Professional services

360-degree feedback is all the rage in companies big and small. But it is frequently bureaucratic, politically charged, and agonizing. The good news is that by understanding four paradoxes inherent to peer appraisal, managers can take some of the pain out of the process—and get better results in.

Media entrepreneur Kramer looks at three French companies that use low-tech ways to better connect with customers. Luxury-goods maker Boucheron hosts...

How to build trust in a new era.

Lessons from professional services firms

If managers want their employees to share information, why do they encourage them to hoard it by rewarding competition among them? My colleagues Erik Brynjolfsson at MIT and Nat Bulkley at the University of Michigan and I have been studying knowledge sharing and productivity in the executive recruiting industry. We asked 71 employees, from partners […]

It is over fifteen years now since I met my first really dumb multimillionaire, and it made quite an impression on me. Up till then I had thought that you needed brains to make money: I was used to being asked “If you’re so clever, why aren’t you rich?” but this was the first time […]

Many felt pressure to lie about their personal lives.

Auditors are like building inspectors: We check out a business’s structure and systems and attest to their integrity so that investors can put their money in with confidence. But having grown up working in my dad’s business, a hardware store in Cleveland, I’ve always liked another side of this trade: helping people actually build things. […]

Photography: Christina House The Idea: Gary Burnison’s faith in the strength of Korn/Ferry’s brand led him to put the firm on a new strategic path—one that would expand its sources of revenue as well as its talent management services for clients. I first bought stock in Korn/Ferry International in 2001. Over the prior 20 years I’d […]

When the biotech pioneer had to get a blockbuster drug to market fast, it didn’t lock itself into a rigid supply chain. It joined with partners to become a virtual manufacturer.

"Please don't tell me that I need to have a baby to have this time off." Those words were still ringing in the ears of Jessica Gonon an hour after a tense...

With China now in the World Trade Organization, opportunities for multinational corporations are multiplying and evolving fast—and so are the accompanying underlying perils.

Service companies have long suffered from haphazard approaches to innovation. But a leading bank is proving that service development can be as rigorous as product development.

By building on a hierarchy of goals, consultants and managers can work toward mutual interests.

Frank Heberer, a human resources manager at Medignostics, has proposed a long-term HR strategy for the German midsize pharmaceutical company. All his...

Excellence is complicated and context-specific. And sadly, there are no short cuts.

Frank Heberer, a human resources manager at Medignostics, has proposed a long-term HR strategy for the German midsize pharmaceutical company. All his...

In making decisions, you may be at the mercy of your mind’s strange workings. Here’s how to catch thinking traps before they become judgment disasters.

Get it right and you win more work; get it wrong and the relationship is over.

In the four years since Rob Miranda became CEO of Growing Places, a provider of on-site child care for companies in the Midwestern United States, he has...