Humanity: A Leader’s Secret Weapon

Author Larry Downes, an expert on government regulation of the tech industry, argues that the Biden administration should heed the lessons of history and let innovation flourish under a less-is-more approach to intervention.

In this episode of the Three Big Points podcast, MIT Sloan professor Sinan Aral, author of The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health — and How We Must Adapt, talks about the hype loop — the echo chamber resulting from the explosive growth of social media. Aral argues that the ongoing dialogue between machine intelligence and human decision-making is changing our society at every level. MIT Sloan’s Sinan Aral discusses social media as a marketing tool that can have a positive impact — if used ethically.

Even though we know that professional sports is big business, we might overlook how the strategies used by that industry can be applied to the broader business world. On this week’s episode of the Three Big Points podcast, MIT Sloan lecturer Ben Shields explains how the NBA’s use of data analytics can offer important lessons for organizations that want to derive real value from their data to gain a competitive edge.

Emotions are a big part of daily life, and there’s no avoiding them at work — even when employees are working remotely, and especially at a time when emotions are heightened by world events. In this episode of the Three Big Points podcast, authors Molly West Duffy and Liz Fosslien argue that we can improve this stressful situation for everyone by setting a positive example, shifting expectations, and leading with empathy.

Social science tells us how to address the key issues of leading through difficult times at the individual, relational, collective, and contextual levels. The challenge, says Morela Hernandez, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, is to lead with humanity. In this week’s episode of the Three Big Points podcast, Hernandez offers specific and actionable advice leaders can follow amid COVID-19 to inspire their teams and lead with compassion.

As companies adjust to the sudden, recent shift to remote work amid COVID-19 and consider its long-term implications for employees, they’re faced with a new challenge: how to make remote work a permanent and productive part of their long-term workforce strategies. In this week’s episode of the Three Big Points podcast, MIT researcher Kristine Dery suggests ways leaders can help their employees address the pain of remote work and transform the experience into an opportunity to excel.

The coronavirus pandemic may serve as a wake-up call to help us focus on the crises and trends already impacting us and our environment. In this week’s episode of the Three Big Points podcast, sustainability consultant and author Andrew Winston explains how we can learn from the current health crisis and use it to develop strategies to shape a more sustainable future.

During a crisis, leaders may find it difficult to determine the best approach to managing the day-to-day business challenges while simultaneously developing a strategy for the future.  On this week’s episode of the Three Big Points podcast, Eric McNulty, associate director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard, shares some of the lessons he has learned from studying past crises and how they can help today’s leaders address the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even as the corporate benefits of diversity and inclusion have become widely understood, actual progress has stalled. So says the guest on this episode of MIT Sloan Management Review’s Three Big Points podcast, Tim Ryan, the U.S. chairman of PwC. He offers a frank assessment of the scope of the challenge and points us toward some specific and replicable practices that are actually working.

In the past decade, disrupters have changed dramatically, says Columbia Business School’s Rita McGrath, this week’s guest on the Three Big Points podcast. Disrupters now enter the market with products and services that are just as good as those offered by legacy companies — making it harder than ever for legacy businesses to compete. But, McGrath says, it’s within any company’s power to take on the upstarts — if they’re open-minded in responding to change.