Every decision is different. A supply chain problem, a staffing call, and a crisis response each require different thinking, different tools, and different tolerances for speed versus deliberation. The Cynefin framework, developed by David Snowden and Mary Boone in Harvard Business Review, gives leaders a way to sort any decision into one of five categories (simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, or disordered) and match the response to the reality. In a pandemic, that match

Do opportunities exist out in the world waiting to be discovered, or do entrepreneurs conjure them into being through sheer force of will? The August issue of Academy of Management Perspectives opens with Eminem lyrics and then spends five articles wrestling with this unexpectedly practical question. The answer matters more than it sounds. How your organization talks about opportunity shapes who gets rewarded, which ideas get traction, and whether your firm keeps creating the

Yes, you're probably tired of remote work. But are you tired of remote work, or are you tired of remote work during a pandemic? The distinction matters enormously, and most leaders are getting it wrong. Judging the merits of remote work based on your 2020 experience is like judging Mexican cuisine based on Taco Bell. The ingredients look similar. The experience is not. Leaders who conflate pandemic fatigue with remote work evaluation will make expensive, long-term decisions o

Overconfidence is not a personality flaw. It's a measurable business risk. University of Chicago Booth research found that less talented CEOs over-promise, under-listen, chase vanity projects, and abandon strategies the moment short-term results disappoint. In good times, rising tides hide a lot of leadership sins. Downturns wash them out into plain view. The good news: the habits that separate skilled CEOs from overconfident ones are learnable, if you are willing to see your

Humans have been complaining about moral decay for 6,000 years, ancient Egyptian tombs contain the same warnings as today's op-ed pages. That's not a reason to dismiss the concern; it's a reason to take it seriously. As nearly half the US workforce moves online and technology compresses the distance between people, moral leadership has quietly become one of the most important skills a founder can develop. The question isn't whether your firm has a moral system. It's who is sh

Every leader is a seasonal leader, whether they know it or not. Some seasons are for building, some for pruning, some for simply holding ground. The hardest part is refusing to wait out a downturn before you invest in yourself, the seeds you plant during uncertainty are the ones that make the next season count. Many of America's largest companies started in a recession because their founders understood what leadership really is: one part decision-making, one part sense-making

When the ground shifts under a business leader's feet, the temptation is to look for new tactics. The best leaders look for something else first: their values. Carl Anderson's 1997 values-based leadership framework gives executives a disciplined way to identify their non-negotiable principles, translate them into values, and examine the leadership philosophy they are actually operating from, before the next hard decision lands.

Economic downturns don't just shrink revenue, they quietly reshape how people think. Research across 51 countries and nearly 60,000 respondents shows downturns trigger zero-sum thinking: the belief that someone else has to lose for you to win. Collaboration collapses at exactly the moment leaders need it most. Here's how to name the pull, disarm it, and keep your team playing an infinite game.

When revenue contracts, the default reflex is layoffs. But research from Harvard Business Review and the BCG Henderson Institute tells a different story: companies that prepared, tightened operations, protected cash, and invested for growth outperformed their peers by double digits coming out of the Great Recession, often without resorting to cuts. Here are the four strategies, and why cutting staff belongs last in the leadership toolkit, not first.