The Gartner Talent Angle

*This spotlight is an excerpt from our 2019 interview. Rebels are generally seen as troublemakers whose decisions create chaos in our personal lives and workplaces. However, what if we saw these unconventional outlooks and rule-breaking decisions as constructive rather than destructive? Tune in to this episode to hear Francesca Gino, Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School and author of “Rebel Talent: Why it Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life” discuss how can we challenge the status quo in both our work and personal lives to drive positive change.

In this episode of the Talent Angle, author Jonah Berger discusses his book, The Catalyst, and offers an approach to changing people’s minds. He argues that we are in an era of entrenched beliefs, so convincing others or pushing them in a direction has become ineffective. Instead, one should  identify the key factors that cause resistance and overcome them by eliminating obstacles, reducing friction, and removing roadblocks. Berger identifies the five key barriers that inhibit change and explains how to reduce them based on his research and underlying psychology behind each barrier.

Are your employees a cost or an investment? How can your company design and manage operations in a way that satisfies customers, employees, and investors? Join us to hear Zeynep Ton, adjunct associate professor in the operations management group at MIT Sloan School of Management and the author of The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs & Boost Profits, discuss how operational excellence and treating your employees like an investment leads to great employee experiences.   Zeynep Ton is an adjunct associate professor in the operations management group at MIT Sloan School of Management and the author of The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs & Boost Profits.  Before MIT Sloan, she spent seven years on the faculty at Harvard Business School. Ton's research explores how organizations can design and manage their operations in a way that satisfies employees, customers, and investors simultaneously.   *This spotlight is an excerpt from our 2019 interview.

In this Talent Angle episode, Anil Lewis, executive director for Blindness Initiatives at the National Federation of the Blind, explains how organizations can create inclusive environments for employees with disabilities. He offers guidance on recruitment and development strategies for differently-abled talent and dispels stereotypes about employees with disabilities. Lewis draws on both his personal and professional experiences to urge organizations to create equal opportunities for the development and growth of employees with disabilities. Anil Lewis is the executive director for Blindness Initiatives at the National Federation of the Blind, where he formerly served as the Director of Advocacy and Policy. Lewis became blind at the age of 25, while a student at Georgia State University. Shortly after graduating, he became a job development and placement specialist for blind clients. He later served as president of the Statewide Independent Living Council of Georgia and as the founding chairman of the board of directors of the Disability Law and Policy Center of Georgia.

*This spotlight is an excerpt from our 2019 interview. What do Ralph Lauren, Larry Ellison, Julian Robertson and Bill Walsh all have in common? Certainly all of them are known for being successful, but there’s one thing that distinguishes these superbosses from their peers: the ability to groom talent. Listen to Sydney Finkelstein, award-winning professor at Dartmouth College, share secrets of how exceptional leaders manage and the types of people strategies they employ. 

In this episode of the Talent Angle, author and entrepreneur Christiane Lemieux argues that friction, inefficiencies that slow processes in both business model and organizational design, is hurting most organizations. In her book Frictionless: Why the Future of Everything will be Fast, Fluid, and Made Just for You, she profiles entrepreneurs and organizations that have eliminated friction to improve customer and employee experience. Lemieux also discusses how friction in our personal and professional lives prevent us from becoming more productive. Christiane Lemieux is a serial entrepreneur, former Executive Creative Director at Wayfair, and author of three books. She operates and designs her lifestyle brand, Lemieux et Cie, and she is a frequent contributor to Architectural Digest and other design media. She is a graduate of Parsons School of Design and Queen’s University in Canada.

What happens when your workplace is exposed to incivility? What should you do if you are the target of this hostility and aggression? Tune in to this episode of the Talent Angle to hear Christine Porath, Professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, teach you how to navigate incivility in the workplace and enhance your own influence and effectiveness through simple acts of civility and respect.  Christine Porath is a tenured professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. She’s the author of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace and co-author of The Cost of Bad Behavior. Christine is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and has written articles for New York Times, Wall Street Journal, McKinsey Quarterly, and Washington Post. She frequently delivers talks and has taught in various Executive programs at Harvard, Georgetown, and USC. Prior to her position at Georgetown, she was a faculty member at University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. This spotlight is an excerpt from our 2019 interview with Christine Porath.

Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Chief Talent Scientist at Manpower Group, argues many of our leaders are incompetent. Chamorro-Premuzic believes this is largely due to humans’ inability to distinguish between confidence and competence —  that is, how capable we think an individual is, compared to how capable they actually are. In this Talent Angle podcast interview, he explores why ineffective leaders are so often elevated, arguing that our judgment is too easily clouded by charisma and charm. For organizations looking to advance more effective leaders, he makes the case for promoting competence, humility and integrity.

Discover the patterns that govern behavior at your organization. Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of DuckDuckGo and author of Super Thinking, joins the Talent Angle to explain how and when to leverage the mental models that accelerate effective decision-making for employees and business leaders alike. Gabriel Weinberg is the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo, the Internet privacy company and private search engine. He holds a B.S. with honors from MIT in Physics and an M.S. from the MIT Technology and Policy Program. Weinberg is also the co-author of Traction.

Businesses across industries and geographies are facing disruption on multiple fronts — economic turmoil, employee activism, regulatory uncertainty. In this Talent Angle podcast episode, Andrew Barnes, author of “The 4 Day Week,” argues that success in this environment calls for businesses to embrace new ways of working which are rooted in flexibility. Barnes shares his company’s journey to designing a shorter workweek for employees and urges other organizations to abandon what he views as an entrenched anachronism, the 5-day workweek.