The Best of This Week
The week’s must-reads for managing in the digital age, curated by the MIT SMR editors.
Topics
Weekly Recap
What a Hub-and-Spoke Model Offers for Hybrid Work
As we emerge from a year plus of forced work-from-home experiments, many companies are looking to reinvent their future work environments in order to find a middle ground between packed offices and the isolation of remote work. Our columnist Ben Laker makes the case that the hub-and-spoke model, in which a company operates a centralized main office (hub) with more localized satellite offices (spokes), offers possibilities for a hybrid way of working.
Solving the Riddle of the Middle Manager
The pandemic has taken a toll on all employees, but for middle managers — whose role is to monitor productivity and optimize individual performance — the rapid shift to distributed remote work has been particularly challenging. This article takes a look at how organizations can begin to free middle managers from tasks that no longer fit a more asynchronous workforce so that they can focus on building teams and developing talent for the future.
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How Companies Can Link Good Intentions to Intentional Action
Protests against racial injustice in the summer of 2020 resulted in a raft of corporate statements against racism, along with new racial equity initiatives. To effect meaningful change, businesses must maintain their commitments over time to address the concerns of their employees, customers, and other stakeholders. The authors suggest ways employers can ensure that their anti-racist statements continue to be backed by concrete actions.
What Else We’re Reading This Week
- The benefits of creating automation centers of excellence in your organization (Source: MIT SMR)
- For your summer reading list: Adam Grant’s selection of 12 new leadership books (Source: LinkedIn)
- A look at how the U.S. must change its approach to the Strategic National Stockpile before the next large-scale public health emergency (Source: MIT SMR)
Quote of the Week:
“We have to accept that wherever there is judgment, there is noise. Just as you would want to reduce bias — even if you cannot completely eliminate it — reducing noise is a good thing. It improves accuracy.”
— Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and author of Noise, in an interview with Behavioral Scientist