Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 791

Podcast: After Hours

HBR Presents
After Hours
Harvard professors discuss news at the crossroads of business and culture.












Listen and subscribe

[image error] Apple Podcasts
[image error] Google Podcasts
[image error] RSS


Also on:
Stitcher
Overcast
Pocket Casts
RadioPublic

Latest Episodes



Season 2 – Episode 4

Can Netflix Keep Winning? And Why People Are Fleeing Latin America
Youngme, Mihir, and Felix debate whether Netflix’s success is sustainable, before trying to wrap their heads around the unthinkably high murder rate in Latin America. They also share their After Hours picks for the week.Read more

Season 2 – Episode 3

How Bad is Airline Service, Really? And Other Customer Service Complaints
Youngme and Mihir welcome their colleague Ryan Buell to discuss whether airlines deserve their reputation for terrible customer service. They also share other customer service pet peeves, as well as their personal “Customer Experience Picks.”Read more
Download this podcast

Season 2 – Episode 2
Is Retail Dying? Plus, How Are Companies Spending their Tax Cuts?
Youngme, Mihir, and Felix discuss whether the “retailpocalypse” is real, try to figure out how companies are spending their Trump tax cuts, debate whether share buybacks are a good thing or a bad thing, and offer their picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 2 – Episode 1
Debating Minimum Wage, and Reflections on a Year of #MeToo
Youngme, Mihir, and Felix are back with Season 2 of After Hours! In this episode, they debate whether the federal minimum wage should be raised, offer their personal reflections on a year of the #MeToo movement, and share their picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 20
New Media and Predictive Policing
In this episode, hosts Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Mihir Desai explore the prospects for media outlets like Vice and Buzzfeed, discuss their thoughts on predictive policing, and offer their After Hours picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 19
Trade and Soccer
In this episode, hosts Mihir Desai and Felix Oberholzer-Gee discuss trade, soccer, offer their After Hours picks.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 18
Food, food, and more food!
In this light-hearted episode taped a couple of weeks ago, Youngme, Mihir and Felix discuss the #eatclean movement, their most/least favorite food trends, and offer their After Hours picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 17
The #MeToo Movement and Its Impact on Business (Live)
In this LIVE! episode taped in front of an audience of Harvard Business School alumni, Mihir and Youngme discuss the #MeToo Movement and its impact on business.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 16
Is the Job of the Presidency Too Big? Plus, Vaping Among Teens
In this episode, Youngme, Felix and Mihir debate whether the job of the presidency is too big even for the most competent of executives; discuss whether the vaping trend among teenagers should have us worried; and offer their After Hours picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 15
Brainstorming Gun Control Ideas, and the Affordable Housing Dilemma
In this episode, Youngme, Mihir and Felix brainstorm out-of-the-box ideas for gun control; discuss whether cities like Boston should be trying to attract companies like Amazon despite the affordable housing crunch created; and offer their After Hours picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 14
A Conversation with Teens
In this special episode, Youngme asks three teenagers (including her own son) a set of 10 random questions that address everything from how they think about social media, to bullying in high schools, to how optimistic they are about the future.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 13
Antitrust and Big Tech, and Is Corporate Lobbying A Good or Bad Thing?
In this episode, Youngme, Mihir and Felix discuss antitrust and whether we should be concerned about the size of the big tech companies; debate the propriety of corporate lobbying; and offer their After Hours Picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 12
Why Management Practice Matters
In this episode, Mihir sits down with HBS economist Rafaella Sadun, who has dug deep into why and how management practices matter with award-winning large-sample empirical work. Rafaella discusses the problems and promise of family ownership, why Americans do IT better, the secrets of her productive partnership and how she came to economics, and her recommendation for a biography of a pioneering female economist.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 11
The Rise of Voice Assistants like Amazon Echo, and How to Punish Wells Fargo
In this episode, Youngme, Felix, and Mihir discuss why voice assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home are all the rage; debate how to punish Wells Fargo for criminal wrongdoing; and offer their After Hours picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 10
The Future of Newspapers, and Debating Big Tech
In this episode, Youngme, Felix, and Mihir discuss whether there’s a market for a Netflix for News; debate the future of newspapers like The New York Times; argue about which Big Tech company (Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook) is most and least vulnerable; and offer their After Hours picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 9
Why They Do It: White Collar Criminals
Youngme Moon interviews Eugene Soltes, who talks about “Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White Collar Criminal.” Among other things, Eugene discusses his unique relationship with Bernie Madoff, the motivations behind white collar crime, how firms can prevent such crimes from occurring, and his most memorable conversations with criminals he has interviewed. Eugene also shares an After Hours recommendation.

Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 8
The Gender Wage Gap, and Debating the Benefits of Retail Medicine
In this episode, Youngme, Felix, and Mihir debate what it would take to close the gender wage gap; discuss whether retailers like Walmart and CVS entering the medical care space is good or bad for consumers; and share their After Hours picks for the week.

Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 7
Zuckerberg Faces Congress, and the Plight of the Post Office
In this episode, Youngme, Felix, and Mihir give their quick takes on Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance before Congress; discuss the plight of the U.S. Post Office; and share their picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 6
Trump’s Trade War, and the Fate of Tesla
In this episode, Youngme, Felix, and Mihir vent about trade deficits and potential tariffs against China; they also debate the future of Tesla. Plus, their After Hours picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 5
Fixing the Culture at Uber
In this episode, Youngme talks to Professor Frances Frei, who was hired by Uber last year to help rebuild a broken culture. Frances describes how toxic the culture at Uber actually was and how she dealt with difficult work scenarios. She also talks about what should be done about “bad people doing bad things” and the link between strategy and culture. Plus, she gives a behind-the-scenes look at preparing for her TED talk.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 4
How Money Can Buy Happiness
In this episode, Youngme talks to her friend and colleague, Professor Mike Norton, about how to spend money to create happiness. Mike’s tips include spending money on experiences rather than on “stuff,” “buying time,” and investing in others. Youngme adds a few tips of her own.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 3
Debating Universal Basic Income, plus Google and the Right to be Forgotten
In this episode, Youngme, Mihir, and Felix debate the idea of a Universal Basic Income; discuss Google and the Right to be Forgotten; and offer their After Hours picks for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 2
Making Sense of Online Reviews, Our Best/Worst Service Experiences, plus Debating the Future of Spotify
In this episode, Youngme, Mihir, and Felix try to make sense of online reviews, dish about their best/worst service experiences, and offer their thoughts on Spotify. Plus, their After Hours recommendations for the week.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Episode 1
The #NeverAgain movement, Facebook and the Russian Influence Campaign, Should Pornography Be Banned, and Oscar Picks
In this pilot episode, Youngme, Mihir, and Felix discuss the NRA and whether the #NeverAgain movement has a chance; disagree about Facebook and the Russian influence campaign; and debate the idea of banning pornography. Plus, they offer their After Hours recommendations for the week and reveal what movies they’re rooting for (and against) at this year’s Oscars.Read more
Download this podcast

Season 1 – Trailer
Introducing After Hours
Listen in as Harvard Business School faculty discuss hot topics at the intersection of business and society.Read more
Download this podcast

HBR Presents is a network of podcasts curated by HBR editors, bringing you the best business ideas from the leading minds in management. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harvard Business Review or its affiliates.

About the Hosts

Youngme Moon is the Donald K. David Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. She sits on the Board of Directors of Unilever, Rakuten, and Warby Parker. She is the author of the bestseller, Different.

Mihir A. Desai is the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. His research has been cited in The Economist, BusinessWeek, and The New York Times. He is the author of The Wisdom of Finance.

Felix Oberholzer-Gee is the Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. His work has been profiled by media outlets around the world, including The New York Times, The Financial Times, Le Figaro, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and The Straits Times.


More HBR Podcasts



HBR IdeaCast
A weekly podcast featuring the leading thinkers in business and management.





Dear HBR:
The advice show for workplace dilemmas. We take your questions and offer a better way forward.





Women at Work
Conversations about the workplace, and the women in it.

John Kerry on Leadership, Compromise, and Change

John Kerry, former U.S. Secretary of State, shares management and leadership lessons from his long career in public service. He discusses how to win people over to your side, bounce back from defeats, and never give up on your long-term goals. He also calls on private sector CEOs to do more to solve social and political problems. Kerry’s new memoir is Every Day Is Extra.

Download this podcast

How Storytelling Can Help Young Doctors Become More Resilient

Hudzilla/Getty Images

I recently stood in front of a group of emergency room residents at my hospital and asked an unusual question.  “Has any of you ever judged your attending physician for not trying hard enough to save a patient’s life?” Then I looked around the room. But like every time I’d given this presentation, there were no takers.

I can’t say I was surprised. I was piloting a new program which uses storytelling to help young doctors reflect on how they handle the emotional and psychological toll of caring for suffering patients. In my experience, engaging in honest exchange about these dimensions is rare in medical culture—in fact, it is tacitly discouraged.

“Well, let me tell you about a time when I was that attending,” I said.  Then I steeled myself, and launched into my story.

The patient was a young woman, healthy up until the moment of her cardiac arrest. As the ICU attending on service, I was responsible for running her code. Despite all of our best efforts, her heart fluttered ineffectively on and off for hours, unable to pump blood to her starving organs.  Multiple rounds of adrenaline, electric shocks, and manual compressions by a string of exhausted interns had not succeeded in restoring her heart rhythm. As a result, her blood had become acidic, her kidneys had failed, and her liver was dying. Unbelievably, she remained intermittently awake over that first day, moaning occasionally. We hadn’t considered sedating her, as any medications for pain or sedation might drop her flagging blood pressure further. We had been pedal-to-the-metal for hours, but she was steadily deteriorating. I was confident that we had passed the point of no return.

Insight Center



The Future of Health Care
Sponsored by Medtronic

Creating better outcomes at reduced cost.

Medical teams function much like fire departments. The chief, or attending, is counted on to lead her troops straight towards the fire, to do the job that needs to get done. We are expected to be brave, confident, and above all, to never give up.  And all the more so in particular cases, such as when a patient is young, previously healthy, or has a condition that appears reversible on admission. And in cases when our well-intended but risky interventions might have actually made things worse, it is almost impossible to let go. I knew how difficult it would be for my team to consider anything less than everything for this patient. I also knew what I would be up against if I suggested changing our approach. I remembered my own tendency as a resident to sink my frustrations into more fight. I had myself judged attendings who had suggested shifting course, even questioned their fitness as leaders. But now, at the helm myself and convinced that this patient would not survive, I knew it was time to rethink our frantic scramble to save her.

A nurse ran by me to retrieve another syringe of epinephrine. I took a deep breath. “It’s time for us to stop,” I said. “I’d like to start pain and sedation meds and not restart compressions the next time her heart stops.”

These were hard words to say.  Harder still when the team turned to stare at me in astonishment.

“She’s only fifty,” said one of my interns incredulously. “I think she deserves more time.”  Another intern swore under her breath and rushed passed me, slamming the door on her way out. My heart sank. There was a veritable mutiny in progress. And within seconds, I began to question myself. I could hear the voices of my colleagues and others who heard of this, possibly directly asking me, more likely talking behind my back—why I hadn’t tried this technique, that intervention, a whole host of options that would never have saved this woman.  They probably would have agreed that these measures wouldn’t have worked. But performing them would have been fighting to the end, the way real heroes do.

In the end, I couldn’t stand up to my own inner voices. I caved, and we continued on.

It didn’t go well. The patient died a terrible death. It took longer than I had expected—she didn’t die for another 24 hours.  That fact further eroded my team’s confidence in me: my prognosis was off by a day.

But the fact is this woman suffered more than she needed to, and it was under my watch. Worried about her blood pressure, we had only minimally attended to her pain and anxiety. I look back on that day as a failure on my part—a time that I succumbed to my own internalization of a culture that prioritizes doing everything over doing what will actually help most.

And that is how I found myself, years later, speaking to this group of residents about this case. Our current medical culture often sets us up for the kind of moral distress I experienced that day. It is not only the witnessing of profound suffering, it is that we often feel unable to question or diverge from scripted approaches — ones which may actually cause more suffering than benefit. This surely contributes to the high levels of depression, suicide, and substance abuse among physicians.

Healing Stories

One way to address this trauma is through storytelling, the approach at the heart of my pilot program. The Narrative Medicine movement, started at Columbia Medical School in 1990, has introduced storytelling into an increasing number of medical schools and training programs. Data show that the use of stories to process the challenging experience of being a doctor increases empathy, enhances wellness and resilience, and promotes a more humanistic health care culture. By p­­­­rovidin­­­­­g a safe space for telling stories and listening to each other about our pain and personal conflict, we restore ourselves, and are better prepared for that next encounter.

In that vein, this program draws on my own experiences to invite others to reflect on this cure-at-all-cost culture in which we physicians have been steeped. Using my own stories, and a Netflix documentary set in our ICU, this multimedia experience aims to expose some of the emotions and fears that hold us back from doing what is best for our patients.

That day, after telling my story to the ER residents, I waited through an uncomfortable silence. I imagined I could hear the wheels spinning in their heads. Even after all these years of writing and speaking on this topic, I felt the familiar tug of anxiety. Were they judging me?

Finally, one of the residents started to speak. Hesitantly, as if worried this would come back to bite him. “I remember a time when we were coding a patient,” he said. “The code had been running for fifty minutes and the attending decided to call it. Everyone was relieved at first. But then someone said that he wasn’t comfortable stopping yet. So we restarted the code. It went on for another twenty minutes and the patient eventually died. But there was an awkward feeling in the room, like the attending had been found out. I felt bad for him because I think he was embarrassed that he’d been the first to give up.”

There were a few tentative nods. Another resident raised his hand. “I remember a time in the ER when a patient came in after a serious car accident,” he said. “We coded him on and off for hours. We’d done everything we could think of and he was about to die. Someone suggested that we open up his chest to see if there was anything we could do to restart his heart—remove some fluid, anything. It was crazy. There were even some snickers in the room. No one thought it would work. And even if it did, his organs had already died. The attending said no. And then I got pissed at the attending. I remember almost hating him. I remember thinking that he was giving up on this guy.”

I looked around the room. The residents who had spoken looked a little shocked, even sheepish. But the others looked relieved. And then a genuine conversation proceeded, one which addressed the emotional pitfalls and psychological challenges of this work. Once again I saw how our battlefield mentality affects us all: patient and healthcare provider, trainer and trainee.

It is crucial that we provide safe spaces for healthcare professionals to reflect on and process their own suffering. Then we will be fully available to do the hard work of patient-centered decision making in the moments when it is really needed — at the bedside of a dying patient.

Using the Power of Supply Chains to End Sexual Harassment

Image Source/Getty Images

In the year since allegations of sexual misconduct against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein shocked the public, the #MeToo movement has exposed widespread workplace sexual harassment—not just in the entertainment world, but across industries.

Last week, we at New America’s Better Life Lab published what we believe is a novel, forward-thinking report on the reality that harassment is “severe, pervasive, and widespread” across low and high income jobs and male- and female-dominated occupations. We also published an accompanying toolkit, called #NowWhat?, aimed at stakeholders invested in changing this reality. Among the recommendations we offer, one in particular is salient to businesses: supply-chain reform.

In a nutshell, this means leveraging consumer, worker, and corporate power to drive change at the companies you do business with.

Consider the Fair Food Program, which leverages farmworker and consumer pressure to demand that food buyers, like fast-food companies, demand that their food suppliers take harassment and other workplace abuses seriously.

In 2011, the Coalition of Immokalee workers banded together to get consumers on board to pressure the agricultural industry to improve working conditions. Workers organized to lobby consumers to buy only from food sellers that have been certified as a “Fair Food Farms,” placing pressure on Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Wendy’s, and other food sellers to “sign legally-binding agreements promising to only source tomatoes from Fair Food Farms with no outstanding wage theft, trafficking, sexual harassment, or other issues.” Certified farms then comply with auditors and participate in worker-education programs to “ensure farm workers have the right to work without violence and the opportunity to create a workplace of respect and dignity.”

How’s this approach working so far? Journalist Bernice Yeung found that “in the program’s seven years, 35 supervisors have been disciplined for sexual harassment, and 10 have been fired.” She continues: “Since 2013, two incidents of sexual harassment have been identified. The program’s most recent annual report notes that during the 2016–17 growing season, more than 70% of participating farms reported no incidents of sexual harassment.” These findings are significant, given that our review of the research on sexual harassment in male-dominated, low-wage industries such as farm work found evidence of widespread rape. A 2010 study showed that 80% of farm working women report experiencing sexual harassment.

The way the Coalition of Immokalee Worker and Fair Food Program ensure success is by creating user-friendly, independent reporting processes for sexual harassment, conducting peer-to-peer training about sexual harassment and workplace rights in an accessible manner, taking regular climate surveys to inform the co-creation of civil workplace practices and enforcement of respectful workplace norms, and making sure employees know that they’re more important than any one harassing foreman or farmer. Notably, the Fair Food Program food addresses many other issues beyond sexual harassment, including wage theft and human trafficking, but their efforts use supply-chain reform to eliminate sexual harassment provides a novel example of how to prevent and address workplace abuse—a strategy that other industries and organizers can use.

So how can firms like yours get ahead of the curve and encourage reform across their own supply chain before they face activist pressure?

First of all, take stock of the many corporations that rely on your company’s business, either as a buyer, a retailer, or a contractor. These are companies you might have enormous influence over, even if they don’t technically operate under your management.

Second, using resources like our report, find out what kinds of factors are letting sexual harassment flourish in companies you do business with. No two industries are alike. This might be a matter of workplace hierarchies, lackluster HR policies, or longstanding cultural assumptions about who belongs in one occupation or another.

Then, it’s time to make your priorities and values about harassment and workplace culture known. This might entail drawing up a clear, written statement on what you expect from your partners and suppliers, and consequences for when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.

Lastly, make it official. You can do this by asking your partners across your supply chain to sign onto an agreement about what is and isn’t tolerated in their workplaces, and then, and this is important, come up with a collective way to enforce that agreement. Will there be annual climate surveys and audits of how your partners are doing? And if so, are you ready to follow through on the consequences you laid out and potentially take your business elsewhere? This is where the power your firm has to influence change across your own industry and others’ really lies.

Of course, supply-chain reform is just one of a multitude of ways a single company can improve workplace culture beyond its own walls. But none of this will be effective unless a firm takes care of its own workers first. It’s one thing for McDonald’s to sign on to the Fair Food Agreement and use its power to protect farmworkers who are picking the tomatoes they buy. But as the strike against McDonald’s for its lackluster response to sexual harassment in September showed, it still has work to do in protecting its own workers from workplace abuse.

With the right research, dedicated partners, and a plan of action, a company can change not only its own workplace culture—but also all those linked to it.

How to Actually Put Your Data Analysis to Good Use

MirageC/Getty Images

Data and analytics professionals seem to be at the center of the next big race for talent. In 2015, there was a surplus of people with data science skills. Now there’s a significant shortage. By 2020, IBM expects broader demand for data and analytics talent to reach 2.7 million positions in the U.S. alone.

The competition for talent will be especially intense for companies for whom advanced analytics forms a core part of their proposition — think e-commerce giants, hedge funds and complex system engineers. For them, a dedicated, in-house team of data specialists can be a necessity.

But the rest of us? Not so much. Consider the findings of a Rexer Analytics survey in which more than a third of data analytics professionals say their company never, or only sometimes, puts their analyses to use. This calls into question the practicality of funnelling analyses through centralized teams focused on big-picture challenges.

Complete Integration with the Business

In our experience, most companies don’t need a small army of data scientists or bleeding-edge analytical techniques. What they do need are analyses that solve key commercial and operational problems. The good news is that the tools to do so are readily available — and relatively inexpensive. The same is true for processing power. Meanwhile, the vast majority of companies already store (but don’t analyze) vast amounts of commercially-relevant data and are collecting it at a faster rate than ever before.

What’s missing, more often than not, is a clear strategy and operational model for using these capabilities in ways that are specific to the company’s business requirements. Any such effort depends on three basic components:

People who can combine their commercial expertise with advanced analytics methods and applications in an effective way
An evidence-based approach that translates analytical know-how and an understanding of the business problem into actionable insights
A small team of analytics professionals (not necessarily data scientists) to develop appropriate analytical tools and techniques and enable the organization to deploy them through internal training and advice

Together, these form a solid foundation for closing the gap between technical skills and commercial thinking so that businesses can extract value from analytics. 

Building Internal Capabilities

So how to get started? We suggest taking your cue from companies that have been down this road before.

Start small. Aim for a single, key problem or an important (but limited) area of the business where predictive analytics can have a valuable and immediate impact. Then use the results to build credibility, excitement and momentum.

Brewing and beverage company SABMiller (now a division of Anheuser-Busch) took this track when they decided to make data and analysis available to their business units. To manage risk, they kept their initial investments modest. That way, they could readily abandon the failures while expanding the rollout of the tools and approaches that worked.

Keep it commercial. Tie analytics to the commercial and operational heart of your organization. (If it doesn’t address a core business need, analytics can be a hindrance more than a help.) While you’re at it, place the analytical capability as close as possible to those doing the commercial thinking.

Insight Center



Scaling Your Team’s Data Skills
Sponsored by Splunk

Help your employees be more data-savvy.

Berlin-based Zalando, for instance, empowered its business units with a self-service analytics infrastructure paired with embedded analysts focused on product development. The result? Teams ranging from Fashion Store to Logistics now can extract the data-informed insights they need to make smart decisions in line with the firm’s top business priorities.

Identify your analytical capabilities — both existing and potential. Many companies already have functions dedicated to strategy, financial planning or business insights, as well as individuals who use analysis to solve business problems. Build on these assets by empowering them with new capabilities. Special qualifications aren’t required — just the ability (and desire) to become data literate and proficient in the tools you select.

When Jaguar Land Rover discovered pockets of self-service analytics activity across its departments, the company began offering in-house analytics training. The first 60-seat course offering filled to capacity. By last year, an estimated 1,800 and 2,500 employees had become “citizen analysts” — business users who created their own analytics as part of their day-to-day work.

Build a toolkit. Encourage business users to tap into analytics with self-service tools that preclude the need to learn how to code. The most effective of these have built-in algorithms to navigate company data, create charts and dashboards, and deliver insights to different audiences.

Nike put together a tailored set of software tools for business intelligence, analysis and visualization—all with an aim to reduce technical barriers and bring insights to users in the business.  The toolkit had to cover the full range of user requirements from those just wanting key dashboards to those looking for as much data as possible to perform their own ‘exploratory’ analysis.  All users benefit from a central team that provides the governance necessary to ensure a stable, secure and up-to-date environment.

Create evangelists. Don’t leave business users to figure out the commercial value of analytics on their own. Show it to them instead, via a network of advocates across the organization. Through these advocates, companies can proactively introduce the capabilities available to the business and provide expert support for those finding their way.

That’s what UK supermarket Sainsbury’s did when they created a new 60 strong internal team called the Humanalysts. The group’s mission? To identify data-driven opportunities for improvement—such as predicting shopper responses to new pricing strategies — and, along the way, make believers out of often-skeptical business users.

Making Use of What You Have

Wherever you start your journey, keep this in mind: Democratizing analytics is an unavoidably iterative process. Every step requires a look back to ensure the appropriate controls, training and delivery mechanisms are in place and working the way they need to be. As Voltaire famously observed, with great power comes great responsibility.

It’s also a good idea to borrow liberally from those in similar situations to your own. Make generous use of relevant case studies. Prioritize the insights that generate commercial benefits. When reporting back within your organisation, focus on output and impact rather than the underlying models. Inspire, and be inspired.

Finally, don’t give in to pressures to build great teams of scarce, highly-paid specialists without working out what makes sense for your business. There’s nothing so special about analytics that they must be kept from those most intimately familiar with the problems you need to solve, and who work for you already. Analytics should inherently empower anyone with the means to comprehend it. Put another way: Data analytics is for everyone — not just the few.

The Tightrope Google Has to Walk in China

HBR Staff

With over 1.3 billion people, the Chinese consumer market is a tempting target for Western technology companies. Of course, it’s also a risky place to do business. The recent news that Google is considering a re-entry into China further highlights a troubling balancing act faced by technology companies looking to do business there. The company last entered China in 2006 with a censored search engine, but pulled the plug on the operation four years later after it discovered that human-rights activists’ Gmail accounts had been hacked. While the economic opportunity in re-entering China could be massive for the firm, there are very real dangers for Google or any internet firm in underestimating the threat posed by Chinese meddling.

Any internet platform company doing business in China has to negotiate a major business and ethical dilemma: The Chinese government enforces overbearing regulations that censor speech in the name of national security and, under common conceptions of international norms, violate human rights. Reports indicate that Google has discussed some of its re-entry plans with Chinese government officials, including offering a search service that would “blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest.”

Google’s bind is a common one. Apple, for its part, gave in to a new, privacy-impinging Chinese data security regulation last year when the firm announced it would build a data center in Guizhou, partner with a Chinese cloud service provider, and accommodate Chinese government demands that it should be able to examine private data held by Apple. The potential loss Apple would have sustained had it not caved and, in the view of many, compromised human rights interests, was huge — its access to the vast Chinese market for devices, as well as its manufacturing base there. Reportedly, Facebook has also attempted to enter China, though it has faced tremendous public outcry and difficulty in doing so.

Google’s departure in 2006 and the maneuvers of other tech companies trying to negotiate this minefield illustrate the difficult choices their executives face. Companies are compelled to maximize shareholder value; should the firm’s executives ignore human rights concerns and seize economic opportunities, or should they take the ethical course and forego the profits to be had?

While ethical considerations should rightly be a central concern, there is an array of potential threats internet firms would be wise to think through as well as they seek to balance the costs and opportunities of entering China.

Intellectual property theft. It is well-known that the Chinese government engages extensively in IP theft. For internet firms like Facebook and Google that collect personal data and monetize it using proprietary algorithms, state theft of corporate secrets — and their potential exploitation by Chinese rivals linked to the government — would pose a serious threat.
Escalating government demands. It is now clear that companies operating in China are kept on a short leash even when they comply with governmental demands. Indeed, the government can be expected, over time, to make increasingly invasive demands. Qualcomm, despite its compliance, has received heavy regulatory fines succeeded by significant merger blocks. Apple, which complied with Chinese regulations last year, was subject to threats that the government would shut off access to the Chinese labor market should the ongoing trade war with the United States escalate.
Regulatory creep. Political backlash against the leading internet platforms is increasing. In the last year, we have seen novel rhetoric and regulation from governmental authorities in Brazil, India, the United States, and elsewhere. Internet companies desire open markets and unconstrained internet service. But by making concessions to China’s censorship and regulatory demands, companies will surely encourage other governments to impose their own restrictions on the industry. When questioned about its China plans on Capitol Hill, Google dodged. But moving forward, U.S. firms will have to maintain stronger lines of communication with policymakers to resolve regulatory concerns on the front foot.
Alienating employees. Until a few months ago, Google’s plans regarding China were a closely kept secret. When employees learned that the company was considering censoring the search platform for the Chinese market, many signed a condemning internal letter — a petition to which the company’s CEO replied by noting only that Google doesn’t have immediate plans to launch a censored Chinese search service.  Employees’ influence within technology corporations is growing; present and past Facebook employees (including former president Sean Parker) likewise have publicly condemned the company’s leadership for its lax data privacy practices; at Google some employees have left the company in protest of its policies.

China has long enforced a strict media and information regime. It’s unlikely that this policy framework will change any time soon. The ethical case for resisting Chinese regulation is clear. But Internet companies need to also think carefully about the business costs of conceding to Chinese rules. In addition to the threat to their reputations, there are material risks that are equally dangerous.

9 Words and Phrases You’re Probably Using Wrong

Topic Images Inc./Getty Images

Many times, especially in business settings, people use words that they think they know — but don’t. Although they do this in an effort to sound intelligent and sophisticated, it backfires badly, because even one small slip-up can cause an audience to focus on only that, not the speaker’s ideas. Sure, saying the wrong word (usually) isn’t a game-changer. But if you make that kind of mistake, it sets you up for a question that no one wants clients, coworkers, or employers to begin asking: “Are you really that smart?”

Think it can’t happen to you? We’ve heard horror stories: people laughing behind a prominent CEO’s back for his not understanding the correct use of a business term; a corporate lawyer saying “tenant” (a renter) instead of “tenet” (a belief); an employee toasting her supervisor as the “penultimate” leader (which doesn’t mean “ultimate” but instead means “next to last”).

Here, excerpted from our new book, That Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means, are nine terms or words that sound smart but when used incorrectly make you sound the opposite, along with real examples of their being misused, drawn from business news reports, research publications, and corporate press releases. (We’ve omitted attributions to protect the well-meaning writers who unwittingly committed the errors)

begs the question

“Fidelity might have fired the last salvo by eliminating fees entirely. This begs the question as to whether Fidelity’s new funds incur any hidden costs or fees.”

In spite of popular thought, “begs the question” is not a smart-sounding way of saying “raises the question.” It’s actually a formal logic term that means trying to prove something based on a premise that itself needs to be proved. So leave “begs the question” where it technically belongs — in the realm of logic and law — and use the (correct) “raises the question” when that’s what you’re trying to say.

impacts on

“They can clearly and simply explain what we have done and how it impacts on our interpretation of the data, ensuring our reports are understandable and actionable.”

In a 2015 American Heritage Dictionary survey of language experts, 79% disapproved of using “impacts on” to mean “affect.” Another 39% disapproved of using “impact” to mean “affect” even without that preposition “on.” The original (and still most common) meaning of “impact” involves collisions. But nowadays, you can use it to mean “to affect” (without any collisions). But leave out that preposition “on.” That might impact (affect) your business presentation.

in regard(s) to

“[I]n regards to the new well, the production capacity of this first large size production well is remarkable.” 

This sentence is wrong. Not regarding the remarkable production capacity, but regarding “in regards to,” which should be “in regard to.” Even better, just say “regarding” or “about.” (For the record, “regards” with the “s” is correct in the phrase “as regards,” where “regard” is a verb.) In regard to the phrase “in regard to,” regard is a noun, and the singular — without the s — should always be used. The exception is when sending someone good wishes — “best regards” — or when giving your regards to, say, Broadway, as in the song. After all, you probably wouldn’t want to wish Broadway only one regard.

less/fewer

“[S]tart-ups are leaving the heartland and are employing less people.”

Technically, at least according to some word snobs, it should be “fewer people,” not “less people.” Why? It all depends on if and what you’re counting. A few basic rules:

Use “fewer” for numbered, countable things, especially people or other plural nouns. (“Fewer than 20 people were there.”)
Use “less” for things that can’t be counted, at least reasonably. (“There’s less sand at the beach.”)
Use “less” with numbers when they are a single or total unit, usually with “than.” (“Less than 50 percent of us went to the meeting.”) This can be tricky, because often you’ll see numbers in the plural — as in “He has less than a million dollars” — that presumably have been counted (as in rule 1). But since here we’re really talking about total amounts of nonhuman things, use less. (Don’t blame us — those are the basic rules that many people follow. Still, it’s all less — not fewer! — difficult than you’d think.)

methodology

“We have…failed to require that the IRS utilize only secure and reliable authentication methodologies…” 

Methodology is an annoying word that has oozed into a lot of places, especially government documents and annual reports, probably because it sounds important…and pretentious. The word to use instead is “method.” The “-logy” tacked onto the end of method transforms it into the study of methods. (That -logy ending comes from the ancient Greek λογίa for “the study of.”) So methodology has its place in English — it’s just that it should stay there and not substitute for method. (One interesting note: The IRS itself, in contrast to the senator speaking about the IRS, almost always uses the word method instead of methodology. Count on tax professionals to use a more economical word.)

moot

“Whether you need to appoint a Data Protection Officer or not is a mute-point.”

Actually, it’s not a mute point at all, because a point isn’t speechless. It should be moot, not mute. But even spelled right, moot is tough to use correctly. The use of moot is, well, moot…and we’re not being cute. What we’re saying is that the meaning of moot is “open to debate” — which is the time-honored definition of moot. But by the mid-1800s, moot also began meaning “something not worth considering.” The idea was that something debatable is of no practical value, so not worth bothering with. So sometimes moot is used to mean “definitely not debatable” because the point is so immaterial. This change in meaning is primarily North American, and it is one that has stuck, although language purists argue about it. Our advice: Choose another word.

statistically significant

“Facebook is ‘a positive, significant predictor of divorce rate….’ [T]he study’s authors feel they’re noticing something that’s genuinely statistically significant.”

You see it all the time nowadays: A study has shown something worrisome! The findings are statistically significant! Uh-oh! But statistically significant doesn’t necessarily mean that the results were significant in the sense of “Wow!” It just means that they signify that whatever was observed has only a low probability of being due to chance. The problem is, in nonstatistical use, significant means something noteworthy or important. So nonstatistical types see “statistically significant” and think it refers to something big. But actually a study can find something statistically significant that has only a tiny effect. For example, Facebook could increase the risk of divorce by a statistically significant 1%. Big deal.

unique

“The Skyline Group of Companies is one of Canada’s fastest-growing and most unique investment management organizations…”

Unique means being the “only one of its kind; unlike anything else.” So something can’t be the “most unique” — it can only be unique. But times are changing. Some dictionaries, like Merriam-Webster, now also define unique as “extraordinary,” although Merriam-Webster does say that this “common usage is still objected to by some.” Include us in the ranks of the “some” (although we’re not as impassioned as the New York Times book reviewer who called this usage of unique an “indefensible outrage!”). Let’s keep unique meaning, well, unique. For plural things that we want to call unique, we can instead say “unusual” or “exceptional.” So we could say that Skyline is an “exceptional” investment management organization…but let’s leave that to the PR department.

utilize

“Among the goals of the partnership will be to utilize Vium’s technology to track digital biomarkers…”

Substitute “used” for “utilized.” Does it make a difference? The only one we can see is that utilized is longer. So why use it? Yes, “utilize” can be distinguished from “use” when something is serving a purpose that it wasn’t intended for (“She utilized her dead tablet as a doorstop”), but it’s a slight distinction and “use” can still work. Utilize can also mean “to convert to use,” most often in scientific writing. (“The body utilizes carbohydrates.”) Even here, use can work, although it sounds a lot less scientific for some reason. In general, utilize is just a fancy way of saying use, and is usually best not utilized used at all.

These nine words are only the tip of an iceberg. From “a priori” to “untenable,” words can work for you or against you. And that’s our last (not penultimate!) word, at least in this article, on the words that can trip you up.

Should You Give Your Star Employees Star Treatment?

Francesco Sassetti/Getty Images

How vital are your vital few? In any team or organization, a small number of individuals will account for a substantial amount of collective output. These “stars” are able to systematically outperform the majority of their peers and confirm the well-established Pareto effect whereby 80% of collective output can be attributed to 20% of the people in a group, or even fewer.

Contrary to popular belief, there are universal traits that predict whether individuals will be part of an organization’s vital few, such as their higher levels of intelligence, work ethic, and social skills. In other words, people who are smart, nice, and hard-working tend to outperform their peers. They also learn faster and are more likely to adapt to new demands, which means they have higher levels of potential even for jobs they have not done in the past.

Because of this, stars are more likely to be in demand than their peers, so they will be approached by recruiters and rival organizations, who will try to entice them with better job offers and career opportunities. As McKinsey predicted 20-years ago, there is a War for Talent, and, in the age of human capital, a company’s stars are the commodities being fought for. This is particularly critical in high-complexity jobs, where the average output difference between average and star employees is 800% (as opposed to 50% in low-complexity jobs).

So, what can you do to keep your star performers motivated? Since engagement is a critical driver of performance, minimizing the gap between what your stars can do and actually do will be vital to achieving the highest level of collective output. Here are a few data-driven suggestions:

Know who they actually are: This may sound obvious, but since most organizations rely on subjective ratings of managers to identify their star performers, false positives are the norm. Unfortunately, this unreliable methodology turns the pivotal exercise of internal talent identification into a popularity contest whereby politically astute employees who manage up and take credit for others’ achievements are more likely to emerge as high potentials — though they more faux po’s than hipo’s. Consider that a seminal meta-analysis on the main predictors of career success identified that political skills are the strongest predictor. As I argue in my forthcoming book, this is one of the reasons why men are more likely to emerge as leaders, even when they are incompetent. In order to ensure that you know who your star performers really are, you should: (a) put in place reliable quantitative performance indicators to compare people’s relative contribution to the team’s performance; (b) use valid psychological assessments to identify their potential (beyond their past performance); and (c) pay attention to your employees’ reputations, particularly what their peers and colleagues think of them (you can’t fool all people all the time). And remember: some people will always get annoyed when they find out they are not regarded as stars, but fair rules and transparent criteria will significantly reduce the number of complainers.

You and Your Team Series
Retention








How to Lose Your Best Employees


Whitney Johnson


To Retain New Hires, Make Sure You Meet with Them in Their First Week


Dawn Klinghoffer et al.


Why Great Employees Leave “Great Cultures”


Melissa Daimler

Let them know that you know they’re valuable: Although many organizations refrain from telling their stars that they are stars, there are several problems with this approach. First, if your concern is that by telling your stars that you consider them stars they will become entitled, then you should note that true stars have the capacity to remain motivated and humble even after their contribution to the firm is acknowledged. In other words, if their performance decreases because you told them, then they were not real stars (and you will not lose too much if they go). Second, fairness is not treating everyone the same, but treating them as they deserve to be treated: if you make your stars feel that they are just like everyone else, they will feel unfairly treated, and rightly so. Third, no matter how much potential people have, they will need to be developed in order to live up to it. This means investing in them, and since you cannot invest in every single employee — and investing in your stars will produce the biggest ROI — you will probably want to tell them that they are worthy of investment. And if you are worried about the risk that they might leave after you invest in them, remember that, as Henry Ford noted, “the only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.”

Make an effort to engage them: With global estimates suggesting that only 13% of employees are engaged, and that the major cause of engagement (and disengagement) is their manager, it is essential that you minimize the risk that your stars fall into this category, and this will require special attention. First, you will need to ensure that they regard their role and contribution as meaningful, which requires aligning their activities with their core values and drivers. Second, provide them with opportunities to develop their curiosity, including the freedom to learn and to nourish their hungry mind (top performers are often more naturally curious, which means they will have lower tolerance for boring and repetitive jobs). Third, focus on the universal drivers of engagement, namely autonomy, affiliation, and achievement. That is, give your star employees resources and leave them alone (as opposed to micromanaging them); make sure they experience a sense of belonging and camaraderie with others and the wider organization; and help them perform beyond their expectations (engagement boosts performance, but performance boosts engagement).

Remember that money isn’t everything: While money is the main vehicle organizations use to keep their star performers happy, it is generally a poor driver of satisfaction. In fact, meta-analytic studies indicate that there is just 5% overlap between pay and pay satisfaction, and merely 2% overlap between pay and job satisfaction. In fact, when you pay people too much for doing something that they enjoy, they may end up enjoying it less. And even if that isn’t the case, your stars will likely habituate quickly to your financial rewards — so a fat wallet is unlikely to buy you their love in the long run. Fundamentally, there are many other psychological drivers people will want to fulfill at work, including their need to help others, to influence others, and to enjoy what they do. And since one size does not fit all, you will need to devote enough time to decoding the personal values and drivers of your stars if you truly aspire to motivating them and keeping them happy.

Regardless of the approach you take to managing and retaining stars, it is essential that you make everyone aware of what the rules of the game are. To be sure, nobody likes to find out that they are not part of the vital few, but the proportion of individuals who will accept this will increase systematically if you are very explicit about what it takes to be part of the vital few, and you enable others to verify that those criteria are actually put in place. At the end of the day, even if everyone wanted to be a star performer, it is not the case that everyone is willing to do what it takes to attain that.

In short, your stars do deserve star treatment, but there is a rational, data-driven, and fair way to provide it, which will minimize perceptions of a rigged or nepotistic culture in your team or organization. For sure, having no approach or avoiding the issue will decrease rather than increase the perception of fairness.

Perfect Is the Enemy

From the Women at Work podcast:

Listen and subscribe to our podcast via Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RSS

Download the discussion guide for this episode

Join our online community

Download this podcast

If you’ve worked your way up in a competitive field — or are anxious by nature — you may have perfectionist tendencies. Maybe you’re a hard-driving, obsessive worker who thinks a task is never quite done. Or maybe you’re avoidant, struggling to start a project because you want it to be done just right.

We all know society holds women to a higher standard than men and rewards us for not making mistakes. But internalizing other people’s expectations — or what we think they expect — will only burn us out. To keep rising in our careers, we need to get in tune with our own standards for what’s a good, or good enough, job.

It is possible to keep our perfectionist tendencies under control. We talk through tactics with our guest expert, Alice Boyes.

Guest:

Alice Boyes is a former clinical psychologist turned writer and author. Her books are The Healthy Mind Toolkit and The Anxiety Toolkit.

Resources:

● “How Perfectionists Can Get Out of Their Own Way,” by Alice Boyes

● “How to Focus on What’s Important, Not Just What’s Urgent,” by Alice Boyes

● “How to Collaborate with a Perfectionist,” by Alice Boyes

● “Perfectionism Is Increasing, and That’s Not Good News,” by Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill

Fill out our survey about workplace experiences.

Email us here: womenatwork@hbr.org

Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Should Everyone Be Allowed to Invest in Private Tech Companies?

Beata Bernina/Getty Images

The SEC Chairman recently announced a policy initiative to enable the ordinary investors to invest in private companies. Currently, only  wealthy accredited investors are allowed to invest in private companies. His stated goal is enabling small investors to get access to alternative high-quality investments, such as in private tech companies like Uber and AirBnB. But in our view this policy, even if implemented, will not work as intended because the ordinary investors may not want to invest in private startups and private companies, especially digital ones, may not want ordinary investors.

It’s worth noting that the average investor does have alternative options to indirectly invest in digital startups. While most of the private equity companies are private, a few like Blackstone Group, KKR, Carlyle Group, and Apollo Global Management are traded on stock exchanges. Many public traded companies, such as Alphabet, Intel, and Apple are, in part, venture capitalists in disguise. While investors may not have the opportunity to invest in Uber, they can potentially invest in similar ventures via KKR or indirectly invest in similar businesses such as Waymo or Titan by investing in Google and Apple, respectively. Furthermore, pension funds are increasingly looking at investments in private equity funds. This may be a better model for average investors to get exposure to private companies, for several reasons.

Digital startups often seek to grow quickly and so report large losses. They therefore seek investors who understand their initial losses and can facilitate secondary rounds of funding when their operations grow. In addition, given their quest for organization leanness, digital startups seek investors who have the expertise to help outsource their noncore business functions, such as production, distribution, marketing, and payroll processing. In addition, venture firms are constantly scouring for opportunities to get their invested company acquired, which is an increasingly attractive exit route for digital entrepreneurs, given the IPO’s long-drawn process and mandated holding-period requirements for initial investors.

Thus, digital entrepreneurs choose their financiers not only for their contributed capital but also for their partnership value and exit options they create for the company. Available capital now significantly exceeds viable investment opportunities so digital entrepreneurs can afford to be picky in choosing their funding partners. By 2017, the number of total private equity funds reached 7,700 and the amount of free investible funds reached $1.7 trillion. With so much private capital chasing good investment opportunities, digital entrepreneurs prefer to remain in private hands until the time they are ready for regulatory compliance, quarterly financial reporting, and public investors’ demand for regular profits, as required post IPO.

Gone is the heyday of the 1990s when firms with simply an idea and little or no revenues could do an IPO. The median age of technology firms, backed by venture capitalists, doing an IPO has reached eleven years and is increasing. Eleven years is a long period for a surviving digital company, during which time, the value of its initial investments can jump several folds. For example, the initial investments of $25 million, made by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital in Google in 1999, increased by more than hundred folds by the time Google went public in 2004. Thus, the most lucrative investment opportunities, with the highest payoff potential, never see the light of public market. They are cornered and nurtured with patient capital by private investors, some of which make huge killing in those investments. By the time, those opportunities reach public markets, if at all, they are fully priced. Public-market investors, therefore, cannot hope to become wildly rich as can some lucky private equity investors.

But a lack of wildly profitable investment opportunities does not justify the opening of private market to public-market investors. Opportunities pursued by private funds carry large risk and require long time horizons.  The median holding is five years, some investments take ten years. General partners of private funds extract large management fees, but it takes a minimum of six years to evaluate their performance. In contrast, investments in public equity markets, through mutual funds for example, diversify risks and impose low management fees. Their performance can be assessed almost on daily basis and the investments can be quickly liquidated through stock markets. Thus, the economics of private equity funds do not favor the investments from ordinary investors, who do not possess the surplus wealth, ability to pay high management fees, and have the patience and risk-bearing capacity of rich investors. Moreover, can the average public investor stomach losses that VCs incur when their investments fail?

In sum, SEC’s chairman’s proposal mentioned at the beginning of this article, while laudable in intent, is unlikely to work. We do not expect ordinary investors to come running to digital startups nor do we expect digital startups to start welcoming ordinary investors, even if the regulations were changed.