Here are choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms, to start off your work week. I’m pointing you to articles about leadership, strategy, industries, innovation, women and work, and work and learning now and in the future. Highlights include how leadership can impact employee engagement and retention, why successful strategy is a social thing, how and why IDEO is changing the way managers think about thinking, why AI is the new electricity, the hidden sexism in workplace language, three simple rules of managing top talent, and a glimpse into the future of work.

Be sure to look for dots that you can connect.

Note: Some links require you to register or are to publications that have some form of limited paywall.

Thinking about Leadership and Strategy

From Chris Byers: How Leadership Can Impact Employee Engagement and Retention

“The best organizations develop the strongest engagement by realizing that employees have the keys to their own motivation and self-management.”

From Bill Barnett: Define the Game

“‘Change the game’ you’ll hear people say. In fact, we often define the game we play when we choose how to play it. But only some of us realize this fact. I was reminded of this lesson in Moscow by the French chess master, Joel Lautier.”

From Seth Kahan: Successful Strategy: Why it’s a Social Thing

“We know enacting change requires follow-through, which requires an inspired commitment by all parties involved. But how do you get that commitment? The answer lies in infusing key constituencies with enthusiasm. But, how?”

Industries and Analysis

From Gwen Morrison: Data: The New Currency for Retail Marketers

“Data has quickly become the most powerful tool in today’s marketing world. As social media and other digital platforms proliferate, purchase intent analytics help marketers target consumers and contextualize offers in real time. We check in with Jeff Rosenfel, VP Customer Insight and Analytics, The Neiman Marcus Group who reveals how retail advertising and marketing are changing how they allocate media investments and generate new creative concepts informed by data.”

From the London School of Economics: Disrupting the digital giants – advertisers and traditional media push back

“Recent failures of online advertising are allowing traditional media to react to Facebook, Google and others – Patrick Barwise”

From Mark Lee Hunter, Luk Van Wassenhove, and Maria Besiou: A Future for the News Industry

“The decline of the news business is not inevitable, if we connect to our best customers.”

Innovation and Technology

From the Economist: Here, there and everywhere

“After decades as laboratory curiosities, some of quantum physics’ oddest effects are beginning to be put to use, says Jason Palmer.”

Wally’s Comment: This is the lead for the Economist Technology Quarterly.

From HBS Working Knowledge: IDEO is Changing the Way Managers Think About Thinking

“IDEO’s human-centered design thinking is a systematic methodology used to help create new products and services. The best part: The company is open about how it works and how to adopt it. Professor Ryan Buell explores this process through the example of Cineplanet, a leading movie cinema chain in Peru. The company hired IDEO to help them determine how to better align their operating model with the needs of its customers. This case study may change the way you think about thinking.”

From Shana Lynch: Andrew Ng: Why AI Is the New Electricity

“A computer scientist discusses artificial intelligence’s promise, hype, and biggest obstacles.”

Women and the Workplace

From Lisa Unwin and Deborah Khan: Where Are All the Women?

“There is undoubtedly lots of seeking going on. Recruiters are being penalized or even ditched if they can’t deliver more women on short lists. Senior executives are signing up for staffing targets that mean their personal bonuses will suffer if they don’t hit their goals.”

From Margaret Ormiston and James R. Bailey: We Know Female CEOs Get Paid More, But We Don’t Know Why

“Last spring Equilar, an executive compensation firm, released a headline-grabbing study on gender and CEO pay. In a survey of 341 S&P 500 companies, it found that the 17 female chief executives in the group made nearly $8 million more on average than their 324 male counterparts. Some in the media responded with shock and excitement (Fortune called it, for example, ‘a reverse gender gap’), while others cautioned about the report’s small sample size. But these findings are supported by two rigorous academic studies: One found that women who hold, or are likely to hold, senior management positions earn up to 10% more than their male peers. Another found not only that female CEOs are paid more than male CEOs but also that nonwhite CEOs (African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American ethnicities) are paid more than white CEOs.”

From Mark Peters: The hidden sexism in workplace language

“While we may think we’ve come a long way, sexism remains in the corners of the words and phrases we use at work.”

Work and Learning Now and in the Future

From Roger L. Martin: The 3 Simple Rules of Managing Top Talent

“The general view in business is that top-end talent is highly sensitive to and motivated by compensation and that big monetary rewards are key to their management. There is a grain of truth to this — but only a grain. In my 36-year career, I haven’t met a single person truly at the top end of the talent distribution who is highly motivated by compensation. Not one.”

From Rod Collins: A glimpse into the future of work

“While the technology revolution continues to transform daily living at a remarkable clip, we are suddenly becoming aware of possibilities that few of us could have imagined even a few years ago. Driverless cars, 3D printers, sophisticated robotics, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality are all early stage applications that seem destined to alter the world of work as we have known it.”

From Wharton: Meaningful Work: What Leaders Can Learn from NASA and the Space Race

“The title of Wharton management professor Andrew Carton’s latest research is playful. But there is an important lesson to be learned from his paper, ‘I’m Not Mopping the Floors, I’m Putting a Man on the Moon: How NASA Leaders Enhanced the Meaningfulness of Work by Changing the Meaning of Work’ (forthcoming in Administrative Science Quarterly). Carton analyzed reams of NASA documents from the 1960s to understand how thousands of employees with vastly different roles were able to rally around the common goal of a lunar landing.”

More Leadership Posts from Wally Bock

Boss’s Tip of the Week: Get the story of the problem

Don’t just ask, “What’s the problem?” Get the whole story. One of 347 tips from Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time.

The Ray Standard

Great bosses recognize that they’re team members, too.

Book Review: The Undoing Project

My review of The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis.

Leaders and Strategies in Real Life: 4/4/17

Articles about real leaders and real companies in real life. This week it’s articles about McDonald’s, Bio-Techne, KPN, Casper, and the Chicago Cubs.

From the Independent Business Blogs: 4/5/17

Pointers to posts by Jesse Lyn Stoner, Ed Batista, Art Petty, Karin Hurt, and Lolly Daskal.

Writing well gives you the edge in business and in life. If you want to get a book done, improve your blog posts, or make your web copy more productive, please check out my blog about business writing. My coaching calendar for authors and blog writers currently has time open. Please contact me if you’re interested.

The 347 tips in my ebook can help you Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time.