The 10 Most Popular Articles in 2023 (So Far)

Three-plus years after COVID-19 interrupted office-based operations with a sudden transition to remote work, managing hybrid teams remains a pressing issue for leaders. Hybrid culture has its own pitfalls to manage, with risks like feelings of disconnection among employees and “productivity paranoia.” Based on the most-read articles in the first half of 2023, readers of MIT Sloan Management Review seem keen to address these issues. Tools for improvement can be found in articles on skills-based culture change, effective one-on-one meetings, and intellectual honesty. Readers have also been focused on the bigger-picture issues of ESG, sustainability, and the growing role of AI in performance management and strategy.

The following are the 10 most popular articles of the year so far. We hope they will continue to help leaders in managing and supporting employees and in building thriving, innovative organizations.

#1
Work-From-Home Regulations Are Coming. Companies Aren’t Ready.

Jimena Murillo Chávarro

A growing web of regulatory minutiae governing flexible working arrangements around the world poses an acute challenge for multinationals. These companies must now contend with different compliance requirements in different jurisdictions, depending on how governments define and interpret terms like remote work, teleworking, and work from home.

#2
Five Ways to Make Your One-on-One Meetings More Effective

Jessica Wisdom

Weekly check-in meetings between managers and their teams or direct reports are key opportunities to build trusting manager-employee relationships. By taking five science-backed steps and asking five key questions, managers can better structure their one-on-ones to make these check-ins more productive.

#3
Why Innovation Depends on Intellectual Honesty

Jeff Dyer, Nathan Furr, Curtis Lefrandt, and Taeya Howell

Fostering psychological safety alone isn’t enough to successfully drive innovation; leaders must also create conditions that enable healthy debate. The authors describe the factors most important to establishing the balance between psychological safety and open, honest debate and outline what leaders can do to create a high-performance learning and innovation culture.

#4
Three Lessons From Chatting About Strategy With ChatGPT

Christian Stadler and Martin Reeves

Amid great excitement about the potential use cases of large language models like ChatGPT, a pair of business strategists decided to test whether the tools can support ideation, experimentation, evaluation, and storytelling as part of the strategy creation process.