Leadership

The corporate president stared out the window of his skyscraper office. His forehead was furrowed in anger and puzzlement. His fingers drummed the arm of his chair with a speed that signified intense frustration. The other executives in the room waited expectantly. Each had said his piece. Each had come to his and her own […]

Hitting the hiring bull’s-eye is one of an executive’s most important—and most difficult—responsibilities. Ten common mistakes can get in the way, but a pointed and systematic approach can virtually guarantee success.

It’s hard to focus on your work when your child is hallucinating. One of the least discussed yet quite salient issues for American business in this year of health care reform is an important yet hidden cost associated with mental illness: the drain on productive work endured by family members struggling to support loved ones […]

Five tips to set yourself apart.

The best change agents almost never realize when it’s time to stop. That’s what makes them so good.

You’re not paying attention to your family, your community, your private self? All you have time for is your career? You’re making a big mistake. How things are going at home, in your community, and in your interior life all influence whether you perform well at work. Over 20 years of research and practice on […]

Even in engineering, competence alone isn't enough.

When should a family business give up on an outside leader?

I recently returned from the Peter Drucker Global Forum Vienna, Austria, an event held as part of the centennial celebration of Peter Drucker’s birth. Having studied and written about Drucker extensively, spent years infusing his thinking into my own management consulting work, and befriended him late in his life, I take three messages from the […]

More than 2.2 million women have been displaced from the U.S. labor market since March.

Why should that be a surprise?

by Lauren Keller Johnson

Joe Ryan turned a small-town cosmetics company into a national powerhouse, making employees happy and shareholders rich in the process. Does it really matter that he cheats on his wife?

Barack Obama is back from a semi-world tour that took him from Afghanistan and Iraq to the capitals of Europe, with stops in Israel and Palestine in between. By most accounts, he pulled it off with few gaffes, but some political reporters and pundits are wondering if Obama looked, in the words of NBC’s Andrea […]

Why some teams are more successful at meeting deadlines, hitting targets, and growing revenues.

Three mindsets that lead to "nondisruptive creation."

Your animated interaction in response to my post The Miracle of Making Mistakes delved deep into the subject, broadened the interpretation of a mistake, and even coined a delightful new term: Risktakes. Thank you Notmd, Dawna, Brett, and all the others, who provided terrific insights over the past four weeks. A mistake is as an […]

Most people use only a few of these tactics. The most persuasive use them all.

Everyone was being so agreeable. The CEO nodded, the VPs agreed, the Directors were polished in their reviews. All the content was "good," the timelines...

Breakthrough innovations--not just steady improvements--in operations can destroy competitors and shake up entire industries. Just look at Dell, Toyota,...

The four-part case study (text cases A, B, C, and video case D) illustrates key concepts and lessons about leading adaptive change in the context of some...

The four-part case study (text cases A, B, C, and video case D) illustrates key concepts and lessons about leading adaptive change in the context of some...

Many Chinese family businesses are facing a succession crisis due to the lack of succession planning. Contrary to this finding, Chen Koon-yaw, the fourth-generation...

Xerox Production Manager Jim Deese has to address the concerns of an employee who is uncomfortable with the company's "vision quests," or creative and...

Circumstantial evidence points to the possibility that the Japanese Imperial Army showed many common features ¿ both positive and negative ¿ with present-day...

This note develops and explains a five-part framework for persuading others to support (or not oppose) a desired course of action.

The four-part case study (text cases A, B, C, and video case D) illustrates key concepts and lessons about leading adaptive change in the context of some...

The cases focus on how Zhang Ruimin, CEO of the Qingdao refrigerator factory, managed to turn around a nearly bankrupt factory which produced bad quality...

After years of vigorous denials, on January 14, 2013 Lance Armstrong admitted in a television interview with Oprah Winfrey that he "doped" in each of...

How would you react if you were faced with a humiliating interaction with an abrasive colleague, boss, coworker, or direct report? What if that person...

Philip McCrea is dealing with the aftermath of the move of his company and family from San Francisco to New Jersey (from the A case). Although the move...

Flying J was a family-owned company that operated travel plazas, oil refineries, a bank for trucking companies, and other related businesses. In early...

The Packet Design case looks at successful serial entrepreneur Judy Estrin and her efforts to build a technology incubator immediately before the Internet...

The management of Telescope, a wildly popular online search engine, must deal with an impending crisis: a security breach in which information from thousands...

"We believe that business is good because it creates value, it is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange, it is noble because it can elevate...

LEGO has emerged as one of the most successful companies in the toy industry. The case describes LEGO's gradual rise, rapid decline, and recent revitalization...

This case, ideal for strategic leadership classes, poses the question: given the ambitious goals of the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic...

This short case provides an update to Elon Musk's strategy and tactical moves with Tesla, Solar City, and SpaceX from 2016-2019.

On one side, a loose network of protesters made arrangements for dramatizing their opposition to the WTO and international trade practices. At the same...

Describes how Joline Godfrey, an intrapreneur at the Polaroid Corp., introduced and developed a project that could help Polaroid move to a more service-...

The four-part case study (text cases A, B, C, and video case D) illustrates key concepts and lessons about leading adaptive change in the context of some...

The corporate president stared out the window of his skyscraper office. His forehead was furrowed in anger and puzzlement. His fingers drummed the arm of his chair with a speed that signified intense frustration. The other executives in the room waited expectantly. Each had said his piece. Each had come to his and her own […]

Hitting the hiring bull’s-eye is one of an executive’s most important—and most difficult—responsibilities. Ten common mistakes can get in the way, but a pointed and systematic approach can virtually guarantee success.

It’s hard to focus on your work when your child is hallucinating. One of the least discussed yet quite salient issues for American business in this year of health care reform is an important yet hidden cost associated with mental illness: the drain on productive work endured by family members struggling to support loved ones […]

Five tips to set yourself apart.

The four-part case study (text cases A, B, C, and video case D) illustrates key concepts and lessons about leading adaptive change in the context of some...

The best change agents almost never realize when it’s time to stop. That’s what makes them so good.

You’re not paying attention to your family, your community, your private self? All you have time for is your career? You’re making a big mistake. How things are going at home, in your community, and in your interior life all influence whether you perform well at work. Over 20 years of research and practice on […]

Even in engineering, competence alone isn't enough.

Many Chinese family businesses are facing a succession crisis due to the lack of succession planning. Contrary to this finding, Chen Koon-yaw, the fourth-generation...