Human Capital Briefs

Last week, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos released his annual letter to shareholders. As is the case every year, it is a tour de force of ideas and initiatives about the customer experience (Amazon Prime), disruptive technology (Fire TV), and strategic consistency.

What attracts top talent? Is it great benefits, flexible hours, steep pay packages, or state-of-the-art training? New research suggests it’s something simpler – but more difficult to obtain. Prestige.

What makes for a great presentation — the kind that compels people’s attention and calls them to action? TED talks have certainly set a benchmark in recent years: HBR even asked Chris Anderson, the group’s founder, to offer lessons drawn from the three decades he’s run TED’s signature events.

Brendan Eich had been CEO of Mozilla, the free software community, only two weeks when he resigned under pressure last Thursday because he’d financially supported California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage, in 2008.

William Thorndike, investor and author of The Outsiders:: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint For Success, looks at some less-known but more effective executives.

Leaders must demonstrate three key attributes in order to be seen as a true leader. First, they must have “grace under fire.” But also, our research found that leaders must stand for and by a clear set of values which define them. Finally, they must have integrity, constantly speaking truthfully.

In their best-selling 2013 book Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think, authors Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier selected Google Flu Trends (GFT) as the lede of chapter one.

There is an increasing amount being written about the use of storytelling as a powerful leadership tool. In fact, stories may be one of the most meaningful ways of quickly understanding what lies “below the water line.” Why might this be the case?

What executive skills are most prized by companies today? How has that array of skills changed in the last decade, and how is it likely to change in the next ten years? Here are the seven C-level skills and traits companies prize most.

some CEOs consistently win in one context but lose in another. If you’re involved in CEO selection, this requires that you both hire the right CEO and understand when the company’s strategic situation suggests that a different CEO is more likely to win.