This collection of articles explores many of the common people-related integration challenges organizations are likely to face during an M&A transaction, and offers recommendations to help executive leadership get it right for Day One and beyond. There are five sections:

Section 1: Due Diligence
Section 2: Integration Management
Section 3: Integration
Section 4: Post-Merger Integration
Section 5: Divestiture

This collection of articles explores many of the common people-related integration challenges organizations are likely to face during an M&A transaction, and offers recommendations to help executive leadership get it right for Day One and beyond. There are five sections:

Section 1: Due Diligence
Section 2: Integration Management
Section 3: Integration
Section 4: Post-Merger Integration
Section 5: Divestiture

We all want and need creativity in our personal lives and at work. But how can we nurture, encourage and use creativity successfully? Patrick Harris offers some suggestions.

The economic slump offers business leaders a chance to more effectively reward talented employees by emphasizing nonfinancial motivators rather than bonuses. A recent McKinsey survey indicates that executives find some nonmonetary rewards motivate employees better than cash bonuses do. See what they are, then let us know what's working in your organization.

Companies increasingly rely on a relatively scarce resource to maintain their competitive edge: the people who are able to use statistics; rigorous quantitative or qualitative analysis; and information-modeling techniques to make business decisions. Or, in shorthand, “analytical talent.”

For business leaders, the importance of such people poses several challenges, but in our experience one question stands out: What’s the best way to organize analysts? Executives have to decide whether they should be centralized or decentralized; “charged out” to the rest of the business as consultants or be made available as a free resource; and where and to whom they should report. New Accenture research helps companies determine the optimal way to organize and retain their increasingly valuable analytical talent.

Multinational corporations have a lot of good things going for them. They have built up a rich store of knowledge over the years, allowing their subsidiaries to share ideas and best practices in ways that smaller companies can only dream of. They also exploit their vast global reach and on-the-ground knowledge to sniff out new concepts or products being used by rival companies in other parts of the world. But these processes aren't always as successful as they could be. Felipe Monteiro, a Wharton professor of management whose recent research looks at how and when new knowledge gets the thumbs up within firms, explains why.

Find a bright spot and clone it.

That's the first step to fixing everything from addiction to corporate malaise to malnutrition. A problem may look hopelessly complex. But there's a game plan that can yield movement on even the toughest issues. And it starts with locating a bright spot -- a ray of hope.

Collaboration has become a hot buzzword. Tear down silos. Get employees to talk to each other from separate cubicles, separate countries. Partner with suppliers and customers to bolster innovation. The mandate for CEOs and senior executives seems clear: You should get your employees to collaborate more.

Guess what? This conventional wisdom is dead wrong: Collaboration is not necessarily a good thing, and more of it is not always better. As a leader, you must distinguish between the right and the wrong way to collaborate in your company. Collaboration can have a tremendous positive impact on sales and profits, provided you can do it right.

After 15 years of research with companies in various industries, I have developed a simple yet powerful approach. It is called “disciplined collaboration,” and its purpose is to help you avoid the traps of collaboration and reap big results for your company.

Could a simple five-minute interaction with another person dramatically increase your weekly productivity? In some employment environments, the answer is yes, according to Wharton management professor Adam Grant. Grant has devoted significant chunks of his professional career to examining what motivates workers in settings that range from call centers and mail-order pharmacies to swimming pool lifeguard squads. In all these situations, Grant says, employees who know how their work has a meaningful, positive impact on others are not just happier than those who don't; they are vastly more productive, too.

The five sure signs of an excellent team.

This essay appears in "The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2010," which is compiled by this journal in collaboration with the World Economic Forum. The ten problems and the innovative solutions are discussed in each essay. This particular essay describes research demonstrating the importance of daily work progress, even incremental progress, for motivating workers. Additional research showed that managers underestimate the importance of facilitating progress as a motivational tool.

Does money change everything? If not everything, it does seem to have an important effect on human cognition and decision-making, according to new research on a link between luxury goods and self-interest. Could such insights help rein in Wall Street? Roy Y.J. Chua of Harvard Business School discusses findings from his work conducted with Xi Zou of London Business School.

Managers want to have their instincts validated before they act, such as waiting until all the data have been gathered before they launch a product. But relying on the tried and true doesn’t always serve managers well, especially when it comes to organic growth. The question of “Will it fly?” can be answered only by letting it fly – by launching the particular product and listening to the market respond. Growth leaders don’t do traditional research. As these authors explain, growth leaders win by placing small bets fast.

The instincts about fairness that emerged on the playground also apply to your partnerships in the workplace.

The secret of self-control

The “vision thing” is still with us, but while leaders insist in having a compelling vision, the fact is that many – both the leaders and the visions – leave people standing still, unmoved. A leader who engages stakeholders when developing a vision will, in the end, articulate one that resonates strongly and impels people to act.

Putting the team first helps solve the “cooperation problem”: Cooperation is risky business—group members who place their own interests above the greater good can scuttle the whole endeavor. But cooperation is everywhere, and research by J. Keith Murnighan shows consistent contributors may be the key to successful groups.

The new business environment will favor those companies able to execute strategy faster, with more flexibility and adaptability, and move their companies ahead briskly.

Identical messages can have different impacts depending on whether they are couched as "I think" or "I feel," says Stanford Graduate School of Business Marketing Professor Zakary Tormala.

Neuroscience research is revealing the social nature of the high-performance workplace.

This paper explores the proposition that many senior managers lack the capacity to conceive, plan and implement change to a degree which is transformational, that this has to do with the meaning-making structure of the manager, and that as this capacity is able to be developed, it is possible for managers to embark on a type of learning which will enable them to purposefully create particular types of organizational culture.

Here are 33 traditional and voguish beliefs that, on the basis of their research, the authors of The Enthusiastic Employee say have little or no basis in reality. These beliefs, covering a variety of areas, are widespread and, when applied to the typical employee and work situation, are wrong. They also often contradict each other, as "common sense" beliefs often do.

A surprising finding on the value of colleague networks leads to an even more remarkable revelation of how networks truly work.

Giving and receiving feedback has long been considered to be an essential skill for leaders. As they strive to achieve the goals of the organization, employees need to know how they are doing. They need to know if their performance is what their leaders expect from them and, if not, they need suggestions on how to improve it. Traditionally, this information has been communicated in the form of feedback from leaders to their employees. And, leaders themselves need feedback from their employees, in the form of suggestions for how to improve procedures and processes, innovative ideas for new products and services, and input on their own leadership styles. This has become increasingly common with the advent of 360º feedback.

But there is a fundamental problem with feedback: it focuses on that past, on what has already occurred—not on the infinite variety of things that can be in the future. As such, feedback can be limited and static, as opposed to expansive and dynamic.