The process of recruiting members to a board is often mistaken for the actual onboarding. Much is at stake in terms of legal and fiduciary responsibilities, but relatively little attention is paid to creating the conditions within the board to extract the distinctive knowledge of its new members. Three strategies can help boards do a better job leveraging the unique expertise of each board member.

As our world and the nature of work fundamentally changes, leaders must consider necessary new skills and accompanying mindset shifts.

While anonymous feedback in teams can sometimes be less than constructive, when used the right way, digital chat tools that provide anonymity can help managers gauge employee morale and drive change.

To better prepare for growing cyber threats, organizations and managers must build awareness about the complexity of cybersecurity and adopt training programs that mimic real-world scenarios. One option is “management flight simulators” that let experienced and novice managers run simulations to learn how to respond to cyberattacks.

Adopting agile development practices helps organizations bring their products and services to market quickly and respond nimbly to market changes. In an increasingly global business landscape, taking the time to address cultural differences when implementing agile is crucial for project success.

What can digital technologies do to help an organization solve customer problems? And what solutions will customers find valuable? It’s only when leaders wrestle with these questions that a digital strategy can emerge. To get there, organizations need to create a portfolio of business experiments and engage with customers to gain insight into their problems and potential solutions. The intersection between what’s possible and what’s desired is where a business will succeed.

On Oct. 2 and 3, MIT SMR is dropping its paywall — all of the content is freely available to visitors. Readers will have immediate access to ideas, research, benchmarks and tools, all grounded in the reality of our technologically driven economy and society. We’re offering some recommendations, based on what readers tell us are some of the most pressing problems they’re facing right now.

The editors of MIT Sloan Management Review are pleased to announce the winner of this year’s Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize, awarded annually to the most outstanding MIT SMR article on planned change and organizational development. The 2018 award goes to “The Corporate Implications of Longer Lives,” by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, both professors at London Business School.

To boost the bottom line, it’s important to increase productivity. This can be challenging for larger organizations, but by creating smaller, more agile teams, managers can facilitate collaboration and efficiency.

Technology changes faster than society can keep up, a pattern now playing out with artificial intelligence. Many CEOs are taking a wait-and-see approach to AI, while others are anxious to barrel forward. In both cases, there’s little conversation about AI’s human costs. Incremental adaption makes it more likely that AI algorithms shared across organizations and geography are spreading their shortcomings. Leaders must act to mitigate these challenges if AI is to benefit society.

New research shows that large organizations are still struggling to implement their digital transformations. Relentless, fast-paced technological progress and massive competency shifts present cultural/organizational challenges that make digital transformation a complex yet necessary exercise. In this webinar, Dr. Didier Bonnet discusses these findings and shares his thoughts on the barriers to digital transformation and what leaders can do to overcome them.

Join us on Twitter to discuss how next-generation measurement can drive change in your organization.

The most popular articles from the MIT SMR archive reflect the depth and range of management challenges our readers face in areas such as innovation, leadership, strategy, and technology. Authors of these “must reads” include MIT Sloan faculty Nelson Repenning and Donald Sull, plus Clayton Christensen, Albert Segars, Michael Schrage, Sam Ransbotham, David Kiron, Philipp Gerbert, and Martin Reeves.

Credibility hinges on perceptions of competence and trustworthiness, which develop out of specific behaviors leaders take. Regaining lost credibility is difficult, but can be done.

Research shows that giving advice is key to restoring confidence and motivation, which are two important factors for achieving long-term goals. So, instead of having struggling employees seek advice, it’s helpful to have them give it to others.

Not many companies are there yet, but there’s a developing framework for what it takes to lead an AI-driven company. Leaders at the forefront of AI have seven key attributes: They learn the technologies; establish clear business objectives; set an appropriate level of ambition; look beyond pilots and proofs of concept; prepare people for the journey; get the necessary data; and orchestrate collaborative organizations.

We understand a lot about how to develop the “hard skills” of analysis, decision-making, and analytical judgment, but we know a great deal less about the genesis of “soft skills” like empathy, context sensing, collaboration, and creative thinking, which are becoming increasingly valuable in the workplace. Understanding the obstacles to developing these soft skills and then addressing those barriers is crucial for our schools, homes, and workplaces.

Political struggles for control and decision-making often result in blocking or slowing down progress on digital initiatives. In this webinar, digital strategist Jane McConnell discusses her research findings on digital maturity and shares her guidelines for preventing politics from upending digital initiatives.

We can choose not to engage in improving the world. We can seize on every advantage available to us and our companies without thought to the consequences. We can act as if the planet and the global economy are not among our most critical stakeholders. We can join the crush of others who are just hoping to play out the string: keep our heads down, meet our numbers, collect our bonuses, and abdicate long-term responsibility to the next generation. But when we make those choices, we do violence against the future.

To deliver ROI and productivity, firms must overcome the barriers to implementing AI technology.