The Best of This Week

This Is How They Win

We’re seeing a new breed of disrupter emerging in our economy: experience disrupters. Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot, writes that these companies are outmaneuvering their competition by offering great products and even better experiences. In a nutshell, how they sell is why they win.

Leading Up

While we often think about leadership in terms of leading down and across, the neglected competency of leading up — known in the military as “telling truth to power” — is essential for healthy organizations. This article from Columbia Business School looks at the challenges of leading up and why companies need strong cultures and social contracts to make upward feedback effective.

Fighting for Brand Control in the Age of Amazon

Nike’s recent decision to stop selling through Amazon is not something many companies have the resources or market clout to copy. But companies can take several steps to gain greater control over their online brand messaging and build stronger customer relationships.

The Global Economic Impact of the Coronavirus

As the human toll mounts in the COVID-19 outbreak, the damage to global supply chains and the impact on the global economy are likely to be significant. Economic and business experts from Wharton, along with UPenn medical experts, weigh in on what we currently know and how we can prepare for what’s coming.

Building Effective, High-Performing Teams

Despite the wealth of research on effective teams, organizations often still struggle to deploy teams that achieve their potential. New research suggests that companies need to think about both functional and cultural change, and how these processes combine and reinforce each other, to achieve team-building success.

The Biggest Remote Work Benefits May Surprise You

More trust, less drama, easily recorded meetings, cute pets, and no smelly fish in the microwave: Remote teams offer perks both subtle and powerful. Distributed teams may lack physical proximity but, by determining how they’ll work together, can quickly build trust — a vital quality of high-performing teams.

What Else We’re Reading This Week:

• Valuable lessons for managing with empathy and authenticity from a beloved Premier League coach
• Experts weigh in on the market implications of the new California Consumer Privacy Act
• A primer on the differences between artificial intelligence and natural language processing

Quote of the Week:

“If there’s one thing that’s going to be the real currency for the next 10 years, [it] is how devoted and inclusive are your teams that are building all these technologies, in terms of gender diversity and ethnic diversity.”

— Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, in his keynote at Future Decoded

The Best of This Week