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Leadership Unlocked Newsletter—Season 3
A Series on focused on AI and the future of work presented by Harvard Business School Professor Ranjay Gulati
Deconstructing the AI Monolith: A Framework for Understanding Enterprise AI
If you watched the Super Bowl in February, you likely walked away with one overwhelming conclusion: AI is here, and it is everywhere. By some counts, nearly a quarter of the commercials during the game featured Artificial Intelligence, with heavyweights like Google,...
Leadership Unlocked Newsletter—Season 2
A Series on Courageous Leadership presented by Harvard Business School Professor Ranjay Gulati
Leading through the Fog: Why Courage is Your Edge in the Age of AI
With this issue, we bring Season 2 of Leadership Unlocked to a close. Throughout the season, we have focused our lens on a single, vital theme: Courage. Drawing from the research in my book, How to Be Bold (Harper Business, 2025), we’ve...
The Powerful Coalition Behind Steve Jobs’s Boldest Bets
When faced with a daunting task or high-stakes uncertainty, what’s your first instinct? If you’re like many, it is to retreat inward—to try and figure it all out yourself. This tendency is especially prevalent at the top. Many senior leaders and CEOs view their role...
What Really Powers Google’s Relentless Innovation?
What company appears to be involved in so many of the 21st century’s most promising technical shifts such as AI, Autonomous Driving, and Quantum Computing? Google. The Silicon Valley darling that began as a humble search engine. But the true scale of this influence is...
How Jobs, Carroll, and Bezos Unlocked Extraordinary Team Courage
As leaders, we spend billions annually on team-building. We invest in retreats, workshops, and trust falls, all driven by a correct intuition: individuals and teams perform better when they feel a sense of belonging. But if the goal is to unlock true collective...
Roaring Out of Recession: How Airbnb Turned Crisis into Clarity to Emerge Stronger from the COVID-19 Pandemic
The dot-com bust in 2000. The Great Recession of 2008. The COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022. Every 7 to 10 years, it seems leaders are confronted with a crisis that plunges their organizations into a fog of deep uncertainty. As I write about in my book How to Be...
Designing for Courage: The Secrets of Bold Organizations
Why has “courage” become one of the most popular corporate virtues of our time? You see it everywhere on conference room walls and in annual reports, often alongside “boldness” or “winning.” This trend reflects a correct intuition: in an era defined by volatility and...
How Alaska Airlines Found the Courage to Break Its Own Rules
Mergers and acquisitions are among the boldest—and most uncertain—moves a leader can make. One 2011 study in the Harvard Business Review confirmed the conventional wisdom, putting the M&A failure rate at a staggering 70% to 90%. While more recent analysis from...
LEGO’s Secret: How the Courage to Say “No” Led to Winning
In the world of business, boldness is often associated with addition: launching new ventures, entering new markets, and pursuing expansive growth. But what if the most courageous act a leader can perform is one of subtraction? In the early 2000s, LEGO, one of the...
Borrowing Brilliance: Uber, Google, and the Power of “Parallel Play”
Few business environments are as fundamentally uncertain as pursuing a new, potentially undefined market opportunity. Whether it is OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity clamoring for supremacy in generative AI whilst still figuring out how to build a business model that...
Leadership Unlocked Newsletter—Season 1
A Series on Courageous Leadership presented by Harvard Business School Professor Ranjay Gulati
Global CEO of Chanel Leena Nair: Building the Courage to Lead
Few companies last beyond a few decades, let alone a century. Yet those that do manage to persist tend to have changed the world in lasting ways. Chanel is no exception. Founded in 1910, when strict dressing conventions kept women in tight corsets and...
The Power of Asking “What Could Go Right?”
Atychiphobia – you may know it as “the fear of failure.” Whether it’s about doing well in school, keeping up appearances with friends and family, or succeeding in our careers, it’s little wonder that we, as a society, worry about failing. In fact, recent research...
How Susan Tynan Disrupted a Dusty Old Industry
There’s no getting around it: An entrepreneur must take risks in order to succeed – and with risk comes fear. As the founder and CEO of Framebridge, Susan Tynan has experienced that fear: when investors questioned her business model; when production problems created...
How Unilever’s Purpose Inspired Paul Polman to Lead Courageously
Like most career professionals, Paul Polman was well aware of the tremendous pressure that CEOs typically faced – both from within and without. So when Unilever approached him in 2009 to lead the company, he thought, “Is this worth the price I will have to pay?” He...
How a fast-growing business can restore its entrepreneurial soul
As a business professor, I have studied organizations that range in size from startups with just a few employees to huge multinationals that employ tens of thousands of people. In the course of my research, I have seen an irony play out time after time: small...
How to Save a Stumbling Startup
An adapted version of this newsletter first appeared on Inc.com. From the earliest days of my academic career, I have sought to answer a question: Why do so many fast-growing small businesses end up failing? This question fascinates me, in part, because I saw a...
How to Prevent Silos From Becoming an Enemy of Collaboration
Collaboration. Businesses want it. Governments want it. Leaders frequently invoke the word whenever a formidable challenge emerges. What better way to serve customers, respond to threats, and deal nimbly with unexpected events (say, a worldwide pandemic) than to bring...
Turning your purpose into a superpower for growth
An adapted version of this newsletter first appeared on Inc.com For the ride-sharing and consumer app Careem, a strong sense of purpose is a “superpower” that guides the company’s decisions. So says its co-founder Mudassir Sheikha, who left a consulting job at...
How feeling like an outsider fueled a CEO’s purpose
An adapted version of this newsletter first appeared on Inc.com Sim Tshabalala's journey from harsh and humble beginnings in Soweto to the highest reaches of finance is a story of courage and purpose. Tshabalala grew up in a Black family in apartheid South Africa; now...
What does it mean to be a courageous leader? Find out on the second season of Harvard Business School’s chart-topping management podcast Deep Purpose.
Deep Purpose Podcast—Season 2
A Series on Courageous Leadership presented by Harvard Business School Professor Ranjay Gulati
Helena Foulkes: The Power Behind Asking “What Could Go Right?”
Helena Foulkes is an experienced CEO and senior executive with a track record of delivering results by building high performance teams, innovative consumer-driven launches and digital transformation. She is known as a purpose-driven leader who has made significant...
Behind the CEO Who Wants to “Keep Enterprise Human”
Josh Silverman is the CEO of Etsy. Previously he served as CEO of Skype, Shopping.com (an eBay company), and Evite. He’s chairman of ScriptEd Inc., which works to equip students in under-resourced schools with coding skills and creates access to careers in technology;...
Global CEO of Chanel Leena Nair: Finding the Courage to Lead
Leena Nair has been Global Chief Executive Officer at Chanel since January 2022. Chanel is a private company and a world leader in creating, developing, manufacturing and distributing luxury products. Founded by Gabrielle Chanel at the beginning of the last century,...
From the Frontlines to the G Suite, How Penny Pennington Found Her Purpose at Edward Jones
Penny Pennington is the managing partner of Edward Jones, a leading financial services company dedicated to helping its 8 million clients turn their life plans into financial plans. Under her leadership, the firm delivers on its purpose to partner for positive impact,...
What it Takes to Lead a Successful Turnaround in Health Care
José (Joe) E. Almeida is chairman, president and chief executive officer of Baxter International Inc. Every day, millions of patients and caregivers rely on Baxter's broad portfolio of essential healthcare therapies and technologies, which can be found in patient...
Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach on Driving the Future of the Digital Economy
Michael Miebach is chief executive officer of Mastercard and a member of the company’s board of directors. He is leading the company into a more digital world where the continued application of new technologies will further enable payments to become more seamless in...
How Anne Mulcahy Turned Xerox Around – and What Came After
Ms. Mulcahy, age 70, was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Xerox Corporation (business equipment and services) until July 2009, when she retired as CEO after eight years in the position. Prior to serving as CEO, Ms. Mulcahy was President and Chief Operating...
Entrepreneur Harsh Shah Debates the Exit Strategy: Is it Selling Out or Building Value?
Harsh Shah is one of the three co-founders of Fynd, the unique fashion e-commerce portal which brings the latest in-store fashion online. He has a keen interest in consumer-facing technology in the retail sector, and specialises in management consulting. At Fynd, he...
From Rags to (Shared) Riches: How James Mwangi Democratized Financial Access Across Africa
Dr. James Mwangi is Group CEO of Equity Group Holdings, credited with democratizing financial access, leading Equity to become an integrated financial services Group operating in 6 African countries with a client base of over 16m, and an asset base of USD 12B+. James...
Piloting Alaska Airlines with Compassion
Ben Minicucci serves as chief executive officer and president of Alaska Air Group, the parent company of Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air. Together, the airlines carry more than 41 million guests a year on 1,200 daily flights to 120+ destinations throughout the U.S....
How Levi Strauss & Co.’s Harmit Singh Finds Purpose in Profit
Harmit Singh is the chief financial and growth officer for Levi Strauss & Co. He is responsible for managing our finance, strategy, information technology, strategic sourcing, real estate and global business services functions globally. Previously, Harmit was...
Making Global Sustainability Personal at Bühler
Stefan Scheiber graduated in Business Administration from the University of Applied Science in St. Gallen and later continued his education at the Institute IMD Lausanne and the Harvard Business School. In 1986, Stefan Scheiber started as a management trainee...
How Framebridge Founder Susan Tynan Managed Risk While Making an Impact
Susan Tynan is the founder and CEO of Framebridge, a custom framing startup that has landed deals with Target and Crate and Barrel. Framebridge has raised more than $67 million in venture financing from T. Rowe Price, New Enterprise Associates, Revolution Ventures and...
Saving BlackBerry: CEO John Chen Explains How to Make the Hard Calls
John Chen is Executive Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of BlackBerry. Appointed in November 2013, John led BlackBerry’s turnaround stabilizing the company’s financial position, ensuring its viability, and pivoting its operations from consumer...
How Unilever’s Purpose Inspired Paul Polman to Lead Courageously
Business leader, campaigner, co-author of “Net Positive: how courageous companies thrive by giving more than they take”, a Financial Times Business Book of the Year. Paul Polman works to accelerate action by business to tackle climate change and inequality. As CEO of...
Deep Purpose Podcast—Season 1
A Series on Courageous Leadership presented by Harvard Business School Professor Ranjay Gulati
Anand Mahindra: The Rise Philosophy at The Mahindra Group
Anand Mahindra is a third-generation member of the family that started the Mahindra Group. The group’s 20-plus industries range from automotive to agribusiness to information technology. Anand Mahindra was included on Barrons’ List of Top 30 CEOs worldwide (2016) and...
DBS CEO Piyush Gupta Aims to Lead the Best Bank in the World
Mr. Piyush Gupta has been Chief Executive Officer and Director of DBS Group since 2009. Prior to joining DBS, Piyush had a 27 year career at Citigroup, where his last position was Chief Executive Officer for South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. In addition, he...
Why Brazil’s Nubank Founder David Vélez Plans to Give Away Billions
Since David Vélez started Nubank in Brazil in 2013, it has grown to nearly 50 million customers worldwide. Vélez received venture funding from his former employer, Sequoia Capital, to help finance Nubank, and proceeded to challenge banks in Brazil and beyond by...
Dilhan Pillay Leads Temasek Holding’s Ongoing Purpose Journey
Dilhan Pillay Sandrasegara is the top executive at Temasek, a Singapore-based investment company with a portfolio of around $400 billion. Before joining Temasek in 2010, he was a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and corporate law....
How Higher Purpose Guides CEO Sim Tshabalala of Africa’s Standard Bank Group
Simpiwe “Sim” Tshabalala joined the Johannesburg-based Standard Bank Group in 2000 and was appointed CEO in 2008. He was born in Hlabisa, a poor area of South Africa, and grew up in Soweto. After initially training to be a lawyer, he switched to a banking career. He...
Arcos Dorados Founder Woods Staton: The Importance of Core Principles
Woods Staton is executive chairman of Arcos Dorados, which employs nearly 95,000 people in 2,000 restaurants across 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Staton was previously a joint venture partner of McDonald’s in Argentina. He founded Arcos Dorados when...
Mumzworld Founder Mona Ataya: Empowering Women in the Middle East
Mona Ataya, CEO and Founder of Mumzworld, is one of the most successful female entrepreneurs in the Middle East, with her company reaching more than 2.5 million people across the region since 2011. She previously held positions at Procter & Gamble and Johnson &...
How Mudassir Sheikha’s Rideshare Company Careem Became a Unicorn in the Middle East
Mudassir Sheikha is the CEO and co-founder of Careem, which started out as a ride-sharing company and has expanded to deliver a range of services to customers in the Middle East. In January of 2020, Careem was acquired by Uber for $3.1 billion. Before starting Careem,...
Unilever CEO Alan Jope Maintains a Long History of Doing Good
Alan was appointed Chief Executive Officer in January 2019. As CEO of Unilever, Alan is responsible for leading one of the world’s largest and most geographically diverse consumer goods businesses, with presence in 190 countries, serving 2.5 billion people every day....
Walgreens-Boots Alliance Leader Rosalind Brewer Inspires Joy through Better Health
Roz Brewer has been CEO of the Walgreens Boots Alliance since March 2021. She previously held executive positions at Starbucks, Sam’s Club, Walmart and Kimberly Clark. She was ranked No. 6 on Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business and was named one of the 25...