The Condensed May 2016 Issue

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael. I am here today with Amy Bernstein, editor of the magazine, to talk about our May 2016 issue. Amy, thank you for coming in.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Great to be here.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Let’s start with the big idea. The big idea article this month is one that we’re actually going to a separate podcast on, so I don’t spend too much time on it because I want people to tune in and enjoy that in more depth. But kick us off. Tell us what it’s about.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Well, it’s called “Embracing Agile.” And this is for our readers whose organizations are adopting Agile in every conceivable pocket. It’s happening everywhere. It’s happening here. Right?

What we know is that Agile in the last 20 or 25 years has moved from IT development into every corner of the organization. Marketers are using it. We’re using it here at Harvard Business Review. We’re going to start publishing our magazine using Agile approaches.

It’s a very good way of moving forward with a lot of momentum and tweaking as you go, just broadly speaking. But this article is for leaders who don’t quite get it. And we were going to call it “Learning to Love Agile.” But that seemed a little bit pejorative. But that’s the point of it. It’s how to understand it, how to embrace it, and how to get out of the way.

Because all too often leaders and managers, without even knowing that they’re doing it, hit the processes in the wrong way. They don’t manage them well. And it takes a certain amount of understanding and a certain amount of practice to know when to let go and when to guide.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, and if you are someone who has maybe heard of the term Agile, the term Lean, the term Kanban, the term Scrum, this is an article that you will want to read because it explains what the different terms are. You don’t need to be confused by those.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Right. Design thinking. It turns out it’s all Agile. And it’s written by people who should know. And Darrell Rigby of Bain is the lead author. But Jeff Sutherland is one of the leaders of the Scrum alliance, I believe, a big, big name in the world of Agile. And then Hirotaka Takeuchi, who’s a Harvard Business School professor, really helped develop Agile.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: It’s a cool idea that’s been around for a long time. It’s been tested. But now it’s really moving to a whole new realm of application.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah. I’d be surprised if any of our readers hasn’t kind of brushed up against it.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: All right. Now, the middle of the book, the Spotlight, this is one that actually goes quite well in some ways with the big idea because it’s all about managing for an unpredictable future.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Right. And who of us isn’t dealing with an unpredictable future? It’s got four very strong articles in it. The lead one is one I’m particularly fond of by Vijay Govindarajan, our old friend, and it’s called “Planned Opportunism.” And this one actually grew out of a talk he gave us.

The part that I found so interesting was about how you take weak signals and turn them into strategic action. And he walks us through that using really good examples from Tata, for example, from Hasbro, a number of companies across different realms of business. How they made decisions that, in the moment, may have seemed counterproductive but that turned out to be super smart because they read weak signals.

Another article that I like an awful lot is “‘Both/And’ Leadership.” And that really concerns the reality of leading in today’s world where, you know, we don’t live in a binary universe. You don’t have to decide do you either innovate, or do you sort of operate the day-to-day business. You have to do both. And it talks about all those tensions that leaders face every single day.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That’s so interesting. It sounds like that’s almost like the leadership version. And then the previous article you talked about is more like the strategy innovation version.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Absolutely. And it gives you guidance on how to make the kinds of decisions that don’t cheat tomorrow for the sake of today.

And then we have another couple of articles on how to hedge your bets and forecast better. The “Superforecasting” article is connected to a forthcoming book by Phil Tetlock and Paul Schoemaker. And Phil Tetlock is sort of the guy on forecasting. And it’ll tell you how to raise your organization’s game when it comes to forecasting.

And then the other one, the one I mentioned just a moment ago, is about how you hedge your strategic bets. And it gives three examples of ways that companies actually do that. The one I really love is about building temporary factories. They are low cost comparatively. They’re relatively low risk. And it helps you test a new approach to manufacturing. But there are other kinds of bets that they’re talking about in there, as well. It’s a great read.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: And that’s from Boston Consulting Group’s George Stalk and Ashish Iyer.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah, Ashish Iyer. Yeah. A very good article.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: And George, also, is someone who has been a regular contributor to HBR for a while. So people are always interested in what he has got to say.

So someone who has really done an interesting job of trying to balance a lot of these things is Meg Whitman, who we also have an interview with in the issue. Tell us a little bit about what she’s up to, what she talks about in this piece.

AMY BERNSTEIN: She did this interview with our editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius shortly after HP had split into two different companies. And she runs HP Enterprise. And she talks a little bit about why she’s even taking this on. Meg Whitman doesn’t exactly need to earn money. And she doesn’t need to gain stature.

But she’s really hungry for the challenge of taking what was once an icon of innovation and getting it back on track. She says the bones of the company are in place. She sees a way forward.

My favorite part of the article, though, of the interview, was really the most human part, which is where she talked about what she’s learned along the way. And she says that her failed bid for California governor was an absolutely necessary step for her to get to where she is today because it taught her what she knows about communication. And I’d never seen that before. And it really sort of– it made Meg Whitman a little more human for me.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, Amy, you are my transition lay-up queen today, just serving up all these great transitions for me because that leads right into what I was about to ask you next about the article on improving your return on failure.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yes. From another one of our favorites, Julian Birkinshaw, and from Martine Haas. This is one of those topics that is– it just– well, it never fails to get a lot of attention because people are always trying to understand how to turn what feels like a loss into a gain, right. And what Julian and Martine help us understand is that there’s actually a very good, simple process for examining and learning from your failures before moving on again. It’s very straightforward. But it’s incredibly helpful.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, and what’s interesting about it to me is that they sort of take a mathematical approach of sort of thinking about the numerator and the denominator. And it’s a way of thinking about it. Like, if you’re not a touchy-feely person who really wants to delve into your feelings and, like, you’re not a word person, you can get a lot out of this article in a way that’s a little bit more refreshing than going through that emotional dredging up stuff. You can kind of do a math problem with it.

AMY BERNSTEIN: You can. But what I really like about this is that– you’re absolutely right about that– but it also appeals to those of us who maybe don’t want to think about numerators and denominators but just want to figure out how to squeeze some benefit out of what felt like a total loss.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Right. Well, and that would help in all kinds of ways.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah. In every facet of whatever it is you’re doing.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So further continuing our vein of learning, I also wanted to ask you, as we do every time we talk, about the Managing Yourself article in this issue, which is all about learning to love networking.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Oh, this spoke directly to me. It’s by Tiziana Casciaro, Francesca Gino, and Maryam Kouchaki. This is an article for people who find networking repugnant, who aren’t comfortable walking into a room and glad-handing strangers, you know, flashing their resumes and business cards.

So they offer four very straightforward, sensible approaches to networking for people like me. And you focus on learning. You think broadly about what you can give. You identify common interests. And you find some kind of higher purpose to talk about. It doesn’t feel phony. It doesn’t feel aggressive and self seeking. It’s actually a great way to make conversation with perfect strangers.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, and what’s interesting to me, too, is these three authors just do fascinating research in this area. They actually wrote something for hbr.org on just a little tiny piece of this that was an experiment they did that showed that networking at conferences actually makes people feel dirty. And so there’s clearly a lot of research backing up this practical advice and also clearly a need out there for more people like us.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I’ve met Francesca. I haven’t met the other two authors. But there is no more down-to-earth person. And so you really believe that what she’s saying is true. It’s a great piece.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, Amy, there’s a lot of great stuff in this issue. Thank you so much for coming in and talking about it with us today.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Always a pleasure, Sarah.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That was a Amy Bernstein, editor of Harvard Business Review. For these articles and more, visit hbr.org.