Volatility in an industry should concern not only the companies within it but also the people who work for them. To stay ahead of developments that may disrupt your professional life, you must make two evidence-based diagnoses: How volatile is your industry? And what explains the volatility? The answers will equip you to disrupt your own career preemptively.

A good psychometric test can easily outperform a résumé scan and interview at predicting job performance and retention. Yet personality testing and other ways of analyzing potential present some significant challenges: For instance, not all assessments pass the sniff test, and people’s personalities vary from moment to moment, often depending on the challenge at hand. We need a finer-grained understanding of human potential.

A webinar featuring ADP chief behavioral economist Jordan Birnbaum describes how data-based performance management can be used to improve the organization.

At the 2019 gathering of the World Economic Forum, re-skilling and flexible work took center stage.

Feeling a sense of belonging, which is when we feel safe and valued for embracing what makes us different, makes us happier and more productive. Not belonging, on the other hand, is among the strongest predictors of turnover. This issue can be exacerbated for remote employees, who don’t benefit from the same in-person, day-to-day interactions their colleagues have.

Baseball teams routinely use analytics to shift fielders’ positions so they can be placed where a hitter is most likely to hit the ball. This works well for preventing the opposing team from hitting and scoring — but it’s not so great for the game, which relies on base hits and scored runs to keep fans excited and engaged. Should “shifting” be banned for the sake of the fans?

Findings don’t have to be earth-shattering to be useful. In fact, obvious insights can help you overcome three barriers to change in your organization: resistance to new data (“But that’s not what my experience has shown”), resistance to change itself (“But that’s the way we’ve always done it”), and organizational uniqueness bias (“That will never work here”). You can also gain trust by confirming what people already believe.

Most organizations can agree on what questions to consider before making a decision about marketing, finance, or operations. But many stumble when the issue has ethical consequences. Leaders need to define what set of questions they want to consider when confronted with an issue that has ethical implications. Seven basic questions can get them started.

Football players who seem mediocre in college suddenly flourish as top pro performers, while hot prospects flounder when they reach the NFL. Can teams’ recruiters and coaches accurately identify the key players that will help their team win games based on the players’ past performance? In this episode of Counterpoints, Wharton professor Cade Massey, host of “Wharton Moneyball,” argues that they can’t.

Examining childhood traits such as boldness, experimentation, and resilience may help leaders access these qualities in service of their leadership roles. Rather than trying to learn how to be more creative or innovative, learning how not to lose the innate creativity and curiosity within us is more effective.

Most companies claim to be customer-focused these days, to the point where the concept has lost much of its power. But when customers are truly at the center of your business, change proceeds from the organizing principle: What’s best for them?

Corporate wellness programs are a lot like resolutions. While announced with the best of intentions, they don’t lead to enough real action — let alone the kinds of transformations they’re designed to bring.

The workforce is changing, with more and more skilled workers electing to work for themselves or become entrepreneurs. In this environment, organizations must significantly reconsider how they managed talent. As the competition for talent heightens, intuition is no longer adequate to identify and attract — not to mention keep — the best potential employees. In this webinar, ManpowerGroup’s chief talent scientist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic discusses the current workplace dynamic and the innovative methods to solve the talent problem, including new digital tools for talent assessment and retention.

This episode of Counterpoints examines the strategic value of data analytics — and more to the point, whether the data scientists creating the analysis are being rewarded appropriately for their contribution to strategy.

Longer life spans are the new normal, and many people alive today will live to be 100 years old. How will we use that time? One option: Rather than working full time for decades and then spending our later years with our grandchildren, we could redistribute some of that projected time from our 60s and 70s into our earlier decades and spend more of it with our children. For fathers in particular, this would be a radical life decision.

From what “being digital” really means for organizations to how developing strategy can feel akin to finding cadence in jazz, there was no shortage of insightful comments from our readers in 2018.

In 2018, MIT Sloan Management Review readers gravitated toward new articles that will help them prepare for the future of work, including topics as varied as skills needed in the age of AI and digital communication tools for virtual teams. The most popular article of the year focused on an area high on the list of most CEOs’ agendas: how to transform your organization successfully.

The world of hackathons brings the study of balancing high-speed, creative autonomy and administrative control to bear in many interesting ways for managers across different industries.

When a business is growing fast, decisions can get lost in the fray — especially if it’s unclear that a decision even needs to be made. People in the workplace bring recommendations to four audiences: a manager or top executive (those who approve a recommendation), and peers or a broader set of stakeholders (those who execute a recommendation). To sell an idea and get others to take action, you have to understand what your particular audience needs to hear.

Many workers value the flexibility and income that gig work provides; customers like being able to find people to do things they want done. However, the extent to which gig workers, typically self-employed individuals, should be afforded the legal rights of employees has yet to be fully resolved in many jurisdictions.