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One of the things I love most about business is how tangible the world becomes. “What’s your budget for the project? What’s the timeline? What are our next steps?” Breaking down your tasks into the simplest components, quantifying the next steps, and creating clear paths forward—that’s

Last week a Harvard economist named Carmen Reinhart argued that the political turmoil in Hong Kong could trigger a global economic recession. “These are not segmented regional effects,” Reinhart said, referring to the US–China trade war and the unrest in Hong Kong. “These have really global consequences. So [the

Yesterday, shortly after I sent out “The Business of Belief,” I read a newsletter from Alan Murray, the president and CEO of Fortune, on the same topic. My former colleagues at the Wall Street Journal editorial page launched a broadside against the Business Roundtable’s “stakeholder” policy yesterday. (See my

Most of the time when you ask leaders of a business what their business “believes,” you’ll get something like “We believe in integrity,” or “We believe in excellence.” These are great virtues to believe in, but they don’t go far enough. Statements like these comprise what organizations call

In the September issue of The Atlantic, Daniel Markovits, professor of law at Yale, makes the case that our meritocratic culture was supposed to be a cure for nepotism and economic inequality. Alumni had long believed that their sons had a birthright to follow them to Yale; now prospective students

One word has been more influential in Western philosophy than most others. It’s called eudaimonia, the Greek word for flourishing. For thousands of years we have been searching for the ideal state of affairs through which society can bring about well-being for all, bringing the true, the beautiful, and

Within your own neighborhood people are living in completely different worlds. People living just across the street or on the other side of the elementary school have vastly different trajectories. This is the argument made by Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist who some say is reinventing the field. The argument

A wide chasm separates working people from the clergy: “It’s as if they speak two different languages.”† In David W. Miller’s God at Work, he gives us a framework to think through this problem as well as historical evidence to support the relationship between work and faith. Miller

The term work is surprisingly difficult to define. Is it an activity for which you’re paid? What about housework? What about homework? In an important book on working theology, Miroslav Volf, professor of theology at Yale and director of their Center for Faith and Culture, wrote that “work is

For centuries writers have argued over whether work is a good thing or a necessary evil. If you had your way, you’d retire today, right? Only if you were financially independent to retire early, or FIRE, as they say. Like Oscar Wilde, you might agree that “Work is the