others. Au-
relection, making people’s self-image more realistic. thentic leaders address the emotional and social demands
However, not everyone responded to feedback in the of their followers while staying true to their authentic self. In
same way: Women more quickly aligned their views of the end, the core challenge of authenticity is to realize one’s
themselves to match others’ opinions. By the end of the year, inner desires in harmony with others.
the average woman saw herself almost exactly as her peers
saw her on three out of four skills. For example, conidence
was 3.84 (self-rating) vs. 3.67 (peer-rating) in January; 3.64
vs. 3.44 in April; and 3.42 vs. 3.47 in June.
Men showed a diferent pattern. Conidence began at
3.99 (self-rating) vs. 3.70 (peer-rating) in January; 3.92 vs.
3.46 in April; and 3.84 vs. 3.64 in June. After receiving criti-
cal feedback, women were quicker to revise their self-con-
idence and other leadership skills, while men continued to
think highly of themselves.
The gender gap in self-perception and feedback stunned
us. Why this diference? One possibility was that women are
socialized to be more sensitive to other people’s opinions.
Women’s greater openness and sensitivity to peer feedback
is a mixed blessing: It increases their self-awareness and au-
thentic leadership. Women may be more in touch with who
they are and therefore are able to learn; but it may also block
the same conidence it is intended to boost, discouraging
them from taking on new business challenges. At the same
time, men’s tendency to overestimate their abilities and ig-
nore what others are saying is hardly a prescription for suc-
cess in the long run.
How can we learn from others’ feedback to strengthen
our authenticity? Here’s a suggestion: Make a list of the peo-
Margarita Mayo is a Professor of Leadership at IE Business School
ple you work with and ask them for feedback on some criti-
in Madrid and a Visiting Professor at ESMT – the European School of
cal skills such as time management, getting buy-in, or self- Management and Technology. She is the author of Yours Truly: Staying
conidence. Check the gap between your acquaintances and Authentic in Leadership and Life (Bloomsbury Business, 2018).
FACULTY FOCUS Ingo Rauth, Rotman School of Management
Your course, Design Your Life, helps MBA students do and bring it to a wider audience. For me, innovation literacy
just that, with a focus on their careers. Which aspects of is about understanding your role and how to collaborate
this are related to innovation? with others to make things happen for yourself and others.
Many of them are, but to understand this, When it comes to designing your life, you need to under-
one has to develop ‘innovation literacy’. stand two things really well: where you currently are and what
Innovation literacy is the knowledge and your desired future state is. Once you have that knowledge, it’s
competence required to bring something all about designing and implementing courses of action that
new and useful into existence, and it is a can help you get from where you are to where you want to be.
skillset that can beneit us in just about ev-
ery aspect of life. There are two key parts to it: conceptualizing You have said that designing one’s life involves ‘re-fram-
the thing you want to accomplish or create, and then taking ing’ and opening up new solution spaces. Please explain.
efective actions to bring it to life. This can play out at the If you think about it, every job is really just a pre-conceived
level of the individual, a team, an organization or at a soci- pattern that we try to match someone up with. When you
etal level. look at everything out there as being created by humans,
Of course, professional designers have been conceptu- it becomes clear that every job or role has been framed in
alizing things and bringing them to life for a very long time. a certain way — and that it can be re-framed. If you accept
However, even they can’t do it alone — they need to collabo- that, is up to you to take steps to proactively create the reality
rate to get feedback and to scale the thing they’ve created that you want to live in.

Changing current situations into preferred
ones is what design is all about.
Yale’s Amy Wrzesniewski and University of Michigan ‘like’, it gives you a quick hit of dopamine; the whole con-
Professor Jane E. Dutton have found that re-framing your cept of gamiication is constructed around giving players
work or ‘job crafting’ in a way that is line with your life’s mo- short bursts of satisfaction. But these things do not fulill
tivations can be a powerful thing. Design Your Life takes a us over the long-term. The question for each of us is, What
more holistic approach, extending the idea to life beyond will give us that feeling over the long term?
the workplace. For example, research shows that engaging in activi-
To re-frame a key part of your life, you need to under- ties where you experience ‘low’ actually makes you feel
stand who you truly are, what you value, what fulills you more fulilled. When this happens, there is an absence of
and what motivates you. Then, if your job is the focus, you ‘want’: You just completely engage in the activity — wheth-
can start thinking about and questioning the pre-existing er it be painting or gardening or working — sometimes for
job proiles that are out there and use your creativity to re- hours at a time. Compared to short-lived dopamine hits,
frame them so they it your future proile. By doing this you this is a much better thing to strive for, because it tends
are opening up a new solution space that can enable you to to only occur when you are doing something meaningful.
ind a future that is both fulilling and meaningful. Designing Your Life is really about making your life more
meaningful.
Talk a bit about how Positive Psychology fits into this pic-
ture. I imagine some people have unrealistic goals. What roles
The traditional approach in Psychology has been to focus do self-awareness and humility play in all of this?
on making people healthy or ‘normal’ again. The question I actually think there is a beauty to unrealistic goals, be-
that Martin Seligman and others have asked is, Why can’t cause they can provide motivation or a ‘North Star’ to aim
we focus instead on helping people to live more fulilled, for. When my students say they want to contribute to world
meaningful lives? This approach its very well with the idea peace or become the leader of the free world, I always say,
of changing current situations into preferred ones — which is ‘Interesting. Tell me more’ or, ‘What motivates you to want
what design is all about. to do that?’ Answering these questions can help you discover
a lot about yourself.
Bill Burnett, co-author of the book Designing your Life, On the one hand, being overly ambitious can be an ob-
teaches a similar course at Stanford. He recently said: stacle to understanding who you really are. And with that,
“A lot of what we do to make ourselves happy is actually you might end up being disappointed about what you’re ca-
wrong.” Please explain. pable of achieving. On the other hand, being under-ambi-
For a long time, there was this idea of seeking ‘the pleasur- tious can stop you from trying things that would make you
able life’. In a way, most of industry is built around plea- happy. Conceptualizing a ‘life prototype’ — consistently try-
sure and entertainment. But the type of happiness we get ing things out to see how they make you feel — can help you
from such consumption is short-lived, as we now know. develop the self-awareness necessary to balance humility
When you post something on Facebook and you get a with courage.
The only true failure in life is settling for a life
that makes you unhappy.
Prototypes are a big part of the design thinking process, that self. Then, identify what is important to you and where
as is obtaining feedback and incorporating it into your you want to go next. We all experience transition points in
next iteration. How do you embrace these principles in our lives, and we’re constantly developing. We used to be-
designing a life? lieve that we get one career in life; but that is simply not true
There are two ways: Talking through things with other peo- anymore. If there’s one thing that I would encourage people
ple and taking action, and there is value to both. The most to focus on, it’s developing an ability to conceptualize their
important thing is to do something, to engage in some way future and act on that conceptualization. As indicated, that
in order to learn and inform the next step or iteration. requires innovation literacy. In the end, the only true failure
In terms of engaging, there are some great examples in life is settling for a life that makes you unhappy.
out there of people starting to ‘play a role’ to see how certain
situations or roles it them. It could be as simple as shadow-
ing someone on the job or engaging in an internship. There
are also some extreme cases of people ‘slipping into roles’
— like Alexa Clay, who dressed up as an Amish person to
discover New York City from that perspective; or A.J. Jacob,
who lived for an entire year according to the lifestyle de-
picted in the Bible. In these examples, individuals have em-
braced a new ‘frame’ to see what a diferent life would feel
like, and gathered experiences to help inform their future.
On a smaller level, you could just interview someone
who has a job or profession you think you might be interest-
ed in. What is the job really like from day to day? What was
the person’s journey like? Then, see how this new knowledge
informs your gut-feel, your decision-making and your ambi-
tions.
What is your advice for readers who are eager to prog-

ress to the ‘2.0’ version of themselves?
Whether I’m working with students, alumni or profession-
als, it has become very clear to me that most people do
not understand themselves very well — and this leads to a
lot of confusion, challenges in decision-making, and inse-
curities that afect the individual as well as those around
Ingo Rauth is a post-doctoral researcher at the Rotman School of
him or her.
Management, where he is studying how to foster innovation in large
To get to ‘you 2.0’, I would irst encourage people to un- organizations using design and behavioural science. He is also an
derstand their 1.0. — their current self — and empathize with adjunct professor at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain.

FACULTY FOCUS Dilip Soman and Kim Ly, Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman (BEAR)
“I myself am made entirely of flaws stitched together with good intentions”.

-Augusten Burroughs
WE INVITE THE READER TO PAUSE FOR A formance) lags in the middle of the task. Author Martha
MOMENT and think of instances in which Wells described this common ‘lagging motivation’ in a re-
you set out to accomplish a particular cent essay:
goal or task, but failed. We suspect that
it would not be diicult for most people Writing the beginning of a book is exciting; everything is
to identify more than one such instance. new, you’re creating the world, meeting the characters for
Indeed, our research and work with or- the irst time. The end is also exciting, because all the plot
ganizations in business, government and threads are tying up and you should be done soon. The
welfare domains has convinced us that middle is the hard part, where you have to make the magic
failing to adhere to our good intentions is happen and start pulling things together.”
a hallmark of being human.
Setting and accomplishing goals has This ‘middle slump’, as researchers call it, happens
always been a fundamental driver of human behaviour. with all sorts of tasks. Research by one of us (Prof. Soman,
Goals can run the gamut from running a marathon to learn- with Joonkyung Kim, Rotman PhD ‘18), as well as earlier
ing a new language to completing an exercise or weight loss research by Northwestern University researchers Andrea
regimen. They can even be as relatively mundane as wait- Bonezzi, Miguel Brendl and Matteo deAngelis showed
ing in line to obtain a service, completing a transaction at a that due to the middle slump, people are more likely to per-
bank, or inishing up the draft of an article by its deadline. form poorly, to procrastinate and delay, and perhaps even
Indeed, there is a very active section of human enterprise— drop out altogether around the midpoint of a task.
productivity gurus, ‘life hackers’, personal coaches, apps, Research in Behavioural Economics not only docu-
advisors and self-help books—dedicated to helping us set ments the existence of a gap between people’s intentions
goals, make plans and execute on those plans. and actions, it also proposes an explanation for why this gap
Yet, as indicated, we do not often succeed at complet- occurs. One central model irst proposed by Nobel Laureate
ing the things we set out to do. Some of us never even get Richard Thaler and Hersh Shefrin is called ‘The Planner–
started, while for many others, motivation (and hence per- Doer Model’ of human behaviour. It argues that the human
Planners are always at a disadvantage, because
their contribution precedes the Doer’s.
apparatus can be divided into the planner, an entity that is Perhaps the two most famous examples of self-control
forward looking, wise and makes plans that are in the best devices come from the domain of online commerce and
interest of the human; and the doer, who has to execute on all inancial products. The website Stickk.com was developed
these plans, but being attached to a human being, is impul- by behavioural economist Dean Karlan. On it, users can
sive, short-sighted, boundedly rational and often has to deal sign up and pre-commit to achieving any goal — for exam-
with many competing goals and activities. ple, inishing up the draft of a manuscript by a given date.
The interplay between the planner and the doer within The website assigns the user a coach, a ‘cheering squad’, and
each of us is best understood from a simple example. Imag- a judge who will eventually certify that the goal has been
ine that the planner within ‘Jack’ thinks about the future and achieved. Importantly, failure to achieve a goal often has a
recognizes the need to save for retirement. The planner in monetary consequence: Up front, users are asked how much
him has every intention of increasing his savings rate at the the accomplishment of the goal means to them in monetary
earliest opportunity. Advisors, self-help books and other terms, and if they fail, they must pay Stickk that amount. If
products and services are great at helping people like Jack this happens, Stickk donates the amount to a charity—but
deine and prioritize worthy goals and lay out the sub-tasks not one of the user’s choice. Instead, the funds go to an orga-
required to achieve them; but they are not great at helping nization that the user will likely be opposed to. A recent visit
Jack and others actually accomplish their goals. to the Stickk.com website indicates that there were upwards
That’s because, when it comes time to take a required of $35 million worth of contracts and about 402,000 com-
action (i.e., to speak with a wealth manager), the doer in Jack mitments in place at this point in time.
takes over and gets waylaid by competing priorities, or might Another popular tool is the Save More Tomorrow
choose to procrastinate because retirement is actually pretty (SMarT) program developed by Richard Thaler and Shlomo
far of and increasing his savings today just doesn’t seem as Benartzi, which addresses the fact that while a vast majority
urgent as some of his other priorities. Alternatively, doers of Americans say they would like to save more, only a small
might get started and complete some of the tasks required to fraction of them actually do so. The most common reason
complete a goal, but as indicated, get waylaid in the middle. for not saving more relates to present needs, in that the act
So, how can we help the doer within each of us stay on of saving more would imply a drop in current consumption.
track when our performance and motivation start to lag in Employees who sign up to a SMarT program make a com-
the middle of completing our goals? The fact is, planners are mitment to save more—not today, but later. In particular,
always at a disadvantage, because their contribution pre- they commit to setting aside a percentage of each and ev-
cedes the doer’s, and hence the planner has no actual con- ery future salary increase in a separate savings account.
trol over what the doer does. However, a crafty planner can For these employees, the act of saving more does not imply
anticipate his/her doer’s behaviour—and proactively use a consuming less. In addition, the doer in them doesn’t have
self-control device to impose a constraint on the doer’s be- to do anything to increase contributions, and in this sense,
haviour. the savings product removes the ability of the doer to ‘mess
Consider a product called Clocky—an alarm clock that up’. Recent estimates suggest that the Save More Tomorrow
literally runs away from sleepy ingers seeking the snooze program alone might be responsible for an increase of about
button, hiding under nearby furniture. A planner like ‘Jill’ $29.6 billion in retirement savings since its inception.
could invest in a product like Clocky to constrain the doer The research on the intention-action gap is clear: The
within her. After all, by the time Jill inds Clocky under majority of us have good intentions to do a number of good
her dresser and silences the alarm, she will probably be so things, eat healthier food, exercise daily, quit smoking, learn
awake and alert that it would be diicult to snooze again. Or new skills and spend more time with our families. But gener-
consider KSafe—a cookie jar-style container with a timer- ally speaking, we tell ourselves that we will start tomorrow.
controlled lock that one of the authors (to remain unnamed) One important corollary of this insight is the limit on the
has used successfully to lock away mobile phones and other efectiveness of inancial literacy interventions. In BEAR’s
potential distractions in order to focus on completing tasks [Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman] ongoing
such as writing this article. work in the area of inancial well-being, we have found that

The first step for any self-control product is
to get people to pre-commit to future actions.
inancial education is not enough: We need to go beyond reduce their scratching behaviour, and ‘AVAIL’, a digital so-
that and take steps to facilitate behaviour. lution that helps families cut down on Internet usage. Other
Our experience across a broad swathe of behaviour- products and services have targeted distracted driving, in-
change challenges suggests that there are three segments of terrupting people in meetings, sedentary lifestyles, medica-
people. tion adherence and low savings rates, to name a few.
MOTIVATED ENTHUSIASTS. These are people who make sure In closing

they act on plans at the soonest possible opportunity. The market for self-control is large and growing, and the
dollar estimates of the impact of Stickk and SMarT show its
DIEHARD OPPONENTS. These are people who might be opposed potential. Given the growth of such innovative tools and the
to the behaviour change that is being asked of them, based simultaneous increase in distractions in today’s world, we
on personal beliefs or philosophical grounds. believe that the intention-action gap will only increase over
time, opening up signiicant opportunity for innovators.
NAIVE INTENDERS. The third segment is perhaps the largest, Governments and businesses are only beginning to
most insidious and therefore the most ignored segment: take notice of this signiicant and unmet market oppor-
These are people who believe in what is being asked of them tunity. Will we soon see a self-control aisle in our local
and fully plan to do it, but their intentions might never con- Walmart, or will the development of self-control products
vert into action. remain in the realm of start-ups and academic institutions?
Will consumers develop the foresight to be able to antici-
In general, we need to do very little about the moti- pate the need for such products and determine their value?
vated enthusiasts, except to reinforce their behaviours; and Will investors fund products that—ironically—will only be
we might be able to use education and evidence to convert deemed a success when they are not needed anymore?
diehard opponents. The segment that we need to focus our Only time will tell. But in the meantime we can pre-
attention on are the naive intenders, who will not be inlu- scribe the following plan of action with relative certainty:
enced by education or evidence. Put simply, these people The next time you think about an important long-term goal,
need help to make things happen. make a public pre-commitment to it and identify a suitable
The irst step for any self-control product is to get people ‘lock’ to bind your future self to getting it done.
to pre-commit to future actions that will help them accom-
plish their goal. Research shows that people are very will-
ing to commit—as long as the task doesn’t have to be done
right away, in the moment. The second step is to impose a
‘lock’ on the doer’s behaviour. Locks can be technological
(Clocky), behavioural (Save More Tomorrow), contractual
(stickk.com) or social interventions (e.g., buddy-based sav-
ings schemes where people cannot withdraw money with-
out a second person knowing about it). Or, they can take the
form of a literal lock—as in the kSafe example mentioned
earlier. Dilip Soman is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Behavioural
At BEAR, we conduct an annual Market for Self- Science and Economics, and Academic Director of Behavioural
Control challenge in which student teams from across the Economics in Action at Rotman (BEAR). He is the author of The Last
Mile: Creating Social and Economic Value from Behavioral Insights (Rot-
University of Toronto pitch new product concepts to a jury man-UTP Publishing, 2015). Kim Ly (Rotman MBA ‘08) is a Research
of judges drawn from the business, academic, policy and Fellow at BEAR and a lecturer at The Rotman School. For more indings
start-up communities. Winning teams from the past have from BEAR, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca/bear
included the ‘Nudge Ring’, a motion sensor embedded in a
Rotman faculty research is ranked in the top 10 worldwide by the
ring that alerts a compulsive skin-picker who is looking to Financial Times.
POINT OF VIEW Ryan Jacoby, Founder, MACHINE, IDEO Alumnus
regardless of industry,
EVERY LEADER, They’ll bring several ideas to the table, usually right from
needs to possess the ability to build a the start, even if they don’t completely believe in each. Make
great team and support it. But as teams sure you have people who are not only general builders, but
go, innovation teams are unique. Re- are capable of building the types of innovation you’ve pri-
search shows that innovation beneits oritized — whether it be in the realm of services, technol-
from a high degree of diversity, technical ogy, channels, partnerships, or marketing. Once you’ve got
depth and people with complementary mindsets and pro- them, use them well. If you’ve got builders sitting around
cess tendencies. waiting for strategy to happen, you’re going to be dealing
Leaders don’t always get to choose their team members with decreased motivation and moonlighting.
from the start, so they often need to nudge people to ind Frank Hauser’s Notes on Directing is a classic compen-
new ways to work, even as they actively bring people in or dium of advice for theatre directors working with actors
move people out of the group. Following are ive principles and crew. Written as a series of brief aphorisms — like ‘Don’t
for leaders of innovation teams to keep in mind. expect to have all the answers’, the book is illed with tips
that are equally useful for anyone working in creative col-
EMBRACE THE ‘BUILDERS’. These are people with a track record laborations. One such pithy piece of advice is: ‘Never keep
of getting things into the world in some way, shape or form the talent waiting’.
— hopefully within your organization and hopefully in dif-
ferent environments. Sometimes scrappy and entrepreneur- DIVERSIFY AND BALANCE THE TEAM. Some people love generat-
ial, they exhibit intense curiosity, value continuous learning ing ideas, but are less energized about executing them; oth-
and are willing to try new things, welcoming as much feed- ers love planning and research, but get anxious committing
back as possible. to a direction. It is your job to ind the right mix of attitudes
Builders aren’t going to wait for you to tell them what to and tendencies — and to correct for deiciencies as you
make, and they’re rarely going to show up with a single idea. go along.

Even the wrong problem can get you started
on discovering the right one.
One common problem I have seen is a team weighted to from market research. Despite their diferent backgrounds,
one extreme or the other. These teams keep spinning their everyone was expected to care about the customer, the so-
wheels (moving Post-its and generating ideas without get- lution, the business model, and the importance of everyone
ting to anything concrete) or jump the gun and start design- else’s technical domain.
ing in excruciating detail the irst idea that materializes. Of As you watch your team interact, notice their patterns
course sometimes the irst idea is the right idea, and some- so that you can adjust for imbalances. Productive disagree-
times we really don’t know enough about the customer. Too ment is ine — in fact, you want diversity of opinions as well
much exploring or too much execution can be counterpro- as diversity in general — but you want your whole team to be
ductive. You need to ind a balance of insight and action, invested in collaborating and owning the whole problem. If
prototyping and strategy. there’s someone on your team with valuable expertise that is
not being utilized, that’s a problem, and it’s the leader’s job
DEMAND DEDICATION. Find people who are able to commit the to recognize it.
time and energy to the project. Your team members should
be able to commit six uninterrupted hours four times a week, FREE PEOPLE UP TO DO THE WORK. Innovation is hard work, and
or they’re of the project. It is even more important for your you have to help your team members stay focused on solving
team to be dedicated than for it to be cross-functional. I’d the problem. That is near impossible if a signiicant portion
rather work with a balanced, diverse three-person team who of a team’s time is focused on creating presentations to get
are ‘all in’ than 15 people who cover every division of the stakeholders up to speed on what’s happening. Sharing what
company but can never ind time to do the hard work. they’re trying, what they’re learning and what they’re build-
ing is important, but don’t let ‘reporting’ become an end in
OWN THE WHOLE PROBLEM. In my experience, teams that do itself. As a leader, you should help shoulder the burden of
this are more successful and build better innovation. Em- status reports and executive updates. Consider encouraging
bracing the whole problem means: teams to use ‘stand ups’, especially with extended teams. In
a stand up, the entire meeting lasts 15 minutes, with each
• Identifying customer problems; person simply sharing progress made yesterday and progress
• Discovering and distilling customer insights; to be made today.
• Prototyping and getting feedback on ideas through
experimentation; SET THE PACE. To keep things pushing forward, use deadlines
• Designing winning solutions and value propositions; creatively. A trick I like to use with new clients is to sched-
• Creating business model opportunities and implica- ule customer feedback sessions as soon as a week or two
tions; and into working together. When we schedule these sessions,
• Getting new oferings and businesses launched. we don’t have anything to show yet — but knowing that cus-
tomers are on the calendar gets the team moving, express-
Ideally, all team members should be proicient, or at ing their hunches as prototypes, and helps to remove any
least, interested in all of these aspects of the problem. Oth- resistance to spending time with customers. This is what the
erwise, you’ll miss out on the true value of a multidisci- Lean Startup and customer discovery people are doing when
plinary approach. they force workshop participants to ‘get out of the building’.
As The New York Times was experimenting with building The same type of thinking can be useful later in a proj-
its approach to digital product development, it learned that ect. Agile software development ofers lots of techniques
a good initial team would be composed of a product person, and methods for assessing work and setting schedules,
a design person, a technologist and an editor, with support but not all innovation is software-based or solely software,
Creating a New Financial Services Offering: Sample Strategic Questions
QUESTION ANSWER TYPE INSIGHT SOURCES

1. What is the current state and cutting Mostly knowable • Direct usage
edge of (financial) advice? What new • Trends
models, experiences, and trends • Landscape scans
should inspire us? • Ask advanced users
2. How many new college graduates Knowable • Start with survey and employment
will be in a position to start saving data
within the first three years of • Look for evidence of account creation
graduation? and 401K opt-in
3. What is the right balance of tailored, Discoverable • Prototype mix, using the same
in-person advice and experts recommendations to isolate
recommendations? the effect of the mix
4. What is the role of experts? Hybrid • Mix customer research with prompts
Family members? Friends? and early prototypes
5. What, if anything, are people using Hybrid • Mix customer research with prompts
today to meet their financial needs? and early prototypes
What services are growing? Waning?
FIGURE ONE
so you have to ind other ways to set deadlines. before the holiday season picked up. The truth is, there was
When we were transitioning from the early stages of no real reason other than to keep things moving.
deining what would become NYT Cooking, The New York Finally, some tactical advice for moving forward once
Times team had to decide what interactions and features your team is ready to go.
would go into the irst pilot. Instead of debating the inter-
actions and features, we set a date in early December and 1. Form a problem statement
used that to help decide which features were most impor- It’s become cliché, perhaps, but it’s still important to ‘fall in
tant to test our assumptions and that we’d be able to execute love with the problem, not the solution’. Don’t hurry through
reasonably well. When asked by the team why we chose inding a problem statement, but don’t agonize over it ei-
this date, I said we’d want to be done with development ther. Just throw something out there and start to reine it.
by Thanksgiving and run the initial pilot in early December Even the wrong problem, so to speak, can get you started

As an innovation leader, your job — first
and foremost — is to make progress.
on discovering the right one. If you’re stuck, start exploring In closing

assumptions you have about the basic motivations and be- As an innovation leader, your job, irst and foremost, is to
haviours of customers. A good deinition of product design make progress. That means helping your organization ex-
comes from the designer Keenan Cummings: “Recogniz- pand its impact by better understanding and serving its
ing patterns of human behaviour, discovering the motiva- customers and launching better products and services that
tions and impulses that drive those patterns, [and then] cre- people value. Making progress on innovation by embracing
ating [oferings] that improve or elevate the output of those the principles outlined herein will not only build credibility
behaviours.” Understanding those patterns of behaviour, for you and your team, it will lead to more support and re-
motivations, and opportunities will get you well on your way sources — continuing the cycle of progress.
to deining the problem.
2. Use strategic questions to guide discovery.

A question can only be considered ‘strategic’ if it has an an-
swer that will make or break the solution or validate or in-
validate an assumption. Strategic questions might be as far-
reaching as, How are tomorrow’s customers diferent and
similar to today’s? And, What regulatory changes might im-
pact our potential solutions? They also might be ‘small’, yet
important like: What does ‘fun’ mean in the kitchen, when
cooking a meal? Or, How much variety in recipes is exciting
and how much becomes too taxing?
I like to draw a distinction between questions where the
answers are knowable and questions where the answers are
discoverable. Knowable answers can be looked up: there’s an
answer out there and you just have to ind it. Discoverable
answers are ones you have to igure out through prototyping
and experimentation. This diference can help you direct
a team’s research more productively — but you’ll need to
make sure they ask both kinds of questions.
Imagine for a second that you are interested in creating
a new inancial services ofering for young people, to help
them establish themselves on a path to lifelong inancial
wellness. Figure One shows some of the strategic questions
you could ask and whether they are mostly knowable, dis-
coverable, or an interesting hybrid. The last column shows
how we might get more insight or evidence of the ‘right’ Ryan Jacoby is the author of Making Progress: The 7 Responsibilities
answer. It’s better to use prototyping to accelerate customer of the Innovation Leader (Sense & Respond Press, 2017,
www.senseandrespondpress.com), from which this article is excerpted.
research and to test assumptions quickly, so whenever you
He is the founder of MACHINE, a strategy and innovation company
see a hybrid question, expect to use low-idelity prototypes based in Brooklyn. Previously, he ran IDEO’s New York City oice
to explore the answer. and built its Business Design discipline.
QUESTIONS FOR Annie McKee, University of Pennsylvania
What does it take to be happy at work?

It boils down to three things. First, people need a sense of
purpose. They need to feel that they are contributing in an
impactful way and that their work is meaningful. Second,
people need to feel hopeful about the future. They need to feel
that work its into life and that overall, work is helping them
progress towards their life vision. Finally, people need great,
warm relationships with colleagues — they need friends.
A best-selling author What role do workplace friends play?
and executive coach In the best cases, we have more than one friend at work —
people who we trust and who trust us, who care about us and
explains what it means whom we care about in return. There is even a phrase for
to be happy at work. this kind of relationship: ‘companionate love’. The research
shows that when employees have these kinds of relation-
Interview by Carolyn Drebin ships, they get more done. Purely transactional relationships
don’t support us in the workplace. Friendships are good for
us individually and they are also good for our organizations.
With so many people working remotely these days,
it’s deinitely harder to build friendly, warm relationships
virtually. You have to make a proactive efort to regularly
check in and build a sense of connection. If you are going to
be working virtually with large groups of people, make sure

there are opportunities to break into smaller groups or pairs. yourself from whatever it is that is not healthy. If you do that,
We’ve got the technology to do this, and as indicated, it’s it frees you up to start to understand how to shift your mind-
very important. set and actions to make your work more palatable, meaning-
ful and fulilling.
We talk about success and happiness almost inter-
changeably. Which comes first? You talk a lot about Emotional Intelligence. How does it
Happiness comes before success, although we don’t often relate to workplace happiness?
think of it that way. We tend to think we’ll be happy when Emotional intelligence is our ability to understand and man-
we get that next promotion, or a new job, or a new perk. But age our own and other people’s emotions, and to use that
in fact, it’s how we feel about our work that determines how knowledge to further collective goals. It requires self-aware-
much we give to it and how much we want to learn. The re- ness and self-management to stay true to who we are and
search supports this. manage the pressures of our ‘always-on’ world. Our social
awareness, or the ability to read other people and under-
Talk a bit about all the unhappy people at work. stand their needs and motivations, helps to ensure that we
When I studied what makes people unhappy at work, I found create warm, resonant and productive relationships. Clear-
that they tend to point ingers outwards: They blame their ly, these things relate very closely to workplace happiness.
boss, the tasks they have to do or the company culture in
general. While it’s true that there are toxic managers and You have identified several ‘happiness traps’. Please de-
unsupportive workplaces, in reality, we have to take respon- scribe them —and how we can set ourselves free.
sibility for our own happiness at work, just as we do in life. There are ive happiness traps. First, doing what you think
Gallup Polls show that two thirds of us are either activity you should do — including staying in a job long after you
disengaged or feel neutral about our work. Being neutral should probably leave — is a common trap. The second trap
means that we see it as ‘just a job’, a transaction: You show is inding yourself completely over-worked and constantly
up for eight hours and get a paycheque and some beneits. struggling to keep up. That does not lead to happiness. The
But if your work is just a job, it won’t be long before neutral third trap, the money trap, is one that many of us fall into,
turns into actively unhappy. and it is driven by a variety of factors. The fourth trap is the
ambition trap, and this one is very insidious because ambi-
What can we do to consciously choose to be happy in the tion helps us to reach for our very best. Yet, over time, we
workplace? can get caught on a treadmill, striving for the next promo-
In order to become truly happy at work you have to develop tion or raise. We’re ambitious for that goal, but we lose sight
your self-awareness and understand what you really care of the joys of the journey along the way. That can make life
about, what values are important to you, and what it means feel very empty. Finally, there is the helplessness trap. This
to make a contribution. Then, you should take a really good arises when we feel disempowered and unable to impact our
hard look around the workplace and ask, “What aspects of situation — and it might be the most dangerous trap of all.
my job are not making me happy, and, in fact, make me mis- Breaking free from these traps requires self-awareness
erable sometimes?” and the courage to act on what you discover. Never mind
If you’ve got a boss or a culture that isn’t great, you’ve what matters to other people. Where are you going in your
got to then lean into your ‘self-management’ competency. life, not just in your career? How does your job and your ca-
That means building up psychological boundaries to protect reer support that? You’ve got to look at the big picture, and
We have to take responsibility for our own
happiness at work, just as we do in life.
ask these important questions. If you do that, you will be always encourage people to look at three categories of clues.
on the road to a deeper kind of happiness that is more sus- The irst is being aware of your physical health. Are you sud-
tainable and will not only efect your working life, but your denly not sleeping well? Do you feel anxious all the time, to
entire life. the point where you’re having physical symptoms? There are
lots of little signs that something might be wrong — and you
Describe the diference between a job, a career and a don’t want to wait for a major physical wake up call.
calling. Next, there are the emotional clues. Are you increas-
A job is when we experience work as transactional: You work ingly impatient, when you used to go with the low? Do you
in exchange for a paycheque, and there are times in life when lose your temper too often? The place to look for this irst is
that is completely appropriate. However, if we experience at home. We’ve all been trained to keep our game face on
work that way for too long, we can start to feel very resentful at work, so diiculties tend to show up at home irst. Then,
about giving up hours of our ‘real’ lives for something that there are the relational clues. Do you ind that people seem
doesn’t matter much to us. The money never feels like it’s hesitant to spend time with you, even in professional settings
enough to pay us for the time or the efort that we put forth. and meetings? Do they not make eye contact? Are you get-
We always want more. ting either subtle or overt messages that things aren’t right?
A career is usually linked to joining a profession that you It’s really important to pay attention to these things
care about. When this is the case, you will experience some long before the big wakeup call that you’re miserable at work
meaning as a result of engaging in work related to that pro- — and before they spill over into your personal life.
fession. In a career, we want to progress — to learn more, to
get better. But, again, we have to be on the lookout for mind-
less movement or climbing the ladder, which can happen to
the best of us.
Ideally, we want to experience our work as what re-
searcher Amy Wrzesniewski and her colleagues at Yale
describe as a calling: We want to feel that our work is mean-
ingful, that we are truly living our purpose and our values.
If a workplace culture is oppressive or toxic, what can we

do about it?
Even if you’re not the boss, you can inspire change by creat-
ing ‘resonance’ around you: Choose the values you want to
live with in the workplace; relect on how you treat people;
and ask yourself what kind of norms and habits you want to
model for your team. If enough of us did this, organizations
would change for the better.
You write about crossing the ‘happiness line’. What does

that mean? Best-selling author Dr. Annie McKee is a senior fellow at the University
of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and a coach to execu-
Tipping the scale from happiness into unhappiness or even
tives of Fortune/FTSE 500 companies. Her most recent book is Happy
despair does not happen overnight. It may seem like it does, at Work: The Power of Purpose, Hope and Friendship (Harvard Business
but that’s usually because we’ve been ignoring the clues. I Review Press, 2017).

Learn from
Each year, the Rotman School of Management
the best hosts almost 100 public talks by bestselling
authors, management executives and other
thought leaders.
Highlights
September 12, 12:00-1:00pm October 4, 5:00-6:00pm
Speaker: Geof Mulgan, CEO, Nesta; Founder, Demos Think Tank; Speaker: William Janeway, Managing Director, Warburg Pincus, LLC;
Author Author
Topic: Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World Topic: Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy: Reconiguring the
(Princeton University Press, 2017) Three-Player Game Between Markets, Speculators & the State (Cambridge
University Press, 2018)
September 20, 5:00-6:00pm
Speaker: Jonah Sachs, Founder, Free Range Studios; Author October 9, 5:00-6:00pm
Topic: Unsafe Thinking: How to be Nimble & Bold When You Need Speaker: Howard Marks, Co-Founder, Oaktree Capital Management;
It Most (Decapo Hachette, 2018) Author
Topic: Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side (Hough-
September 21, 8:00-9:00am ton Milin Harcourt, Oct. 2, 2018)
Speaker: Ashesh Mukherjee, Associate Professor of Marketing,
Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill October 10, 5:00-6:00pm
Topic: The Internet Trap: Five Costs of Living Online (Rotman- Speaker: The Right Honourable David Johnston, former Governor
UTP Publishing, 2018) General of Canada; Author
Topic: Trust: Twenty Ways to Build a Better Country (Signal, Oct. 9, 2018)
September 21, 12:00-1:00pm
Speaker: Dorie Clark, Consultant; Adjunct Professor, Duke University October 11, 5:00-6:30pm
Fuqua School of Business; Author Topic: “How I Built My Company: Stories from the Front-Lines of
Topic: Entrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Entrepreneurship”
Multiple Income Streams, & Thrive (HBR Press, 2017) 4 Panelists:
Arthur Bekerman, Chief Operating Oicer, IQ Food Co
September 25, 8:00-9:00am Cynthia Beretta, Founder/Brand Ambassador, Beretta Farms Inc.
Speaker: Howard Green, Veteran Journalist; Author Anthony Green, Co-Founder, Greenhouse Juice Co.
Topic: Railroader: The Uniltered Genius & Controversy of Four-Time Marc Kadonof, Vice President, Sweets from the Earth
CEO Hunter Harrison (Page Two Books, Sep. 18, 2018) Moderator: Ahmad Ayyub (MBA’13), M&A Operations Advisor, EY
Canada
September 28, 8:00am-6:00pm
Rotman Behavioural Approaches to Diversity Conference October 23, 8:00am-6:00pm
Theme: “New Solutions from Behavioural Science for Making 4th Rotman Machine Learning & Market for Intelligence
Real Progress on Inclusion” Conference
October 1, 5:00-6:00pm October 24, 5:00-6:00pm

Speaker: Beth Comstock, Change Maker; former Chief Marketing Speaker: Ken Auletta, Staf Writer, The New Yorker; Author
Oicer, General Electric; Corporate Director, Nike; Author Topic: Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (& Everything Else)
Topic: Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, & the Power of Change (Penguin, 2018)
(Random House, Sep. 18. 2018)
October 3, 5:00-6:00pm Never Miss an Event

Speaker: Thomas Page McBee, Transgender Boxer; Author Sign up to be notified about upcoming events at
Topic: Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man (Scribner, 2018)
rotman.utoronto.ca/events
™
Innovation.
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©2018 Steelcase Inc. All rights reserved. Trademarks used herein are the property of Steelcase Inc. or of their respective owners.

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Emotional Independence Self- Optimism Vitality Commonality Assertiveness Empathy

DEVELOPING INNER RESOURCES CONNECTING WITH OTHERS

Worldview Shared Follow- Responsibility Vision Direction Co-creation Sponsorship

Openness Unselfishness Recognition Balance Focus Empowerment Servanthood Harmony

Source: Bain Inspirational Leadership 360 survey

48 / Rotman Management Fall 2018

Each of the three steps of centeredness will allow you to

• STEP 1: Settling into your body signals to your primi-

52 / Rotman Management Fall 2018

Are You in a Renewal Business Are Your Actions Consistent

54 / Rotman Management Fall 2018

Are You in a Classical Business Environment?

You are facing a classical environment if the following hold

SWITCHING. In these cases, irms manage a common pool

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