Showing results by narrator "Todd Mundt" in All Categories

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9-11 Commission, was created by congressional legislation and the signature of President George W. Bush in late 2002. This independent, bipartisan commission had the task of producing a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the attack, including preparedness and immediate response, and providing recommendations designed to guard against future attacks.

Businesses hoping to survive over the long term will have to remake themselves into better competitors at least once along the way. These efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, rightsizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnarounds, to name a few. In almost every case, the goal has been to cope with a new, more challenging market by changing the way business is conducted. A few of these endeavors have been very successful.

This issue includes four complete articles, all on the theme of this month's issue: leadership. In "Becoming the Boss", Linda Hill offers some tips from common mistakes first time managers make. In "Firing Back", Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Andrew Ward talk to leaders about their career disasters and how they bounced back.

Michael E. Porter, the Bishop Lawrence University Professor at Harvard University, and Thomas H. Lee, chief medical officer at Press Ganey and the former network president of Partners HealthCare, write about why providers must lead the way in making value the overarching goal.

First, V. Kumar, J. Andrew Petersen, and Robert Leone explain how to identify the customers who bring in the most referrals and then capitalize on that knowledge. Next, Alvin Roth discusses a new branch of economics that allows businesses to create markets where there were none or fix them when they go wrong. Also, Tony Schwartz on the science of stamina that enables individuals, teams, and whole organizations to significantly increase their capacity to get things done. Finally, you'll hear executive summaries of the remaining articles.

"How to Profit from ‘Lean Advertising’" by Thales Teixeira. "Tour of Duty – The New Employer-Employee Contract" by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh. "Dysfunction in the Boardroom" by Boris Groysberg and Deborah Bell. "It’s All About Day One" by Suzanne de Janasz, Kees van der Graaf, and Michael Watkins.

Roger L. Martin, a professor and the former dean at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, writes about how a detailed plan may be comforting, but it’s not a strategy.

Corporate profits are beginning a long slide. Prepare for leaner times.

How dangerous assumptions can creep into every strategic proposal – and how you can avoid them....

Virtually all leaders believe that to stay competitive, their enterprises must learn and improve every day. But even companies revered for their dedication to continuous learning find it difficult to always practice what they preach.

Among the tests of a leader, few are more challenging and more painful than recovering from a career catastrophe. Most fallen leaders, in fact, don't recover. Still, two decades of consulting experience, scholarly research, and their own personal experiences have convinced the authors that leaders can triumph over tragedy if they do so deliberately.

How capitalism can be reinvented – in order to unleash a wave of innovation and growth.

Guhan Subramanian, the Joseph Flom Professor of Law and Business at Harvard Law School, writes about how we need to return to first principles rather than meander toward “best practices.”

In 1976, Genentech, the first biotechnology company, was founded by a young venture capitalist and a university professor to exploit recombinant DNA technology. Thirty years and more than $300 billion in investments later, only a handful of biotech firms have matched Genentech's success or even shown a profit. This disappointing performance raises a question: Can organizations motivated by the need to make profits and please shareholders successfully conduct basic scientific research as a core activity?

Ram Nidumolu, the founder and CEO of InnovaStrat, C.K. Prahalad, a professor of Strategy at the University of Michigan, and M.R. Rangaswami, founder of the Corporate Eco Formun, report on how being environmentally-friendly is more than just a corporate social responsibility. It's the road to innovation.

The five "discovery skills" that separate true innovators from the rest of us.

"The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson; "Saving the Planet: A Tale of Two Strategies" by Roger Martin and Alison Kemper; and "Retail Doesn’t Cross Borders" by Marcel Corstjens and Rajiv Lal.

A new system allows the traditional hierarchy to operate in concert with a companywide “strategy network” that holds the key to nimble change.

When a company is doing well, how would anyone know if it could improve? Learn about a landmark benchmarking study - comparing prosperous companies with firms that have done even better - that points the way.

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, a professor of Leadership Development and Organizational Change at Insead, reports on how bosses who suffer from narcissism, manic depression, and other serious disorders can make organizations miserable.