Welcome
Launch of the Asper Leadership Playbook Series - Bridging Research and Practice
The James W. Burns Leadership Institute at the Asper School of Business is dedicated to helping leaders make a real difference by connecting academic excellence with what actually happens in organizations. An important aspect of the Institute’s mission is to empower current and future leaders with the tools and insights needed to be effective and thrive in our fast-moving landscape. To help you stay ahead, we are launching this new Leadership Playbook Series as a way to share recent research on the cutting-edge issues leaders are facing across many sectors. We see the playbook as a bridge between leadership research and the broader communities we serve. The playbook aims to translate rigorous scholarship into practical ideas you can bring back to your own organization.
We believe that the most impactful research does not occur in a vacuum but thrives through an active dialogue with leaders and managers doing the work. Academic studies can tell us a lot about how leadership operates and why; and the experiences of the business community show us how that plays out in real life. That’s why we want this series to go both ways; we share what the research says, and you tell us how it lines up (or doesn’t) with what you see day to day. To help close that loop, we will be looking for straightforward ways to stay connected with you and keep the conversation going.
Our inaugural issue, “AI Makes You Faster. Does It Make You Better?” looks at where leadership and artificial intelligence meet. Rather than relying on a single data point, it brings together a key longitudinal study and broader industry benchmarks from around the world to take a careful look at what AI is really doing in the workplace. We try to get past the hype and focus on what leaders need to know now about how AI-assisted decision-making actually affects organizational and employee performance. The research shared here looks at the “speed dividend” AI offers, and at why better decisions often depend on how digitally mature an organization is and how intentionally its leaders use the technology. It is a good starting point for the series, and a nudge to think about how technology can support human judgment rather than simply replace it. In a follow-up issue, we will share emerging research from some of our own Asper colleagues working in this domain.
We invite you to dive into this inaugural issue and, more importantly, to join the conversation that we hope to foster. Leadership is a dynamic practice, not a static theory, and your insights from the field are a real-world check that makes research truly impactful. Your feedback ensures that this series remains a living, breathing playbook continuously refined by the leaders it seeks to support. Let’s bridge the gap between evidence and action, one dialogue at a time.
Dr. Zhenyu Wu and Dr. Suzanne Gagnon would like to thank Mr. Mohammad Motevasseli, PhD Candidate in Business Administration, Asper School of Business, for his contributions to the playbook series as a research assistant.