Communicating clearly and persuasively sets you up to have the impact and influence you’re after. But what if you’re running on empty or under a lot of stress? Expressing your ideas and giving direction when you’re time-strapped, overwhelmed, or exhausted can feel nearly impossible. Add to that, having to deliver a message you don’t agree with. So, what then?

Leadership development coach Muriel Wilkins talks us through communication techniques that meet you where you’re at mentally and emotionally so that you can rise to the moment (even when you’re worried you can’t).

Key episode topics include: leadership, interpersonal communication, difficult conversations, management communication

If you’re thinking about scaling an initiative, an innovation, a strategy, or even a successful part of your company culture, Bob Sutton has advice for how to face this difficult leadership challenge. He’s an organizational psychologist who’s taught management science at Stanford for more than 40 years. Along with his colleague Huggy Rao, he’s studied leaders who’ve scaled something successfully, as well as those who’ve failed at it. In doing so, they identified the habits that help spread what works and the patterns that keep early wins from catching on.

In this 2014 conversation with former HBR editor-at-large Julia Kirby, Sutton shares insights from Scaling Up Excellence, the book he co-wrote with Rao. Together, they explain how to expand what’s working at your company without letting growth dilute your success.

Key episode topics include: leadership, entrepreneurial business strategy, change management, organizational culture

For business leaders, the struggle between efficiency and innovation is constant. How do businesses meet their customers’ needs while also developing new and improved products and services? And how do you avoid letting people’s biases and entrenched behaviors get in the way?

In the article “Why Design Thinking Works” from the September-October 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review, author Jeanne Liedtka of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business writes: “the structure of design thinking creates a natural flow from research to rollout.”

She explains how this clear process helps teams break free of a variety of human tendencies that get in the way of innovation. “Most humans are driven by a fear of mistakes, so they focus more on preventing errors than on seizing opportunities,” she writes. “They opt for inaction rather than action when a choice risks failure. But there is no innovation without action—so psychological safety is essential. The physical props and highly formatted tools of design thinking deliver that sense of security, helping would-be innovators move more assuredly through the discovery of customer needs, idea generation, and idea testing.

In this episode, we bring you the narrated version of Liedtka’s article. 

Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at hbr.org

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor at Harvard Business School, believes the world demands a new kind of business leader. She says so-called “advanced leaders” work inside and outside their companies to tackle big issues such as climate change, public health, and social inequality. She gives real-life examples and explains how business leaders can harness their experience, networks, innovative approaches, and the power of their organizations to solve challenging problems. Kanter is the author of the book Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Small Innovation at a Time.

Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at hbr.org

Even the most carefully worded and meticiously reviewed contracts can fall apart once they hit the reality of modern business dynamics. Oliver Hart, Nobel-winning Harvard economist, and Kate Vitasek, faculty at the University of Tennessee, argue that, when it comes to contracts, one side often ends up feeling like they’re getting a bad deal, and it can spiral into a tit for tat battle. Hart and Vitasek say that companies should instead consider so-called relational contracts. Their research shows that creating a general playbook built around principles like fairness and reciprocity offers greater benefits to both businesses. Hart and Vitasek, with the Swedish attorney David Frydlinger, cowrote the article “A New Approach to Contracts.”

It’s tough to keep a team motivated when the strategy from the top keeps shifting. That’s the challenge facing a leader in a large global organization. He’s been geting positive feedback on his work, but he’s having trouble leading his team amid conflicting priorities and without direction from his senior leaders. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through how he can help his team have organizational impact, with or without more clarity from above.

Harvard Business School’s Stefan Thomke says running experiments can give companies tremendous value, but too often business leaders still make decisions based on intuition. With the right approach, even small firms can get a competitive advantage from the right kinds of tests. He explains how to introduce, run, and learn from experiments, as well as how to cultivate the right mindset at your organization. Thomke is the author of the book Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments and the HBR article “Building a Culture of Experimentation.”

• Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: How to Set Up—and Learn—from Experiments

Jennifer Riel, an adjunct professor at the Rotman School of Management, presents a model way to solve problems: integrative thinking. It enables leaders to move beyond either-or decisions to make stronger choices. She gives examples from the film industry to show how CEOs have put the process to work. Riel is the co-author, along with Roger Martin, of the book Creating Great Choices: A Leader’s Guide to Integrative Thinking.