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 leadership’s most important secret, why organizations need Chief Knowledge Curators, what’s new with the Internet of Things. a strategist’s guide to artificial intelligence, how women make big decisions, the emotional sophistication tomorrow’s leaders will need, and how to determine if your company’s diversity training is making you more biased.

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 HBS Working Knowledge: Should Management Be Primarily Responsible to Shareholders?

“One of the most controversial theories in business management is again boiling over. Should management put the shorter-term interests of shareholders over the longer-term needs of the company? What do YOU think? asks James Heskett.”

From Tom Koulopoulos: Leadership’s Most Important Secret

“This is not your average story about business leadership. But it illustrates one of the crucial concepts every truly great leader knows.”

From Simon Rey: Why Organizations Need Chief Knowledge Curators

“Organizational knowledge is like currency. When spent the right way, the dividends compound like the fastest growing interest.”

Industries and Analysis

From Srivatsan Rajan, Joydeep Bhattacharya, Yaquta Mandviwala and Deepak Jain: Changing Gears 2020

“Digital technologies are causing disruption across the global automotive industry. From digital engineering and 3-D printing to smart sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT), digital is poised to disrupt automotive R&D, manufacturing, sales, marketing and post-purchase services.”

From Shunichi Miyanaga: Manufacturing: Collaborating for the Future

“Today, manufacturers’ customers have constantly evolving requirements, and collaboration is vital to keeping pace with their needs. It provides a way to bring together critical skills, market knowledge, technologies and infrastructure to provide the products and solutions, as well as ongoing innovations that customers want. Thus, manufacturers in the United States need to embrace collaboration to thrive in an increasingly demanding global marketplace.”

From the Economist: The decline of established American retailing threatens jobs

“Therein lies the problem for America’s retailers. Not every mall or shop is dying. For now, store-occupancy rates are healthy. Nor have consumers stopped shopping. But they are spending money in new ways to the benefit of other businesses, such as restaurants, hotels and e-retailers, in particular Amazon. As a result, a giant established industry is descending into crisis.”

Innovation and Technology

From Mark Patel, Jason Shangkuan, and Christopher Thomas: What’s new with the Internet of Things?

“Adoption of the Internet of Things is proceeding more slowly than expected, but semiconductor companies can help accelerate growth through new technologies and business models.”

From Anand Rao: A Strategist’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence

“As the conceptual side of computer science becomes practical and relevant to business, companies must decide what type of AI role they should play.”

From Irving Wladawsky-Berger: The Emerging Data Economy

“Throughout history, scientific revolutions have been launched when new tools make possible new measurements and observations, e.g., the telescope, the microscope, spectrometers, DNA sequencers. They’ve enabled us to significantly increase our understanding of the natural world around us by collecting and analyzing large amounts of data. Our new big data tools now have the potential to usher an information-based scientific revolution on just about any domain of knowledge, – including people, and their varied interactions, organizations and institutions, – given our ability to now gather valuable data on almost any area of interest.”

Women and the Workplace

From the London Business School: Lessons in courage – how women make big decisions

“Kathleen O’Connor, Visiting Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School and Erica Dawson from Cornell University, both psychologists and experimental researchers, were curious. Interviewing women of all ages, from recent graduates in their early twenties to retirees in their seventies, they heard how women made decisions that changed their lives – and ended up happier as a result.”

From Diana Bilimoria: Unconscious Gender Bias Still Obstructs Women in Manufacturing

“‘Second generation’ bias erects powerful but subtle and often invisible barriers for women that arise from cultural assumptions and organizational structures, practices, and patterns of interaction that inadvertently benefit men while putting women at a disadvantage.”

From David Rock and Heidi Grant: Is Your Company’s Diversity Training Making You More Biased?

“Although diversity and inclusion training is prevalent in corporate America, its impact is inconsistent. According to the evidence, sometimes the programs even have the opposite effect of what they intend. One 2016 study of 830 mandatory diversity training programs found that they often triggered a strong backlash against the ideas they promoted. ‘Trainers tell us that people often respond to compulsory courses with anger and resistance,’ wrote sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev in the Harvard Business Review, ‘and many participants actually report more animosity toward other groups afterward.’”

Work and Learning Now and in the Future

From MJ Craig: Power of Pods: Teamwork in the Workplace

“Modern organizations have begun to adopt the silicon valley-like strategy of forming small, cross-functional teams to address bold business challenges and produce high impact results. Below are some steps to take to start creating pods and increasing teamwork in the workplace:”

From Quy Huy: The emotional sophistication tomorrow’s leaders will need

“The current cynicism about humanity’s value within organisations is the result of the no-emotions-allowed business culture that has been the global norm for generations. With so many companies treating people like instrumental (human) resources, is it any wonder we feel inferior to machines, which have no emotions to suppress?”

From Claire Cain Miller: How to Prepare for an Automated Future

“Pew Research Center and Elon University surveyed 1,408 people who work in technology and education to find out if they think new schooling will emerge in the next decade to successfully train workers for the future. Two-thirds said yes; the rest said no. Following are questions about what’s next for workers, and answers based on the survey responses.”

More Leadership Posts from Wally Bock

Boss’s Tip of the Week: They pay attention

Don’t be fooled. Your team members are always watching you. One of 347 tips from Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time.

Leadership: You can’t do it that way! You’re 40 feet tall!

When you become a boss, what you do has outsized impact.

Reading Intentionally: How Terry Moore chooses what to read

Terry Moore doesn’t have a formal process to choose what to read next, but he is very thorough and selective.

Leaders and Strategies in Real Life: 5/23/17

Articles about real leaders and real companies in real life. This week I’m pointing you to articles about the Coca-Cola Company, their new CEO, and their future. I think you’ll enjoy the varied analyses from the authors of these seven pieces.

From the Independent Business Blogs: 5/24/17

Pointers to posts by Art Petty, Kate Nasser, Terry “Starbucker” St. Marie, Kevin Eikenberry, and Mary Jo Asmus.

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.