Misconduct at work is often treated as a simple problem, yet research shows it is anything but. Drawing on more than 250 studies, Michael J. Gill of the University of Oxford finds that employees break rules for a wide range of reasons, including personal gain, pressure from their environment, and a desire to help others. For leaders, the key is to not rush to judgment and to understand why the behavior is happening. Many violations that look harmful .....more

Most organizational change efforts fail not because of poor execution but because senior leaders fall into a false alignment trap-believing they agree on why, what, and how to change when they actually do not. Drawing on research, behavioral science, and a case study of the jewelry group Pandora, this article explains how false alignment arises from vague discussions, avoidance of disagreement, and pressure to move too quickly and shows how it leads .....more

Many organizations use tools like RACI to clarify who should provide input on decisions, who should make them, and who should carry them out. But in practice these frameworks often fail because teams don''t apply them properly. Drawing on their research and their work with more than 100 companies, the authors identify four common mistakes: setting decision roles before clarifying goals, treating decision rights as a static list created by .....more

In a dematerializing economy-where value has shifted from physical assets to intangibles such as data, software, and capabilities-traditional strategy frameworks no longer provide enough guidance. Organizations need a clear center: a single, coherent organizing principle that defines what they are really about. A strategic center guides resource allocation, opportunity selection, and organizational identity. Columbia Business School professor Rita .....more

Private-equity firms have long favored CEOs with prior experience at portfolio companies, but talent shortages and the rapid expansion of PE ownership are pushing investors to recruit more leaders from the corporate world. Not all make the transition successfully. Leading a PE-backed firm requires five capabilities: a practical commercial orientation, the ability to tackle strategy under pressure, the ability to wield influence widely to achieve impact, .....more

Immersion is increasingly defining customer experiences in a variety of industries, yet too often creators of immersive environments rely on spectacle, advanced technology, or scale, which fails to create a lasting impact. The most effective experiences are based on the psychological state of absorption and guide participants through a progression in which they seek answers to six questions: Where am I? Who am I with? What can I do? What is happening? .....more

Today''s leaders face increasing pressure on all sides, and their stress levels are higher now than they were even at the peak of the pandemic. Though stress can sharpen performance briefly, over time it erodes judgment, narrows perspective, and increases the risk of costly missteps. Most leaders have distinct default responses to it. This article outlines the six most common patterns: the calm lighthouse, the reinvention-oriented alchemist, .....more

Agentic AI is reshaping entrepreneurship and raising the stakes for incumbents. Startups are deploying coordinated systems of AI agents that can plan, act, and adapt autonomously. This approach dramatically compresses the time, capital, and head count needed to launch and scale up a company. Products that once took large teams more than a year to develop can now be built and refined in weeks by a handful of people. AI-native startups build proprietary .....more

After years of cheap capital, many companies drifted away from managing for shareholder value in favor of loosely defined stakeholder models. Now capital costs are moving back toward historical norms, and value maximization should once again guide decision-making. However, it must be applied differently than it has in the past. This article proposes a simple but disciplined model: Retain value maximization as the governing objective but explicitly .....more

Drawing on interviews with 11 elite coaches across major U.S., European, Australian, and New Zealand professional sports leagues, the authors show that high-pressure decisions aren''t a single "formula" but a set of practices that unfold before, during, and after pivotal moments-and translate directly to business leadership. Top coaches combine disciplined preparation with emotional control and social awareness during crunch time .....more