Deborah L. Ancona

Faculty

Deborah L. Ancona

Support Staff

Get in Touch

Title

About

Academic Groups

Academic Area

Centers & Initiatives

Deborah Ancona is the Seley Distinguished Professor of Management, a Professor of Organization Studies, and the Founder of the MIT Leadership Center at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Her pioneering research into how successful teams operate has highlighted the critical importance of managing outside, as well as inside, the team’s boundary. This research directly led to the concept of X-Teams as a vehicle for driving innovation within large organizations. Ancona’s work also focuses on the concept of distributed leadership and on the development of research-based tools, practices, and teaching/coaching models that enable organizations to foster creative leadership at every level.

She is the author of the book, X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, and Succeed (Harvard Business School Press) and the related article, “In Praise of the Incomplete Leader” (Harvard Business Review). In addition to X-Teams, her studies of team performance have also been published in the Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, and the MIT Sloan Management Review.  Her previous book, Managing for the Future: Organizational Behavior and Processes (South-Western College Publishing), centers on the skills and processes needed in today’s diverse and changing organization. Ancona has served as a consultant on leadership and innovation to companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Bose, Takeda, Li & Fung, OCP, Accenture, ASA, and has served on the Board of the Penn Graduate School of Education and the working group of the Canadian Council of Academies.

Ancona holds a BA and an MS in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in management from Columbia University.  

Honors

Ancona wins MIT's 2022 Seegal prize

Ancona wins Jamieson Prize

Publications

"Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite."

Ancona, Deborah, and Dennis N.T. Perkins. Harvard Business Review, January 2022.

"Shifting Team Research after COVID-19: Evolutionary and Revolutionary Change."

Ancona, Deborah L., Henrik Bresman, and Mark Mortensen. Journal of Management Studies Vol. 58, No. 1 (2021): 287-291.

"The Overlooked Key to Leading Through Chaos."

Ancona, Deborah L., Michele Williams, and Gisela Gerlach. MIT Sloan Management Review, September 8, 2020.

"Five Rules for Leading in a Digital World."

Ancona, Deborah. MIT Sloan Management Review, January 2020.

"Walking the Line Between Creativity and Chaos."

Ancona, Deborah, and Kate Isaacs. Latin Trade,, October 20, 2019.

"How to Give Your Team the Right Amount of Autonomy."

Ancona, Deborah, and Kate Isaacs. Harvard Business Review, July 11, 2019.

Load More

Recent Insights

Ideas Made to Matter

4 ideas for growth from MIT Sloan Management Review

Uncertainty will abound in 2023. Focus now on resilience, agility, examining external factors, and innovation in artificial intelligence.

Read Article
Ideas Made to Matter

The top 10 MIT Sloan news stories of 2022

From “smart skills” to digital marketing trends, here are the stories readers were drawn to this year.

Read Article
Load More

Media Highlights

Executive Education

Executive Education Course

Transforming Your Leadership Strategy

As organizations move away from a “command and control” model to a more “cultivate and coordinate” model, executives can no longer rely on old ways of thinking about leadership strategies. This course introduces participants to transformational leadership theory and a powerful framework developed at MIT to help leaders at every level drive innovation, maximize team performance, and develop the personal leadership skills you need to succeed in today’s complex world of fast-paced, dramatic change.

  • Jul 13-14, 2023
  • Nov 8-9, 2023
View Course
Executive Education Course

Leadership in an Exponentially Changing World

This online short course provides a step-by-step guide to the 4-CAPS+ Leadership Framework, developed by Faculty Director Deborah Ancona and her colleagues at MIT. The framework provides key insights into the skills required for effective leadership.

  • Jul 19-Sep 5, 2023
  • Oct 4-Nov 21, 2023
View Course
Load More