Why it Matters: Synthetic data — which resembles real data sets but doesn’t compromise privacy — allows companies to share data and create algorithms more easily. Companies committed to data-based decision-making share common concerns about privacy, data integrity, and a lack of sufficient data. Synthetic data aims to solve those problems by giving software developers...

This post What is synthetic data — and how can it help you competitively? appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

Why it matters: Industry is taking the lead on artificial intelligence research that has traditionally been the domain of academia. What does this mean for research that is in the public interest? Until the early 2000s, AI research in academia and in industry was split fairly evenly. But over the past decade, the balance has...

This post Study: Industry now dominates AI research appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

Why It Matters. It’s not enough to excel at a steady state — firms also need the resilience to respond to irregular operations and conditions. Systems thinking can help. Fresh off a year-plus of supply chain disruptions and irregular operations precipitated by the global pandemic, organizations should make time to rethink resiliency and risk management....

This post 4 ways to boost enterprise resilience with systems thinking appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

Why It Matters. MIT Sloan experts offer a systematic approach to organizational resilience that can help leaders manage risk and rebound rapidly when catastrophic events strike. Consider the recent system failures at Southwest Airlines that put the brakes on holiday travel. Or the Deepwater Horizon oil spill or the Norfolk Southern freight train derailment, both of which rapidly became...

This post A risk management playbook for improving organizational resilience appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

Every leader should design and communicate how they want to make decisions. Making it clear what you care about, what you need to know about, and what you’re tasking others to move on will help minimize confusion about who should be making which decisions. It also helps clarify when you as the leader can be...

This post Effective Leaders Decide About Deciding appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

Research using employee data reveals the top five predictors of attrition and four actions managers can take in the short term to reduce attrition. More than 40% of all employees were thinking about leaving their jobs at the beginning of 2021, and as the year went on, workers quit in unprecedented numbers.1 Between April and...

This post Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

As my company grew, I’d periodically be accused of making decisions slowly. I couldn’t figure out why, until one day it dawned on me: While employees thought they were asking me to weigh in on a choice that had to be made, I thought they were making small talk at the coffee machine. It wasn’t...

This post How to Get Others to Adopt Your Recommendation appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

The digital revolution is forcing the rapid transformation of IT departments and compelling them to do more than take care of infrastructure and basic services. Today’s IT organizations must be strategic partners with business leaders to help them execute digital strategies and capitalize on emerging technologies in order to generate entrepreneurial opportunities and disruptive ideas....

This post The Four Competencies Every IT Workforce Needs appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

The coronavirus pandemic’s office exodus risks diminishing company culture unless leaders take action to support it. Within just a few weeks earlier this year, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a massive shift to remote work that may change the office as we know it forever. Many large companies are urging employees to work from home for...

This post How to Sustain Your Organization’s Culture When Everyone Is Remote appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

To remain relevant and resilient, companies and leaders must strive to build business models using three key components for growth. In the face of a global health and economic crisis, many traditional companies have suffered tremendous losses, and some have shuttered their doors. Those that heavily rely on physical capital (for example, stores, goods) and...

This post Modern Business Models Will Drive the Post-Pandemic World appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

The rapid shift to remote work has created new challenges for organizations, but survey data shows organizations around the world are experimenting with creative solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many employees to work from home, and the magnitude of the shift to remote work is staggering. Before the pandemic, about 15% of U.S. employees...

This post Five Ways Leaders Can Support Remote Work appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

Several months into a global pandemic, leading organizations are redefining expectations of what is possible. Consider how offices around the world shifted virtually overnight to digitally enabled remote work. Grocery retailers and restaurants rolled out new pickup and delivery services. Hospitals rapidly expanded telehealth options. Automakers, apparel makers, and mobile phone assemblers retooled on the...

This post The Age of Accelerating Strategy Breakthroughs appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

For decades, researchers have published findings in MIT Sloan Management Review about developing and executing strategy. This collection offers a dozen of our most popular strategy articles of all time. “Strategy, at its heart, is about choice,” write the authors of “Turning Strategy Into Results,” an article featured below, which takes a keen look at how leaders...

This post 12 Essential Strategy Insights appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly and dramatically upended the working world, creating unanticipated business and leadership challenges. Some organizations are pivoting hard to new delivery channels, new products, and new operating models without having enough time to manage the impact of these changes thoughtfully. As a result, many executives currently find themselves shooting from the...

This post New Leadership Challenges for the Virtual World of Work appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

Assumptions lead to the mother all F@!$ ups. We are overwhelmed by data and using it correctly is essential. Your customers and brands can be hurt and damaged due to bad data and AI systems that have not been thought through. This represents a new and very real challenge for businesses to address. Everything from...

This post Three People-Centered Design Principles for Deep Learning appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

MIT Sloan means that innovation is one of the driving forces in our world. The constant creation of new ideas and their transformation into technologies and products forms a powerful cornerstone for 21st century society. Indeed, many universities and institutes, along with regions such as Silicon Valley, cultivate this process. The crux of the article...

This post Mathematical Model Reveals the Patterns of How Innovations Arise appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

MIT Means that we need a more nuanced approach to predicting job performance. For all the promise new predictability techniques hold, it’s difficult to measure something as complex as a person for several reasons, we must concur. The best guess here regarding personality and potential tests is that results have been mixed (at best). On the one...

This post Can We Really Test People for Potential? appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

How can organizations achieve their strategic objectives? Few questions are more fundamental in business, and yet few resources are available to provide clear, concise answers. To address this gap, Donald Sull, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan and his co-authors, have partnered with MIT Sloan Management Review on the ongoing Strategic Agility Project. Highlighted here in this...

This post A guide to MIT Sloan Management Review’s Strategic Agility Project appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

MIT Sloan contends here that an important executive goal in most large companies is to improve efficiency and effectiveness. With top-line revenue growth elusive in most markets, a key way to increase returns to shareholders is to boost the bottom line — and that means stepping up productivity. These gains need to come from improving...

This post Get things done with Smaller Teams appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

An important executive goal in most large companies is to improve efficiency and effectiveness. With top-line revenue growth elusive in most markets, a key way to increase returns to shareholders is to boost the bottom line — and that means stepping up productivity. These gains need to come from improving the processes that run the company as...

This post Get Things Done With Smaller Teams appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

MIT Sloan means that a quiet revolution is in the making regarding how companies manage employees. At some companies, in fact, traditional annual review processes are being replaced by ongoing efforts to help employees improve their performance. The challenge according this inset? Many managers aren’t confident they can change employee behavior… Read more

This post The Missing Piece in Employee Development appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.