If you’re a senior leader, managing technology has never been more challenging—especially as organizations struggle to deploy generative artificial intelligence. Since ChatGPT burst into the mainstream a year and a half ago, everyone has been scrambling to make sense of how to use these tools, what they can and can’t do, and what they mean for our work and our teams.

Tech at Work is a four-part special series from HBR IdeaCast. Join senior tech editors Juan Martinez and Tom Stackpole for research, stories, and advice to make technology work for you and your team. New episodes publish in the IdeaCast feed every other Thursday starting May 2, after the regular Tuesday episode.

In this episode, Ethan Mollick, a management professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of the new book Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, discusses what he’s learned through direct experimentation with these tools, where he sees the most potential, and why organizations are struggling to create value with them.

And please let us know what you think of the series and which technology topics you want us to cover at [email protected].

Further reading:

• ChatGPT Is a Tipping Point for AI (Ethan Mollick)
• Why You (and Your Company) Need to Experiment with ChatGPT Now (HBR IdeaCast)
• The Social Cost of Algorithmic Management (Armin Granulo, Sara Caprioli, Christoph Fuchs, and Stefano Puntoni)
• Deployment of algorithms in management tasks reduces prosocial motivation (Armin Granulo, Sara Caprioli, Christoph Fuchs, and Stefano Puntoni)
• When AI Teammates Come On Board, Performance Drops (Juan Martinez)
• Super Mario Meets AI: Experimental Effects of Automation and Skills on Team Performance and Coordination (Fabrizio Dell’Acqua, Bruce Kogut, and Patryk Perkowski)

There's plenty of advice on how to grow into a better leader. And it takes effort to become more effective. But bad leadership gets worse almost effortlessly, says Barbara Kellerman, a Center for Public Leadership Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. She shares real examples from the public and private sectors of how bad leaders spiral downward, and how bad followership enables that negative trend. She gives her advice for recognizing and avoiding ineffective and unethical leaders. Kellerman is the author of the new book Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers.

If you’re a senior leader, managing technology has never been more challenging.

You face hard decisions about how to incorporate technology into your organization. But how do you cut through the noise to understand what a tool—especially a brand-new technology like generative AI—could mean for your organization or your team?

HBR IdeaCast has a new special series for you: Tech at Work. Every other Thursday, join our senior tech editors Juan Martinez and Tom Stackpole for research, stories, and advice to make technology work for you and your team.

• How can we all get the most out of adopting generative AI?
• Is your team making the best use of collaboration technology?
• What does your company need to know about spatial computing?
• How will digital marketing evolve without third-party cookies?

You’ll get answers from expert researchers and experienced practitioners to help you lead effectively and stay ahead. Listen every other Thursday starting May 2 in the HBR IdeaCast feed, after the regular Tuesday episode.

And please let us know what you think of the series and what technology topics you want us to cover at [email protected].

Worker disengagement is on the rise around the world. Even those of us who generally like our jobs sometimes find it hard to muster energy and focus. So what's the key to regaining motivation? Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg and research associate Robin Abrahams share a four part process to help you get your groove back: detachment, empathy, action and reframing. They offer simple tips like thinking in the third person, helping others, and gamification to help get back on track. Groysberg and Abrahams are the authors of the HBR article "Advice for the Unmotivated."

Few leaders have been trained to ask great questions. That might explain why they tend to be good at certain kinds of questions, and less effective at other kinds. Unfortunately, that hurts their ability to pursue strategic priorities. Arnaud Chevallier, strategy professor at IMD Business School, explains how leaders can break out of that rut and systematically ask five kinds of questions: investigative, speculative, productive, interpretive, and subjective. He shares real-life examples of how asking the right sort of question at a key time can unlock value and propel your organization. With his IMD colleagues Frédéric Dalsace and Jean-Louis Barsoux, Chevallier wrote the HBR article "The Art of Asking Smarter Questions."

Many people aspire to entrepreneurship but we all know it's a high-risk endeavor. Bill Aulet, the Ethernet Inventors Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has for decades studied what it takes for start-ups to succeed and advises the next generation of founders on how to do it. He discusses the key trends and changes he's seen over the past few years, and outlines concrete steps anyone can take to get a new venture -- including those within larger organizations -- off the ground. Aulet is the author of the newly updated book Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup.

The amount of work we need to get done seems to grow daily. To avoid becoming overwhelmed, we have to become more productive than ever. Laura Mae Martin has advice on what has worked well at one of the biggest organizations in the world. She's the Executive Productivity Advisor at Google and shares the practical ways she helps her colleagues and company executives manage their time, calendars, email inboxes, and more. Martin is the author of the new book Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing.

It's been nearly two decades since the term "glass cliff" was coined; it refers to the tendency for women to break through the glass ceiling to top management roles only when there is a big crisis to overcome, which makes it more difficult for them to succeed. In short, senior female leaders are often set up to fail — and this continues to happen today, as recent examples from business, politics, and academia show. Sophie Williams, a former C-suite advertising executive and global leader at Netflix, has researched why the glass cliff remains a problem and offers advice for women facing them — as well as lessons for the broader corporate world. She's the author of the book "The Glass Cliff: Why Women in Power Are Undermined - and How to Fight Back."

A growing number of workers are reaching retirement age around the globe. At the same time, many countries face a worker shortage, especially in critical areas like health care. Ken Dychtwald, cofounder and CEO of Age Wave, says it’s time for companies to stop overlooking this valuable labor pool, because AI alone won't alleviate the tight supply. He explains why many late-career people want to work longer. And he shares creative and often simple ways that companies can keep older workers engaged, including phased retirements, non-ageist recruiting, mentorship programs, and grandparental leave. Dychtwald is a coauthor of the HBR article "Redesigning Retirement."

There's a lot of advice out there on how to get job interviews right, whether you're the one trying to get hired or the one evaluating the candidates. But the dos and don'ts aren't always applicable to every person. In fact, author Anna Papalia thinks we're better served by understanding and leveraging our own natural interviewing style. Having spent years as a corporate recruiter, organizational consultant, and coach to students and professions, she's conducted thousands of real and mock interviews and noticed that people tend to fall into one of four categories: charmer, examiner, challenger, or harmonizer.  She outlines the strengths and weaknesses of each and explains how this framework can help us get better from both sides of the desks. Papalia wrote the book "Interviewology: The New Science of Interviewing."

The coauthor of the classic book Getting to Yes has new advice on how to negotiate, designed for a world that feels more conflicted than ever. William Ury, cofounder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, has come to learn that the biggest obstacle in a negotiation is often yourself—not your opponent. Ury, who also coined the term BATNA, explains the latest thinking from his research and consulting. He shares his tried-and-true methods for overcoming yourself to negotiate better outcomes at work and in life. Ury wrote the new book Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict.