Video: Embracing financial transparency
Gilles Hilary, Professor of Accounting and Control – INSEAD speaking about the critical role financial transparency in organisations.
2015
Video: Grappling with a changing business environment
Martin Gargiulo, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD speaks about how companies must tackle a constantly changing business environment.
Negotiating the cultural minefield
In cross-cultural negotiations, be aware of cultural differences but don’t feel you have to adapt your behaviour. A former student of mine who hails from Germany once called me in distress about a negotiation he was engaged in with a Chinese counterpart. “I’ve done the guanxi, I’ve done every Chinese cultural adjustment I can think…
Leadership & the need for speed
It’s obvious that business is moving faster and faster, and that to keep up, leaders at all levels need to know how to pick up the pace. That’s easy to say. But is it so? Is there a correlation between speed and perceived leadership effectiveness? In a word, yes. We recently analyzed 360 feedback evaluations…
Teaching people to be more creative
Can you coach someone to be more creative? To some degree, our creativity levels are hard to change. They come down to personality traits such as intellectual curiosity, openness to experience and unconventionality, which are largely set by the time we reach early adulthood. Creative individuals have also been found to have higher IQs and…
Why brands are so important
Without a strong brand-building philosophy, many developing companies may never truly emerge to global prominence. India’s strong future growth potential and its increasingly affluent and aspirational population have made it a magnet for major global corporations. Every organisation with serious plans of tapping into the significant customer base has a strong portfolio of global brands…
Multicultural strategies can become missed opportunities
Smart consumer businesses are unanimous on the critical importance of “multicultural” growth opportunities. Yet companies still cling to misconceptions about how to market to consumers of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. The most significant misstep: Most multicultural strategies and analysis still view consumers mainly via demographics instead of really trying to understand demand. Assuming that…
What China’s “new normal” means for leaders
2014 marked the end of China’s period of miracle growth. Amid a real estate and manufacturing slowdown, economic growth slipped to 7.4 percent last year, China’s lowest level since 1990. It marks the first time since 1999 that the pace of growth fell short of Beijing’s target (which was 7.5 percent for 2014). This is…
Ask, listen and empathize
Leaders today have to understand their business thoroughly, but it’s unrealistic and ill-advised to expect them to have all the answers. Organizations are simply too complex for leaders to govern on that basis. One way for leaders to adjust to this shift is to adopt a new role: that of coach. By using coaching methods…
Being normal is not about fitting in
Trying to fit in is likely to make you miserable. Accepting your differences as assets and applying them is more effective. Normality is a subjective, relative concept: a conundrum, an enigma, and an illusion. In everyday situations, people judge normality by comparing others to their own implicit benchmark for normal behaviour. In this sense, normality…