   
CEO Picks - The most popular editorials that have stood the test of time!
How to Blow a Presentation to the C-Suite
 Divya, a director who leads a large engineering team, was invited to a two-day retreat with the CEO and senior executives of her Fortune 50 company. She and 30 of her high-potential peers were excited to rub shoulders with the leadership team.
The purpose of the retreat was to expose up-and-coming leaders to broader challenges, expand their network across silos, and, of course, give them an opportunity to connect personally with C-suite executives.
The session kicked off with participants dividing into small teams to tackle company-wide strategic challenges. This was a rare opportunity to present directly in front of the CEO, so Divya and her teammates worked hard to research their assigned topic, frame the specific challenge, and debate different ideas and solutions. Instead of hanging out at the bar after dinner, they worked far into the night finalizing their presentation. Divya was selected as the spokesperson for her group, and the next morning, she made their pitch.
The team's idea was met with a lukewarm reaction and what, at best, could be called a polite round of applause. Naturally, they were disappointed in the tepid response.
Divya and her team are all smart, do great work in their current jobs, and have promising careers ahead of them. So, what went wrong?
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Remote Work Is Killing the Hidden Trillion-Dollar Office Economy
 From airlines to Starbucks, a massive part of our economy hinges on white-collar workers returning to the office
For a decade, Carlos Silva has been gluing, nailing, and re-zippering shoes and boots at Stern Shoe Repair, a usually well-trafficked shop just outside the Metro entrance at Union Station in Washington, D.C. On a typical day, he would arrive at 7 a.m. and stay until 8 p.m., serving the crowds of professionals shuttling by on their way to work. But since the near-shutdown of office work and train travel, he has been closing the shop at 4 p.m. "There is no traffic, my friend. The whole station is dead," says Silva. "Now it's only a part-time job."
In the five months since the coronavirus forced a lockdown of U.S. businesses, economists have focused much attention on the devastation of mom-and-pop businesses, brick-and-mortar shops, bars and restaurants, and massive chains. But they have mostly overlooked a looming threat to a vastly larger and more consequential galaxy of businesses, one worth trillions of dollars a year in GDP and revolving around a single, much underappreciated economic actor - the white-collar office worker.
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What Kind of Happiness Do People Value Most?
 Sure, everyone wants to be happy. But what kind of happiness do people want? Is it happiness experienced moment-to-moment? Or is it being able to look back and remember a time as happy? Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman described this distinction as "being happy in your life" versus "being happy about your life." Take a moment to ask yourself, which happiness are you seeking?
This might seem like a needless delineation; after all, a time experienced as happy is often also remembered as happy. An evening spent with good friends over good food and wine will be experienced and remembered happily. Similarly, an interesting project staffed with one's favorite colleagues will be fun to work on and look back on.
But the two don't always go hand in hand.
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Boomerang CEOs: What Happens When the CEO Comes Back?
 Many companies have turned to their former CEOs in times of need, but little was known until now about the implications of this practice.
In the spring of 1985, the board of Apple Computer made the fateful decision to force out cofounder Steve Jobs. Apple struggled over the next decade, losing much of its market share and dominance in the personal computer industry. As it neared collapse in 1996, Jobs returned to retake the reins of the company he had created. Through a series of brilliant changes and innovations, Jobs helped refocus and rebuild Apple, which ultimately became one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world.
Jobs is certainly a unique case - yet, surprisingly, many other large and high-profile companies have turned to former CEOs, often called boomerang CEOs, in times of need. Dell, Enron, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, Best Buy, Starbucks, Yahoo, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, J.C. Penney, Reddit, Bloomberg, Urban Outfitters, and Charles Schwab, among others, all had former CEOs return to lead their organizations. But while boomerang CEOs appear to be prevalent, little was known until now about the implications of this practice.
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� | � |  | Evolution made really smart people long to be loners
 Psychologists have a pretty good idea of what typically makes a human happy. Dancing delights us. Being in nature brings us joy. And, for most people, frequent contact with good friends makes us feel content.
That is, unless you're really, really smart.
In a 2016 paper published in the British Journal of Psychology, researchers Norman Li and Satoshi Kanazawa report that highly intelligent people experience lower life satisfaction when they socialize with friends more frequently. These are the Sherlocks and the Newt Scamanders of the world - the very intelligent few who would be happier if they were left alone.
To come to this conclusion, the researchers analyzed the survey responses of 15,197 individuals between the ages of 18 and 28.
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Winner, winner, chicken dinner: The incredible growth story of Licious
 In an 'informal economy' country like India, formalization will lead to a lot of startup opportunities. Sometimes, you just have to hang in there and keep doing what you are doing and wait for the market to reach you. That's what has happened with Licious. At the beginning of the pandemic, rumours about chicken carrying the virus screwed with their happiness, but then the non-vegetarians who wanted their meat preferred to order from a clean organized player like Licious than the local butcher. Result, their sales have gone up 300%!
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Start Your Day on Purpose And You Will Have Your Best. Day. Ever.
 Your morning sets the tone for the rest of your day. Use them to achieve your goals and accomplish some pretty amazing things. If you win most of your days, the years will take care of themselves.
Rather than depending on your mood and your circumstances for a great start to your day, choose to be proactive and make mood and circumstances respond to your work. Jim Rohn said "Either you run the day or the day runs you."
A default routine for so many people is to immediately pick up their phone, check the news, email and social media and go about their day. There's no way you can think clearly, focus and do your best work in the morning if you are constantly reacting to others' expectations or getting distracted by the news.
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What this 100-year-old restaurant can teach CEOs about balancing resilience and profit
 Joe's Stone Crab is the top-grossing independent restaurant in the U.S. It's been succeeding for a century because it pays its employees and suppliers exceptionally well - and is willing to experiment.
Joe's Stone Crab of Miami Beach is a rarity: an American restaurant that has prospered for over a century. It is currently the top-grossing independent restaurant in America - despite being the only restaurant in the top 100 that closes for three (and it used to be five) months per year when its principal fare, stone crab, is out of season. Its annual gross is 4% greater than that of the second-place competitor, but its monthly gross is 39% greater. In a trendy business sector in which the median age of the next 10 restaurants on the top 100 list is 27 years, its 100-year run of success is nothing short of astounding. The leading gross certainly suggests efficiency, while the longevity confirms resilience - a productive balance.
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� What can smallpox teach us about how we've managed COVID-19?
 - Smallpox killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century alone.
- In 1980, smallpox was the first disease to be officially eradicated.
- Lessons from dealing with past pandemics apply to COVID-19.
For many global health decision-makers, COVID-19 has come to symbolize a failure to apply lessons from past experiences with infectious diseases and raised pressing new questions to be addressed ahead of the next pandemic.
I had the honor of being involved in the campaign to eradicate smallpox, a devastating disease whose historical names - pox, speckled monster and red plague - hint more clearly at the pain and suffering it caused hundreds of millions of people over centuries.
After a decades-long fight to prevent transmission and inoculate people the world over, the last known case of Variola major was diagnosed in a three-year-old Bangladeshi girl named Rahima Banu, and the last case of Variola minor in October 1977, in Somalia. The World Health Organization, which estimates the disease killed 300 million people in the 20th century alone, declared in 1980 that it was the first - and so far only - human disease to be eradicated globally.
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Disrupt Your Own Business First
 Planning the future for your company begins with knowing how to destroy it.
The coronavirus pandemic has reminded business leaders of some unsettling truths: that all assumptions and practices must be continually reexamined and that existential threats can come at any time, from any direction. This crisis will eventually pass. But its ramifications will ripple through the economy for years, and inevitably it will be followed by another global crisis - or an unforeseen revolution in the marketplace. How can companies strategize once they have recognized the limitations of long-term planning in an unpredictable world? By mercilessly examining their own weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and by gaming out their own destruction before someone - or something - does it for them.
In this article, we will walk you through an intensive, multipart exercise in that kind of creative destruction that we have field-tested with more than 1,500 leaders from around the world as part of executive education at INSEAD. Ordinarily, the process includes participants from multiple companies and plays out over several days as CEOs search for the surest way to demolish their respective companies from a competitor's perspective. Here, we streamline the exercise for a single institution and a flexible time frame.
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What B2B Companies Get Wrong About Volume Discounts
 I have a favorite client who always eggs me on to tell the "7-Eleven Big Gulp story" in meetings. "C'mon, tell it," he nudges. Often, I do.
My friend's fascination with the story is well-founded. 7-Eleven does a fantastic job of employing volume discounts. Fountain drink sizes at the convenience store's Cambridge, MA location range from 16 to 32 ounces (priced from 99 cents to $1.39). While 16 ounces of soda - a Gulp - will satisfy my thirst, I inevitably purchase the 24-ounce Big Gulp because it's only 20 cents more. By lowering the price-per-ounce on larger sizes in a manner that mirrors my reduced willingness to pay for more soda, 7-Eleven entices me to purchase a bigger size.
Squeezing me for an extra two dimes may not seem like much, but remember, fountain soda drinks are notorious cash cows. 7-Eleven reports that after introducing the Big Gulp line - which has included sizes as large as 128 ounces (Team Gulp) - profits from fountain drinks increased by close to 100%. Some 7-Eleven operators report that Big Gulp fountain drinks account for almost 10% of their stores' revenues.
The moral of this story is clear: When properly implemented, volume discounts can unleash generous new profits and growth.
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The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan's Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking
 Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996) was many things - a cosmic sage, voracious reader, hopeless romantic, and brilliant philosopher. But above all, he endures as our era's greatest patron saint of reason and critical thinking, a master of the vital balance between skepticism and openness. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - the same indispensable volume that gave us Sagan's timeless meditation on science and spirituality, published mere months before his death in 1996 - Sagan shares his secret to upholding the rites of reason, even in the face of society's most shameless untruths and outrageous propaganda.
In a chapter titled "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Sagan reflects on the many types of deception to which we're susceptible - from psychics to religious zealotry to paid product endorsements by scientists, which he held in especially low regard, noting that they "betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers" and "introduce an insidious corruption of popular attitudes about scientific objectivity."
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� | � | | Is Employee Engagement A Painkiller Or A Vitamin?
 Traditionally, companies have had to master the art of providing painkillers - healthcare, retirement benefits, additional well-being resources, etc. As we move into an altered working landscape, what new benefits might people want? Onsite gyms might have tempted people in the past, but demand is now growing for more practical support, especially as remote working is no longer a "vitamin" to be dangled in front of employees. Engagement cannot be demanded. But it can be motivated through the strategic and creative use of new and innovative perks and benefits. Or, what teams can view as "vitamins."
What could these vitamins look like? Perspectives from three companies in vastly different industries give teams food for thought.
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The small-town takeout store worker who won over New Zealand -- and the world
 It's Friday night in the small town of Morrinsville and a handful of locals are waiting at the Golden Kiwi on the main street for a greasy parcel of fish and chips.
It wasn't so long ago that Jacinda Ardern was behind the counter, taking orders at the nautical-themed takeaway joint. Now, the 40-year-old New Zealand Prime Minister is one of the world's most recognizable leaders.
Throughout her three-year term, she's attracted headlines -- for being an unusually young Prime Minister, for giving birth while leading a country, for her empathetic handling of the Christchurch mosque attacks, and lately, for her swift, effective action against the coronavirus pandemic.
That's given her an outsized profile for the leader of a country of 5 million people. She's graced the covers of Vogue and Time magazine and hosted American TV personality Stephen Colbert at her suburban Auckland home. Last year, she topped a survey of most trustworthy politicians -- in Australia. And, as she heads into this year's New Zealand's election on October 17, polls put her as one of the country's most popular leaders ever.
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Be the Most Persuasive Person in the Room: 9 Things Highly Influential People Always Do, According to Science
Every successful person I know is extremely good at persuading other people. Not manipulating or pressuring, but genuinely persuading: Describing the logic and benefits of an idea to gain agreement.
When you think of it that way, everyone needs to harness the power of persuasion: to convince other people your idea makes sense, to show investors or stakeholders how a project, or product, or business will generate a return, to help your employees understand why they should embrace a new process.
Having the ability to persuade is critical in every career. That's why successful people are extremely good at persuading others.
So how can you become more persuasive -- in a genuine and authentic way?
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To Succeed in a Negotiation, Help Your Counterpart Save Face
 What do a human rights negotiation in Afghanistan, a crisis negotiation in Calgary, and a business dispute between a Brazilian and a Frenchman have in common? At first blush, nothing. However, when we dig deeper into these high-stakes negotiations, there is a common thread that connects them all. The concept of face.
What exactly is face? In their classic work on politeness, Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson define face as "the public self-image that every member of a society wants to claim for himself/herself." Put differently, face is how people want to be perceived and connected to identity and dignity. When it comes to negotiation, it is about both sides preserving their and their organizations' reputations.
To understand the critical nature of face to negotiation success, consider the three cases I just mentioned
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� | � | | Customer Surveys Are No Substitute for Actually Talking to Customers
 I'll never forget the questionnaire handed to me midway through a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney. It was massive. Page after page of detailed tick-the-box or circle-the-response questions - it seemed to me it would take the full 13-hour flight to complete. I started, but it was too much work and I abandoned it halfway through. I thought to myself: does management really believe they get valid and reliable data from these surveys?
For many organizations, surveys like this qualify as "talking to the customer." They're ubiquitous - appearing in hotel rooms, after online purchases, and in hospital emergency departments. But do they really qualify as customer consultation? Or are they a symptom of an isolated management just putting on a show of interest? What can be done instead?
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Next Big Shift in Economics Takes Shape Under Covid Shadow
 A rare regime-change in economic policy is under way that's edging central bankers out of the pivotal role they have played for decades.
Fiscal policy, which fell out of fashion as an engine of economic growth during the inflationary 1970s, has been front-and-center in the fight against Covid-19. Governments have subsidized wages, mailed checks to households and guaranteed loans for business. They've run up record budget deficits on the way -- an approach that economists have gradually come to support, ever since the last big crash in 2008 ushered in a decade of tepid growth.
And the public spending that put a floor under the pandemic slump is increasingly seen as vital for a sustained recovery too. When it looks like drying up, as it did in the U.S. last week, investors start to worry.
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Forget about the "new normal": Design something different
 Five principles of service design, adapted for the COVID-19 era.
How do you as a company leader design for this different world? When the ground shifts beneath you, the first thing to do is find a solid place to stand - and that is your value proposition. Customers come to you for a reason: because you're innovative or top-quality, because you're a one-stop shop, or because you build deep relationships. Yes, you need to both stress-test that value proposition and do a gut check on it, but in all likelihood, you'll reaffirm it. Now is not the time to change it.
What might change, however, is how you deliver the value you promise, and that depends on five principles that translate a value proposition into the experience customers actually have. We first outlined these service design principles several years ago in "The art of customer delight." Today, we use the acronym SPICE, because they involve segments (which customers you serve), promises (the expectations you set), innovation (how you evolve and improve), coherence (how you orchestrate sales channels and ecosystem partners), and efficiency (how you become easy to do business with). When you apply them in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, they may lead you to new and different insights about how to design your customers' experience and employees' activities.
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Mastering the building blocks of strategy
 Left unchecked, market forces continually conspire to deplete profits. Powerful business strategies can counteract those tendencies, but good strategy is difficult to formulate. Indeed, the latest McKinsey research (see "The strategic yardstick you can't afford to ignore.") finds that a very small number of companies create most economic profit. The research also shows that a significant number of good companies outperform even in so-called bad industries, where the average economic profit is less than the market average.
How do they do it? In other words, where do powerful strategies come from? Sometimes it's luck, or good timing, or a stroke of inspiration. In our experience, it's also possible to load the dice in favor of developing good strategies by focusing on the core building blocks that often get overlooked. One is the need to gain agreement - before creating strategy - on the essential decisions and the criteria for making them. Another is to ensure that the company is prepared and willing to act on a strategy once it is adopted. Too much of what passes for strategy development, we find, consists of hurried efforts that skip one or more of the essentials. The resulting strategies are often flawed from the start.
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� | � | | The unexpected benefits of virtual education
 Let's just say it: there is nothing ideal about students and teachers dealing unexpectedly with remote learning, as millions have been doing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That said, there may be a silver lining to virtual classrooms and distance learning, which many universities and schools this academic year are defaulting to, in various degrees, due to the coronavirus. As students and teachers may have to compensate for logistic challenges, collaborating online might prepare high school students with the kind of organizational acumen, emotional intelligence and self-discipline needed for modern careers, particularly those that allow for the growing trend of working in remote, distributed teams. The sooner that students master those proficiencies, the better off they'll be when they reach the job market.
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We need to rethink social media before it's too late. We've accepted a Faustian bargain
 A business model that alters the way we think, act, and live our lives has us heading toward dystopia
When people envision technology overtaking society, many think of The Terminator and bulletproof robots. Or Big Brother in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, a symbol of external, omnipotent oppression.
But in all likelihood, dystopian technology will not strong-arm us. Instead, we'll unwittingly submit ourselves to a devil's bargain: freely trade our subconscious preferences for memes, our social cohesion for instant connection, and the truth for what we want to hear.
Indeed, as former insiders at Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube attest in our new documentary, The Social Dilemma, this is already happening. We already live in a version of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. As Neil Postman puts it in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business:
"In Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think."
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An AI can simulate an economy millions of times to create fairer tax policy
 Deep reinforcement learning has trained AIs to beat humans at complex games like Go and StarCraft. Could it also do a better job at running the economy?
Income inequality is one of the overarching problems of economics. One of the most effective tools policymakers have to address it is taxation: governments collect money from people according to what they earn and redistribute it either directly, via welfare schemes, or indirectly, by using it to pay for public projects. But though more taxation can lead to greater equality, taxing people too much can discourage them from working or motivate them to find ways to avoid paying - which reduces the overall pot.
Getting the balance right is not easy. Economists typically rely on assumptions that are hard to validate. People's economic behavior is complex, and gathering data about it is hard. Decades of economic research has wrestled with designing the best tax policy, but it remains an open problem.
Scientists at the US business technology company Salesforce think AI can help. Led by Richard Socher, the team has developed a system called the AI Economist that uses reinforcement learning - the same sort of technique behind DeepMind's AlphaGo and AlphaZero - to identify optimal tax policies for a simulated economy.
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� | � | | The Display of the Future Might Be in Your Contact Lens
 Mojo Vision's prototypes can enhance your vision or show you your scheduleâ€"right from the surface of your eyes.
Mojo Vision is all about "invisible computing." The company, whose founders include industry veterans from the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, wants to reduce our reliance on screens. Instead of pulling out your phone to check why it buzzed in the middle of a conversation, look to the corner of your eye to activate an interface that will tell you in a split second.
"We want to create a technology that lets you be you, lets you look like you; doesn't change your appearance; it doesn't make you act weird walking down the street," said Mike Wiemer, cofounder and chief technology officer at Mojo Vision. "It's very discreet and frankly, substantially, most of the time it doesn't show you anything."
Making smart contact lenses is no simple task, thoughâ€"even Alphabet's Verily subsidiary had to refocus its Smart Lens program after hitting a few snags.
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