Today's leader can succeed only be creating and promoting an environment in which he or she learns to respond in new ways, in effect unlearning traditional responses, especially the one that sees the CEO say, "No, problem. I'll fix it."

Companies can make their IT investments more cost effective by creating separate demand organizations to coordinate development requests from their business units.

"We tend to assume that great leaders must make difficult choices between two or more conflicting outcomes. In an interview study with 26 CEOs of top American and European companies (incl. IKEA, Campbell Soups, Nokia, H&M), we find that instead of choosing between conflicting outcomes such as long-term strategy or short-term performance drivers, top tier managers argue that their role is to embrace such paradoxes to make both things happen simultaneously. The study identifies five groups of practices that make this possible. Together, they reveal a systematic approach to managerial work at the top, which is seldom found in the literature. By building on the engagement of many in the development of the organization, the practices are important for our understanding of how a CEO facilitates the partaking of many in strategy making."

Executives are finding it harder to meet investors’ rising expectations. Owners are serious about wanting their companies to produce maximum results. This is about how to do that - a results best practice.

Delivering those maximum results means that the company’s leaders - the CEO, division presidents and the general managers in those divisions - first have to answer three key questions: What are we being scored on? What should we do to maximize our score? What’s the most effective way to increase the economic value of our company? The new tools described here will let executives find the answers.

Peter Drucker describes seven personal experiences that taught him how to grow, change, and age. [Hat Tip to Personal MBA]

Dave Naffziger offers food for thought about startup stock options and when/whether they should be exercises. There are also links to related useful posts (like the difference between ISO and NSO option) and some useful information has been posted in the comments section. [Hat Tip to Ask The VC]

This article will help you explore one dimension of the complex relationship between you and your company: the cultural match factor, or "How compatible is your personality with the organizational culture of the company for which you work?" Even more than that, it will provide you with the assessment tools to figure out whether you are, indeed, compatible. One tool helps you evaluate the company culture, one tests your personality type on the related dimensions, and the third shows you how to compare responses to see how closely they match. Together they help you address the question of "How well do I fit in this organization?"

Be global, and be local, you're told. Collaborate, and compete. Change perpetually, and maintain order. Your many managerial roles are so often contradictory. Here's how to think through your job better by accessing five different mindsets.

Gallup’s World Poll reveals new findings on the “great global dream” and how it will affect the rise of the next economic empire.

Understanding human systems requires looking from many angles. Based on his 50 years of research into organizational dynamics, the author describes some useful approaches.

Mix sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder theory and accountability, and you have the four pillars of corporate sustainability, an evolving concept that managers are adopting as an alternative to the traditional growth and profit-maximization model.

Professional women face a common double standard: how the display of emotion can be perceived as an indicator of the incapacity for leadership; don't show emotion and be rejected as unfeminine. Communication and organization experts at Emory University and its Goizueta Business School explore the role of women and emotion in the workplace and note that for future generations, many of the stereotypes may no longer be a factor.

This article discusses the issues for a company, and its counsel, to consider when inheriting different policies and procedures for information technology after a merger or acquisition. This article also includes a practical guide to integrating such policies and procedures and timing suggestions for completing the necessary steps. The article will also address special topics such as privacy policies, open source issues, and export compliance. [Hat Tip to themanager.org]

Thorough and comprehensive Intellectual Property (IP) due diligence requires much more than compiling a listing of the company's IP assets. Rather, IP due diligence requires assessing the strength of the company's IP rights in the marketplace, the strength of the competitors' rights in the marketplace, and the effect of the IP on the base company's products and other IP rights. [Hat Tip to themanager.org]

What is it about going through life, making decisions flying by the seat of our pants, without a plan to get to a clear destination that has us all so captivated? To have the confidence to strike out on your own—research and professional opinion be damned—and take a stand, make a choice, set off in a new direction... just like that? As it turns out, while it sounds quite manly, brave, and highly lucrative to stick to your guns and go with your gut under pressure, under scrutiny, to not back down, it’s not exactly an uncommon thing to do in business today. … The real issue is how many times do pure hunches alone lead to legendary success? The answer upon closer inspection: pretty rarely.

Silence is the secret tool of power negotiators. Knowing when to listen, not talk. Using facial expressions, not your voice, to make a point. Here are five tips on how perfecting the art of silence can make you a better negotiator.

Why the risk of wrongdoing has migrated from senior executives to middle management — and what to do about it.

In a wired world, connecting people to what matters most is the name of the game. That’s because innovation and value emerge primarily out of people’s connections. So if connecting is so important, which kinds of connections matter most when it comes to business performance?

Private equity offers a distinctive governance model that, in many respects, is superior to that found at public companies. This model allows private-equity firms to drive changes in a company’s fundamental value-creation performance. The good news, for public managers, is that they don’t necessarily have to sell out to a private-equity firm in order to benefit from this superior governance model. It’s possible to adapt some of its most important features to the realities and constraints that public companies face.

An organization is much more likely to improve its current performance and underlying health by using a combination of complementary practices rather than any one of them alone, according to new McKinsey research.

The Spring 2007 issue of Rotman magazine contains 124 pages of varying quality articles and other information. I personally recommend reading the following:
- Thought Leader Interview: Daniel Kahneman
- Countering the Biggest Risk of All by Adrian Slywotzky and John Drzik
- Bounded Awareness by Dolly Chugh and Max Bazerman
- Hull's Laws: What we can learn from derivatives mishaps by John Hull
- A Primer on the Management of Risk and Uncertainty by David Robinson
- Questions for: David Apgar

Dave Robinson, a marketing professor at Haas, offers some notes on performing case analysis and also offers his "Six C's model" of Business Situation Analysis.

It's not as hard as you think. Here are five tips to become a more successful, persuasive, and motivating speaker.

Is a satisfied customer a loyal customer? Not necessarily says the author of two books on CRM, who in this article makes the important point that satisfied customers can defect but customers who have a strong relationship rarely do.

An important American thinker in the early part of the twentieth century, James Burnham saw owners and managers in a perpetual struggle for power. In important respects, his ideas still resonate.