The Coronavirus pandemic provided a great challenge for modern business and introduced new challenges for us all to address. Post-pandemic, business is working through which novelties are good to keep and which to discard. Among these are remote work, artificial intelligence, ESG (environment, social, and governance), and social justice movements (like DEI). This book, compiled by Harvard Business Review (HBR), seeks to help business leaders make smarter decisions by understanding ways to make the most out of work’s changing landscape.

Like other HBR books from this series, this book is exceedingly short. It collects individual essays produced by thought leaders. So it’s a short conglomeration of short articles. That’s both a strength and a weakness. It offers busy business leaders an intellectual lens to understand the latest trends through expert analysis, but it does not provide an in-depth treatment on any.

The overall viewpoint is one of thoughtful progress. It does not fight historical trends, but instead critically analyzes them in order to push organizations ahead. While popular journalism and political leaders often engage in culture wars, this book avoids those passions in favor of an integrative, philosophical approach. Discussions engage in high-level overviews that hit on all the right key concepts. Each chapter ends in suggested takeaways to summarize its findings. However, it lacks in-depth investigation of one-or-more fundamental issues – a constraint of the entire series.

Organizational leaders provide the intended audience of HBR’s series. An audiobook format, which I used, is adequate to understand. This kind of writing that can be listened to and thought through to-and-from work, while doing dishes, or in the car bussing one’s children around. It’s very accessible and does not require advanced education to get the main point in a thorough but quick manner. HBR provides another focused work to provide leading thoughts to the managerial front lines. ( )