   
CEO Picks - The most popular editorials that have stood the test of time!
S1S2Research: How Long Should a Founder Remain CEO? Do founder-CEOs have an expiration date? In the wake of Jack Dorsey’s resignation from Twitter, some have begun asking whether the move could herald a new era, in which founders voluntarily step aside rather than sticking around for decades or waiting to be ousted. To explore the value added by a founder-CEO, the authors analyzed stock price and financial performance data from more than 2,000 publicly traded companies. They found that on average, founder-led firms outperform those with non-founder-CEOs — but that the difference dwindles to zero just three years post-IPO, after which founder-CEOs actually start detracting from firm value. Given these findings, they offer three strategies to help investors, boards, and executive teams support founders in transitioning out of the CEO role when the time is right, and ultimately argue that Dorsey’s decision may have been more prescient than many realized.
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S3The surgeons who can operate from anywhere in the world The current pandemic has revealed how much our healthcare services rely on physical human contact. Many surgeries have been cancelled to try to stop Covid-19 from spreading, creating considerable physical, mental and economic consequences for patients, hospitals and societies.
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S4How to Move Money in the 21st Century “Financial operations” (FinOps) is an emerging software category with a massive opportunity to streamline, automate, and optimize how we move money, while giving the entire organization a real-time view of a business’s financial health.
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S5S6Three Leadership Stories You Should Tell Successful leaders inspire, motivate, and encourage their employees. They recognize the importance of communication and connection when it comes to gaining consensus and mobilizing change around their vision and strategies. The leader points the way to the future and asks their team to join them on the journey. Progress relies on change, but great leaders know not all change leads to progress. They recognize that while they constantly ask people to adapt to change, people need to understand why change. They need to believe in the purpose for change and see the right change for the right reasons. Change works best when people feel some form of emotional connection with the stated vision and purpose. When you tell stories, you engage the emotional system and speed the path toward that change.
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S7S82021 Talent Attraction and Retention Survey Challenges attracting and retaining employees have spiked during the pandemic, leading employers to adopt new strategies and plan future actions to remain competitive. Those that don’t risk getting left behind in their ability to get and keep talent.
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S9S10To Recover from Burnout, Regain Your Sense of Control You feel exhausted, ineffective, unaccomplished, and cynical. Maybe you feel like no matter how hard you work, you can never keep up. Or that you can’t make your boss happy no matter how hard you try. And you’re beginning to question your professional situation: Am I in the right job? The right company? The right career? I used to feel passionate about going into work but now I dread Monday and can’t wait until Friday. Will I ever feel excited about my life and work again?
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S11Here are 5 Steps for Getting Your Business Out of a Slump - StartUp Mindset There will likely come a time in your career that you fall into a slump. The walls you may hit could be related to your professional development goals, success as a solo entrepreneur, business plan, or changes in the marketplace. Your sales might be stagnant, expansion is taking longer than you planned, or you aren’t hitting your goals as quickly as you thought you would have. These slumps can feel discouraging and like they drag on forever.
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S12S13Does Being Bilingual Make You Smarter? One of the many joys of visiting Montreal, as I just did, is listening to fashionably dressed little children chatting over their chocolat chaud and croissants. I couldn’t help thinking, a bit absurdly: My goodness, those Quebec kids are smart—they not only speak French much better than I do, they’re great at English too! (And street hockey.)
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S14S15Avoid a One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Sales Coaching Coaching sales reps is about clarifying relevant behaviors and whether the issue is motivation or ability. Some reps may work hard, but lack certain capabilities while others demonstrate capability but seemingly lack motivation or effort. Good coaching helps to clarify the issues, and lets both manager and rep then concentrate on behaviors that can be improved. The author offers advice on coaching through three common situations across a typical sales cycle (prospecting, from contact to trial, and closing the sale) and encourages managers to set reps up for success by providing efficient access to peers via new technologies and development tools.
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S16S17Are Personalized Ads a Waste of Money? Many Big Tech companies have created platforms that offer businesses tips and tools and services to better target their customers online. These can be helpful — but anybody relying on them needs to be very careful. That’s because many of the claims that these companies are making encourage companies to spend money on ads that target customers who are already inclined to buy.
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S18What the Lean Startup Method Gets Right and Wrong The Lean Startup approach was an instant hit in Silicon Valley, as startups embraced this new experimental ethos. Indeed, the evidence strongly suggest that startups should engage in experimentation along the lines pioneered by the Lean Startup Method. But there are two problems with the Lean Startup approach: First, it pushes founders to “get out of the office” and talk to customers as quickly as possible. But the focus on getting fast feedback from customers to Minimal Viable Products makes startups prone to aim for incremental improvements, focusing on what customers want today, rather than trying to see ahead into the future. Second, while the questions Lean asks are useful — you should know who your customers are! — it doesn’t ask the most important one: what is your theory about why your company is going to win?
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S19So You Botched a Job Interview. What's Next? There’s nothing worse than preparing for an interview and blowing it. How can you move forward after flubbing a question — or an entire interview? The author offers five ways to turn a bad interview into success. First, take time to debrief yourself after the interview. Second, use a thank-you note as an opportunity to clarify any questions you might not have answered as well as you would’ve liked. Third, try to keep from ruminating. Fourth, keep your job search moving. Finally, prepare for your next interview — either at the same company or a different one.
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S20S21S22S23The Health Toll of Poor Sleep Sleep — both its quantity and its quality — is one of the most frequently discussed health topics. How often have you told a friend or relative, “I’m exhausted, I was up half the night”?
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S24S25The Top 20 Business Transformations of the Last Decade In 2012, Denmark’s biggest energy company, Danish Oil and Natural Gas, slid into financial crisis as the price of natural gas was plunging by 90% and S&P downgraded its credit rating to negative. The board hired a former executive at LEGO, Henrik Poulsen, as the new CEO. Whereas some leaders might have gone into crisis-management mode, laying off workers until prices recovered, Poulsen recognized the moment as an opportunity for fundamental change.
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S26Overwhelmed? Adopt a Paradox Mindset With lockdowns closing schools and offices around the world, it’s become commonplace to see dogs and kids barge into business meetings as the boundaries between work and life have blurred. A seamless balance is impossible. We have to do both – work plus managing our lives, our spouses, kids, pets and home – all at once.
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S27Stop Doing Your Team's Work for Them Your primary task as a leader is to build capability below you — but for new managers, this can be especially challenging. You want to be liked. That’s natural. But remember: Placing performance pressure on your team isn’t cruel. A leader who stretches their people risks the possibility of not being liked in order to give others the opportunity to grow. This means the next time you are tempted to solve a problem for your team member, stop yourself. Turn it into a learning opportunity instead.
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S28How driverless cars will change our world It's a late night in the Metro area of Phoenix, Arizona. Under the artificial glare of street lamps, a car can be seen slowly approaching. Active sensors on the vehicle radiate a low hum. A green and blue 'W' glows from the windscreen, giving off just enough light to see inside – to a completely empty driver seat.
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S29Science says it's essential to make time to do nothing. Here's why Most weeks, I spend my days working from home — thinking, writing, and trying to remember to unmute my Zoom mic before I start talking. By the end of the day, when I finally close my laptop, my brain is fried. Most nights I’m so zonked it’s all I can do to open Instagram and scroll through my feed until time becomes a blur, wanting to stop but unable to tear myself away from the comforting narcotic glow of novelty and stimulation.
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S30Grounded! What did a year without flying do to the world? On 14 March 2020, I left my home in the Orkney Islands to drive to Edinburgh international airport. I was due to travel to Germany for a research trip. Full of nervous anticipation, and making frantic last-minute preparations, I hadn’t paid as much attention to the coronavirus crisis as I might have, but events were developing so quickly across Europe, it was dawning on me that international travel might not be an option for much longer.
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S31S32How to Identify What You Enjoy Arthur C. Brooks and Lori Gottlieb discuss the importance of fun, the cultural distortion of emotions as “good” or “bad,” and how envy points you in the direction of your deepest desires.
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S33The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion? Towards the end of a conversation dwelling on some of the deepest metaphysical puzzles regarding the nature of human existence, the philosopher Galen Strawson paused, then asked me: “Have you spoken to anyone else yet who’s received weird email?” He navigated to a file on his computer and began reading from the alarming messages he and several other scholars had received over the past few years. Some were plaintive, others abusive, but all were fiercely accusatory. “Last year you all played a part in destroying my life,” one person wrote. “I lost everything because of you – my son, my partner, my job, my home, my mental health. All because of you, you told me I had no control, how I was not responsible for anything I do, how my beautiful six-year-old son was not responsible for what he did … Goodbye, and good luck with the rest of your cancerous, evil, pathetic existence.” “Rot in your own shit Galen,” read another note, sent in early 2015. “Your wife, your kids your friends, you have smeared all there [sic] achievements you utter fucking prick,” wrote the same person, who subsequently warned: “I’m going to fuck you up.” And then, days later, under the subject line “Hello”: “I’m coming for you.” “This was one where we had to involve the police,” Strawson said. Thereafter, the violent threats ceased.
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S34What Resilience Means, and Why It Matters A small but intriguing new survey by a pair of British consultants confirms the importance of resilience to business success. Resilience was defined by most as the ability to recover from setbacks, adapt well to change, and keep going in the face of adversity. But when Sarah Bond and Gillian Shapiro asked 835 employees from public, private, and nonprofit firms in Britain what was happening in their own lives that required them to draw on those reserves, they didn’t point to tragedies like the London Tube bombings, appalling business mistakes, the need to keep up with the inexorably accelerating pace of change, or the challenges of the still-difficult economy — they pointed to their co-workers.
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S35S36What CIOs need from their CEOs and boards to make IT digital ready | McKinsey
What CIOs need from their CEOs and boards to make IT digital ready | McKinsey
As any CIO or tech leader can tell you, transforming IT and modernizing a business's technology estate is a significant challenge. Making matters worse, many CEOs and board members still cast a jaundiced eye on large tech projects, which have traditionally run over budget and delivered below expectations. Unfortunately, this mindset undermines the support CIOs need to successfully drive their tech transformations.
To understand how CEOs and board members can better support their tech leaders, we spoke with about 120 senior tech leaders and 30 senior business executives over the past 18 months. These detailed interviews provided a range of insights, but these five, in particular, highlight the best measures CEOs and boards can take to provide CIOs with the support they need:
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S37To Become a Top Executive, Take Control of Your Personal Brand Today In today’s search-engine era, numerous search platforms make it easier than ever to find out all you could ever need to know about products, businesses or even personal information about senior-level executives. At the same time, with so much information out there, it can be easy to go unnoticed — which is why companies dedicate entire teams to branding their image, mission, vision and values. This branding helps grow their business.
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S38Motivating Employees Is Not About Carrots or Sticks Leaders often rely on the carrot vs. the stick approach to motivate employees, where the carrot is a reward for compliance and the stick is a consequence for non-compliance. But this is an outdated approach that never really works well. Motivation is less about employees doing great work and more about employees feeling great about their work. There is no stronger motivation for employees than an understanding that their work matters, and is relevant to someone or something other than a financial statement. To motivate your employees, start by sharing context about the work you’re asking them to do. Recognize that challenges can materially impact motivation. Be proactive in identifying and addressing them. What might make an employee’s work difficult or cumbersome? What can you do to ease the burden? And remember that if you’re not engaged and enthusiastic about the work you do, it’s unlikely that your team will be. So, check in with yourself about how motivated you are for the job at hand, because employees feel more motivated when their leaders are also motivated.
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S39S40Processed Foods | Diet Tips  While you know by now that processed foods are bad for your overall health—there’s no denying their convenience. This is why they make up so much of Americans’ diets. But just what are all those foods doing to your heart health? And while an occasional trip through the drive-thru won’t hurt, just how much ultra-processed food is too much?
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