Organisational Behaviour

Who decided what ambition looks like?

12 March 2026

Article at a glance

Women do not lack ambition. Dr Poornima Luthra explains that workplaces are still structured in ways that make career progression hard to sustain.

As a result, women are redefining ambition on their own terms, with many turning to entrepreneurship rather than climbing the corporate ladder.

The sheer volume of women leaving their jobs should serve as a wake-up call.
Businesses must rethink how “ambition” and “success” are defined by evaluating their workplace systems and cultures to make sure talent is not being lost due to poorly designed systems.

"Ambition” and “success” need redefining

Women do not lack ambition, as the 2025 Women in the Workplace McKinsey & Company report concludes. But there is a cost to success which has prompted many women to leave the workforce. Ambition is about growth and challenge; it's a personal driver which reflects our individuality.

A recent CNN Business report found that almost half a million women had left their jobs in the US between January and October in 2025 for reasons ranging from poor work-life balance, the cost and challenges of accessing childcare and toxic workplace cultures.

These pressures reflect a deeper structural issue: many workplaces were not designed with diverse career paths or life circumstances in mind.

As a result, many women are turning to entrepreneurship. Women are now starting nearly half of the businesses in the US, according to a recent article in Forbes magazine. A 2024 Wells Fargo Impact of Women-Owned Business Report cites the number of women-owned businesses increasing at nearly double the rate of male-owned businesses between 2019 and 2023. Choosing entrepreneurship doesn’t signal lower ambition. It often signals the opposite — ambition on one’s own terms.

When organisations fail to support diverse forms of ambition, they risk losing talented employees.

Why is this a business problem

The sheer volume of women leaving their jobs should serve as a wake-up call to business leaders. Many organisations are still largely run by men, and gender biases, both subtle and explicit, continue to shape workplace culture. When organisations fail to support diverse forms of ambition, they risk losing talented employees.

How business leaders can redefine ambition and success

We need to make both cultural and organisational changes, with a long, hard look at what ambition and success should look like. Business leaders must redefine these constructs for the workforce and next generation:

On the systems side, leaders must revisit hiring, promotion criteria, pay structures and performance evaluation. If we define ambition solely as vertical progression, we will continue to reproduce inequality and risk losing talented employees.

On the cultural side, leaders must model sustainable success. That means realistic expectations, visible boundary-setting, and rejecting the idea that heroic sacrifice equals commitment.

All leaders and team members should have the agency to challenge bias in their own teams.

Conversations about equity of opportunity must start early, in classrooms and around dining tables, as we speak to young people about success.

Before we question women’s ambition, we need to question the systems we’ve built. If the goal isn’t desirable, the cost is too high and the support isn’t there, disengagement cannot be named as a lack of ambition. It’s simply a rational response to inappropriately designed systems.

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Why the so-called “ambition gap” is really a leadership and systems failure

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Why your business goals are holding your team back

Guy Voichek — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:14:02 +0000

Why your business goals are holding your team back

Guy Voichek Wed, 15/01/2025 - 12:14

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Who decided what ambition looks like?

19 February 2026

Article at a glance

Setting concrete goals can backfire by locking people into sub-optimal ways of working, according to research by Assistant Professor of Marketing Guy Voichek

Making progress towards a goal increases perceived effectiveness of established approaches, reducing openness to better alternatives

Leaders can counter this bias by building in structured reflection

Targets matter, but so does the means of pursuit

Every year we make resolutions. Every quarter we set targets. Everywhere we measure progress. Setting concrete goals can motivate people to stay on track towards becoming healthier, wealthier and happier. But sometimes the track we choose is not the best way to get there and our focus on achievement can backfire because we undervalue alternative routes.

Dr Voichek’s paper reveals a surprising way in which setting goals can go wrong. When people aim for a specific goal and begin pursuing it via a particular path, early progress inflates the perceived effectiveness of that path, making people less likely to adopt a superior, alternative route.

Progress creates a bias in effectiveness

Through a series of studies spanning diverse areas such as health, finance and work, the authors saw a consistent pattern of behaviour. In one study, participants committed to earning a specific amount of money before beginning a task. After making initial progress using one type of task and earning some money, they became less likely to switch to an easier, higher-paying task, compared to participants who did not set a goal before beginning work. Making progress towards a concrete goal led participants to view the initial approach as a more effective way to earn money, and alternative tasks as less effective. As a result, participants with a concrete earning goal ultimately earned less than those without a specific goal in mind.

Thankfully, there is a simple way to overcome this: rather than focusing only on whether your current actions advance your goal, also consider how different paths might advance it. A reminder to consider the advantages of both current and alternative ways of working mitigated the entrenchment caused by concrete goals, one study revealed.

Once people made progress, they judged their chosen approach as more effective.

The risk of overly specific targets

Once progress metrics are embedded into dashboards, performance reviews and incentives, flexibility becomes even harder. Teams that are “on target” are rarely encouraged to question how they got there. Yet markets, technologies and competitive conditions change constantly. The danger is not only poor goal setting but rigidly sticking to the old methods that have worked in the past for acquiring those targets.

What can business leaders take from this?

Organisations often become more rigid than the people that create them. It's a powerful tendency: when we are satisfied with how things are going, we don’t question our methods.

This research adds an important dimension to our understanding of how concrete goals can produce entrenchment.

How organisations can counteract this:

Institutionalise reflection: Build in regular checkpoints that require teams to explicitly evaluate alternative ways of achieving their goals. Instruct employees to ask not only whether they are on track, but whether they are on the best track.

Reward course correction: Incentivise employees to change direction when doing so makes sense, rather than implicitly reward persistence for its own sake. Consistency should not be confused with efficiency.

Maintain high-level goals: remind people that most goals can be pursued in multiple ways, and that any given method is a means – not an end.

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Working towards concrete goals can leave employees resistant to exploring superior ways of achieving results

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Swatch: 8 actionable lessons from a pioneering brand

Omar Merlo — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:14:02 +0000

Swatch: 8 actionable lessons from a pioneering brand

Omar Merlo Wed, 15/01/2025 - 12:14

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Who decided what ambition looks like?

27 October 2025

Gen Z may not have the same memories of Swatch that Baby Boomers or Gen X have, but the brand remains a gold standard in entrepreneurship, marketing and leadership. It saved an entire industry in its Swiss homeland and has had a lasting impact on the global watch market.

To ensure these lessons are not lost in the past, I have had the privilege of collaborating with a key member of the brand's original team and its first marketing director, Dr Konstantin Theile. Our book The Dawn of Swatch: Timeless Strategies in Business, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship, reveals lessons that are just as valuable for business leaders today as they were over four decades ago.

Swatch's success offers many lessons – here are just eight of the most actionable for today’s marketers, leaders and entrepreneurs.

1. Flip weaknesses into assets. Swatch was born from an industry on its knees and desperately needing to make a step-change to survive. Cue a small visionary core team of the right people at the right time. It was their perceived weaknesses — youth, naivety and irreverence — that freed them to spurn the established Swiss watch experts and turn the industry on its head. This led them to conceive an injection-moulded, non-repairable, affordable fashion accessory that just happened to tell the time.

2. Marketing can be frugal. In the early days of Swatch, budgets were tiny, and the marketing team became pioneers of guerilla marketing before the phrase was even coined. A 500ft Swatch suspended from the front of the Commerzbank building in Frankfurt would be pretty radical even by today's standards. In 1984, funded largely by the bank itself (persuaded by the potential halo benefits of the Swatch brand), it generated a huge amount of publicity for Swatch in a crucial European market.

3. Think brand experience, not product. The first prototypes (branded Delirium Vulgaris rather than Swatch) were technically impressive but commercially unsellable. The marketing team soon realised that success would hinge on more than engineering; they needed an engaging brand name and story to capture consumers’ imagination. By positioning Swatch as an affordable fashion accessory, they gave customers a reason to buy not just one but several. Their edgy tongue-in-cheek campaigns turned each watch into a statement of individuality.

4. Harness the power of serendipity. While your chance of winning the lottery is in the hands of fate, you do have to be in it to win it. By creating an environment that allows for opportunity and a willingness to take risks, business leaders can create their own luck. For example, when Swatch was struggling to break into the American market, Konstantin's persistence and a fortuitous meeting with a watch buyer named Heidi (a fitting name for a Swiss success story) gave him the opening he needed.

5. Customers may not identify their needs. When it comes to innovation, traditional market research has its limits, especially when consumers can’t yet imagine what’s possible. Early Swatch market tests, for instance, produced negative results; people simply didn’t like the idea. Yet by relying on observation, intuition and belief in their vision, the team discovered unexpressed needs that consumers couldn’t articulate.

6. Embrace change. The Swiss invented quartz watches but their fear of new technology allowed the Japanese to seize the opportunity. By the time the Swiss realised what they’d unleashed, Seiko was already leading the world. Change will happen, whether you like it or not, and at an ever-increasing rate. Ignore it at your peril. As smartwatches reshape the industry, are Swiss brands adapting quickly enough?

7. Trust your instinct. Instinct played a huge role in Swatch's early success. As Konstantin often says: "The test of a good idea is first and foremost does it make the heart sing? If it does, then – and only then – should we apply our rational minds". This prompts anyone to assess the idea emotionally and only then apply rational thought to ensure the idea isn't reckless. Konstantin built his marketing team by prioritising genuine energy, creativity and passion over experience and formal qualifications.

8. Be relentlessly consistent. Swatch executed its fashionable, affordable and imaginative character across every touchpoint with rare obsession and passion. Whether it was product design, pricing, distribution or communication, every detail told the same story: Swatch was a fashion accessory, not just a watch. From fashion-show launches to art collaborations with figures like Vivienne Westwood and Damien Hirst, every move reinforced a single, coherent brand narrative. Branding excellence lies in this obsession with detail.

Gen Z might be more familiar with brands like Apple than with Swatch, but Apple’s success (and that of many leading brands today) borrows from the same timeless lessons Swatch pioneered decades earlier. Let’s make sure those lessons live on.

Note: This article was updated on 11 November 2025 to reflect the author's name and designation in the standfirst.

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Profile: Professor Anita Patel goes behind-the-scenes of health economics

Evie Burrows-Taylor — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 11:40:54 +0000

Profile: Professor Anita Patel goes behind-the-scenes of health economics

Evie Burrows-Taylor Tue, 29/10/2024 - 11:40

29 October 2024

Recently appointed Provost's Visiting Professor of Health Economics, Anita Patel explains the "quiet" but significant impact of health economists.

Last year, House of Commons research estimated the COVID pandemic cost the UK public up to £410 billion – around £6,000 per person. When such figures are involved, it’s easy to appreciate the importance of economics in addressing healthcare challenges: from modelling the scale of risks, to assessing the cost-effectiveness of solutions.

Nevertheless, health economists – the specialists who do this work – don’t tend to find themselves in the limelight. As Professor Anita Patel, who recently joined Imperial as the Provost’s Visiting Professor of Health Economics, puts it: “Health economists have a significant role in policy and practice, but they tend to do it quietly from the sidelines.”

Resourcing healthcare

“Pretty much every healthcare system in the world is struggling with resourcing what their populations need,” Professor Patel, whose role is a joint appointment between the Business School’s Department of Economics & Public Policy and Imperial’s School of Public Health, explains.

“The bread and butter of health economics is to help define the economic implications of such challenges, evidence or estimate the value of new solutions in a resource-constrained context, and support their implementation into policy and practice. By showing that you can, for example, save millions across a system, or even wider society, just by intervening at a different stage, you can help gain policy interest.

“New interventions and approaches are constantly being developed. There are also many that are already evidenced to be cost effective but not yet optimally implemented in terms of being delivered in the right amounts, to the right people, at the right time. Health economists facilitate this by bringing a social science perspective to practical healthcare delivery challenges.”

Evaluating health policies and programmes

Although she joins Imperial with 23 years in academia under her belt, Professor Patel has certainly not taken a conventional route to her new role. After academia, she became a freelance health economics consultant, working on projects as diverse as supporting charities to get awareness of specific conditions on the political agenda, and helping tech companies develop their value propositions to pitch products and services to the UK's National Health Service.

And then, at the end of the pandemic, she was ready for a role with more consistent human interaction and work that was closer to national policy. So rather than moving back to mainstream academia, she took up an unusual opportunity at research consultancy Ipsos UK.

An important part of my job is being visible as an ethnic minority woman in a senior position, which is unfortunately still uncommon

“That was a revelation for me,” Professor Patel says. “I realised there are ways to do research within a good work culture that is sadly sometimes lacking in academia. We were evaluating policies and programmes in real time: fast, complex work that was tough but hugely satisfying because the impact was clear and immediate.” The entrepreneurial dimension of the role also played to her strengths.

That experience of working collaboratively, with teams coming together at pace through matrix structures around projects, rather than people, suited her. “It was a surprisingly good fit with how my brain works and felt a more productive and comfortable culture than I’d previously experienced. Interestingly, it was female-dominated,” she explains.

Diversity in academia

“And that’s why the role at Imperial really spoke to me,” she says. “Unlike a traditional academic role, it specifically has a collaborative and equality, diversity and inclusion remit, in a specific timeframe.”

As the Provost’s Visiting Professor of Health Economics, Professor Patel will work between the Business School and the School of Medicine for one year, which each have a group of health economists. “The group at the School of Medicine has a specific focus on infectious disease modelling,” Professor Patel explains. “And the group at the Business School looks more at addressing public health issues through policy.”

A key focus of her role will be to support Imperial in extending its health economics work and capacity. “Economic evaluation of new interventions is where my main experience lies, and that’s a recognised gap at Imperial. That kind of work is vital to support clinical and health innovation research, and it opens up funding streams for the university too.”

Pretty much every healthcare system in the world is struggling with resourcing what their populations need

Of course, this won’t happen overnight, so there will be an initial need to strengthen existing partnerships. “That’s something I can help with, using my networks and experience in building health economics capabilities elsewhere,” says Professor Patel.

There’s also another element to the role. “An important part of my job is being visible as an ethnic minority woman in a senior position, which is unfortunately still uncommon,” she explains. “That includes mentoring and supporting staff and ��ý across the university, and it’s something I’m passionate about, having myself experienced many biases in academia.”

Ultimately, it feels like a case of the right position, at the right time. “I was feeling that it was my time to do something, and it’s clear from the role that the Provost is genuinely committed to making a difference in this area, so it’s a timely and opportune role for me.”

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Why you should work with your business rivals

Tim Weiss — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 09:09:37 +0000

Why you should work with your business rivals

Tim Weiss Mon, 15/04/2024 - 09:09

16 April 2024

Henry Ford once called competition the "keen cutting edge of business”. But this approach comes with serious costs that can be mitigated by embracing a spirit of collaboration with your rivals.

Competition drives us to reduce costs, innovate, and work hard to gain an advantage in the marketplace. Framing business in this way alone, though, risks adopting a mindset which is all about outcompeting rivals to reach the top. This ignores the central role that collaboration, cooperation and mutual support play in driving and maintaining success in business.

In the workplace, we often thrive because of the support we receive from, and give to, others. This "in it together" mindset harnesses the advantages of collaboration and working together towards shared goals, and may even apply beyond the boundaries of the workplace, in business, as well as life more generally.

Pulling together

We developed our understanding of this idea from an unexpected group: car mechanics in the neighbourhood of Dagoretti Corner in Nairobi, Kenya. Over a period of two decades, the number of garages located in Dagoretti Corner increased from a handful to 105 individual businesses.

Viewed through a competitive lens, these rival businesses should be competing fiercely with one another for clients, employees, space and prominence, with the weaker entities dying off as aggressive pricing and advertising pushes them out. Instead, more and more individual businesses have come to populate Dagoretti Corner, while the existing ones survive and thrive.

Through fieldwork and interviews, we found that, rather than competing against one another, the businesses adhere to the Kenyan ethos of "Harambee" – Bantu for "let us all pull together". This sees them create a welfare system, supporting each other to survive amid the harsh conditions of life in Nairobi.

Non-competitive growth

There are a number of features underpinning this welfare system. For example, business owners who we would expect to compete against each other instead regularly save and invest together, using the funds for shared purchases and to provide each other with credit opportunities. They also respect that each business has its own set of clients – a customer base that grows organically through word of mouth and referrals based on the high quality of their work, rather than advertisement.

Taking a client from another business is viewed as disrespectful or even fraudulent, but if a business has too much or too little work, the owner will often choose to share out clients or employees, mitigating the risk of one garage leaving others behind. This means that instead of going bust and being taken over by their neighbours, businesses are supported through difficult times.

The existential challenges of the modern world have sparked a search for new ways to organise, work, and find meaning in our lives and careers

There’s also an interpersonal element at play. For example, whenever a business owner or a member of their family faces severe illness – which often comes with significant monetary costs – their peers make donations to provide financial aid and visit the family to offer emotional support.

Collectively, these approaches produce a welfare system where we would expect hypercompetition and conflict to be the norm. This is not unique to Kenya – this type of mutual support between businesses exists across the Global South. And, while saving money together with colleagues or providing financial aid to rivals might be a stretch, there are aspects of this cooperative mindset and behaviours running through all workplaces that can be harnessed to provide a collaborative edge.

Harnessing the collaborative edge

The existential challenges of the modern world have sparked a search for new ways to organise, work, and find meaning in our lives and careers. Where a competitive edge may once have been the goal, many of us now value work-life balance, relationships, mental health and wellbeing above pure career success.

With this in mind, there is power in moving closer together and creating something larger than the sum of its parts. The car mechanics in Dagoretti Corner show us that by prioritising thriving together, we can harness a collaborative edge that sees everyone benefit, though we're in dire need of more examples.

We often thrive most because of the support we receive from, and give to, others

Harnessing the collaborative edge in your workplace or business can be extremely powerful. The Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance, for example, brings together high-impact African and African-diaspora entrepreneurs to support each other through mutual mentoring, investment, and network sharing. Rather than competing against each other, the power here lies in generating a collectivist spirit, because only as a collective can large-scale challenges be addressed to bring about transformative change.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that competition is irrelevant, but competition comes with psychological costs – it can be lonely, isolating and stressful. Making use of the collaborative edge can help balance out these psychological costs, moving us closer both to shared goals in work and business, and to enriched lives that are worth living.

This article draws on findings from "Survivalist Organizing in Urban Poverty Contexts" by Tim Weiss (��ý), Michael Lounsbury (University of Alberta) and Garry Bruton (Texas Christian University).

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Why every company needs its shepherds – steering external ideas to become internal innovations

Anne ter Wal — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 12:27:23 +0000

Why every company needs its shepherds – steering external ideas to become internal innovations

Anne ter Wal Tue, 02/02/2021 - 12:27

4 July 2017

Dr Anne ter Wal explains why it’s vital for companies to build internal systems that encourage the sourcing, integration and championing of new knowledge

“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice” – Anton Chekhov

Tapping into the brains of scientists and innovators around the world makes sense for multinationals. Gone are the days when companies relied solely on the expertise of internal research and development departments – with today’s rate of innovation, it’s nigh impossible to do everything in-house.

An automotive company might want to seek inspiration for environmentally-friendly new materials, or a pharmaceutical company may require novel external solutions for new medical technology. Sometimes firms don’t know what they’re looking for. Capturing fresh ideas through ‘open innovation’ gives blue-chip companies – from consumer goods through to pharmaceuticals – access to ideas more original than they could ever generate themselves.

But while many companies have invested heavily in formal open innovation practices, some good external ideas still fail to reach or make an impact on the market. What’s going wrong? In our research we’ve looked at how individuals can play a vital role in shepherding fresh external ideas through corporate obstacle courses and turning them into successful innovations.

Anyone who wants to introduce innovation from the outside often encounters major roadblocks. Sometimes companies say one thing while their legal departments – ever-protective of intellectual property – say another. Or there may simply be too much friction in the system, with big companies often creating bureaucracy and stifling communication. External wisdom isn’t always welcome or understood. Sometimes companies haven’t thought through the systems and processes required to usher in new intelligence from outside, and employees within may not know what to do with the new information once they have it.

We’ve examined practices in a wide variety of science-led firms and focused on a leading firm strongly oriented towards open innovation. After unpicking the progress of external ideas at a personal level, what we’ve found has been surprising.

Knowledge from outside won’t find a suitable home within a company, no matter how innovative it might be, unless the firm puts significant effort into training individuals to integrate it and champion it onwards within the organisation

Gatekeepers and shepherds

First and foremost, knowledge from outside won’t find a suitable home within a company, no matter how innovative it might be, unless the firm puts significant effort into training individuals to integrate it and champion it onwards within the organisation.

We’ve defined two main roles that are essential to making the most of open innovation: ‘gatekeepers’ and ‘shepherds’.

It’s not enough simply to charge knowledge scouts to pass on fresh external ideas to users within the company. ‘Gatekeepers’ need to help the firm to assimilate the new knowledge, acting not only as providers of external ideas but also as ‘translators’ who communicate these ideas in ways that will strike a chord with their colleagues. Companies also need ‘shepherds’, who further modify external ideas and blend them with internal knowledge to ensure safe passage through corporate processes of idea selection, to ensure that their potential for internal innovation is realised.

So, what’s stopping individuals from assuming these roles? The barriers are many and various, even amongst the most enthusiastic corporate adopters of open innovation. Research shows managers are often sceptical and unsupportive of the value of external ideas if they don’t have direct and immediate merit for their department. Hunting for external new knowledge is time consuming, and sometimes seen as a distraction with no guaranteed returns.

If not everyone values external collaboration and knowledge – in other words, if everyone isn’t “on message” – individuals within a company won’t be motivated to pursue it. Sometimes “not invented here” attitudes prevail. I’ve come across an employee who was offered membership to a prestigious professional society, but their line manager didn’t rate this as worthwhile or important to include in their performance appraisal. But it is indeed relevant if an organisation wants to be more open.

Managers need to understand how to value and reward insights that don’t have an immediate impact on their own business, but may sow the seeds for the big ideas of the future

Value and reward

How can companies nurture the culture and build the systems that encourage individuals to steer external ideas through and make open innovation a successful strategy? Managers need to understand how to value and reward insights that don’t have an immediate impact on their own business, but may sow the seeds for the big ideas of the future.

Say you go to a conference and learn about the potential of a new technology or medical development. Your job is to find a suitable home for this information within your company. You’ll need good networks and knowledge of who’s working on what in order to mould the idea to appeal to receptive colleagues, who could pick it up and apply it in their ongoing innovative efforts. But if you think, “That’s interesting, but this doesn’t apply to my work,” the knowledge ends there – as unrealised potential.

Companies need to build internal systems to encourage the sourcing, integration and championing of new knowledge. If a company really wants to promote a culture where someone says, “This isn’t relevant for me, but it might be for someone else,” there are ways of creating the right rewards. Most employees respond to incentives. Some institutions have created systems in which individuals are associated with a project from start to finish; even if all they did was to just drop a kernel of knowledge in the beginning, they are still rewarded for it.

However, if the employees who scout for fresh knowledge have no further part in the process – if their job is merely to introduce the information and move on – then that knowledge is most likely to be lost. But if individuals play a role in integrating and championing these new ideas, the more likely it is that they will take root.

This article draws on findings from Coping with open innovation: responding to the challenges of external engagement in R&D by Ammon Salter, Paola Criscuolo & Anne LJ Ter Wal (2014), published in California Management Review 56 (2): 77-94, and Making a marriage of materials: the role of gatekeepers and shepherds in the absorption of external knowledge and innovation performance by Ter Wal, ALJ & P Criscuolo, A Salter (2017), forthcoming in Research Policy.

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The Icehotel: redefining management via paradoxes and intangibles

Jonathan Pinto — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 10:51:02 +0000

The Icehotel: redefining management via paradoxes and intangibles

Jonathan Pinto Wed, 20/01/2021 - 10:51

14 August 2017

Sweden’s number one tourist attraction has a lot to teach businesses about embracing paradox and making customers say “Wow!”, argues Dr Jonathan Pinto, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour

In a corporate world that prizes data (especially big data) and business leaders who focus almost exclusively on an alphabet soup of quantitative metrics – EVA, EPS, ROI, ROE, RONA, ROCE, P/E Ratios, NEP, etc – words, especially quaint ones like paradox and intangible, appear to have no place. But the Icehotel says otherwise.

And in a hospitality industry that excels in creating ever bigger, taller, smarter and shinier glass-and-chrome monoliths, whose interiors are almost unfailingly replete with marble, gold-leaf, lapis lazuli and crystal, a hotel that is only one storey tall and built entirely of one mundane material should be an aberration. However, the Icehotel is anything but.

The Icehotel is the world’s first and largest hotel built entirely out of ice and snow. Every winter it attracts more than 50,000 visitors to its remote location in Swedish Lapland (200km north of the Arctic Circle), despite the weather being at its coldest and harshest.

It is Sweden’s most popular tourist destination and has been designated one of the country’s “Seven Wonders”. It was the subject of an entire episode in National Geographic’s Megastructures documentary series, which described it as “without doubt a frozen wonder of the world” and “one of the most amazing hotels on the planet”. Unsurprisingly, it was also a an episode on BBC’s recent documentary series Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby.

By being designed to die, the Icehotel undermines the fundamental “going concern” principle of accounting

And it is indeed amazing: every year 12,000 guests spend at least one night in a room with a temperature of -5oC, sleeping on a bed made of ice. And pay for the privilege!

Even more remarkably, the Icehotel is by definition unsustainable. Each version remains in existence for a mere three months: as winter gives way to spring, the sun comes out, the temperature rises, and the Icehotel melts and eventually dissolves entirely, leaving no trace of its existence and the tundra as unspoilt as it ever was.

By being designed to die, the Icehotel undermines the fundamental “going concern” principle of accounting, which assumes an entity will remain in business for the foreseeable future. And even though each Icehotel is sure to disappear, the organisation has been in business for over 25 years, building a sustainable business out of an unsustainable structure. (Now ironically, the Icehotel has come the full circle and has spawned a subsidiary, the Icehotel 365, which exists year-round, providing both warm and cold accommodation.)

Why would anyone, let alone a crack team of ice sculptors, designers, architects and builders from all over the world, build a structure that lasts pretty much only as long as it takes to construct? The answer is simple, profound and pragmatic: they do it because they enjoy both solving the technical challenge (of working with a difficult building material), and playing in the snow.

Every year 12,000 guests spend at least one night in a room with a temperature of -5oC

Constructing the Icehotel exemplifies what scholars have called “serious play”, a paradoxical approach to resolving paradoxes, and one which has tremendous implications for employee engagement and organisational culture. Imagine if all employees everywhere showed up for work looking forward to both the challenge and fun inherent in their jobs. The Icehotel shows that work and fun need not be contradictory or mutually exclusive.

Such contradictions or paradoxes are central to the Icehotel. The name itself is a paradox and a portmanteau that combines words with opposing connotations: “ice” (cold, harsh, dangerous) and “hotel” (warmth, comfort, safety). This paradox has been deliberately created and maintained: as the Icehotel’s creative director Arne Bergh says in the Megastructuresdocumentary, “We would not like to make it too comfortable: then it is not an ice hotel.”

By managing this core paradox and the others I have described (negative/positive, different/same, evolutionary/revolutionary, unsustainable/sustainable), the Icehotel takes a more balanced approach to management: it remains true to its values, and does not allow any one stakeholder to dominate. This is in stark contrast to the vast majority of organisations, which tend to focus on short-term profitability in order to satisfy the expectations of the shareholder, or more specifically the (perceived to be) all-powerful equity analyst; an approach that can result in suboptimal decisions and even corrupt practices.

Apart from paradox or irony, the Icehotel embodies another intangible: surprise. The creativity intrinsic to the Icehotel almost inevitably evokes a visceral “wow” reaction. And that is the sort of reaction many organisations hope to evoke from their customers. Having successfully executed a surprising, creative concept and then raised the bar, year after year, the Icehotel can teach other organisations how to deliver “Wow!”

This article draws on findings from “‘Wow! That’s so cool!’ The Icehotel as organizational trope”, published in Human Relations, and available to read for free until the end of August.

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When businesses hurt clients, it’s because they don’t like them

Laura J. Noval — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 10:42:44 +0000

When businesses hurt clients, it’s because they don’t like them

Laura J. Noval Wed, 20/01/2021 - 10:42

25 October 2018

If we want to do something self-serving, we convince ourselves the victim has nothing in common with us

Imagine you’re given control of lottery tickets for a cash prize. The stakes are high and it’s your job to share them out fairly with someone you’ve never met. You know he or she is ambitious, entrepreneurial, spirited – a bit like you. What would you do? Play fair, divvy them up evenly and may the best man – or woman – win? Or secretly hang on to the lion’s share, increasing your chances of walking away with the cash? Or worst, keep all the tickets for yourself?

Years of research looking at both humans and primates show we (and our ape cousins) are more likely to empathise with those who resemble us. This makes us less likely to harm them – we might even want to help them and share our resources with them.

Conversely, we are more likely to behave selfishly towards someone, or cause them harm, when they have little or nothing in common with us. When a person is different in class, ethnicity, race or national culture, we feel their pain less: even studies of our neural circuits show we are less concerned about their well-being.

The higher the incentive… the more likely people are to develop such a self-serving bias

In our research, we have discovered some unpalatable truths. If people want to do something self-serving – such as hanging on to more lottery tickets – they will convince themselves in advance that the victim has nothing in common with them. This pre-emptive action makes it easier to quash uncomfortable feelings that one is not playing fair. Distorting the truth by deliberately making the victim seem unfamiliar means it is easier to harm them, and the perpetrator doesn’t necessarily perceive what they are doing as wrong.

Feeling bad feels bad

At the heart of our work is learning to understand how people with the best intentions can behave badly. We’re trying to unpick the mechanisms we deploy to assuage a guilty conscience – and observe how this dictates our subsequent actions.

In the past, we’ve seen how people are capable of distorting their actions after the event if they’ve done something unfair or unethical. This is human nature: we don’t like to feel bad about ourselves so we practise a little self-deception. But this is the first time we’ve shown people are capable of distorting their opinions of others for their own gain in advance.

It is possible employees soothed their consciences about harming their clients by perceiving them as different

If they are tempted by money, they are more likely to be biased against the person they would harm if they got that money. And if they think less of someone, they feel less guilt about causing that self-serving harm – by hanging onto those lottery tickets, for example.

The higher the incentive – the greater the sum of money up for grabs – the more likely people are to develop such a self-serving bias. Thinking less of someone lessens the barrier of conscience between desire and goal.

In our research, we almost fell upon this truth. We were initially investigating how people perceive who’s “in” and who’s “out” of a social group. But we began to realise that financial incentives distorted how similar people think about each other – even though, in a perfectly rational world, money should not have anything to do with the way we perceive others.

Wild farrago

There are many ways you can go from here. We’ve looked at how individuals function, but we could also consider how people behave in groups. When members of a group agree with each other, they tend to reinforce each other’s biases and grow even more convinced they’re right. This type of group bias is even stronger than individual bias and harder to crack – but if we can properly understand the mechanisms at play, we could begin to counter them.

Making the victim seem unfamiliar means it is easier to harm them, and the perpetrator doesn’t necessarily perceive what they are doing as wrong

Or what if people went one step further than merely thinking less, and started to actively dehumanise one another? We know this happens on the battlefield from the way soldiers talk about war, when they see those they hurt as “things” rather than living beings. If this ever occurs in a corporate setting – if employees begin to see clients as non-human – it might allow them to justify more seriously harmful behaviour, such as fraud or environmental crimes.

There have been many ethical scandals in business that show this is possible. Consider the Wells Fargo furore: staff at the US financial services company committed widespread fraud by opening unwanted accounts, charging unwarranted fees and illegally repossessing peoples’ cars. It is possible employees soothed their consciences about harming their clients by perceiving them as different, as our research would suggest. It is even possible employees started dehumanising those clients, and that their biases were supported by others in their group – which would have made things even worse.

Businesses might set ethics and rules to dictate how they expect employees to behave, but our research could help companies understand the mechanisms behind unethical decisions, and fight them. To balance self-serving distortions, companies could, for instance, encourage employees to look for similarities rather than differences in colleagues or clients, making them less likely to do anything to harm them. It’s an approach that’s definitely worth a second thought.

This article draws on findings from “Motivated dissimilarity construal and self-serving behavior: How we distance ourselves from those we harm” by Laura J. Noval, Andrew Molinsky (Brandeis University) and Günter K. Stahl (WU Vienna), published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

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Want to improve your results? Stop shouting, start listening

Ileana Stigliani — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 09:17:37 +0000

Want to improve your results? Stop shouting, start listening

Ileana Stigliani Wed, 13/01/2021 - 09:17

31 July 2017

You don’t have to be domineering and bullish to be successful in business. Dr Ileana Stigliani explains how empathetic leadership can improve employee engagement and retention

If I were to say the word “leader” to you, of what kind of person would you think? A dominant, assertive, Type A character? Someone who pulls no punches, who takes no prisoners, who leads singlehandedly from the front? Looking at the leaders we choose – in business, politics and beyond – you certainly would not be alone in thinking so.

It’s time, however, we moved our thinking beyond this outmoded concept that has been culturally and societally ingrained for so long. A good leader is not an action hero. They are inspiring, nurturing and caring figures; a leader, in short, is empathetic. Some of you may already be thinking, “That sounds lovely, but when it comes to business, what’s needed is hard, tough, masculine qualities.” Let’s put this in language you might understand: empathy has a direct impact on your bottom line.

There are numerous studies that confirm this. The top 10 companies in the latest edition of the annual Empathy Index register earnings 50% higher than the bottom 10. In their study of competitive advantage Scott Keller and Colin Price of McKinsey & Company found companies who placed an emphasis on the organisational health of employees performed two times better financially. Or to look at this from a different angle, a study by Gallup shows lost productivity resulting from a lack of employee engagement costs US companies $450-550 billion annually.

Not taking out your problems on others requires a good deal more strength than simply barking orders and insults

Cultivate a culture of trust

A business is more than one person. It’s not just how the boss performs, it’s about how everyone pulls together. A study conducted by HBR and the Energy Project found employees performed better if four basic needs were met: renewal (physical needs), value (emotional needs), focus (mental needs) and purpose (spiritual needs). Employees who felt respected were 63 per cent more satisfied, 55 per cent more engaged, and 58 per cent more focused. They were also 110 per cent more likely to stay with their organisation – if your best and brightest are leaving you because they don’t feel happy with their lot, then you have a problem.

There’s plenty of literature out there still that treats business as is it were warfare, seemingly taking inspiration from the behaviour of the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. Ray Williams, writing for Psychology Today, does a fine job of debunking this sort of thinking. You could, however, look to the military for a more positive sort of inspiration, as Simon Sinek has done. The title of Sinek’s book and subsequent TED Talk Leaders Eat Last came from speaking to Lieutenant General George Flynn of the US Marine Corps. Flynn explained the order in which Marines take their meals is in inverse relation to their rank; the lowest first, the highest late. By putting the needs of others above their own, the leaders cultivate a culture of trust, through which the units can operate as one. If this behaviour allows people to trust each other with their lives, then imagine what it might to do in a business environment.

It’ll take more than eating your lunch later than your reports, of course – though any small action that demonstrates you put their needs above yours would certainly be a step in the right direction. William Baker (who served as president of WNET for 21 years) and Michael O’Malley (Principal at Cineáltas Human Resource Consulting), authors of Leading with Kindness: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results, advocate what they call a “transformational” leadership style to improve engagement. This is defined by compassion, integrity, gratitude, authenticity, humility and humour, and, yes, empathy.

Employees who felt respected were 63 per cent more satisfied, 55 per cent more engaged, and 58% more focused

How to be a more empathetic leader

Here are a few practices you might try if you want to improve engagement and retention:

Try to cultivate curiosity about other people, inside and outside your organisation. Curiosity expands our empathy when we talk to people outside our usual social circle, encountering lives and worldviews that are different from our own.
Challenge prejudices – especially those that encourage non-empathetic thinking – and seek out commonalities between people and ideas. Challenge your own assumptions about other people, always maintaining an open-minded attitude.
Put yourself in other people’s shoes, and try to experience the world through their eyes. This habit allows you to understand your employees’ motivations, hopes and difficulties, and to create the right support mechanisms to allow them to achieve at the highest-possible level.
Listen to your employees, and open up to them by sharing your own personal experiences, setbacks and feelings too. Employees who feel they are seen and heard are likely to be more motivated and more productive, and to display a higher commitment to their organisation.
Inspire collective action and collaborative teamwork. Leading by example, empathetic leaders inspire the same actions in other people in their organisations, a phenomenon called mirroring. Moreover, as empathy strengthens bonds of trust, it will lead to better and healthier team dynamics.
Think creatively and embrace design thinking, of which empathy is very much the cornerstone.

What makes human beings special

Look closely at these qualities and reflect; you’ll see there can be no conflating empathetic leadership with weakness. Indeed, being alive to the needs of others, not kowtowing to damaging ideas from above, and not taking out your problems on others require a good deal more strength than simply barking orders and insults at those below you in the pecking order. It is of crucial importance to look for these qualities in your hiring process, to encourage this sort of thinking at every level.

Gender balance is no panacea – “reptilian behaviour” (Sinek’s term) still pervades the thinking of those of both sexes who believe they must act in a dominant fashion to get ahead – but some semblance of gender equality could still have a positive effect.

One final thing to think about: the increasing prominence of robots and automation. This has reached a point where even the man hotly tipped to be the next Governor of California is ready to take on Silicon Valley over the ethical questions it poses. “Your job,” said Gavin Newsom, at a UC Berkeley commencement speech, “is to exercise your moral authority… to do the kinds of things in life that can’t be downloaded.”

AI will be become more and more advanced as the years go by. There is one thing which it may never be able to do, though: empathise. It’s what makes human beings special, and what has got us to our position of global dominance. Perhaps it’s time we acknowledged and embraced it.

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Where are we going wrong with our networking?

Anne ter Wal — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 15:29:40 +0000

Where are we going wrong with our networking?

Anne ter Wal Tue, 12/01/2021 - 15:29

29 March 2017

Dr Anne ter Wal, Assistant Professor of Technology & Innovation Management, outlines the two most effective networking approaches for professional success

Received wisdom tells us professional networks matter. We all probably network to a lesser or greater extent, but are we doing it properly? Are our networks the ‘right’ networks? Do they really work for us? Is it more useful to gather as many contacts from as broad a field as possible, or to rub shoulders only with people who share similar expertise?

The answer is neither. Limiting professional contacts to a tight circle of like-minded individuals is risky. Say you work in human resources, for instance. Most of your contacts might all work within the same field and even in the same city – you’ve accumulated a network over time but you probably haven’t paid much attention to expanding your horizon. While it’s useful to have such specialised know-how on call, it also leaves you exposed. You might fall into the trap of ‘group think’. When you get together, there’s a probable convergence of ideas. You all take the way you see things for granted. There’s no sense of perspective and no diversity – the group is too sterile. This may limit your ability to see novel solutions to problems in your work.

Is it more useful to gather as many contacts from as broad a field as possible, or to rub shoulders only with people who share similar expertise?

But there are also risks and limitations at the other extreme. If your associates come from too wide a variety of backgrounds and are too loosely linked – they don’t know each other, for instance – it’s extremely difficult to make sense of all the information that might be coming from them. There’s simply too much to process. That HR manager won’t be able to pull together anything useful from the disparate wisdom of, say, marketing professionals, managers or technology specialists in his or her circle of contacts because there is no common thread, or no one is joining the dots. And while we know we need our own professional networks, there’s little understanding about how to manage and leverage them.

In our research, we’re moving towards a greater behavioural understanding of networks. What do people have to do to be more effective networkers and how they can keep their networks alive? We’ve started to study networking as a more active process rather than as a snapshot of the people we are connected to.

So, which networks actually work best? Our research shows that there are two different configurations that are proven to contribute to individuals’ professional success. We’ve researched this among investors in technology companies in the US, but the results could apply to other settings. These two types of networks can offer the kind of expertise that helps when we need it most – in a new job, say, or when faced with a particularly thorny problem.

Investors, like many other professionals, build a network of partners over their career simply as a by-product of their day-to-day business engagements. Thus, networks might grow haphazardly, but people can rely on them purposefully for advice when looking for new opportunities. Networks in which professionals share specialised expertise – fintech investors, for instance – are useful, but only if they are spread over multiple ‘pockets’ of interconnected groups and not everyone in your network knows each other. Such open networks are more likely if your contacts, despite all being fintech investors, come from a variety of backgrounds, roles and locations. They might share specialised expertise but it’s important to maintain variety – the group must be open. These networks are, in other words, open but specialised – rather than open and diverse, or closed and specialised.

The other type that tends to work well is a network comprising professionals from a wide variety of disciplines, but strongly interlinked. In such a closed and diverse network, most of them know each other, or have something that holds them together as a cohesive group. In such networks, diversity comes from the variety in people’s backgrounds whilst the interconnectedness among them creates a ‘platform’ in which we can better interpret the diverse information.

In both kinds of networks, individuals ensure there’s enough diversity to bring something fresh to the party that can be meaningfully applied to the current work context. Of course, creating these types of networks is easier said than done. But today, networking technology such as LinkedIn and other professional communications make things easier.

Networking is something you do every day anyway without thinking – such as going for a coffee with colleagues simply because you want to, or calling up a friend you’ve not talked to in a long time, or deciding to go along to a conference to meet new people linked to your field of work

Imagine you’ve recently been promoted to a health and safety position in a London hospital. Does your network comprise mostly similar professionals in the capital? Could you then expand your network geographically, and make contact with professionals elsewhere in the UK, Europe or beyond? Creating such an open and specialised network, you are in a better position to bring new ideas or solutions your colleagues may not have considered before. Are you working on a project that involves bring different types of expertise areas together? You can put your disparate contacts representing those areas in touch with each other – in person or virtually – and, in doing so, create a closed-diverse network which can contribute much to your own personal success. Jointly diverse contacts in your network can help you mull problems and interpret information and bring greater insights. You are the person they all know who can bring them together.

Not everybody approaches networking with relish. We know some people say it makes them feel uncomfortable and opportunistic, or that very deliberately ‘schmoozing’ is frowned upon. But this is one of the main points I try to teach. It’s not something that should make you feel uncomfortable. It’s something you do every day anyway without thinking – such as going for a coffee with colleagues simply because you want to, or calling up a friend you’ve not talked to in a long time, or deciding to go along to a conference to meet new people linked to your field of work. A lot of it is building up good will without any expected returns. Just a putting a little thought into when it may be productive to put people in touch with each other – and when it may worthwhile to reach out to new pockets of specialists – may be all that is needed to make your networking work for you.

This article draws on findings from The Best of Both Worlds: The Benefits of Open-specialized and Closed-diverse Syndication Networks for New Ventures’ Success, by Anne L.J. Ter Wal, Oliver Alexy, Jörn Block and Philipp G. Sandner.

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