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EducationPhilosophy

Thinking Higher, Feeling Deeper: Honoring Elie Wiesel

Today marks one year since the passing of Professor Elie Wiesel. To me, and certainly to countless others, Elie Wiesel was a, if not the moral conscience of our world. Professor Wiesel said that “words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the status of deeds.” His morally courageous and truthful words in so many moments of consequence – especially when in the face of hatred or persecution – transformed into deeds that made our world more just and human.

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AIBehaviorCapitalismCommunityCultureEconomyFrameworksHumanityInnovationJourneysLeadershipMission and PurposeTechnologyTrustValues
Leader to Leader

The Rise of the Human Economy

In the face of rampant technology and automation (including warnings about jobs being lost to robots), Seidman points out that we must cultivate trust, truth, values, passion, and other human-related qualities. He notes that numerous companies tout the word human in their slogans. In many cases, these companies do exemplify human-centered values. However, “though these efforts are likely earnest attempts to embody human values, companies get into trouble when they don't fully and completely instill these values in their organizations.” Citing the example of Nelson Mandela, Seidman writes: “When you demonstrate moral authority, people follow you not because they have to, but because they want to.”

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Purpose

The Real Purpose of Corporate Purpose

Every single day, business leaders and the people they work with are constantly reminded that the world around them is moving faster than they are currently able to respond and in ways that they struggle to predict, comprehend, let alone control. The world around us is not simply speeding up, it is being fashioned into something altogether new; the amount, level, and magnitude of change has accelerated to the point that we have gone from a difference of degree to a difference of kind.

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Tom Friedman Column

Homeless in America

I began election night writing a column that started with words from an immigrant, my friend Lesley Goldwasser, who came to America from Zimbabwe in the 1980s. Surveying our political scene a few years ago, Lesley remarked to me: “You Americans kick around your country like it’s a football. But it’s not a football. It’s a Fabergé egg. You can break it.”

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Economy

How the Financial Industry Can Earn Back the Trust it Has Lost

The financial crisis may have begun with a lion’s roar, but it seems to have concluded with something akin to a lamb’s bleat. In late August, the SEC announced a settlement with former Fannie Mae CEO and President Daniel Mudd, who was accused of misleading investors about the organization’s exposure to risky mortgages, marking the conclusion of one of the last legal battles…

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PauseTrust

To Build Trust in Business, Start with a Pause

Businesses of all kinds are mired in a crisis of trust. Whether it’s the exposure of embarrassing corporate details stemming from a hack initiated in Asia; the revelation that a company has systematically misled its customers, subverted regulators, or made unreliable claims to patients; the release of sensitive financial documents through WikiLeaks or the Panama…

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AIHumanityTechnology

In the machine age, only one type of organization will thrive: a human one

The world is not just rapidly changing, it is being dramatically reshaped. It is being reshaped faster than individual humans and the institutions are yet able to respond. Recent technological advances and disruptions have generated a world that operates so differently that we struggle to comprehend its meaning and adapt to the circumstances it presents to us. This new world poses profound challenges for organizations of all kinds as they try to cultivate resilience and simultaneously determine a source of growth.

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Metrics

New Metrics for a New Reality

In modern business, perhaps the most sacred management adage is that what you measure is what you get. Therefore, it follows, you must manage what you measure. At the same time, Albert Einstein cautioned that, “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” All of these sayings contain both truth and wisdom that apply to this day, but as we forge ahead in a new century, we have yet to come to grips with what is, perhaps, an even deeper truth.

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InnovationLeadership

What Every Boss Can Do To Inspire Innovation

The vast majority of business leaders are looking for innovation in all the wrong places. In the 20th century, a CEO could command his employees to, ‘produce 10 times as many widgets as you did last month,’ in the same way that a general might have told a soldier to, ‘Take that hill.’ You could measure such progress easily.

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LeadershipSociety

Why Hillary Clinton Should Choose a Republican Vice President

A few weeks ago Hillary Clinton said that we should “Make America Whole.” She may have said it as an aside, just as a contrast to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” but it actually encapsulates an ethos of leadership both deeply rooted in the American political tradition and central to the future of both our country and the corporate world.