Human Resources
Make a little time for yourself (in a 24/7 world)
We all know that work-life balance can be difficult, but do we make it harder on ourselves by how we choose to conceptualize the idea? More specifically, is the concept […]
5 ways COVID has impacted women in the workplace
Since 2015, the Women in the Workplace report has evaluated the successes of women in corporate America alongside the challenges they face. Sponsored by McKinsey & Co. and Lean In, […]
Sexual harassment damages organizations (in more ways than you think)
At first blush, the damages done by sexual harassment seem obvious. Make that incredibly obvious. Such behavior exposes our organizations to legal consequences and the subsequent financial fallout. And in […]
Steven Pinker: The case for letting go of identity politics
Identity politics has become a highly contentious element within modern political discourse. Those who support this approach believe it bolsters the presence and power of those who would otherwise be […]
What would it take to create a great place to work for all?
The business case for diversity and inclusion is overwhelming. We know that diverse teams benefit from increased productivity and a wider knowledge base. We know that varied perspectives help us […]
Want to be a better ally? Help your colleagues overcome subtle prejudice.
Malignant discrimination remains a problem in society, but it’s one we’ve improved upon compared to its historic highs—or, rather, lows. Interracial marriage, to pick one example of progress, used to […]
The Best of the Best: Big Think+ in 2020
For many, 2020 will not be remembered as a “best of” much. We don’t need to repeat the reasons here; it’s sufficient to point out that a 100-year pandemic was […]
This year, ditch your career ladder for a career lattice!
The corporate word-stock suffers no shortage of overworked metaphors. We drill down to find low hanging fruit, and despite lots of moving parts obscuring our window of opportunity, we mustn’t […]
How should human values shape the future of AI?
There’s a fortune to be made in data and silicon, and everyone is out for their share. Artificial intelligence is this century’s gold rush. Its promises scintillate in them there […]
Jonathan Haidt: Get to know Gen Z and build strong cross-generational teams
How do we integrate Gen Z into the 21st century workforce? Intergenerational differences are challenging: whether it’s listening to grandpa’s lecture on what’s wrong with the world these days or […]
Avoid these pitfalls to achieve customer service excellence
When we look at some of the companies with notoriously bad customer service, like Comcast, Bank of America, or United Airlines, it could be tempting to say that good customer […]
Barbara Corcoran: Hiring or firing, these are the keys to create a killer sales team
When it comes to hiring great salespeople, the statistics do not paint a pretty picture. In the U.S., roughly a third of all salespeople leave or are fired from their […]
Simon Sinek: What should your company culture be? Start with verbs.
Culture of a company is like the character of an individual,” says Simon Sinek in his Big Think+ video, “Starting with Why: Build a Culture by Design.” We know that […]
Need to hire and get it right? Follow the hiring strategy of an interview master.
While fewer companies these days rely solely on interviews in deciding who to hire, interviews still have value in that they can reveal the difference between a candidate as a […]
This 3-step method will help you hire—and retain—millennial talent
If a new hire is expected to put in 40 hours, 50 hours, or even more at their job, their new position will be their life for as long as […]
Got retention issues? Try this refreshingly modern (and honest) job contract.
You know it. Your employees know it. They’re likely to stay with your company only for just a short while. Two years, four years, seven years max. Yet you both […]
Do you work in a high-trust or low-trust organization?
Chairman of JetBlue Joel Peterson considers trust, “smart” trust, a key element in a successful organization. Where there’s trust, a company is free to become a whole greater than the […]
Your Gen Z colleagues really are different. Learn to understand them.
It’s probably always been the case that each generation’s creations and preoccupations shape the next generation in unexpected ways, producing young adults who seem nearly incomprehensible to their elders, especially […]
Barbara Oakley: How too much focus can limit your creativity
Have you ever had the experience of giving up on a problem and coming back to it some time later to find its solution suddenly obvious? According to Barbara Oakley, […]
Why 85% of the business world thinks differently than you do
Business, on every level, is becoming more multi-cultural. Whether it’s embracing diversity internally, expanding to multiple sites around the world, or entering distant markets such as China, never has it […]
Quality over quantity: What companies just don’t get about work hours
Jody Greenstone Miller is founder and CEO of Business Talent Group. She’s seen companies lose great people simply because of the way management assumes a job must be structured: To […]
Sexual harassment at work: Gretchen Carlson on fixing company culture
It’s a strange situation. In many American workplaces, it’s the sexual predators we protect, not their victims, according to journalist and author Gretchen Carlson. Since her landmark 2016 lawsuit against Fox […]
Creativity vs. Order: A psychology lesson to elevate your management game
Cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand says that our attitudes toward rules have a lot to do with who we are and with the type of environment we find most comfortable. She’s […]
How LinkedIn uses personalized learning to boost company IQ
As Chief Learning Officer at Degreed and former Chief Learning Officer at LinkedIn, Kelly Palmer has thought a lot about architecting effective learning environments for employees seeking to grow their […]
Neurodiversity: How unusual minds bring hidden strengths
An autistic woman, Judy Singer, coined the term ‘neurodiversity’ in her 1988 thesis as a label for the unique contribution made to the world by people whose brains are wired […]
Diversity hiring: How to support your ‘firsts’ and ‘onlys’
Diversity without inclusion is largely pointless. Beyond superficially satisfying some hiring metric, bringing on an employee who has little chance of thriving deprives the company of diversity’s benefit and puts […]
Unconscious bias: How to recognize first and react second
Just because you have unconscious bias doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It just makes you human. Amway’s Claire Groen cites the quote that made her feel better about her […]
Diversity: Is your team smarter than its smartest member?
In Shane Snow’s Big Think+ video, “Harness Your Team’s Mental Toolkit,” he begins by asserting that “two heads are better than one” is a lie. Also — and as long […]
Diversity & inclusion: You can’t have one without the other
This month’s release from Big Think+ is all about diversity and inclusion. These two intertwined objectives are on our minds a lot lately for their importance in the company cultures […]
There’s no hiding from what your KPIs are telling you
Key performance indicators, KPIs, are not new: It’s said that way back in the third century, China’s Wei dynasty began using them to rate the behavior of members of the […]