Harvard Business Review

Many companies see little impact from AI tools because generic models don’t align with how teams actually work. At a Fortune 500 retailer, a contracts team struggled to use an off-the-shelf tool until the company mapped their workflow (“work graph”) and fine-tuned the model using reverse mechanistic localization. The result: more accurate outputs, less manual effort, and a 30% boost in throughput. The takeaway for leaders is that context is essential—real productivity gains come from aligning AI with specific team processes. To do so, companies can: 1) start by mapping how work gets done with a work graph, 2) use the work graph to fine to AI tools, and 3) adopt a practice of continuous refinement.

A seasoned professional explores how to align his personal brand with executive leadership.

Some leaders don’t just respond to crises—they thrive in chaos, rushing in to save the day, often from problems they unknowingly created. Meet the “firefighter”—the boss who runs on urgency, constantly pulling their teams into high-stakes battles, rewarding reaction over strategy, and exhausting heroics over efficiency. A firefighter boss’s leadership style has the power to reshape workplace culture in ways that go beyond mere frustration. It has a measurable psychological cost on employees. While their quick-thinking and ability to mobilize teams can be invaluable in emergencies, their leadership style often comes at a steep cost—one that exhausts teams, stifles strategic growth, and fosters a culture of burnout. But there are measures you can take to protect yourself. By shifting what they value, resisting their chaos, and redirecting their energy, you can thrive under their leadership.

You’re in a one-on-one with your boss, and they’re outlining a plan that sounds great in theory—but you know it’s going to create chaos in practice. Or maybe you’re in a team meeting, and everyone else is nodding along to an idea that you’re certain will backfire. Pushing back on your boss’s idea without straining your relationship is tricky. How do you raise concerns without looking like you’re resisting change? Is it better to be subtle and ask questions or state your case directly? And how do you make your point without making your boss defensive? Here are strategies to try.

Traditional career coaching can be expensive and time-consuming. But with the emergence of generative AI platforms such, many job seekers are turning to AI as an accessible, efficient, and personalized alternative, even if they are already lucky enough to have a great human career coach. Whether you need resume help, interview practice, or leadership coaching, gen AI can be your 24/7 career companion and thought partner. This article shows you how you can use gen AI tools for career coaching, with practical prompts and strategies to maximize your experience, learnings, and success.

An interview with executive coach Melody Wilding on managing up.

Using meeting-recording and transcription features has become standard in many workplaces as we seek to better manage the ever-increasing volume of things we must do and keep track of. Generative AI tools that also create meeting summaries that highlight key themes and assign to-dos are also increasingly common. While these tools can save time and effort, it’s critical for leaders to recognize that they affect the social fabric of meetings—particularly psychological safety and engagement. Over time, these effects can stack up, and leaders who take psychological safety and team dynamics seriously need to give some thought to whether, how, and why to use these tools.

Five years into the world’s largest WFH experiment, what have we learned about the benefits and downsides of life without an office? This interview with Jennifer Magnolfi Astill, a leading researcher on the evolution of workspaces and human-machine collaboration, discusses what’s been surprising about this shift, where organizations are going wrong in thinking about RTO mandates, the importance of face-to-face human connection when it comes to innovation, and, in the end, what an office is truly for.

Forever chemicals are toxic and widely used in buildings and yet they remain on the rise globally with little regulation to control them. In the United States, for example, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations currently cover only forever chemicals in water—and only six of the more than 10,000. But organizations have a responsibility and role to play in eliminating them from workplaces in the same way they might have asbestos in years past. At Harvard University and several corporations, leaders are following a simple, two-part playbook: Demand transparency from suppliers and avoid entire classes of chemicals.

In a recent HBR article, the authors described a new method to find out where pay gaps exist within an organization. Yet in presenting their findings to companies, many firms wondered: once we’ve determined there’s gaps, which do we close first? In this follow-up piece, the authors describe a framework to help companies decide which steps to take to stay aligned with their values and responsive to their regulatory environment.

Some employees don’t just cause problems—they create them on purpose.

From teary feedback sessions to managers who won’t listen, the Amys weigh in.

The gap between the feedback leaders need and the feedback they actually hear represents one of the most significant yet addressable barriers to leadership effectiveness. By developing the skills to detect hidden feedback cues, create psychological safety for honest dialogue, listen with genuine curiosity, and reward candor, leaders can transform these seemingly ordinary exchanges into extraordinary growth opportunities. In business environments where adaptation is paramount, leaders who systematically uncover and leverage hidden feedback gain an unmatched competitive advantage: They see around corners others miss, repair cracks before they become chasms, and build the kind of trust-based cultures that withstand the most challenging circumstances.

To address challenges posed by ambiguous threats, employees need to speak up at the earliest signs of trouble. Yet research shows that the more ambiguous a threat, the more likely employees are to remain silent . Why does it happen? The likely explanation is cognitive overload. Employees juggle multiple responsibilities, and ambiguous threats require significant mental effort to assess. As a result, they may shift their focus to more manageable tasks. Additionally, traditional workplace structures reinforce the assumption that decision-making is a leadership responsibility, while employees are expected to execute rather than question. Thus, by relying on leaders to make sense of the threat, employees offload the burden of grappling with ambiguity themselves. This reliance is problematic because even the most capable leaders may overlook ambiguous threats or misjudge weaknesses in their team’s products and processes. Meanwhile, employees—who interact with these products and processes daily—may have critical insights that could help navigate uncertainty. The authors recommend targeted actions at three levels. At the organizational level, companies should foster a mindset of proactively analyzing even the smallest errors. At the leadership level, managers should prepare employees for uncertain situations and provide them with the skills needed to recognize and respond to threats. Finally, employees themselves should be enabled to challenge leadership when necessary.

If you and your team are too busy, it’s essential to take time to figure out how to work differently. Here are three key strategies you can use to reassess and reconfigure the work you do to free up vital time and energy for what matters: 1) Make sure your team really understands what “good enough” looks like. 2) Identify and eliminate hidden low-value tasks. 3) Strategically reduce your availability.