Leadership & Organisations

A new McKinsey study (PDF) reports statistically what we already knew from personal experience: that mid-career and senior women tend to be found disproportionally in staff jobs, or “pink ghettos,” relative to men.

If you’re wondering what to do next in your career, you’re hardly alone. The debate about where and how we may best feed our hunger for mastery, service, prestige, approval, safety, achievement — whatever we’re after — is fiercer than ever.

Conflict and debate are considered essential to better decision making in some cultures, while in others, it’s downright rude. How do you bridge the cultural divide?

“Australians don’t trust Qantas management” was the leading head line of a recent national poll. The fact that the unions were unhappy with the way management conducted the industrial dispute is no surprise.

Did you know that if you think you are creative, you’re more likely to actually be creative? This surprising fact pops up again and again in our research. In our database of over 6,000 professionals who have taken the Innovator’s DNA self & 360 assessments, people (entrepreneurs and managers alike) who “agree” with the survey statement “I am creative” consistently deliver disruptive solutions — by creating new businesses, products, services, and processes that no one has done before. They see themselves as creative and act that way.

Editor’s Note: Nearly 16 years ago to the day, I interviewed Steve Jobs at an investment conference in San Francisco, California. He was “out of favour,” in-between his bifurcated tenure at the helm of Apple, revolutionising movie-making as chairman and CEO of Pixar. In retrospect, we see that Jobs brought his Apple technology approach to the movies and took movie marketing with him back to Apple…

Whose life am I living? I’m sure you ask yourself that kind of question from time to time. What am I really good at? What is the purpose of my work? These are not new questions. Sooner or later, we all seek answers to them.

Can you be liberal, feminist and Muslim at the same time? Malaysian activist Marina Mahathir says “Yes.”

Diversity matters—in teams and companies. In fact, recent research at McKinsey mirrors other studies of top management diversity around the world. McKinsey found that U.K., French, German, and U.S. companies ranking in the top quartile of executive-board diversity, as measured by gender and international differences, delivered returns on equity at least 50 percent higher and earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) margins 14 percent higher than those in the bottom quartile. Not bad results, but they could be even better.