Tag Archives: management

Jon Stewart, Superboss

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by Sydney Finkelstein

This past February, when Jon Stewart announced his impending retirement from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show after sixteen years, the collective mourning began almost immediately. “I have this irrational feeling of sadness, bordering on hurt,” a commentator for Entertainment Weekly said. “I feel wounded. It’s not like a romantic break-up, per se—more like a childhood best friend announcing his family is moving away right before sixth-grade starts.”

“Sixth grade” referring to, of course, the upcoming Presidential election. How would the nation possibly cope without Stewart around to skewer the candidates? “Jon Stewart, we need you in 2016,” pleaded a headline in the New Yorker. His departure, said the magazine, killed the “last hope for bringing some rationality to the 2016 Presidential field.” Stewart’s opponents on the right disagreed, with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly proclaiming, “I don’t think overall he’s been a force for good.” Continue reading →

Leadership and Brilliance Are Not the Same

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Sramana MitraBy Sramana Mitra

When “How I Lead” was suggested as a topic, I had to pause to consider how my thinking has evolved on the subject. How did I lead earlier in my career? How do I lead today? What has changed? What has remained constant? How do I synthesize what has worked particularly well?

I have founded and run four companies since 1994. In each case, I had a mission for value creation that was big, bold, important, clear, and I always made sure the mission was communicated to everyone on my team and to the external world with utmost authenticity.

When I started DAIS in 1994, my mission was to jumpstart a technology industry in Calcutta, using my MIT Computer Science background to plug my birthplace into the global startup eco-system. My team of ~50 understood that mission well. I also got the media to root for us, inspiring them with that vision. This helped us tremendously in recruiting talent at a time when “startup” and “Calcutta” were incongruous concepts. Continue reading →

The Real Difference Between Leader and Manager

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by Steve Tobak

In the 19th century, Karl Marx famously called religion “the opium of the people.” In the new millennium, the opium of the people is content. A massive amount of content is generated and consumed daily by a billion people who increasingly resemble addicts or drones in an online collective, depending on your choice of metaphor.

The only real difference between the two opiates is that, today, anyone can create his own personal brand of religion and attract a flock of followers to his blog or Facebook page. No wonder so many who’ve never actually managed an employee or run a business call themselves entrepreneurs and CEOs. They have followers, so they must be leaders. Continue reading →

Using Social Media Without Jeopardizing Your Career

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by Alexandra Samuel

Effective business communicators know that a brisk, bulleted memo is often more effective than a multi-page document, that an executive summary is at least as important as a full report, and that a PowerPoint deck driven by a few key images and bullets works a lot better than a deck that contains a word-for-word transcript of your presentation. We all know that less is more.

Yet even those who have mastered the art of brevity in traditional business communication may have a tough time mastering online communication. Whether it’s email, chat, or a social network, word count isn’t just a matter of style—it’s often a technical requirement. Add to that the expectation that your online voice should sound conversational, engaging, or even funny, and communicating online may be the biggest (and certainly most frequently encountered) writing challenge that we face in business today. Here are some guidelines that can help make those messages productive and satisfying—rather than a liability. Continue reading →

How to Manage a Team of B Players

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by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

In 2004, Greece surprised the world by winning the European Championship, the toughest tournament in international soccer. Despite not even being a dark horse in the competition, and with a team of mostly peripheral and unremarkable players, they overcame France and hosts Portugal (twice) to lift the trophy. Even hardcore soccer fans would be unable to name more than two players in that Greek squad, yet few will forget the remarkable collective achievement of a team that faced odds of 150/1 for winning the trophy.

What allows a team of B players to achieve A+ success? A great deal of scientific evidence suggests that the key determinants are psychological factors — in particular, the leader’s ability to inspire trust, make competent decisions, and create a high-performing culture where the selfish agendas of the individual team members are eclipsed by the group’s goal, so that each person functions like a different organ of the same organism. In the famous words of Vince Lombardi: “Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” This is true for all teams, of course, but if you’re leading a team of B players (people who are just average in terms of competence, talent, or potential), your leadership matters even more. In fact, if you are leading a team of B players, you have to be an A-class leader; otherwise, your team will have no chance. Continue reading →