The Ideas that Shaped Management in 2013; Harvard Business Review, 12/24/13

Katherine Bell, Harvard Business Review; The Ideas that Shaped Management in 2013: "It’s always tempting at this time of year to try to make a definitive list of the best ideas from the past 12 months. But then we end up debating what counts as best — important? useful? original? all three? — and compiling extremely long lists, struggling to shorten them, and over-thinking it all, when the point should just be to gather some really good reading for you for any free time you happen to find over the holiday. So this year, instead, we thought about the pieces that most surprised us or provoked us to think differently about an intractable problem or perennial question in management, we reviewed the whole year of data to remind ourselves what our readers found most compelling, and we looked for patterns in the subjects our authors raised most frequently and independently of our editorial urging. The result, I think, is a set of ideas that together are important, useful, and original, and that feel like quite an accurate account of the management concerns many of us shared in 2013. Here’s the list. See what you think... 6. Being nice makes you a better leader and your company more profitable – new research proves it. Amy Cuddy, Matthew Kohut, and John Neffinger answered Machiavelli’s question: is it better to be loved or feared? The best way to influence and lead others, they say, is to begin with warmth. And that’s not all: Generous behavior is associated with higher unit profitability, productivity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction, along with lower costs and turnover rates."