Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2024 från Rotman Management

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A DEI expert shares her insights around the recent backlash against these efforts; what to do and what not to do; and why she remains hopeful about the future. With respect to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), collective awareness has definitely increased in recent years, but some apathy has set in. Some have even used the term ‘backlash.’ How would you describe the current state of workplace DEI? There are a few things going on here, but one of the big reasons people might be feeling some ‘diversity fatigue’ is the perception of being stuck. People feel like this work has been going on for too long and that it has cost too much for there to still be a problem. With all the time and money that’s gone into…

IT’S A STORY THAT HAS BEEN TOLD time and time again: Kodak’s journey from global photography giant to bankruptcy in the era of digital photography. The narrative usually plays out as a cautionary tale: Once upon a time, an incumbent failed to innovate and lost out to technically savvy new entrants. However, this misses an interesting subplot. Between 1974 and 2006, Kodak had a nuclear reactor loaded with 3.5 pounds of enriched uranium in a secret underground laboratory in Rochester, New York. The reactor — which was used to perform neutron radiography testing — was an investment in cutting-edge technological research that should have kept Kodak at the forefront of new photography and imaging products. But we all know what happened next: Kodak found itself blindsided by new developments in…

Susan Christoffersen: Both of you work for large multinational companies, on the Canadian side. Given today’s challenging environment, how would you describe the mindset shifts happening within big corporations? Penny Wise: Over the 20-plus years that I’ve worked for 3M, the operating model has shifted from more autonomous, local entities to centrally driven approaches — and I see the same shift happening at other multinational companies. When you have operations in 50+ countries, there has to be a focus on simplification and standardization to be efficient and effective. More and more, I’m finding companies are building a global, more centralized model, where strategy is developed from the centre. Insights and requirements are gathered from all countries and the diverse needs of markets are accounted for, but there is a lot…

You have made it your life’s work to study overwork and its effects on people and organizations. Why is this topic so important to you? It’s something I’ve struggled with myself. For as long as I can remember, I have felt an inner pressure to always be busy doing something. When I was younger, that meant signing up for all kinds of clubs and sports while still getting straight A’s. It wasn’t due to pressure from my parents; it was just me. I’ve always felt like I had to prove myself and really struggled with being idle. By the time I made it to grad school, I stumbled across the concept of workaholism and I thought, ‘Wow, I could actually study this phenomenon and understand it better.’ That’s why I…

BUSINESSES ARE MADE UP of a wide variety of individuals, each of whom comes into the workplace each day with their own motivations. When personal goals are aligned with those of the broader organization, great things can happen. When there is misalignment, however, the opposite is true. That’s according to Gary Latham, Secretary of State Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Rotman School of Management. Prof. Latham has dedicated his career to studying goal-setting and performance. Based on his research, when self-set goals are aligned with assigned goals, individual performance improves. “Without such alignment, personal goals have a detrimental effect on a group’s performance.” Latham believes four strategies will ensure a mutually beneficial relationship between your personal ambitions and your organization’s objectives. STRATEGY 1: CHOOSE YOUR EMPLOYER WISELY. Aligning your…

WHILE WE DON’T OFTEN THINK ABOUT IT, every day we have an opportunity to positively alter our lives and those of other people. How? By bringing possibilities to life. Regardless of the realm we are focusing on, possibility is about the ability to see something in our imagination or in our heart — and then, taking steps to make it materialize. In my work at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design — the ‘d.School’ — I have developed a framework for manifesting possibilities for our life, family, work and dreams. The four one-word steps look deceivingly simple: 1. See2. Start3. Do4. Finish Sounds easy enough, but the reality is that these behaviours don’t come naturally to us. In fact, they are counterintuitive to how the human brain functions and…

IF LAST YEAR HAD A TITLE, it could be ‘the year of artificial intelligence’ (AI), especially advanced systems that use machine learning (ML). Universities around the world, including ours, were asking more students to take tests in classrooms to prevent them from using tools like ChatGPT to write answers for them. Meanwhile, notable computer scientists, including Geoffrey Hinton, considered the godfather of AI, wrote open letters sounding the alarm over “existential threats” from future versions of these technologies. As much as we agree that it would be highly undesirable for computers to start wars or interfere in elections, we don’t need to imagine future technologies to see that ML tools are already reproducing social inequalities. In order to consider how these tools can reproduce inequalities, it helps to understand a bit…

As we speak, conflict is all around us. How would you describe the current environment? William Ury: Every day, we are confronted by the headache and heartache of contentious disputes. More than at any other time I can recall, destructive conflicts are polarizing our communities, poisoning our relationships and paralyzing our ability to address our most critical issues. Ironically, after many decades of working on intractable political conflicts around the world, I find an intractable conflict tearing apart my own country [the United States]. Unthinkable as the prospect may seem, more than two in five Americans fear that the country may be sliding into a civil war. I have never seen such levels of fear, anger and contempt for the other side. Nor have I seen such depths of resignation…

“HAPPY FAMILIES ARE ALL ALIKE; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This is how Tolstoy begins his masterpiece Anna Karenina. For individuals, we could say the opposite: When joyful, we are all different, moving towards our potential in unique, unreplicable ways. When suffering, we are all alike: we feel stagnation; alternate between frantic action and paralysis; suffer frustration and anxiety, rumination and negative selfthoughts; and try hopelessly not to repeat past failures. We are alike in our suffering because, while our potential and paths are unique, the symptoms of getting stuck appear to be universal. But before we can begin to understand how stagnation happens and how we can leave it behind, we are faced with a big question: What is the self? Ever since Freud divided…

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST various groups in the workplace has been well documented as affecting a range of processes and outcomes, including hiring, compensation, performance evaluations and rewards, as well as everyday interactions. These findings make it clear that certain groups are consistently disadvantaged at work. While researchers have firmly established the existence of workplace discrimination, individuals often feel uncertain about classifying negative personal experiences as such. They might wonder whether they were denied a particular reward as a result of discrimination or a more benign factor, like task-relevant characteristics. For example, when a woman is passed up for a promotion in favour of a man, she may wonder whether her colleague’s performance was simply superior. Left to make sense of the incident on her own, she may never fully resolve whether…

Why did you decide to start a translation business back in 1992? Liz Elting: It was a natural business for me to gravitate to because I grew up living in five countries. I was born in New York, then I lived in Portugal when I was eight and nine. When I was 10, we moved to Toronto and lived in Canada for a number of years. Then I did my junior year of college in Spain and worked in Venezuela after graduation. Over the years, I had the opportunity to study four languages, and by the time I graduated from high school, I was hooked: I simply loved languages. I majored in languages in college and shortly after graduating, worked at a translation company in New York City. I quickly…

Uncertainty has become a daily reality for leaders across industries. What does ‘resilient leadership’ look like in this environment? In the management realm, resilience is about the ability to manage uncertainty proactively by shifting from a reactionary mode of leadership to a proactive mode of leadership. Resilient organizations try to plan for the future as best they can by managing through scenarios that are informed by a wide-lens view. I recently worked with a global, vertically integrated apparel brand to tackle this very issue as its business grew. We focused on creating three intensive scenarios, which incorporated very real political, social and economic scenarios that could hinder growth. We looked at every function and department and together we asked, ‘If this happens, what will we do?’ By coming up with…

What does it mean to be ‘indivisible’? One of the biggest challenges we face today is the adversarial nature of our interactions. We all share a responsibility to care for this world together. We may disagree about the ways to do that, but we need to remember that we are all in the same boat. To be indivisible is to understand our interconnectedness. It means moving through the world with a deep understanding of the value, strength and beauty of others. Embracing this mindset goes beyond knowledge; it is an ongoing practice of bridging differences to activate the unique capabilities of others and of ourselves. Sadly, we haven’t yet learned how connected we are — and it’s thrown us into crisis, both individually and as a society. Please describe your…

AS A LEADER, do you really still have to do oneon-one meetings with each of your direct reports? The answer to this question is, of course, yes. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t have written an entire book about the value of the one-on-one (‘1:1’) meeting. The fact is, there is something special and unique about 1:1s that goes beyond team meetings, an open-door policy and social interactions. You might already be getting heartburn at the thought of having more meetings. But keep in mind that well-executed 1:1s will wind up saving you time by creating better alignment in your team, higher-performing direct reports (‘directs’) and fewer spontaneous interruptions to your workday. They also promote employee engagement, ultimately decreasing turnover. In the simplest sense, 1:1s refer to a regular and recurring…

IN 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, interest in creating more inclusive workplaces surged as corporations focused on addressing racism and power imbalances. As diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs have increased over the past four years, some companies are now rethinking DEI to include belonging. Spirituality should be included in this effort. In a recent study conducted by Business for America (BFA), a non-partisan, non-profit organization, more than two dozen executives from 18 companies were interviewed, revealing how companies are struggling to ‘build bridges’ in an increasingly polarized culture. According to BFA founder Sarah Bonk, despite noble intentions, DEI initiatives have unintentionally deepened divisions within some organizations and led to the emergence of resentment among employees. Because of these unintended consequences, some companies are now trying to shift away…

MOST BUSINESS LEADERS now recognize that climate change is a grand challenge of the highest order. While there is vast potential for corporate action on this issue, relatively little is known in practical terms about how firms should go about managing their stakeholders to address environmental preservation. In this article we will describe how a Brazilian cosmetics company has been working with its stakeholders to create positive impact on the Amazon rainforest. Founded in 1969, Natura & Co. is the world’s largest B-Corporation, with 2022 net revenue of US$7.4 billion. Recognized with the United Nations Champion of the Earth Award in 2015, it has also been the parent company for other purpose-driven brands including The Body Shop, Aesop and Avon. By aligning the interests of its stakeholders with its own, Natura…

ESG—ENVIRONMENTAL, social and governance — has emerged as one of the most critical management imperatives facing leaders across industries. As data standards for reporting ESG performance improve and better alignment on reporting frameworks emerges, organizations will increasingly be required to report and be benchmarked against industry peers. This growing scrutiny and, increasingly, legal disclosure requirements, require attention from the most senior leadership within every organization. In this article we will highlight four common myths associated with ESG which, if not understood, can lead to poor outcomes. We will also discuss the key stakeholders who are influencing organizations to improve their ESG performance, and how they are shaping the ESG landscape. MYTH 1: ESG IS ALL ABOUT CLIMATE The ‘E’ in ESG is the component that gets the most attention from…

ALMON BROWN STROWAGER, a New York undertaker from the 19th century, was fuming. He found out that a local phone switch operator — the wife of a competing undertaker — was redirecting his customer calls to her husband. Harnessing his entrepreneurial spirit, he set out to take all switch operators to their employment graves: He and his colleagues invented the Strowager switch, which automated the placement of phone calls in a network. The switch soon spread worldwide and, as a consequence, a job that had once employed over 200,000 Americans virtually disappeared. While the pioneer researchers in new areas of artificial intelligence (AI) such as machine learning, deep learning, reinforcement learning and generative AI are probably not motivated by similar frustrations, their stated goals have nevertheless been to develop human-level…

I HAVE AN ADMISSION TO MAKE: I have a hard time speaking up. You wouldn’t guess it, given that I hold degrees from and teach at some of the best universities in the world. For over a decade, I had the title Managing Partner before my name and the initials JD for juris doctor after it. I’ve been in front of audiences of up to 300,000 people. I make a living by talking and leading. Then again, maybe you wouldn’t have guessed I have a hard time speaking up — you would have assumed it. After all, I’m female, Asian and (relatively) young. It’s a well-documented stereotype and statistic that people like me are good entry-level hires but not likely to be promoted to management. People assume that we’ll work hard…

FOR DECADES, leaders have relied on solutions propagated by the business mainstream. Want to improve profitability? Outsource everything that isn’t part of your core business. Want to build an efficient organization? Create the right organizational structure. Want to become a great leader? Involve yourself in all key decisions. The list goes on and on. In the past, these mainstream strategies often worked well. The received wisdom was based on observations of what worked in practice and sometimes drew on years of experience. In other cases, they were just a passing trend or a reflection of some business thinker’s personal biases. In the worst cases, apparently contradictory strategies coexisted. But time marches on. As we all know by now, yesterday’s solutions no longer work in today’s complex world. Something unexpected happens…

PEOPLE DISAGREE a lot these days, but they do tend to agree on a few things. For one, the dominant cultural understanding of stress is that it is bad for us. This conception of stress leads countless individuals to embrace the common goal of reducing or avoiding it from day to day. But, given that stress is a fact of modern life, we propose an alternative approach: stress optimization. The widespread negative evaluation of stress has arisen, in part, because of research documenting its effects on our physical and mental health, brain aging and cardiovascular disease. The truth about stress, however, is not quite so grim. Multiple lines of research link it with several beneficial outcomes. For instance, studies link stress to personal initiative and productivity as well as physiological thriving.…

FORTUNATELY FOR ALL OF US, history is full of people who embody the entrepreneurial spirit. These bold thinkers imagine the world in a new and better way and drive change to make it a reality. Of course, not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. But whether you’re launching a start-up or managing a corporate team, every leader can benefit from learning how to think like one. The entrepreneurial mindset fosters creativity, adaptability and a problem-solving approach to life and work. It encourages seizing opportunities, taking calculated risks and learning from both successes and failures. This mindset is a powerful tool for innovation, enabling individuals to see challenges as opportunities and drive positive change. While leadership and management are interdependent in every organization, their practical applications differ significantly. Leadership is…

THE ABUNDANCE OF RECENT CONFERENCES and articles on responsible management, corporate purpose and stakeholder theory suggest that leaders and management scholars alike are searching for solutions to an economic system that has produced crises of global warming, inequality, pollution and other issues. Yet, we tend to look at our navels when we do so — thinking from within the current system rather than exploring entirely different ways of knowing. That’s why concepts such as shared value and environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics dominate the conversation: By arguing that you can ‘do well by doing good,’ we imply that we can solve these problems without disrupting existing power and economic arrangements. We often fail to appreciate that the economic system reflecting these arrangements is inherently a colonial one that was…

You believe the goal of curiosity isn’t to know but to understand. Why is this such an important skill in today’s world? Curiosity is often seen as an intellectual tool for extracting information about the world in order to know something. But there is another form of it that I call ‘heart-centred curiosity.’ This entails asking deep questions and moving away from surface-level knowledge to a deeper understanding of a person. What were their experiences growing up? What values or relationships are important to them? Do they know their purpose? This type of curiosity helps us see other people in more depth, and that is really important today because we live in an era of in-curiosity, where we’re turning on each other. Everywhere you look, cancel culture and toxic polarization…

At Rotman events, we equip you with cutting-edge business thinking that fits your industry and boosts your success. Register now for any of our upcoming events and discover breakthrough ideas, explore research-based content, and learn from panel discussions and interviews featuring bestselling authors, executives, and other thought leaders. Event Highlights for May - June 2024 MAY 1, 5:00 PM | IN-PERSON Inside Entrepreneurship - Exit Strategies: From Success to New Beginnings Ali Asaria Founder, Well.ca & Tulip Craig Follett Co-Founder, Universe & Peggy Sarah Landstreet Founder, Georgette Packaging Ahmad Ayyub Director of Strategy and M&A, Corus Entertainment MAY 9, 5:00 PM | IN-PERSON Dream Car: Malcolm Bricklin’s Fantastic SV1 and the End of Industrial Modernity Dimitry Anastakis L.R. Wilson and R.J. Currie Chair, Canadian Business History, University of Toronto Malcolm…