In May, our team, along with five other groups at MIT Sloan School of Management, will move into a gorgeous space with amazing views, cool furniture, and a whole new outlook on how we work. There won’t be any offices, corner or otherwise, for anyone including the most senior managers, and our group, the Office of Executive Education, has gone even further and abandoned assigned seating altogether.
It’s Earth Day. Like New Year’s Eve, it’s an occasion that often results in resolutions, some harder to keep than others. Maybe you resolved to eat less meat, recycle more, bike to work, or install solar energy. However, it’s easy to feel that your actions aren’t enough. And you’re right—they are necessary but not sufficient. “Our fight against climate change depends on both personal and collective action,” says Jason Jay, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Sustainability Initiative at MIT Sloan. “To make a measurable difference, we need to catalyze change at the level of companies, cities, states, and nations.”
Conventional wisdom holds that bad jobs are the unavoidable price of low-cost service. The rule of thumb for many companies in industries like retail, hospitality, banking, and health care has been to drive down wages and operating costs, creating a vicious cycle of disinvestment in search of higher profits. But there is a shift taking place. Companies are realizing that happy, engaged workers are more productive, provide better service, and are more loyal. Good jobs are, in fact, good for business.
Contrary to popular belief, part-time employees and remote workers still have high productivity and engagement levels, according to Richard Branson. And our own Peter Hirst, Associate Dean of Executive Education, agrees. Hirst saw these results first hand after implementing a flexible work policy here at MIT Sloan. He tells CNBC Make It that this work redesign created motivated and fulfilled employees "who are passionate about what they're doing." Read the article on CNBC.com.
Will technology supplement (or perhaps even replace) a normal human function and to do so at scale? Welcome to the idea of what futurist Gerd Leonhard calls “The Global Brain.” In his latest book and series of short films, Leonhard investigates how we might preserve our humanity in a world that is rapidly beginning to resemble that of science fiction.
In the Innovative Leadership (iLead) Series by MIT Sloan and the MIT Leadership Center, top thought leaders share their views on business challenges and achievements. As part of this series, Ruth Sommers, COO of Blue Nile, recently shared some leadership lessons learned during her 25-year career as an executive in the retail industry.
Our MIT Sloan Advanced Management Program (AMP) provides executives with a unique, month-long opportunity to step away from work, to learn, practice, and benefit from 1-to-1 leadership coaching and individualized feedback assessments. AMP participants are paired with an executive coach for individualized, confidential sessions during the program. These coaching relationships are often so powerful that the participant elects to continue the sessions beyond completion of the program.
The 2018 MIT Sustainability Summit, held March 8 at the Four Seasons in Boston, focused on the long-term sustainability of future workforces, widening inequality, and the recent proliferation of contract labor. Keynote speaker and MIT Sloan Professor Zeynep Ton explained why “good jobs” are critical to a sustainable economy. She teaches the new program Achieving Operational Excellence Through People: Delivering Superior Value to Customers, Employees, and Shareholders.
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