The Gartner Talent Angle

Humans are hardwired to add rather than subtract. Across various contexts ー whether biological, cultural or economic ー we often default towards more. Professor Leidy Klotz, author of "Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, " argues we pay a price for the belief that more is better. In this Gartner Talent Angle interview, Klotz makes the case for the untapped potential of less, exploring subtraction as an overlooked strategy to achieve business results.

*This excerpt was taken from our 2020 interview. The #MeToo movement has called attention to the prevalence of workplace misconduct. In response, organizations across industries and sectors have had to confront the many risks—legal, reputational, and financial—misconduct and harassment pose to their bottom line. In her book #MeToo in the Corporate World: Power, Privilege, and the Path Forward, labor economist and award-winning author Sylvia Ann Hewlett urges companies to recognize the adverse consequences of toxic workplace cultures. She provides HR leaders and professionals with tools and strategies to create more equitable and safe workplace environments, especially for marginalized groups.

Using findings from her two books — "Collective Genius" and "Being the Boss" — Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill, reflects on the elements of leadership that produce innovation. She argues for a view of leaders as social architects, tasked with building cultures and capabilities necessary for their teams to do their best and most creative work. For organizations looking to learn from her leadership playbook, she counsels focusing on creative abrasion, creative agility and creative resolution.

*This excerpt was taken from our 2020 interview. Few of us work in roles designed to our personal specifications. In his new book Personalization at Work: How HR Can Use Job Crafting to Drive Performance, Engagement and Wellbeing , Rob Baker argues that employees thrive when allowed to craft their roles to fit their strengths. Baker provides HR leaders and professionals with tools and guidance to create workplace environments that empower employees to customize their jobs to meet their needs.

While technology such as instant messaging and videoconferencing have driven digital productivity, leaders and managers are struggling to effectively communicate with their teams using these tools. Entrepreneur Joe Freed joins the Gartner Talent Angle to share how technologies will reduce cognitive load and enhance culture initiatives. He also shares seven markers of digital interactions to assess the health of your organizational culture in the hybrid world.

Joe Freed is the Co-founder and CEO of Cultivate, a technology company providing a leadership development platform for the digital workforce. He has led several startups focused on online learning and HR technology, and lectures at UC Berkeley Extension.

*This excerpt was taken from our 2020 interview. Culture change efforts often yield little more than a survey assessing current culture followed by ineffective action steps to achieve change. On this episode of the Gartner Talent Angle, Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft's Chief People Officer, shares how Microsoft not only incites culture change, but also how they foster a growth mindset to ensure employees are comfortable learning and failing in order to grow.

In this Gartner Talent Angle podcast, labor market expert Martha Ross explores how non-college-educated talent can excel at organizations with the right on-the-job learning opportunities. She offers tactics for organizations seeking to diversify their recruitment strategies and improve sourcing of underrepresented talent.

Martha Ross is a senior fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. Ross researches and writes about workers and the labor market, with a focus on low-wage and underemployed workers, the education and employment experiences of 18- to 24-year-olds, pathways to good jobs for young adults, and COVID-19's disproportionate impact on these talent segments. She has a master's degree from the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration and a bachelor's degree from Colorado College.

*This excerpt was taken from our 2020 interview. In his book Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments, Stefan Thomke shares that bright ideas and decisive actions alone do not create innovation. Instead, innovation depends on a culture of experimentation which values the science of testing. By stripping big ideas into hypotheses to test what does and doesn't work, organizations are better positioned to establish a competitive edge and generate strong financial returns.

Hear Jeff Kavanaugh, author of The Live Enterprise, discuss how to transform your organization into an ever-evolving, continuously learning industry leader. He provides a clear path to transform large and complex businesses into agile ecosystems that evolve with changing market needs.

*This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2020 interview. The power of preventative thinking is one that is underutilized by organizations and individuals alike; a shortcoming which perpetuates reactive, rather than proactive, solutions. This according to Dan Heath, author of Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen. In his book, Heath makes the case for an upstream mindset — arguing that this approach can effectively surface solutions to seemingly intractable problems by highlighting early warning indicators.