Category Archives: Blog
Why We Humblebrag About Being Busy
We have a problem—and the odd thing is we not only know about it, we’re celebrating it. Just today, someone boasted to me that she was so busy she’s averaged four hours of sleep a night for the last two [...]
Aug
To Do Things Better, Stop Doing So Much
Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, on the importance of being “absurdly selective” in how we use our time. Click here to listen to the HBR ideacast with Sarah and Greg TRANSCRIPT SARAH GREEN: Welcome to the HBR [...]
Aug
If I Read One More Platitude-Filled Mission Statement, I’ll Scream
Let’s start with a game. Below are three mission statements from three Fortune 500 companies. Try to match each company with its mission statement: How did you do? The largely indistinguishable statements make the task almost impossible. Such statements may [...]
Jun
Hire Slow, Fire Fast (Harvard Business Review)
A lot of start-ups hire fast and fire slow. A bias for speed combined with the pressure for high growth drives many leaders to be quick to hire (“We need to fill this role now!”) but slow to remove underperforming employees [...]
Mar
The One Decision That Makes 1,000
Let’s start with a game. Below are three mission statements from three Fortune 500 companies. Try to match each company with its mission statement: How did you do? The largely indistinguishable statements make the task almost impossible. Such statements [...]
Oct
Stephen R. Covey Taught Me Not to Be Like Him – Harvard Business Review
Stephen R. Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, died yesterday. In a testament to his impact, his passing was news on CNN, The Washington Post and in many other publications around the world. The comments on these obituaries include [...]
Jul
Can We Reverse the Stanford Prison Experiment? – Harvard Business Review
When I met for lunch with Dr. Phil Zimbardo, the former president of the American Psychological Association, I knew him primarily as the mastermind behind The Stanford Prison Experiment. In the summer of 1971, Zimbardo took healthy Stanford students, gave them roles [...]
Jun
The Unimportance of Practically Everything
A friend of mine is the Executive Director for an organization with global reach. He is intelligent and driven, but constantly distracted. At any given time he will have Twitter, Gmail, Facebook and multiple IM conversations going. The majority of them are [...]
May
The One Thing CEOs Need to Learn from Apple – Harvard Business Review
A few weeks before Steve Jobs passed away, I was at Apple having lunch with a leader there. We revisited the well-known story of Jobs returning to an almost-bankrupt Apple. Jobs could have tried to maximize profits by squeezing every [...]
Apr
World Economic Forum and Young Global Leaders
I am blown away. On March 6th 2012 the World Economic Forum announced that I would be named one of their Young Global Leaders. The YGLs selected by a committee chaired by H.M. Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan and [...]
Mar
