Larry Clark, Author at Harvard Business Publishing

Leading the Frontline Through a Downturn

Larry Clark — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 17:48:10 +0000

IN BRIEF: Downturns in the economy put all at work on edge, especially frontline employees, who often find themselves navigating stressed and frustrated customers. Frontline leaders can have an outsized impact on an organization’s ability to steward employees through tough economic times, given they supervise an estimated 80% of the workforce. Research by Harvard Business Publishing has uncovered the top leadership skills frontline leaders most need to navigate economic uncertainty—and the capabilities aren’t just business-centric; they’re human-centric, too. Downturns in the economy put employees on edge, especially those on the frontline, who often find themselves dealing with frustrated and […]

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Leadership Imperatives for Success: Reskilling for Opportunity (3 of 3)

Larry Clark — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 14:19:08 +0000

Since Covid-19 struck, the primary response by many organizations has been to focus on protecting its people, protecting the firm, and just getting through things. When there’s so much upheaval, mind-boggling change, and such profound uncertainty, this seems to be the obvious and sensible course. Some organizations, on the other hand, also saw the fog of uncertainty as a singular opportunity to not just shift their game strategy, but to rewrite the rules of the game itself. This shift in leadership approach was just one of many we observed in organizations adapting rapidly to the pandemic, and we wanted to […]

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Leadership Imperatives for Success: Cultivating Trust (2 of 3)

Larry Clark — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 14:34:44 +0000

Early in my career, I worked for a large tech firm where employees frequently talked about The Deal—the sum of all the explicit and implicit aspects of give vs. get between the employee and the firm. There were the obvious aspects of compensation, benefits, advancement, working conditions, etc. But the less obvious aspects of The Deal held much more power—things like leader support, being part of a technology “movement” we were trying to create to better society, or the freedom and autonomy to work out a unique, maybe crazy idea that might never get any traction but was worth trying […]

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Leadership Imperatives for Success: Leading Through Uncertainty (1 of 3)

Larry Clark — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 14:50:11 +0000

In the world of leadership and management, the three most feared words have always been “I don’t know.” This has held true in my discussions with leaders around the world over the last several months, where the consistent, underlying question has been, “Can someone predict for me what is going to happen so I can put a strategy together to deal with it?” Because we as leaders are wired to do exactly that. Define the problem and then figure out a way to deal with it. We just don’t like uncertainty. We don’t know what to do with “I don’t […]

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Innovation in a Time of Crisis

Larry Clark — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 18:04:18 +0000

Many of us are familiar with stories about how American GI’s kept trucks and jeeps rolling during World War II, even when spare parts weren’t available. Used to tinkering with jalopies in their garages, the young soldiers were able to jury rig fixes with whatever materials were on hand. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, innovators are jumping in to help. Around the world, beermakers and distilleries have shifted production to hand sanitizers. In Italy, a start-up engineering company began quickly using 3D printers to create the valves used in ventilators. Those just-in-time valves are saving lives. When we look […]

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How Do You Engage the Workforce of the Future?

Larry Clark — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 15:38:14 +0000

There was a time you may remember—not too long ago—when a manager’s unspoken goal of “employee engagement” was really just to get people to work harder and complain less. Thankfully, so much has changed. In our recent blogs and podcasts, we’ve been exploring the shifts in organizations, jobs, and skill requirements that shine a light into the dizzying complexity of what it means to be part of the workforce of the future. Now, it’s time to turn our attention to the workforce itself—the learners, the leaders, and the expectations they bring with them about their working environment, their careers, and […]

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Future Workforce Podcast: Client Roundtable Discussions

Larry Clark — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 20:23:59 +0000

In the latest installment of our podcast, we hear from 10 clients as they share their insights and experiences in preparing for and enabling the workforce of the future. No matter what industry you are in, the size of your business, or where in the world you are, work is fundamentally changing. New technologies and new workplace cultures are driving organizations to rethink the way they manage and train. They’re setting high goals for capitalizing on the new opportunities presented and looking to their L&D professionals to deliver solutions that prepare the workforce to reach those goals. For our newest […]

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Is Your L&D Team Ready to Respond to a Disruptive Future?

Larry Clark — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 15:06:42 +0000

One of the things I’ve always loved about the learning leader role is that we get brought in early when changes are happening in the business—because a big part of the role of L&D is to equip the organization for what is coming. As we speak to learning leaders today, the message we hear is that the sheer volume and depth of change is unlike anything they have ever seen. New jobs, new technologies and a host of other forces are changing organizations at an unprecedented pace, requiring new skills, capabilities, and new ideas almost daily. The future is really […]

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Moving from Control to Clarity

Larry Clark — Mon, 06 May 2019 14:01:25 +0000

In an earlier post, I highlighted a basic paradox about learning culture in an organization—that learning is extremely human, and organizations tend to be, well, less so. Earlier this month, I had the chance to explore that paradox a little more deeply by spending time with 30-plus learning and talent leaders, entrepreneurs, and business executives in Mexico City, exchanging ideas about trends in leadership and business in Latin America. Through the course of the discussion, which covered topics ranging from digital transformation to leading a multigenerational workforce, the need emerged for a key shift in leadership that gets to the […]

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Making Organizations Human Again Through Learning

Larry Clark — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 12:50:31 +0000

After many years in the business world, I’ve grown very accustomed to—maybe too accustomed to—the extraordinarily artificial world of The Organization. Constructs like reporting relationships, span-of-control analyses, performance reviews, or rightsizing initiatives simply don’t exist outside the firewalls and badge-access doors of the places we go for a paycheck. In the world of The Organization, there are good reasons for these constructs. They enable tens of thousands of people to work in a coordinated fashion toward a common goal like creating software, building a new model automobile, or sending satellites into space. But while these organizational constructs are built to […]

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