Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 769

When Managers Break Down Under Pressure, So Do Their Teams

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As a leader, much of what you do is relatively forgettable. We don’t mean to insult, but your routine actions on routine days are experienced by your direct reports as, well, routine.

But for non-routine days — the days when you are under the gun, feeling the heat, or pushed to your limits — how you respond under the pressure makes an indelible impression on the people around you. Our latest research shows that your temperament in these crucial moments has a tremendous impact on your team’s performance.

When the hammer comes down, are you calm, collected, candid, curious, direct, and willing to listen? That would be ideal, wouldn’t it? Or would your direct reports describe you as upset, angry, closed-minded, rejecting, or even devious?

We asked more than 1,300 people in an online survey to describe their leader’s style under stress and the impact of that behavior on their work. We found that a large majority of managers and leaders buckle under pressure. Specifically, respondents reported that, when under pressure:

53% of leaders are more closed-minded and controlling than open and curious.
45% are more upset and emotional than calm and in control.
45% ignore or reject rather than listen or seek to understand.
43% are more angry and heated than cool and collected.
37% avoid or sidestep rather than be direct and unambiguous.
30% are more devious and deceitful than candid and honest.

One executive we worked with was adamant and deliberate about creating a fun and supportive atmosphere where his team felt safe to try new things. He saw his role as supporting people and developing talent. And yet, to his surprise, most of his team labelled him a “jerk.” As we described a time when his team found him to be extra “jerky,” he said, “I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking I’m some sort of hypocrite. But I’m not. Ninety-five percent of the time, I’m the fun, supportive guy I’ve described. It’s only five percent of the time when I lose my temper or forget what I should be doing and I say stupid things like that. Those statements are not an accurate reflection of who I am.”

And while his team agreed he was great 95 percent of time, this non-routine behavior left a lasting impression. His team felt it was those few moments — the five percent of moments when stakes were high, and the heat was on — that revealed the truth about who he really is.

And there’s more to the story. The research found that when leaders buckle under pressure, it doesn’t just hurt their influence, it also hurts their teams. Respondents said that when their leader clams up or blows up under pressure, their team members have lower morale; are more likely to miss deadlines, budgets, and quality standards; and act in ways that drive customers away.

Our research reinforced this. One out of three leaders were seen by their direct reports as someone who can’t talk or engage in dialogue when the stakes grow high. And when leaders fail to practice effective dialogue under stress, their team members are more likely to consider leaving their job than teams managed by someone who can stay in dialogue when stressed. Team members are also more likely to shut down and stop participating, less likely to go above and beyond in their responsibilities, more likely to be frustrated and angry, and more likely to complain.

A leader’s brash communication style also has a domino effect on team morale and psyche. One employee of a large multinational company told us that his direct leaders were terrible in high-stakes conversations, and the more he tried to speak up and engage, the more verbally violent his leaders became. He and his front-line colleagues grew increasingly silent. It was so bad that people adopted the attitude: “They pay me just enough not to leave, and I work just hard enough for them not to fire me.” They also adopted the saying, “$1000/week for hide and seek.” It wasn’t that they were just a little disengaged; they deliberately avoided management, contributed as little as they could get away with, and picked up their check at the end of each week.

Our research reinforced this. One out of three leaders were seen by their direct reports as someone who can’t talk or engage in dialogue when the stakes grow high. And when leaders fail to practice effective dialogue under stress, their team members are more likely to consider leaving their job than teams managed by someone who can stay in dialogue when stressed. Team members are also more likely to shut down and stop participating, less likely to go above and beyond in their responsibilities, more likely to be frustrated and angry, and more likely to complain.

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Let’s walk through an example to see how a few simple skills can help a leader be at their best even when the pressure is on. Imagine you’ve just come from a meeting with a customer, your boss, and your boss’s boss – and it didn’t go well. You thought your company’s agreement with the customer stipulated a 15-day order delivery. But that wasn’t what the contract actually specified. The timeframe was 10 days so you and your team have been missing the mark every time. Your boss and her boss were embarrassed and angry and as they left the meeting, put the onus on you to fix the situation ASAP. Now, you have to go back to your team, including the contract officer who originally misunderstood the contract, and get them to put in the evening and weekend work it will require to meet this week’s deadlines.

Determine what you really want. You’re humiliated and angry and you blame your contracting officer for the mistake. But before you allow your emotions to take over, stop and ask yourself, “What is it I really want long term, for myself, for the contracting officer, and for the team?” The answer to this question becomes your North Star, the purpose that guides your actions. In the moment, you might feel like proving to the contracting officer that you’re angry, but is that productive over the long term? Instead, focus on a positive destination like “Showing my best self” or “Making sure the team understands my appreciation for the sacrifice I’m going to ask them to make,” for example.
Challenge your story. It would be easy to make the contracting officer the villain. Not only does it sound plausible, but it would also make you blameless — a victim, even. You would feel justified in your anger. However, the best leaders challenge their stories. So you could ask, “Why might a rational, reasonable, and decent person make the mistake that she made?” and “What role did I have in allowing her mistake to go unnoticed and uncorrected?” These questions move us from angry judge to curious problem solver, and make us far more effective as leaders.
Start with facts. When we’re angry, we lead with our emotions, instead of with the facts. Skilled leaders tamp down the temptation to level accusations, and gather the facts. Specifically, focus on what you expected: the commitments, standards, policies, or targets that were missed. Then, add what you observed: the specific actions with dates, times, places, and circumstances as necessary. Don’t add your conclusions, opinions, or judgments. Because facts are neutral and verifiable, they become the common ground for problem solving.
Create safety. When you’re under pressure with your job or reputation on the line, how do you light a fire under your team without showing them your anger? Can you get your team to put in the overtime you’ll need from them without threatening them? The short answer is yes. Our study showed that teams work harder and more effectively if a boss doesn’t lose their temper with them. So you don’t have to threaten. Share your positive intent by saying something like, “This is not about blaming, it’s about fixing. I want us to focus on how we can solve our immediate problem. Then we can circle back to find ways to prevent it from happening again.” By framing your intent, you get your team focused on what they need to do, and not on how they are being mistreated.

When the heat turns up at work, most of us aren’t at our best. If you’ve lost your temper in the past, be easy on yourself. You may do it again. But don’t be discouraged – or complacent. Ask yourself, “When it matters most, who am I?” While it isn’t easy to step up to your best self under pressure, it is incredibly important. These are defining moments for you and for your team.

Help Your Team Overcome Digital Distractions to Be More Innovative - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM WORKFRONT

By Alex Shootman, CEO, Workfront

Alexander Graham Bell once noted that “the inventor … looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are.” I could say the same of most business leaders I’ve met. With rare exception, they’re not satisfied with the status quo and are driven to innovate and change.

And yet that drive for innovation fails to reach most people on their team — at least not in a way that employees can act on. 58% of knowledge workers say they’re so swamped with tasks that they don’t have time to think beyond their daily to-do list, according to Workfront’s State of Work report. And the average knowledge worker says they spend just 40% of their time doing the job they were hired to do.

This isn’t a new issue, either. We’ve been surveying workers for five years, and the response remains consistent: workers are so busy with distractions that they don’t have time to focus on their primary job, much less invent the future.

Why do we let this happen? If I were the CFO of a manufacturing company and was asked by the board for my manufacturing capacity utilization and I said I didn’t know or that it was only 40%, I’d probably get released to ‘pursue other opportunities.’ And yet many executives who employ knowledge workers accept that there’s no choice but to fly blind and keep putting their people in a work environment that results in them devoting less than half their time to their real work.

That’s crazy. Digital technology should be freeing us up to be more innovative and productive. Instead our technology leads to over communication, a glut of distractions, and the tyranny of the urgent. At the same time, the complexity of modern business causes today’s leaders to struggle to get insight into what’s happening across their company.

What we’re talking about here is a digital work crisis. We’re over-instrumented, yet underserved. We’ve become so real-time we don’t have real time.

Some people look at this digital work crisis and say we will solve it by embracing incremental change and stretching existing platforms to do more than they were made for. So far, this approach has only failed. You can see this in research that found companies spending $1.3T on digital transformation, 70% of which will not achieve their stated objectives. Fortune 500 companies that stuck to antiquated approaches are not just suffering — they are vanishing.

A new generation of leaders know that confronting the digital work crisis isn’t just about surviving. It’s about learning to thrive by embracing a new way to work — an operating model that combines cultural changes and digital technologies in an integrated, well-planned approach to improve revenue, customer experience, and cost.

When it comes to cultural changes, this new model of work requires less hierarchy and more empathy. As I write in Done Right: How Tomorrow’s Top Leaders Get Work Done, the more a leader trusts their team to solve problems, the more their employees will own solutions and invest in securing successful outcomes. This approach gives people freedom to make mistakes and believe that they come to work to do their best. It’s about empowering people to speak their minds and then really listening to the wisdom in the room. In an era as complicated as today, no single leader can possibly have all the answers.

For instance, at Workfront we use a collaborative approach to identify our key initiatives. One way we do this is by gathering teams together and handing each person a stack of sticky notes. Then we set a timer for two minutes and ask everyone to write down one idea per sticky note that might help us accomplish our primary goal. At that point, each person sticks their notes to the wall in random order. We then divide into two teams and invite each team to take half the sticky notes off the wall and group them into four to six clusters or themes.

Every time I’ve done this I’ve found that one or more of the clusters are very similar across the two teams. These clusters become our key initiatives for accomplishing our primary goal. Since these key initiatives arise from the wisdom in the room, they come with team buy-in from the outset, making our chances of innovation and success far more likely.

This new model of work is also built on a system of record that tracks all activity across an organization, provides accurate reporting on what’s happening at each level, and integrates with the myriad of software tools used in an enterprise. Just as businesses use a financial system of record such as SAP, a customer system of record such as Salesforce, and an HR system of record such as Workday, they also use an operational system of record to conquer their digital work crisis. This way they bust down work silos, spend less time in useless status meetings, and free up time to innovate.

No leader today would say they want people to work more and accomplish less. But that’s exactly what’s happening with knowledge work around the globe. Unless today’s leaders figure out a way to successfully navigate their digital work crisis, they’ll be stuck with a workforce that doesn’t have time to innovate. And that’s a shame, because work matters. With an operating model that includes cultural changes and an operational system of record, modern leaders can overcome the digital work crisis and release a team that is able to do their best work.

To learn more click here.

 

 

A Look into Microsoft’s Data-Driven Approach to Improving Sales

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Companies are beginning to utilize their employees’ behavioral data — generally known as people analytics — to better understand and improve their sales operations, with strong results. Microsoft, where we work, is no exception, and B2B sales is one of the areas where we are seeing the most value. Our findings, and the ways we came to them, can be useful to other sales organizations looking to make internal changes of this type or optimize how their salespeople relate to customers.

In mid-2017, we executed a major redesign of our sales organization in response to what our customers needed from us, and to better align our selling approach with cloud services sales model (in this model, customers pay based on usage versus a traditional fixed licensing deal). We knew we needed a fast and effective transition to the new model without dropping the ball with our customers, but the undertaking was daunting and the stakes were high: With a complex sales organization of 20,000-plus salespeople covering large enterprises to small business customer segments, and spanning 100 countries, it was important to see how these changes impacted our customer collaboration and partnerships. We needed to get answers to some of our biggest questions, including:

Are we spending enough time with our most important customers?
Are new hires ramping up and collaborating with customers as quickly as expected?
Are they growing their internal and customer networks?
Are salespeople collaborating with one another effectively?
How is all this impacting our customers’ own business success?

Our hunt for answers started by using our own Workplace Analytics product to aggregate de-identified calendar and email metadata for thousands of enterprise salespeople. We then combined that with organizational and customer relationship management data to determine how the people selling via the cloud sales model were collaborating with their internal teams, customers, and partners. The next step was to correlate sales outcomes with these behaviors to identify the patterns that correlated with better results. These analyses were done in part to help us through a massive transformation and in part to better align us in responding to our customers’ needs and expectations. To date, the analyses revealed several actionable insights, which we came to with the help of our colleagues Ben Boatman, Chris Moss, Gabriel Zhou, Jared Baker, and Fabio Correa.

1. Networks are vital — and a reorg could destabilize them. One of the first things we learned is that salespeople with larger, more inclusive networks tended to have better outcomes. This is consistent with a number of other similar studies. Based on this finding, we initiated a program to coach our sales teams to focus on efficiently building and growing their internal and external networks. By looking at network size relative to tenure within the company, we were further able to establish that it typically takes roughly 12 months for most people to build these networks.

This underpins the importance of stability in roles over that time period, and beyond. It also left us concerned that the reorganization was forcing the salesforce to rebuild their networks from scratch, which could be costly and sub-optimal for our customers. To mitigate this cost, we rolled out programs to emphasize manager coaching and invested in facilitating rapid network growth for new hires.

2. We engage very differently with high-growth accounts. Another key aspect of the re-org was to ensure continued growth of our business and the right level of engagement with customers. Looking at the amount of time teams spent interacting with each of their accounts, as well as the number of individual contacts they were connecting with, allowed us to identify statistically significant differences in how teams engaged with the different account segments. On average, teams engaged with twice the number of customer contacts in our higher growth accounts, and collaborated double the amount of time with these customers as compared to lower growth accounts.

To make sure this wasn’t just a one-time anomaly, we also confirmed that this pattern was consistent month over month. Correlation vs causation is always an open question with an initial finding like this: are the accounts higher growth because we spend more time with them? Or do we spend more time with them because they are higher growth? Deeper analysis showed that investing more time and energy into partnering with some of these lower growth accounts could improve them. As a result, we adjusted our sales coverage models to enable more face time with these previously underserved customers.

3. Relationship investments correlate with customer satisfaction. It was important that the new sales model also drives happier customers and partners. Therefore, our next step was to look for patterns associated with customer satisfaction. We found that customer satisfaction is directly correlated with customer collaboration time (email and meetings) across all Microsoft roles and teams engaging with customers, including product engineering and marketing teams.

In the enterprise segment specifically, satisfied customers are the ones we spend the most time with and the least satisfied are the ones we barely keep in touch with. This and other findings encouraged our sales leaders to revamp internal business processes such as business reviews and forecasting meetings to be more efficient. We also reduced the number of enterprise accounts per seller to allow for more customer interaction. This enabled our sales teams to spend more time building and maintaining relationships across their entire account portfolios. We also observed behavioral differences in different countries — some use email more frequently than others, for example U.S. and Canada sellers directly schedule meetings with customers through Outlook, while in Japan customer meetings are more formal and scheduled via executive assistants. This confirmed our understanding of various cultural norms and collaboration patterns which was an important input to our analysis.

4. Customer satisfaction (and churn) can be predicted. As part of our ongoing organizational efforts to better understand our customers, one of our teams built a machine learning model that uses more than 100 features to predict customer satisfaction. We worked closely with this team to add the behavioral data about collaboration we gathered into the model. After our analysis, we discovered that collaboration became the top feature in predicting customer satisfaction, and helped increase the accuracy of the model from 78% to 93%.

Being able to predict satisfaction of each of our customers at any given time with this level of accuracy was a groundbreaking discovery for us. Further, having a deeper understanding of how our team’s interactions influence customer satisfaction by segment has huge upsides: it enables us to intervene in time to change high-risk customers into low-risk ones, and to offer new opportunities to highly satisfied customers. Our ability to predict customer satisfaction with this level of accuracy will help us keep an ongoing pulse on our transformation and intervene in a timely manner to ensure customer satisfaction at all times.

What’s next. Our goal is to arm each seller with these four insights on an ongoing basis, setting them up to be as successful as possible in creating value for our customers. We are currently testing a prototype in which a customized and automated email is sent monthly to each seller to help guide them toward behaviors that drive higher outcomes. Importantly, the data sent to each seller is set up for their eyes only; to protect everyone’s privacy and retain trust in the system, no one else, not even upper management, can see anyone else’s data.

Salespeople are provided the following every month:

Predicted satisfaction scores for their customers
Reminders to connect with customers they’ve lost touch with
Internal and external network size in comparison with benchmarks in their local areas
Recommendations on how to grow their customer networks through LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Time spent with each of their customers as compared to addressable market
Top internal collaborators and reminders to connect with other sales roles that are also working with their customers

We believe this information will empower our sellers with nudges and recommendations that are simple, actionable, and effective. Early reactions are extremely positive. If we continue do our jobs well, our sellers will be empowered to be as successful as possible, and will get better and increasingly connected to customers over time.

We also learned a few things along the way that were critical in helping us shape the story and vision to drive business impact.

Executive sponsorship is critical, and we couldn’t have gotten our analysis off the ground without it. Their support helped us get the right level of visibility for continuous analysis and digging deeper, which ultimately got us to something more meaningful and actionable.
Investment in business analyst, data science, and data engineering talent was essential. It takes a real commitment to unlock and operationalize the most powerful insights, and it takes a lot of people to do it. We believe bringing the right people onboard is worth it.
Freeing data from silos and cross-team collaboration was key to our success. As for any analytics project, we needed to source data from multiple sources across the company to correlate behaviors with sales outcomes. Without this, our efforts would be fruitless.

We’ve invested a lot of time and resources in building out our behavioral data capabilities, and they’re already generating tremendous value. However, we believe we are still in the very early phases of uncovering what’s possible. We have a long way to go, but so far, our transformation is working. Pushing the envelope on behavioral analytics has been a key ingredient to our success, and hopefully our insights can help your salespeople, too.  

When You and Your Friend Both Want the Same Promotion

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Research generally shows that having friends at work can increase productivity and engagement. However, a new study by Wharton researchers Julianna Pillemer and Nancy Rothbard finds that there can be a dark side to having friends at work, especially if what’s best for the friendship conflicts with what’s best for the organization.

Take this example: Suppose two colleagues, let’s call them Lata and Andres, have worked on the same team for over five years and are close friends. They’ve supported and coached each other whenever work challenges come up for one of them. They get together with their families on weekends. And they both cherish having a close friend who is also a colleague.

Recently, however, a point of tension came up for Lata and Andres. Their supervisor told Lata that they were both being considered for a major promotion and whoever received the job would end up managing the other. While both were excited about this possibility, they also felt uncomfortable. Their relationship had always been mutually supportive not competitive. And they both had good reason to want this promotion. Lata’s aging parents had moved in with her family, so she’d recently bought a bigger house — and now had a large mortgage to pay off. For Andres, as a single parent with three children, this promotion would mean he would be doing more team management and less client-related travel, allowing him to spend more time with his kids.

After a grueling round of interviews, Lata was selected for the promotion. Andres felt disappointed. While he was happy for Lata, his self-esteem had taken a hit. His closest friend at work was now his manager, which meant a new awkwardness between them which inevitably impacted their ability to work together.

What do you do when a work friend and you are both up for a promotion — or in any other competitive scenario where one of you stands to “win” while the other stands to “lose”?

First, emotional balance and perspective are critical. Remind yourself that this is just one of many promotions that will come up in your career trajectory. It’s easy to focus on the trees and not the forest and lose perspective — especially when you’re caught up in an emotional situation. Brain-imaging research shows that, when you are stressed or anxious, reason and logic are negatively impacted. Taking a step back, gaining perspective and seeing things from a broader point of view can help. After all, how much better is it to have a manager who respects, likes, and understands you than a stranger who may not “get” you as well? Given research that shows that our heart health is directly linked to our relationship with our boss, having a leader you like and who likes you can be a huge advantage. A supervisor who appreciates and cares about you is likely to help support your career. For example, Andres knows Lata will always vouch for him.

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Perspective will also help you realize that your friendship is probably more important to you than the promotion. Research shows that social connection is one of our greatest needs after food and shelter. We are happier and more engaged at work when we have positive social relationships with the people we work with (even more so than when we receive a large paycheck). Loneliness, on the other hand, can harm both our psychological and physical health, as leading loneliness psychologist John Cacioppo, coauthor of Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, has shown in his work. Friends at work lead to a host of benefits for us both personally and professionally, including higher performance and lower burnout rates. Rather than dwelling on his own unhappiness with the promotion outcome, Andres might remind himself of how delighted he is for Lata. That social connection is more beneficial for Lata than dwelling on what he’s lost.

Second, keep your feelings of self-worth in check. The outcome of the promotion selection is not a judgment on you. Promotions can often be arbitrary and subjective. It’s not always about who is better for the job. For example, research shows that people get ahead at work due to relationships more than technical skills. We all know that “politics” almost always plays a role in these sorts of decisions as well. In the West, we mistakenly overemphasize situations as being about us. As pioneering cultural psychologist Hazel Markus has written about in her book Clash!: How to Thrive in a Multicultural World, if you’re from an individualist country like the U.S. or many European countries, you (erroneously) tend to think that you are solely responsible for your successes or your failures. People from collectivistic cultures like East Asian countries have a more holistic view: understanding that whether or not you win has to do with many more things than your own merit. The decision to promote (or not promote) you may have little to do with your actual skill, and more with factors outside of your control.

Third, communication and planning are key. Talk to your friend about the situation to diffuse the tension. Discuss your discomfort. Share your determination not to let this work situation impact your friendship. Andres and Lata would benefit from discussing what they would like their work relationship to look like and how to make sure the imbalance of power doesn’t impact their personal relationship. Even before a decision is made, it would help both Andres and Lata to think through the possible outcomes and how they would maintain their friendship.

The upsides of having friends at work are undeniable. But, of course, there are tricky situations to navigate. The key is to use your emotional intelligence to make sure you — and your friendships — can survive despite what happens in the organization.

Stopping Data Breaches Will Require Help from Governments

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Not a month goes by without a major corporation suffering a cyber attack.  Often state-sponsored, these breaches are insidious, difficult to detect, and may implicate personal information relating to millions of individuals. Clearly, the current approaches to safeguarding sensitive data are insufficient. We need to reorient expectations for the role of the private sector in cybersecurity.  As the risk of cyberattacks has become better appreciated, we see an increasingly punitive focus on holding corporate America solely responsible.

Multiple, overlapping laws at the national and state level require companies to have “reasonable” security, a concept that is largely undefined and elusive, especially given that threats and available defensive measures constantly evolve. And regulatory enforcement actions and lawsuits in the wake of cyberattacks declare any exploited security vulnerability to be de facto “unreasonable,” without a meaningful assessment of the company’s overall security program or acknowledgement that the company has been the victim of a crime.

This approach is premised on an unreasonable expectation that every company in the United States has the resources and capability to defend itself against even the most sophisticated cyber actor.  We should move away from laws that focus on finding companies at fault, rather than as victims of criminal cyber activity.  This framework is neither fair nor effective in improving our collective cybersecurity.

In our experience, despite increasing security spend, most companies face significant obstacles to successfully managing cyber risk.  Although some industry security standards have emerged, they are  vague, and available security solutions are seldom turnkey.  Rather, effective security requires application of significant judgment in the context of unique and complex corporate network architectures, as well as the ability to adapt as security solutions and threats evolve.  Unfortunately, the talent pool with the requisite cyber experience and knowledge is limited.  It is simply not possible, at present, for every company in America to have sufficient internal cyber expertise to manage the risk.

The challenge is compounded by the resources and sophistication that state and criminal cyber attackers can bring to bear.  In no other arena do we expect every business to defend itself from foreign intelligence and military agencies or sophisticated criminal threats.

Although there has been a significant focus on sharing threat information, both within the private sector and between the government and the private sector, such sharing remains incomplete at best, particularly when it comes to the techniques, tactics, and procedures that particular actors are employing.  As a result, companies often lack sufficient knowledge of the specific threats they face so they can best defend themselves.

Given these and other factors, companies that suffer cyberattacks are, and should be treated primarily as, victims.  When a bank suffers a physical robbery, we do not think of blaming and shaming it – even though there is almost always some additional precaution the bank could have taken that might have helped prevent the attack (such as a police officer stationed at every teller window or limiting customer access to tellers).  While banks are expected to implement some security measures, there is no expectation that those measures will prevent criminal attacks entirely, and banks are not vilified if they did not have every available precaution in place that might have prevented them.  Yet in the cyber context, a company that suffers a breach faces a substantial risk of multiple regulatory investigations and class action lawsuits, all focused on assigning blame to the organization for having inadequate security measures to defeat the criminal attack perpetrated by others – no matter the strength of the company’s overall security program or the amount of the investment it has made in security.

That perspective is not only unfair, but counterproductive.  Instead of focusing on remediating the incident, restoring operations, improving security going forward, and mitigating potential harms, a company in the midst of a cyber breach also needs to worry about the record that is being created – what is being written down, whether lawyers are sufficiently involved in the forensic investigation, and other considerations bearing only on protecting against liability.  Moreover, the fear of potential downstream liability constrains what information a company is willing to share – it may not disclose the incident at all, let alone how and why the intruder was able to evade existing security measures, depriving the broader community of the opportunity to learn lessons from the incident, as happens in aviation and other industries.

Although the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 provided some protections, they are narrow and have not resulted in a material increase in information sharing.  As a result, our collective cybersecurity is diminished:  we do not harness the enhanced security or efficiencies that a more collaborative approach to threat intelligence and defense would yield.

We need to reorient our cybersecurity focus.  We should place less burden on individual companies by focusing more on systemic ways to address cyber threats.  In part, that approach would require the federal government to take a more active role in cyber defense.  The government has a number of comparative advantages over the private sector, such as the ability to collect and exploit intelligence and to coordinate internationally with other governments and law enforcement agencies.  The government should do more to give the private sector the benefit of these advantages.

For example, the government should devote more resources to collecting intelligence about potential cyber-attacks against private entities, particularly from nation-state actors, and then take steps to help prevent them — not merely notify companies believed to be at risk and then leave them alone, with imperfect and incomplete information, to investigate and respond.   As the Department of Homeland Security takes on greater responsibilities for identifying and minimizing cybersecurity risks to the U.S. economy it should issue pragmatic, cost-effective operational guidance to companies on how to defend against evolving risks.

We also need to focus more on incentivizing security improvements at points in the cyber ecosystem that can have a scale effect and protect large groups of users and companies, rather than leaving each one on its own.  We are collectively better off the more that software providers can use secure coding practices and thereby prevent a vulnerability – rather than requiring every user to install a patch somewhere down the line.  We will also be better served if more Internet service providers mitigate the effects of a botnet by filtering traffic to limit IP-spoofing – rather than requiring every target to fend off a denial of service attack.

Legal and policy reforms are likely needed to achieve these goals and encourage companies to collaborate with the government on these initiatives.  Such collaboration is unlikely unless the law provides greater confidentiality and liability protections than those presently available for companies that take actions to aid our collective cyber defense.  But with the right protections, companies may be more willing to join forces with the government in this way and others to reduce cyber risk.

While we are not challenging that it makes sense to impose some cybersecurity obligations on individual companies, those obligations should be reasonable and clear. Companies that meet a defined set of risk-based requirements, which could be developed through a collaborative, multi-stakeholder process, should have a safe harbor from liability – recognizing that they are victims, not perpetrators, of malicious cyber activity.

Digital Growth Depends More on Business Models than Technology

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For startups, 2009 was a good year. More than 20 companies launched at that time, including Uber, Slack, Pinterest, and Blue Apron, eventually achieved $1 billion-plus valuations. Given that those companies were all venture-financed and emerged from Silicon Valley, you might assume that the key ingredients that have ensured their success were cutting-edge technologies, digital platforms, and customer bases that were chiefly made up of digital natives. You would be wrong.

Yes, those companies had great technologies, platforms, and demographics, but the secret of their success turns out to be much more prosaic. Each was able to satisfy real customers who needed real jobs done — and by jobs, I mean a fundamental problem in a given situation that needed a solution. In other words, they had great business models.

Every successful company, whether it knows it or not, owes its success to its business model. I explained this in an article that was published in Harvard Business Review in 2008, before any of those companies began, and, now, 10 years later, that still holds true, as more and more of the business discourse is focused on digital transformation. A digital platform, or a digital solution, may enable a new epoch of transformative growth, but when you get under a company’s hood and look to see what’s really driving it, the engine of transformation turns out to be its business model.

In my article, I identified the four interlocking elements that, taken together, create and deliver value to both companies and its customers:

Customer Value Proposition (CVP), which is a way to help customers get a job done. The more important the job, the lower the level of satisfaction with other companies’ attempts to solve it, and the better and cheaper your solution is than theirs, the more potent your CVP.

The second is a Profit Formula, or how you create value for yourself while providing value to a customer. There are four essential elements to the formula: revenues, cost structure, margins, and resource velocity. The best way to create a profit formula is to work backwards, either starting with the price for lower cost businesses that is required to deliver the CVP, and then determining what the cost structure and other factors need to be or in highly differentiated businesses, start with the needed cost structure and margins that leads to the required price.

Key Resources are the assets that are required to deliver the CVP to the customer at a profit, meaning the people, technology, products, facilities, equipment, channels, and brand.

Key Processes are the operational and managerial capabilities that allow a company to deliver value in a way that can be repeated and scaled. These include manufacturing, budgeting, planning, sales and marketing, and customer service.

Successful business models have an exceptionally strong CVP, and a stable, scalable system in which all the elements mesh together seamlessly while complementing each other. As simple as this framework may seem, its power lies in the complex interdependencies of its parts. Major changes to any one of these elements affect the others and the whole.

Mature companies often look wistfully at successful startups like 2009’s class of unicorns and wonder if they can reinvigorate themselves by adding a digital component to their existing business model, in the way that clamping an outboard motor onto a rowboat makes it go that much faster. But what made each of those companies so valuable wasn’t their digital auspices — it was their powerful Customer Value Propositions, which investors believed they could deliver at profit and at scale. Being able to hail a car with your smart phone (a car that is driven by a self-employed contractor, who pays for most of the overhead him or herself). An instant messaging system that also allows for collaboration at work. A social media site that allows its users to visually share their interests with each other (and with advertisers, who sponsor content and pay for user data).

For an example of digitally-enabled business model transformation, consider Domino’s Pizza, which has experienced a massive turnaround since 2010. Forbes hailed it as a veritable case study “on how digital transformation leads to business value.” That Dominos has undergone a transformation cannot be disputed — an investor who bought $1,000 worth of Dominos shares in 2008, when it was on the brink of bankruptcy, would be able to sell them for more than $80,000 today. By comparison, $1,000 of Chipotle stock purchased the same year and sold at its peak in 2015, before the e-coli scare, would have only been worth about $5,000.

Along with introducing product innovations such as improved recipes and new menu options, Domino’s improved its processes around ordering and delivery by bringing its e-commerce technology in-house. Today, more Domino’s pizzas are ordered via digital devices than by phone.

But digitization was just the first step in Domino’s transformation. As it improved its online and mobile platforms, it introduced heavily-advertised features such as pizza profiles, which allowed users to order more easily, and loyalty programs, which boosted frequency of use. Domino’s transformation was enabled by its online storefront, but it worked because it successfully attracted and retained new customers while turning occasional customers into dedicated fans, at the same time that it extracted more value from each transaction.  More than that, it changed its branding and its relationship to its customers by making the experience of ordering pizza fun — which was the missing piece in Dominos old CVP. Now customers can play “Pizza Hero” on their iPhones after entering their personalized orders, or watch a clock click down the time to their pizza’s delivery.

Building its own digital platform was a game-changer for Dominos, but it’s not what changed its game. It did that by strengthening its CVP (adding more in the way of both convenience and fun), its Profit Formula (by increasing its volume and its resource velocity), and by upgrading the resources and processes that it needed to support them.

Any consumer or service company that doesn’t have a digital component certainly should; this is 2018, after all. But the key to transformational growth is still a powerful and coherent business model.

Building a Direct-to-Consumer Strategy Without Alienating Your Distributors

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Companies increasingly use digital technologies to circumvent distributors and enter into direct relationships with their end-users. These relationships can create efficient new sales channels and powerful feedback mechanisms or unlock entirely new business models. But they also risk alienating the longstanding partners that companies count on for their core business.

The auto industry is a case in point. Porsche’s Passport program allows consumers to subscribe via a phone app to a range of vehicles for a fixed monthly fee. Your chosen Porsche is delivered to your house with insurance and maintenance as well as unlimited miles and flips to other models included. But if you’re a Porsche dealer, how do you like this idea? Now consider that similar subscription services are being offered by Volvo, Lincoln, BMW, and Mercedes, with more to follow.

These direct-to-consumer offers threaten the very livelihood of dealerships, who historically have owned the customer relationship. And many dealers are pushing back. The California New Car Dealers Association lobbied for a law that required subscriptions to go through dealers. Volvo’s program has elicited so much criticism that dealers have mobilized the Indiana state legislature to outlaw the business model.

This is but one example of the digital Catch-22, the dilemma that most manufacturers and service companies face when creating new distribution channels. As a result, many B2B companies remain stuck in a stalemate. Writing in the Sloan Management Review, Boston College professor Gerald Kane noted that 87% of executives surveyed indicated that digital technologies will disrupt their industries to a great or moderate extent. Yet fewer than half felt that their companies were doing enough to address this disruption.

We frequently find that executive teams understand the potential of a reinvented distribution strategy; however, they are unclear on how to proceed. While the opportunity is compelling, so is the potential to upset existing distribution partners and thereby damage the core business. Disgruntled distribution partners may retaliate in ways such as switching to rivals, favoring competing products, or even lobbying for legislative remedies.

How can companies position for the future without putting their current business in jeopardy? Here are three strategies for developing digital distribution approaches that minimize risk:

Embrace Stealth

In the past, companies looking to test new business models could quietly enter a new geography free from restrictive distribution contracts that limit their ability to go direct in their traditional geographies. But that is harder to do in the digital age, as customers and partners anywhere can easily see what you’re doing online.

Alternatively, the company can operate in stealth mode by targeting customer segments that have been poorly served or ignored by traditional distributors.

Recently, Verizon quietly launched a startup called Visible which offers no-contract mobile phone service subscriptions for a $40 flat fee and is only available for purchase through an app. This model competes mainly with smaller-brand, low-end providers and may not be seen as a direct threat by Verizon’s massive distribution network of company-owned, partner, and authorized reseller stores that are selling higher-margin services.

Sometimes, an entirely new product provides the right entry point. Starting in 2011, Mercedes chose to develop direct distribution capabilities for electric bicycle sales under its Smart brand.

Mercedes’ strategy preserves its traditional distribution network for its major lines of vehicles, while enabling the company to build the capabilities and infrastructure needed to support a reinvented distribution strategy — selling to consumers rather than through traditional dealerships.

Create Hooks

Distribution partners willingness to retaliate can be minimized if companies are able to create hooks that compel and reduce their negotiating leverage. There are many ways to build hooks, including bundling products, monopolizing a category, or developing features that are indispensable to a subset of customers.

For example, Cree Inc. made a splash when it introduced affordable consumer LED lightbulbs in the early 2010s. For several years the company was both a cost and product feature leader in the category. This enabled Cree to command significant shelf space in Home Depot, while simultaneously building a direct-to-consumer business. During this period, Home Depot was compelled to carry Cree products. This dual distribution strategy resonated with both consumers and investors — as Cree’s stock price tripled from 2011 to 2013.

In 2012, with the launch of the Surface product line, Microsoft began directly competing with the manufacturers and OEMs who had been its distribution partners for decades. Microsoft was able to do so largely due to its monopolization of the desktop operating system market. Traditional Microsoft partners such as Acer, Lenovo, HP, and Dell were already hooked on Windows and had little choice but to accept Microsoft’s direct-to-consumer strategy.

In fact, many of Microsoft’s partners, at least publicly, were supportive of the Surface. In 2012, Acer’s founder, Stan Stinh, indicated that he believed the Surface was only intended to stimulate market demand and that “once the purpose [was] realized, Microsoft [would] offer more models.” Today, the Surface product line has a greater share than Acer does in the U.S. market for personal computers.

Minimize Pain

Supporting downstream partners’ business can also reduce the risk of retaliation.

The heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, for example, introduced a vehicle management platform that provides customers with insights on vehicle utilization, health, and location. The platform is sold directly to customers — frequently removing downstream partners from the sales process. Ultimately, though, the platform benefits partners because it alerts customers when they need to get their equipment serviced by these local partners — a key revenue stream for Caterpillar’s distributors.

UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest health insurers in the U.S., is on the verge of becoming the nation’s largest employer of physicians. But under its subsidiary Optum, UnitedHealth Group has pursued an aggressive M&A strategy to build its direct-to-consumer capabilities while being careful to not upset traditional healthcare providers. For example, Optum has continued to accept over 80 types of health insurances across its facilities and has avoided restricting United insurance customers to Optum-owned providers. Optum’s deliberate strategy has caught the industry’s attention, but to date has avoided direct retaliatory actions by incumbent healthcare providers.

Digital represents a significant opportunity for many B2B companies, but also risk. Failure to act enables competitors and new entrants, while action risks retaliation from existing partners. To break this stalemate, leadership should align on the imperative to act, acknowledge the risks of action, and identify the right strategy with which to move ahead. Your long-term partners are more likely to stand by you if they see your direct-to-consumer move not as an act of aggression but as a plan for growth.

Study: When Leaders Take Sexual Harassment Seriously, So Do Employees

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When it comes to the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace, employees demand leadership accountability. Consider the recent Google walkout, which employees staged to protest the lofty exit packages paid to men accused of misconduct. In response, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, and Larry Page, chief executive of its parent company, Alphabet, apologized.

Business leaders want to do better. The high costs of sexual harassment are evident, from employee outrage to the loss of worker productivity and employee attrition. One study estimated that for each employee who was sexually harassed, the company lost an average of $22,500 in costs associated with just lost productivity. Yet, solutions are hard to come by.

Our research points to a single step that leaders can take to help reduce sexual harassment: communicate to employees that preventing it is a high-priority issue for their companies. In just a few sentences, this signals to others how much they should prioritize the issue and sets a culture in which sexual harassment is not tolerated.

This messaging is critical because, more than any other aspect of a company, it is organizational climate that best predicts the occurrence of sexual harassment. When the climate toward sexual harassment is lenient, members feel that there are few consequences – that those who engage in sexual harassment will be protected, while those who report it will be disregarded or even penalized. Such a climate characterized the environments in which recent high-profile sexual harassment cases like those of Harvey Weinstein and Charlie Rose happened. In contrast, in a climate intolerant of sexual harassment, people perceive that their organization takes a strong stance against it by taking complaints seriously and holding perpetrators responsible.

Our interest in the impact of leader messaging arose from our own experiences working in higher education. In 2015, many universities around the country conducted surveys to measure the incidence of sexual violence on campuses nationwide, and university presidents then issued statements outlining the findings. As the media picked up the statements, we noticed a great deal of variation in how they were written. Some expressed outrage; others brushed off the disturbing survey results. We wondered if the different responses shaped how students came to think about sexual assault on their respective campuses. So we conducted a national experiment to explore the impact of leader messaging more broadly.

In that newly published research, we found that the way leaders communicate can indeed shape peoples’ attitudes toward sexual harassment. In our experiment, 618 online study participants in the US read a brief statement from a fictional company about the results of a sexual harassment survey taken by its employees. For some participants, the statement included a quote from the CEO emphasizing the severity of the problem, such as: “The results of the survey are alarming.” Others read a CEO quote downplaying the issue, such as: “We are skeptical that the survey represents an accurate rate of sexual harassment at Soldola.”  The factual information about the survey was the same for all participants.

This simple difference in leader communication turned out to be powerful. Those who read the “skeptical” statement were less likely to rate sexual harassment a high-priority problem at the company, while those who read the message about the leader taking sexual harassment seriously were more likely to rate it a high-priority problem. This pattern held no matter the participants’ gender or political affiliation.

While our study showed that leaders can raise the level of concern about sexual harassment, some might argue that it is not in the best interests of a company. Why acknowledge that sexual harassment is a problem and risk damaging the company’s reputation?

First, downplaying the issue may result in more damage to a company’s reputation. As we have seen in many cases this year, when a leader signals to her or his employees that sexual harassment is not taken seriously, those who are victimized may ultimately turn to the media, and, as we noted above, negative coverage of these scandals can have profound and expensive consequences, including leadership and employee turnover, reduced productivity, walkouts, and even boycotts. The public perception of a toxic culture can have long-lasting effects on the corporate brand, making it difficult to attract and retain not only customers but also employees who want to work in a safe, fair environment.

Second, ignoring the problem amounts to institutional betrayal, which can compound the trauma suffered by victims of sexual harassment. People who are sexually harassed already experience negative health consequences; and research shows that when institutions fail victims of sexual violence, their negative health outcomes are exacerbated.

If leaders do nothing, they are not just acting neutrally. They may be fostering a culture where sexual harassment will become more prevalent. But if a leader instead identifies sexual harassment prevention as an issue that the company prioritizes, our research shows that this stance will push other people in the organization to take it seriously as well.  Of course, leader communication alone will not solve this issue. Companies that wish to eradicate sexual harassment must follow words with actions, taking steps to bring transparency and accountability to policies and investigation processes. However, setting the right tone with a clear zero-tolerance message is an important first step.

How to Talk to Your Boss When You’re Underperforming

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It’s normal to underperform on occasion. After all, everyone has an off quarter — or even an off year — from time to time. But don’t just sit back and wait for that painful performance review. You need to have a conversation with your manager sooner rather than later. How should you position the news? How can you maintain your reputation while being honest? And what sort of explanation — if any — should you give?

What the Experts Say

When you’re having a bad time at work — your big project isn’t coming together as planned or you’re missing your sales targets by a wide margin — talking to your manager may be the last thing you want to do. But you shouldn’t shy away from the topic, according to Jean-François Manzoni, president of IMD and the author of The Set-Up to Fail Syndrome. “You don’t want your boss annoyed at you and wondering” about what’s going on, he says. It can be a tricky conversation, however. Dick Grote, a management consultant and author of How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals, says you must do two things to preserve your professional standing. First, “come clean” about your underperformance “before your boss has had a chance to discover it another way,” and second, focus on “solutions, not excuses.” Here are some ways to think about — and prepare for — the discussion.

Reflect

The first step in owning up to your underperformance is determining the source of the problem. For starters, says Manzoni, you need to consider “whether you really are underperforming.” Often our efforts don’t “immediately translate into desired organizational outcomes.” In other words, “you could be doing all the right things but, unfortunately, it’s taking a long time for it to lead to positive results.” Look at what both the “leading and lagging indicators” tell you. If both point to underperformance, Grote recommends a period of “soul-searching.” You need to figure out if this “is a one-off situation or more of a trend.” If the missed goals are an anomaly or due to extenuating circumstances that’s one thing, but if they’re indicative of a pattern, they ought to “trigger some career thinking,” he says. This bad stretch might mean that “you are really struggling” and perhaps in “need of more development,” he says. It could also mean that “you’re not in the right job.” (More on this below.)

Prepare

Next, says Grote, you need to think about your underperformance from your boss’s perspective. Ask yourself, how will my boss react to this news? “If you have a boss who has a propensity to blow up, you need to prepare for that,” he says. “You don’t want to go in naïvely thinking ‘I hope my boss is in a good mood today.’” Think especially about how you will explain what happened, says Manzoni. It could be, for instance, that you “took a risk” that didn’t pan out as you’d hoped. “You thought the market would turn. The odds were good. It was a reasonable bet, but it didn’t work out.” Or maybe you’re dealing with an outside distraction — an ailing parent, for instance — that’s the reason you’re “not at your best.” A “reasonable boss will be able to understand that,” he says.

Own up

When the time comes to talk to your boss, be straightforward and direct, says Grote. “Start the conversation by saying, ‘I have some bad news for you.’” Doing so “rivets the person’s attention” and ensures “no mixed messages.” Second, “appropriately express contrition and remorse.” A sincere “I’m sorry” goes a long way. Finally, segue into how you can make it right. “Focus on correction, not blaming, shaming, or fault finding,” he says. It’s natural to get defensive in these situations but do your best to avoid listing excuses. In difficult discussions like these, it’s natural to want to end on an optimistic note. And yet, “there are some conversations that won’t have a positive outcome,” says Grote. For this reason, he advises that you “ought not give too much thought about how to put a happy sheen on things.” The bottom line: “Don’t try to circumnavigate the problem.”

Ask for advice

As you offer ideas and suggestions on how to improve the situation, it’s worthwhile to ask your manager for guidance, according to Manzoni. “Asking your boss for advice shows that you respect your boss’s intellect and that you trust your boss,” he says. Asking for assistance is “flattering to your boss,” but you shouldn’t be obsequious, adds Grote. He suggests saying something like, “Here’s what occurs to me to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Does this make sense to you? How else would you handle this?”

Think long term

If your underperformance is representative of a bigger problem, you need to address it. This will be a separate and “longer conversation” with your manager, says Grote. He recommends saying, “When we get over this hump, I’d like to schedule a time to talk with you about the implications of this and what I can do in the long term to make sure it never happens again.” Possible interventions include more frequent check-ins or some sort of training to boost your skills. Your underperformance might also be a sign that you need to find a position at your company that’s better suited to your strengths. In this case, Manzoni advises talking to your boss about a possible move. “Say, ‘I appreciate your trust and support. I’m trying hard, but I am still struggling,’” he says. If you “establish your good intentions,” hopefully your boss can support you in identifying and transitioning to a more suitable role.

Principles to Remember  

Do:

Try to figure out the source of the problem by engaging in some soul-searching.
Offer ideas on how to improve the situation and ask your manager for guidance.
Resist any overly optimistic impulses. It’s not worth trying to put a positive spin on your underperformance.

Don’t

Wing it. Prepare what you’ll say and think about how your boss will react.
Mince words. Begin the conversation with “I have some bad news for you.” This ensures no mixed messages.
Ignore red flags. If you’re struggling, it might mean that you need more frequent check-ins with your boss, more development, or a job change.

Case Study #1: Admit your mistakes and generate ideas on how to improve

Matt Lee works at ResumeGo, a resume writing service company. Matt joined the company in 2016 and has consistently been a strong performer — until he recently found himself in an unexpected slump. The company offers money back guarantees for clients who are not satisfied with its products, and a little over 10% of his clients had asked for refunds. “This was the highest percentage of unsatisfied clients I’d ever had,” he says. “I had to explain it to my boss.”

First, he thought about the source of the problem. “A lot of the issues stemmed from a lack of communication with my clients,” he says.

In looking back, he noted that several of his clients said they didn’t like the formatting of their new resume. “I realized that if I had simply showed them the format I was going to use beforehand and explained the reasoning behind why I chose that format, this [trouble] could have been avoided.”

Second, he thought about how his boss would react and prepared what he was going to say. “More refunds requested by customers ultimately means less revenue for the company, so I was definitely nervous [to talk to my boss],” he says.

Matt began the conversation by “openly acknowledging” that there was a problem. “I wanted my supervisor to know that I was very serious about finding ways to improve my performance.”

Matt says he didn’t want to come across as defensive in trying to justify his poor performance, but he also wanted to make sure his manager understood his perspective. “While I acknowledged that there were things I could have done differently, I also defended the specific decisions I made with regards to how I wrote each resume,” he says. “I’m the expert here when it comes to how to write and design resumes, so I can’t simply alter my standards every time a client disagrees with how I approach their resume.”

Ultimately his boss agreed with many of Matt’s points. “It’s important with these kinds of issues to stand your ground and justify your actions — especially when you are confident in the decisions that you made.”

Matt ended the conversation with ideas on how to improve. “I had a list of things I could do that would potentially increase my customer satisfaction numbers,” he says. “These mainly revolved around communicating with clients more extensively at the very start before making certain decisions about their resumes.”

Since the conversation with his boss, Matt has worked on his communication with clients, and his customer satisfaction numbers have improved as a result. “I think that particular quarter was likely just an outlier,” he says.

Case Study #2: Work together with your boss to improve your performance

Each January, Tracy Nguyen, an online media relations associate at Tiny Pulse, a Seattle-based startup that provides technology to assess employee morale, sits down with her boss to outline her goals for the coming year.

“This way I am always able to track my performance,” she says. “As many PR practitioners, my main responsibility is managing brand reputation through generating positive media coverage. Last May, I did not meet a monthly goal of securing seven unique instances of press coverage.”

She reflected on the reasons for her missed goal. “I sat back and looked at all of my approach methods to see what was working, what was not, and what needed to be improved.”

She figured out that her long pitch needed work. “It was not getting the attention of my target journalists,” she says.

Second, she did a lot of research on how to improve her pitching. She also sought advice from her peers on how she could get better at it. Then she prepared what she would say to her boss.

When it came time for the meeting, she told her boss that she missed her objective. She apologized for falling below expectations but then launched into a discussion of what she would do to improve. “I wanted to bring this to my manager’s attention instead of waiting to be asked about what holds me back,” she says. “I was determined to lead with possible solutions.”

Tracy also asked her boss for suggestions on how to enhance her pitching skills. “Together, we came up with a solution to try an 80/20 method, which means spending 80% of the time targeting middle-tier publications and 20% on top-tier ones,” she says.

To measure the effectiveness of this method, they compared the impact of the new practice to the previous one. “As a result, two months later I exceeded my goal,” she says.

 

Job-Hopping

Are you worried about being seen as a job-hopper? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your with the help of Allison Rimm, a career coach and the author of The Joy of Strategy: A Business Plan for Life. They talk through how to leave after a brief time on the job, explain a series of short stints on your résumé, or know when to stick it out.

Download this podcast

Listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe on the Dear HBR: page. Email your questions about your workplace dilemmas to Dan and Alison at dearhbr@hbr.org.

From Alison and Dan’s reading list for this episode:

HBR: Managing Yourself: Job-Hopping to the Top and Other Career Fallacies by Monika Hamori — “The notion that you get ahead faster by switching companies is reinforced by career counselors, who advise people to keep a constant eye on outside opportunities. But the data show that footloose executives are not more upwardly mobile than their single-company colleagues.”

HBR: Setting the Record Straight on Switching Jobs by Amy Gallo — “In fact, people are most likely to leave their jobs after their first, second, or third work anniversaries. Millennials are especially prone to short stays at jobs. Sullivan’s research shows that 70% quit their jobs within two years. So the advice to stick it out at a job for the sake of your resume is just no longer valid.”

HBR: 10 Reasons to Stay in a Job for 10 Years by David K. Williams and Mary Michelle Scott — “It’s easy to quit over perceived unfairness or serious challenges. But it shows much stronger character to persevere, to find and enact solutions to problems, repair damage, and to take an active role in turning a situation around.”

HBR: Managing Yourself: Five Ways to Bungle a Job Change by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams — “A hasty job change, made with insufficient information, is inherently compromised. When under time pressure, people tend to make certain predictable mistakes. They focus on readily available details like salary and job title instead of raising deeper questions, and they set their sights on the immediate future, either discounting or misreading the long term. Many also have an egocentric bias, thinking only of what affects them directly and ignoring the larger context.”