• May 2025
• Case

Elizabeth McGeveran, Vice President of Investments at the McKnight Foundation, reflected on how to effectively advance the organization’s net-zero strategy. The foundation had committed 10% of its endowment to building a portfolio of impact investments and was among the first family foundations to embrace ESG investing—despite the limited availability of robust metrics. McKnight recognized that sustainable investing did not equate to sacrificing returns; in fact, the foundation had already demonstrated its ability to generate competitive performance. Still, leadership acknowledged that some growing pains and short-term deviation from traditional benchmarks were inevitable. The question now was: how could they continue to succeed in their ESG strategy—and, more importantly, position themselves as a market signal, setting higher expectations for fund managers on environmental and social governance?

• May 2025
• Case

In the spring of 2023, Sunao Manabe, CEO of Daiichi Sankyo, reflected on a pivotal decision. A large Western pharmaceutical company had made a bid to partner with Daiichi Sankyo to develop the next three products in its oncology pipeline. Daiichi Sankyo, a 125-year old Japanese pharmaceutical company, had shifted its strategic focus toward oncology in 2015. In 2019, through a partnership with Western pharmaceutical company DrugCo, Daiichi Sankyo developed Enhertu®, an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) that was highly successful in the global oncology market. Subsequently, Daiichi Sankyo expanded its research portfolio to develop more ADCs that could target new cancer types and undertook a culture transformation initiative to support its globalization and growth efforts. Following a year of meeting with the Executive Management Committee (EMC), many different perspectives had been raised with arguments for and against partnering. While a partnership might expedite access to Western markets, R&D executives worried about compromising the company's independence and agility in scientific development. Manabe now had to decide whether Daiichi Sankyo should develop the next three ADCs in its pipeline independently or launch a new partnership with PharmaCo.

• May–June 2025
• Article

Psychological safety—a shared belief among team members that it’s OK to speak up with candor—has become a popular concept. However, as its popularity has grown, so too have misconceptions about it. Such misunderstandings can lead to frustration among leaders and employees, stymie constructive debates, and ultimately harm organizational performance. In this article the authors identify the following six common misperceptions: Psychological safety means being nice; it means getting your way; it means job security; it requires a trade-off with performance; it’s a policy; and it requires a top-down approach. They explain why each misperception gets in the way and give advice on how to counter it. They also offer leaders a blueprint for building the kind of strong, learning-oriented work environment that is crucial for success in an uncertain world. Leaders should clearly communicate what psychological safety is and what it isn’t, and take steps to improve the quality of conversations and to establish structures and rituals that will help teams assess their progress in building a psychologically safe environment.