Patrick Lencioni, author of "Silos, Politics and Turf Wars." Also: HBR articles "Preparing for a Pandemic" and "Inside the Mind of the Chinese Consumer."

Darrell Rigby, Bain & Company partner and head of the firm's global retail practice. Also: Leon Gorman, chairman of L.L.Bean.

Mark Kramer, managing director of FSG Social Impact Advisors.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Bill Taylor, Herminia Ibarra, Paul Hemp, Tammy Erickson, and Tom Davenport, suggest New Year's resolutions for business executives.

John Elkington, founder and chief entrepreneur of SustainAbility and coauthor of "The Power of Unreasonable People."

Josh Bernoff, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research and coauthor of "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies."

Marshall Goldsmith, executive coach and author of "Succession: Are You Ready?"

Bill Drayton, founder and CEO of Ashoka.

Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab.

Alexandra Samuel, director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University.

Herminia Ibarra, professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD and coauthor of the HBR article "Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women."

Maggie Craddock, author of "Power Genes: Understanding Your Power Persona--and How to Wield It at Work."

Misiek Piskorski and Anthony J. Bradley, of Harvard Business School and Gartner Research, respectively.

Peter Bregman, author of "18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done."

Cassie Mogilner, assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School and author of the HBR article "You'll Feel Less Rushed If You Give Time Away."

Nilofer Merchant, author of "11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era."

Kevin Boudreau, London Business School professor.

Gary Pisano, Harvard Business School professor and coauthor of "Producing Prosperity: Why America Needs a Manufacturing Renaissance."

Nancy Koehn, Harvard Business School historian and editor of "The Story of American Business."

Alexandra Samuel, vice president of social media at Vision Critical.

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland.

Bruce Nussbaum, professor at Parsons The New School of Design and author of "Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire."

Michael Raynor, director at Deloitte Services LP and coauthor of the HBR article "Three Rules for Making a Company Truly Great."

John Jullens of Booz & Company says multinationals from China and other emerging markets must learn to innovate and manage quality while remaining nimble.

Sandy Pentland, MIT professor, on how big data is revealing the science behind how we work together, based on his book "Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread."

Michael Mankins, partner at Bain & Company, on how to get the most out of meetings.

Greg McKeown, author of "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less," on the importance of being "absurdly selective" in how we use our time.

Steve J. Martin, coauthor of "The Small Big: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence," on the little things that persuade.

The mayor of London explains why Churchill is a role model and whether his aspirations include the Prime Minister's office.

Charlene Li, author of "The Engaged Leader," on why and how senior executives are diving into online networks.

Sally Osberg, president and CEO of the Skoll Foundation and author of "Getting Beyond Better" with Roger Martin.

In every issue, we feature a conversation with someone who's been wildly successful outside the traditional business world. This time, it's an astrophysicist.

Denise Lee Yohn, author of "Extraordinary Experiences" and "What Great Brands Do," explains what we can learn from retail and restaurant brands

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg discusses a nimbler approach to diagnosing problems than existing frameworks: reframing. He’s the author of “Are You Solving the Right Problems?” in the January/February 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Deloitte national managing director Kim Christfort talks about the different personality styles in an organization and the challenges of bringing them together. Her firm has developed a classification system to help companies better understand personality styles and capitalize on their cognitive diversity. She and Suzanne M. Johnson Vickberg coauthored the article, "Pioneers, Drivers, Integrators, and Guardians" in the March-April 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s third CEO, opens up about his effort to refresh the culture of the company and renew its focus on the future. He reflects on important life lessons he learned growing up in India, immigrating to the U.S., and working for Microsoft for 25 years. Nadella thinks of the past, he says, for the sake of the future—of technology, public policy, and work. His new autobiography is "Hit Refresh."

Dorie Clark, a marketing strategy consultant, answers a burning question: how do people make money off of what they know? She outlines the options for experts who want to monetize their knowledge. Clark explains, using herself and other successful solopreneurs as examples, how to earn revenue from public speaking, podcasting, e-books, and online courses. She also goes over what to charge and when to get an assistant. Clark teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and is the author of the new book “Entrepreneurial You.”

Jeff Bussgang, a venture capitalist who teaches entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, knows from personal experience and having funded many startups that there’s more than one way into that world. You don’t have to have a technical background. Excellent communication skills and a high emotional IQ are startup skills, too. Bussgang, the author of “Entering StartUpLand,” walks through the process of finding your dream job in a new company.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and author James Patterson discuss their new novel, The President is Missing, in which a fictional president fights a cybersecurity attack amid intense political dysfunction. The coauthors share their lessons for collaborating across disparate skillsets — “clarity on the objective” and “don’t be afraid to admit what you don’t know.” They also talk about their research into cybersecurity threats and how realistic their thriller scenario could be.

Howard Yu, Lego Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD Business School in Switzerland, discusses how the industrial cluster in the Swiss city of Basel is a unique example of enduring competitive advantage. He explains how early dye makers were able to continually jump to new capabilities and thrive for generations. He says the story of those companies offers a counter-narrative to the pessimistic view that unless your company is Google or Apple, you can’t stay ahead of the competition for long. Yu is the author of “LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied.”

Rebecca Shambaugh, a leadership coach, says being too collaborative can actually hold you back at work. Instead of showing how well you build consensus and work with others, it can look like indecision or failure to prioritize. She explains what to do if you over-collaborate, how to manage someone who does, and offers some advice for women — whose bosses are more likely to see them as overly consensus-driven. Shambaugh is the author of the books "It's Not a Glass Ceiling, It's a Sticky Floor" and "Make Room For Her."

Corey Phelps, a strategy professor at McGill University, says great problem solvers are hard to find. Even seasoned professionals at the highest levels of organizations regularly fail to identify the real problem and instead jump to exploring solutions. Phelps identifies the common traps and outlines a research-proven method to solve problems effectively. He's the coauthor of the book, "Cracked it! How to solve big problems and sell solutions like top strategy consultants."

Thomas Steenburgh, a marketing professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, was inspired by his early career at Xerox to discover why firms with stellar sales and R&D departments still struggle to sell new innovations. The answer, he finds, is that too many companies expect shiny new products to sell themselves. Steenburgh explains how crafting new sales processes, incentives, and training can overcome the obstacles inherent in selling new products. He's the coauthor, along with Michael Ahearne of the University of Houston's Sales Excellence Institute, of the HBR article "How to Sell New Products."

Caitlyn Collins, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, conducted interviews with mothers in four countries -- the United States, Italy, Germany, and Sweden -- who have jobs outside the home to better understand the pressures they felt. She found that American moms were by far the most stressed, primarily because of the lack of parental benefits offered by their employers and the government. In Europe, women told Collins they had more help, but at times cultural norms around their personal and professional roles had yet to catch up. Collins thinks companies can work to improve the situation but argues that the real solution is carefully designed government interventions that will help families at all income levels. She’s the author of the book “Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving.”

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and the founder of the Center for Talent Innovation, has studied the difference between mentoring and sponsorship and what leaders have to gain from the latter. She says it's important to seek out protégés who outperform, are exceptionally trustworthy, and, most importantly, offer skills, knowledge, and perspectives that differ from your own, so you can maximize the benefits for both parties. Hewlett brings real-world lessons from several successful pairings and tips on how to effectively launch and manage these long-term relationships. She's the author of the book "The Sponsor Effect: How to Be a Better Leader by Investing in Others."

Spencer Harrison, an associate professor at INSEAD, says that managers in any industry can learn from the success of the Marvel movie franchise. While some sequels lack creativity, Marvel manages to make each of its new releases just different enough, so consumers are not just satisfied but also surprised. Research shows that several strategies drive this success; they include bringing in different types of talent while also maintaining a stable core creative team then working together to challenge the superhero action-film formula. And, Harrison argues, leaders in other industries and functions can easily apply them to their own businesses. He is the co-author of the HBR article "Marvel's Blockbuster Machine."

Ranjay Gulati, professor at Harvard Business School, says the most successful organizations tend to have one thing in common: a soul. Moving beyond culture, the "soul" of a growing start-up -- or a more established company -- is built on clear business intent, a strong connection to customers, and a stellar employee experience. Gulati says that leaders must think hard about preserving all three elements of the soul even as they scale and never lose sight of what makes their company special. He's the author of the HBR article "The Soul of a Start-Up."

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor at Harvard Business School, believes the world demands a new kind of business leader. She says so-called “advanced leaders” work inside and outside their companies to tackle big issues such as climate change, public health, and social inequality. She gives real-life examples and explains how business leaders can harness their experience, networks, innovative approaches, and the power of their organizations to solve challenging problems. Kanter is the author of the book "Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Small Innovation at a Time."

In 1958, writer Rachel Carson began her exhaustive research on the effects of widespread pesticide use for her next book, Silent Spring. Over the next four years, she built up an airtight case showing how the world’s most powerful chemical companies were harming animals, plants, and people. Her effort was also a race against time, as she struggled against an aggressive form of breast cancer. In the second episode of a four-part special series on leadership, HBR Editor in Chief Adi Ignatius and Harvard Business School professor and historian Nancy Koehn trace the modern environmental movement back to Carson’s pioneering reporting and powerful prose. They discover lessons in how to strengthen your resilience, gather your energy and skills for a coming challenge, and why caretaking is an act of leadership.

Myriam Sidibe, senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, says that brands are uniquely positioned to encourage shifts in consumer behavior that benefit individuals, communities, and the environment. A public health expert, she has studied these types of mission-led marketing campaigns and helped Unilever design one for Lifebuoy soap that not only promoted hand-washing in the developing world but also boosted the business's bottom line. She explains how companies of any size can find the right causes, craft authentic messages, and measure the return on their investments, adding that the current pandemic and economic crisis have made this work even more important. Sidibe is the author of the HBR article "Marketing Meets Mission."