Thought leaders across the web

If today’s workplace had an anthem, it might very well be the British indie duo Ting Tings’ new song with its refrain “Clap your hands if you’re working too hard.” Workplaces are more demanding than ever in terms of hours and performance. Americans are putting in more hours per week than previous years. That’s creating [...]

My partner Mats Lederhausen, formerly worldwide head of strategy for McDonald’s, introduced me to “Strategy Trees.” The concept is, like most useful things, deceptively simple. It forces you to get at the heart of what you are trying to achieve. The “tree” analog comes from the linkage between the questions in a Strategy Tree. Start [...]

Lately I have been spending a lot of time with some of our portfolio company CEOs talking about how to differentiate their products and services. How should they think about their value or selling proposition? How can they best measure their success? For our portfolio businesses (especially those in digital media and information services) and [...]

For HBR’s April issue on failure, I penned a piece on the experience of going through a failed IPO. In one context or another, you’ve likely failed, too. You may have chosen to frame it some other way (“experience,” “lessons learned,” etc.), but it was failure. First, welcome to the club. We’ve all been there. [...]

Next month I will be the proud recipient of two honors: the “Isabel Benham Award” (Women’s Bond Club) and the “Woman of the Year Award” (Financial Women’s Association). I’m more than usually appreciative. I’ve held high-profile jobs and delivered impressed results, but I know about banishment and lonely struggle. Like many working moms I’ve grappled [...]

Mao Zedong may have famously proclaimed that “women hold up half the sky,” but many of today’s Chinese career women feel their high-flying ambitions have feet of clay. “Yeah, we hold up half the sky,” recently quipped a female senior manager for a multinational pharmaceutical company, “but there are 5,000 years of history dragging us [...]

As research for an upcoming book with Harvard Business Review Press, my colleagues and I have been interviewing entrepreneurs and business builders about the factors that drive success. We talked to David Lawee, vice president of corporate development at Google, about how he got to where he is and the role that luck has played [...]

My highlight so far at this year’s TED conference in Long Beach, California, has been meeting the extraordinary composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, after his moving and highly inspiring talk. Over 12 years, I have seen my share of TED presentations, and this was one of the most special. Whitacre is a contemporary composer known [...]

We recently did an informal survey of some of our venture capital colleagues. We asked, “What crossroads decisions are most common and challenging for entrepreneurs in the course of the business-building journey?” The most common responses to this open-ended question were whether to take an investment and whether to sell the company. For some the [...]

Hectored by the blogosphere, mocked by the press, UBS has recanted its 43-page employee primer on how to appear polished, proficient, and professional. As a result, a lot of up-and-comers badly in need of grooming guidance simply won’t get it. The brouhaha over the Swiss bank’s dress code manual, which dictates protocol on everything from [...]