What I learned about showing up for your teammates after the tragedy in Seoul.

It probably won''t surprise you to learn that incivility on the front lines of business is on the rise. After all, as the pandemic wore on, we saw in real time how frontline workers went from being seen as "essential" to being seen as, essentially, punching bags. What might not be obvious is that incivility doesn''t affect only workers who experience it directly - it also affects those who witness it, with consequences for .....more

Customers'' incivility toward frontline employees hurts workers emotionally, physically, and cognitively and can result in lower performance. But these effects are compounded when employees are required to keep providing "service with a smile," according to psychology professor Alicia Grandey''s research. Companies looking to support their employees in dealing with rude behavior should train them in how to mitigate the effects .....more

This case talks about the 3P (People Planet Profit) strategies of Ant Group backed MYbank, which was established as an online bank in China, as part of Alibaba''s ecosystem, with the vision of providing inclusive finance services to SMEs and farmers in rural China. In April 2022, however, the Chinese economy was grappling with the after effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and macro-economic trends had predicted slower growth for the year. The .....more

Many organizations take big actions in the realm of DEI because of something they see another company do--such as publicly declaring themselves champions of people of color or setting an ambitious top-down DEI strategy across the firm. However, these grand stances usually fizzle out, leaving leaders frustrated and saying, "DEI work is too hard. It takes too long to see results." The fact is, DEI isn''t a short-term project, and a .....more

While the popular view is that insights are the key benefit of artificial intelligence, in truth AI creates value by improving the quality of decisions. The good news is, the opportunities for it to do that in business are countless. But because decisions in one area of an organization usually have an impact on decisions in other areas, introducing AI often entails redesigning whole systems. In that way, AI is similar to groundbreaking technologies .....more

Many salespeople today are struggling; only 57% of them make their annual quotas, surveys show. One problem is that buying processes have evolved faster than selling processes, and buyers today can access a wide range of online resources that let them evaluate products before even meeting a salesperson. AI tools can help organizations close the gap, but most don''t know how to use them effectively. In this article the authors describe how .....more

Many sustainability initiatives focus on improving the sustainability of products and operations in legacy or adjacent markets or on achieving sustainability gains by exploring new markets with a more diverse set of products. This is a variation on the classic "where to play/how to win" strategy familiar to most executives. Fewer leaders, however, are exploring an important new frontier in sustainability, in which brands actively partner .....more

The new system in a day-care center is producing biased results--setting off an alarm when some dark-skinned parents enter the lobby. The director of the center must decide whether improving security is worth the possible legal ramifications. This fictional case study by Mary C. Gentile, David Danks, and Maralee Harrell features expert commentary by Joseph Steinberg, Cedric L. Alexander. This HBR Case Study includes both the case and the commentary. .....more

The new system in a day-care center is producing biased results--setting off an alarm when some dark-skinned parents enter the lobby. The director of the center must decide whether improving security is worth the possible legal ramifications. This fictional case study by Mary C. Gentile, David Danks, and Maralee Harrell features expert commentary by Joseph Steinberg, Cedric L. Alexander. For teaching purposes, this is the case-only version of the .....more