Stories are one way that leaders cement their legacy, inspire action, and define an era. The stories they tell about where a company is going can foreshadow opportunity or foment fear—sometimes unwittingly. Today, leaders are telling employees the story of what AI will mean for them. “No one knows,” some say, leaning into the 2010s-era virtue […]

The Insider is a weekly, subscriber-only newsletter, where our managing editor curates HBR stories, research, and ideas that senior leaders shouldn’t miss. If your organization is having a tough year, you’re not alone. As a leader, it’s enormously challenging to guide your employees through setback after setback. Over time, it can feel like everyone is […]

According to a global survey of 500 executives conducted by the Capgemini Research Institute, the active use of AI in team meetings is anticipated to more than triple in the next three years. The executives surveyed said that they expect group use of AI to lead to better meetings that arrive at higher-quality outcomes. Leaders should not let […]

Decades of experience and research have consistently shown that most organizational change efforts fail. In 1993 Michael Hammer, who launched the business-process-reengineering movement, somberly concluded in his book Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution that “as many as 50% to 70% of the organizations that undertake a reengineering effort do not achieve the dramatic results […]

At one global technology company, 12 executives recently crowded around a table to make the final decision on a heated issue: whether to add the C-suite role of chief innovation officer to their leadership team and expand the central unit that person would run. Their company, which made a variety of tools used in hospital […]

Ask a roomful of senior executives what AI can do for their business, and the answers will probably cluster around the same themes: lower costs, smaller headcount, faster processes, leaner operations. Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency—it’s an almost universal reflex. It’s also a badly misguided one. At a recent roundtable of senior financial-services executives, we posed a […]

In March 2024, The Atlantic announced a strategic content and product partnership with artificial intelligence giant OpenAI. OpenAI would license The Atlantic’s content to train its models and respond to user queries, while The Atlantic would receive a fee, privileged access to OpenAI’s technology, and “premium” positioning within the tech giant. At the time, over […]

Leaders have always lived with stress—it comes with the territory. But today’s strain feels especially acute. Many executives describe pressure mounting on multiple fronts, from economic uncertainty to technological disruption to geopolitical volatility. We’ve studied these sources of stress over the past six years, and the trend is unmistakable: According to Brunswick Group’s Leadership Stress Index, […]

There’s a growing leadership gap that few are talking about. Many leaders are relying on skills that no longer match the needs and demands of their role and today’s workplace. The unintended consequences are popping up everywhere. Trust is eroding, employee engagement is at an all-time low, talent is leaving, and innovation is suffering. Even well-intentioned decisions […]

Being an effective board chair is harder than ever. Today chairs have to manage a growing and increasingly diverse group of stakeholders whose demands often conflict, while the environment their firms operate in has become more and more chaotic. With new risks emerging from climate change, technologies like artificial intelligence, and political instability, the number and complexity […]