KILUVU

Forget slogans and posters. Forget mission statements. Forget culture decks. A survey of over 400,000 people across the U.S. found that when employees believe promotions are managed effectively, they are more than two times as likely to give extra effort at work -- and to plan for having a long-term future with their company.

But wait, there's more: When employees believe promotions are managed effectively, they are more than five times as likely to believe their leaders act with integrity.

The result? At those companies, employee turnover rates are half that of other companies in the same industry. Productivity, innovation, and growth metrics outperform the competition. For public companies, stock returns are almost three times the market average.

Here's some heartening news for working mothers worried about the future of their children.

Women whose moms worked outside the home are more likely to have jobs themselves, are more likely to hold supervisory responsibility at those jobs, and earn higher wages than women whose mothers stayed home full time, according to a new study. Men raised by working mothers are more likely to contribute to household chores and spend more time caring for family members.

The findings are stark, and they hold true across 24 countries.

"There are very few things, that we know of, that have such a clear effect on gender inequality as being raised by a working mother," says Kathleen L. McGinn, the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, who conducted the study with Mayra Ruiz Castro, a researcher at HBS, and Elizabeth Long Lingo, an embedded practitioner at Mt. Holyoke College.

What do you do for work? Not, what is your job title, or what’s written in your official job description? But what do you actually do?

It’s potentially the most important question you can ask yourself if you care about standing out, staying ahead of the change curve, and continuously elevating your performance to gain access to choice assignments and opportunities to advance.

This is because the value you deliver, the results you produce, and the impact you have on others come more often from the execution of unspoken intangibles that are not reflected in your title, job description, or the daily tasks and activities you’re responsible for. This severe mismatch is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the true demands of work.