As our editorial team read through the past year’s issues of Harvard Business Review to select the articles for this volume, a feeling of hope emerged among us. After many trying months of social distancing, adjusting to remote work, political unrest, a worldwide recession, and illuminating social justice movements, vaccine rollouts were ramping up globally, and a brighter future felt within reach. When we chose these pieces, we tried not only to look back at the year that was but also to imagine what leaders would need at the dawn of 2022 to thrive in the new normal.

More often than ever before, articles HBR published were a direct response to current events. We covered the issue of anxiety and work for the first time because the alarming increase of people experiencing anxiety became impossible for leaders to ignore. The crises pushed many people to rethink their careers, what they expect from their employers, and how they’d like to work—making it a prime time for brushing up on job negotiation skills. These articles reminded us that life would keep going on in spite of the chaos. We saw that in explorations of compassionate leadership, the best ways to grow an innovative culture, and the continuing rise of machine learning. Other pieces looked at trends already underway that had accelerated over the past year. Some organizations were working remotely before 2020, but the pandemic created a need to swiftly get up to speed with the right technology and the best team practices for working from anywhere. And although inequality and bias have been unresolved workplace issues for centuries, recent events have forced us to reexamine what it means to have a truly inclusive, diverse workplace—and to reflect on what hasn’t worked in the past.

The challenges of 2020 revealed where we should start making changes for a better year ahead. The old ways aren’t coming back, and in many cases we wouldn’t want them to. As you read through this collection, we hope these articles inspire hope and help you feel prepared for what’s next.

We start off with “Begin with Trust,” because as Frances Frei and Anne Morriss say, “Trust is the basis for almost everything we do.” It’s the reason we’re willing to exchange our hard-earned paychecks for goods and services, to pledge our lives to another person in marriage, and to cast a ballot for someone who will represent our interests. Trust is also essential for leaders who strive to empower other people as a result of their presence and to ensure that the impact of their leadership continues beyond their tenure. The more trust you build, the easier it is to practice that kind of leadership. How can leaders start? By being authentic, exercising sound judgment, and showing empathy. Frei and Morriss explain how to assess your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to trust and offer advice for building the three components of trust.

In “Cultural Innovation,” Douglas Holt argues that companies struggle with innovation because they put all their chips on one innovation paradigm—what he calls better mousetraps. Fortunately, there is a better way to innovate. In consumer markets, innovation often proceeds according to a logic Holt calls cultural innovation. With better-mousetraps innovation, companies focus on outdoing competitors on existing notions of value. With cultural innovation, you change the understanding of “valuable.” Using the stories of the Ford Explorer’s reinvention of the family car and how Blue Buffalo turned the culture of dog food on its head, Holt reveals the strategic principles that allow companies to pursue cultural innovation.

“Co-opetition”—cooperating with a competitor to achieve a common goal or get ahead—has been gaining traction for three decades. Yet many companies are still uncomfortable with the concept and miss the promising opportunities it presents. In “The Rules of Co-opetition,” Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff offer a framework for deciding whether to team up with a rival and how to manage the relationship, drawing on examples from DHL, UPS, Google, and Yahoo. Co-opetition requires teams to think both competitively and cooperatively—at the same time. Firms that learn to do so can gain an important edge.

Cooperation is also key to successful negotiation. In “Negotiating Your Next Job,” Hannah Riley Bowles and Bobbi Thomason encourage readers seeking to advance their careers to think strategically about not just what they want but how to get it. The authors draw on their work coaching executives and their cross-cultural research to propose four steps that can prepare you to negotiate: Think broadly about your long-term career goals, be mindful of what type of opportunity you’re asking for, arm yourself with the necessary information, and connect with people who can be helpful in making your case. Be specific and realistic, they argue, and you’re more likely to achieve success.

Although many workers dealt with anxiety before 2020, for some the uncertainty and stress of the pandemic brought it on for the first time. In “Leading Through Anxiety,” Morra Aarons-Mele starts a productive, much-needed conversation about anxiety in the workplace and how we can reframe its negative reputation. She explains that although anxiety is uncomfortable, it isn’t always counterproductive. Because managing anxiety can make us more comfortable with uncomfortable feelings, it can prompt us to react quickly to threats. And when channeled thoughtfully, it can make us better leaders in a crisis. But unchecked, it zaps energy and clouds decisions. In this article Aarons-Mele offers advice on how to inspire and encourage your team even when you’re struggling yourself.

Products and services that rely on machine learning don’t always lead to ethical or accurate choices. Sometimes they cause investment losses, for instance, or biased hiring, or car accidents. And as machine-learning-based AI offerings proliferate across markets, the companies creating them face major new risks. Executives need to understand and mitigate the technology’s potential downside. In “When Machine Learning Goes Off the Rails,” Boris Babic, I. Glenn Cohen, Theodoros Evgeniou, and Sara Gerke provide a guide to managing the risks.

Twenty-five years ago Robin J. Ely and David A. Thomas made the groundbreaking argument that to fully benefit from increased racial and gender diversity, organizations must adopt a learning orientation and be willing to change the corporate culture and power structure. In the time since, organizations have largely failed to do so and are no closer to reaping diversity’s benefits. Instead, business leaders misconstrue or ignore what abundant research has made clear: Increasing the numbers of traditionally underrepresented people in your workforce does not automatically produce good results. Now, in “Getting Serious About Diversity,” the authors reevaluate and update their argument and highlight the key actions for leaders looking to make real change.

As intractable as it may seem, racism in the workplace can be effectively addressed with the right information, incentives, and investment. Robert Livingston argues that because organizations are small, autonomous entities that afford leaders a high level of control over norms and policies, they are ideal sites for doing so. In “How to Promote Racial Equity in the Workplace,” Livingston walks readers through the five stages of a process for making profound and sustainable progress toward this goal in your organization.

The pandemic has hastened a rise in remote working for knowledge-based organizations. This has notable benefits: Companies can save on real estate costs, hire and utilize talent globally, mitigate immigration issues, and experience productivity gains, while workers can enjoy geographic flexibility. At the same time, concerns include how to communicate across time zones, share knowledge that isn’t yet codified, socialize virtually and prevent professional isolation, protect client data, and avoid slacking. In “Our Work-from-Anywhere Future,” Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury highlights best practices that can help leaders decide whether remote working is right for their organizations.

“A More Sustainable Supply Chain” tackles the disconnect between the commitment of multinational corporations (MNCs) to sustainability and the reality of their suppliers. MNCs are pledging to procure the materials and services they need from companies committed to fair labor practices and environmental protections. But their suppliers—and their suppliers’ suppliers—often violate sustainability standards, exposing MNCs to serious financial and social risks. To explore this problem—and identify solutions—Verónica H. Villena and Dennis A. Gioia studied the supply networks of three MNCs deemed to be sustainability leaders.

To close this collection, we take a fascinating look at a widely admired company whose internal workings have often been unknowable to outsiders. In “How Apple Is Organized for Innovation,” Joel M. Podolny and Morten T. Hansen discuss the innovation benefits and leadership challenges of Apple’s distinctive and ever-evolving organizational model in the belief that it may be useful for other companies competing in rapidly changing environments. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, in 1997, it had a conventional structure for a company of its size and scope. It was divided into business units, each with its own P&L responsibilities. Believing that conventional management had stifled innovation, Jobs laid off the general managers of all the business units (in a single day), put the entire company under one P&L, and combined the disparate functional departments of the business units into one functional organization. Although such a structure is common for small entrepreneurial firms, Apple—remarkably—retains it today, even though the company is nearly 40 times as large in terms of revenue and far more complex than it was in 1997.

Keeping up with business trends and synthesizing the best ideas is important—and time-consuming—work for today’s leaders. With this volume, we’ve done the heavy lifting for you. Despite the challenges of the past year, you can learn much from these articles as you lead your business forward. We hope they prepare you for a better year ahead and set you on the right track for a prosperous future.

—The Editors