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When bad things happen, most of us have a gut reaction. Psychological resilience-the capacity to respond quickly and constructively in a crisis-can be hard to muster when a manager is paralyzed by fear, anger, confusion, or a tendency to assign blame. Resilient managers are able to shift quickly from endlessly dissecting traumatic events to looking forward, determining the best course of action given new realities. They understand the size and scope of the crisis and the levels of control and impact they may have in a bad situation. The authors present a regimen for boosting personal resilience that begins with recognizing four dimensions of an adverse event- influence, impact, breadth, and duration-and continues with a series of pointed questions designed to get managers out of their own heads. Specifying questions help them identify particular points of intervention when dealing with a crisis. Visualizing questions help them look beyond problems and toward actual solutions. Collaborating questions inspire them to reach out to others, not for affirmation of wrongdoing, or commiseration, but for assistance. Managers can use these questions to tamp down unproductive responses to adversity, to replace negativity with creativity and resourcefulness, and to get things done despite real or perceived obstacles.

Companies have never before had such powerful technologies for understanding and interacting with customers. Yet too many firms operate as if they're stuck in the 1960s, an era of mass marketing, mass media, and impersonal transactions. To compete in an aggressively interactive environment, companies must shift their focus from driving transactions to maximizing customer lifetime value. That means products and brands must be made subservient to customer relationships. And that means transforming the marketing department-traditionally focused on current sales-into a "customer department" by: replacing the CMO with a chief customer officer, cultivating customers rather than pushing products, adopting new performance metrics, and bringing under the marketing umbrella all customer-focused departments, including R&D and customer service.

Historically the U.S. economy has been about ideas, experiment, and exploration. U.S. dynamism-the country's ability and proclivity to innovate-depends on multiplicity: variety among new ideas, a pluralism of beliefs among financiers, and diversity among consumers. Dynamism has been in decline over the past decade. Venture capitalists bemoan a dearth of innovative ideas, and investors bewail a precipitous drop in their returns. Total venture investment is running at less than $20 billion per year. The current financial system chokes off funds for innovation. As an antidote, this article proposes the establishment of a new government-sponsored enterprise - the First National Bank of Innovation. It would be structured as a network of "merchant" banks that invest in and lend to innovative projects, and it would have some features of the Farm Credit System in the United States. A dedicated funding arm would raise money in the capital markets at attractive rates. Banks would pass these funds on to entrepreneurs at rates commensurate with the risks of their projects. The banks in the network would be dedicated to "relationship-based" investing and lending. Thanks to comprehensive risk-based disclosure, strict oversight and transparency would emerge.

A lot of people have blamed short-term thinking for causing our current economic troubles, which has set off a debate about what time window we should use to assess a CEO's performance. Today boards of directors, senior managers, and investors intensely want to know how CEOs handle the ups and downs of running businesses over an extended period. Many executive compensation plans define the "long term" as a three-year horizon, but the real test of a CEO's leadership has to be how the company does over his or her full tenure. This article contains a list of the 50 CEOs of large public companies who performed best over their entire time in office-or, for those still in the job, up until September 30, 2009. To compile the results, the authors collected data on close to 2,000 CEOs worldwide. They asked, Who had led firms that, on the basis of stock returns, outperformed other firms in the same country and industry? The ranking combines three measures: country-adjusted return, industry-adjusted return, and change in market capitalization during tenure. While it may come as no shock that Steve Jobs of Apple tops the list, the ranking does contains a few surprises. You'll see some relatively unknown faces at the top. The inverse is also true: Some obvious candidates based on reputation don't make the top 50. The authors' analysis of the factors that increased the likelihood that an executive would place high in the ranking turned up a few more surprises. Although one might expect context to have a big effect, they found a wide diversity of countries and industries represented in the top performers. The CEO's background did matter, however, as did the situation left behind by his or her predecessor.

Fully half of all joint ventures are a failure. That's worrying, given that partnerships and alliances are central to many companies' business models. The reasons are not mysterious: the partners have divergent strategies; the goals set for the venture are ambiguous; partnership agreements quickly become obsolete; and middle managers don't have clear strategic principles to work from. The problems can be remedied if companies switch their focus from operations and contractual obligations to strategy and commitment. This article describes how Solvay Pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceutical services firm Quintiles used the balanced scorecard and strategy maps to help them define strategic goals, create a governance structure, develop metrics, and align the two groups. The new approach yielded impressive results: The alliance reduced cycle time for clinical studies by approximately 40%, an achievement that brings new products to market much faster and leads to tremendous cost reductions.

Russia is no longer a failing superpower. After Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, Goldman Sachs predicted that Russia, along with Brazil, China, and India, would soon be among the world's most important economies. Although Russia's growth hasn't kept up with China's and India's, the world economy cannot ignore Russia. Over the past ten years, Putin has strengthened Russia's nascent capitalist economies and institutions. In the process, he has stoked the Kremlin's apparently infinite appetite for power. That represents a growing threat, not only to Russia's development but also to companies wishing to do business there. Instead of looking solely at growth rates, CEOs should come to grips with Russia's still-evolving capitalism, particularly the tensions between the state and business, to craft an effective strategy. There is money to be made in Russia, as long as companies play by the rules imposed during Putin's tenure as president. The very different experiences of Shell, BP, and Enel-each of entering the energy industry-illustrate the importance of government relations. Multinational companies must fit in with the prevailing definition of Russia's national interest; they cannot hope to succeed in spite of it. The bottom line: It is safe to invest in Russia as long as you have the right partner, which is the state or a well-connected local company.

"The Aflac Duck is a rock star in Japan," writes the company CEO. From 2003, when the duck was introduced in that country, to 2008, Aflac's revenues increased by 44%, to $16.6 billion. Seventy percent of that increase came from Japan. This article tells the often comical story of how the duck came into existence in the United States, its instant success in CNN ads on New Year's Day in 2000, its transmogrification into a popular stuffed animal, and its export to Japan-where U.S. duck wranglers had to be flown in because the Japanese were unaccustomed to using live animals in commercials. In 2009 Aflac's Japanese marketing team introduced a new incarnation of the duck: Maneki Neko Duck, which incorporates the traditional Asian good-luck white cat. A giant plush version of the cat duck toured Japan by bus, drawing crowds as big as 20,000 in city after city. At each event the company set up tables where it sold policies to enthusiastic fans.

The average baby boomer switches jobs 10 times in his or her career. Though such moves are just about inevitable, they're seldom easy-and they often lead to a noticeable decline in both short- and long-term performance. That's because people make them for the wrong reasons. Drawing on an extensive survey of executive search consultants, as well as surveys of HR heads and interviews with C-level executives around the world, the authors have identified senior managers' five most common career missteps: not doing enough research, leaving for money, going "from" rather than "to," overestimating yourself, and thinking short term. These mistakes follow predictable patterns and persist throughout the course of a career; they're often a direct result of psychological, social, and time pressures. What if you do take the wrong job? The authors' research indicates that you should cut your losses and leave. But fleeing to another bad situation is not the answer. Make your next move strategically-and wherever you are in the search process, don't hesitate to go down another road when it becomes evident that a certain kind of change wouldn't be right.

Dan Sestak has had a charmed career path at packaged-foods giant NutriSelect. But when the CEO unexpectedly passes away just months after Dan is tapped as his successor, he finds himself thrust into the role before he feels ready. Two experts comment on this fictional case study in R1001N and R1001Z. Commentator Bruce Chizen, former CEO of Adobe, remembers what it's like to step into big shoes and advises Dan to acknowledge his weaknesses and reach out to his top team for guidance. Executive coach Debra Benton proposes a few strategic firings to show detractors that Dan means business.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has made a career of arriving in positions of power during difficult times and, critics say, without the requisite experience. HBR talks to Dr. Rice about making transitions between sectors, managing without management experience, and relearning lessons in new contexts.

Dan Sestak has had a charmed career path at packaged-foods giant NutriSelect. But when the CEO unexpectedly passes away just months after Dan is tapped as his successor, he finds himself thrust into the role before he feels ready. Two experts comment on this fictional case study in R1001N and R1001Z. Commentator Bruce Chizen, former CEO of Adobe, remembers what it's like to step into big shoes and advises Dan to acknowledge his weaknesses and reach out to his top team for guidance. Executive coach Debra Benton proposes a few strategic firings to show detractors that Dan means business.

Dan Sestak has had a charmed career path at packaged-foods giant NutriSelect. But when the CEO unexpectedly passes away just months after Dan is tapped as his successor, he finds himself thrust into the role before he feels ready. Two experts comment on this fictional case study in R1001N and R1001Z. Commentator Bruce Chizen, former CEO of Adobe, remembers what it's like to step into big shoes and advises Dan to acknowledge his weaknesses and reach out to his top team for guidance. Executive coach Debra Benton proposes a few strategic firings to show detractors that Dan means business.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For most companies, the single largest cost category is the total spend with suppliers. However, figuring out how to identify the best areas for supply savings -and then how to measure and report them -presents major challenges. Both understatement and overstatement of supply savings gaps signal the wrong reality, leading to an overemphasis on low-yielding cost saving initiatives, misdirected corporate resources and employees being rewarded for the wrong behavior. Moreover, supply savings gaps conceal the strategic contribution suppliers can provide. In studying the supply management practices at 30 large North American and European companies, the authors identified a variety of measurement and reporting practices for supply savings. They conclude that correct measurement of supply savings is almost impossible and that there are frequently gaps between reported savings and reality. They explore why gaps exist, what practices lead to under- and overstatement of savings, the consequences of poor supply savings measurement and what can be done to recognize supply savings gaps. To overcome the measurement and reporting challenges, the authors recommend that executives do three things: Focus on the total cost of ownership; categorize the different types of savings; and hardwire savings to the budget.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Despite the importance of innovation to a business's success, only recently have companies not only established internal environments conducive to innovation but also begun identifying, cultivating and taking advantage of a wide variety of external sources for innovation. Among such sources, suppliers are recognized as having especially large innovation potential because they know what the companies - that is, their customers -are doing and need and also because mechanisms for knowledge transfer from supplier to customer are typically in place. However, while it is one thing for a mechanism to be available by which suppliers may transfer innovation to customers, it is quite another for the suppliers actually to do the transferring. The customer, the prime mover in building and maintaining the relationship, can move in two different ways to encourage the supplier to innovate to the customer's benefit. First, it should reduce or eliminate three kinds of problems: (1) conflicting objectives among the customer's functional areas, (2) excessive and often late engineering or specification changes and (3) price-reduction pressures on suppliers that consider only the customer's financial needs. Second and most importantly, the customer should initiate directly positive and trust-building activities.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The country's largest corporations have hit a road bump on their way toward factoring sustainability into their transportation choices. Despite pressures from customers and investors -and the prospect of evervolatile energy costs -just 9% of Fortune 500 companies include environmental goals in their public documents. A study of those 44 companies reveals some of the best practices that can help a business go the distance, ultimately working with its partners to rethink its entire transportation infrastructure. Companies must demonstrate three distinct levels of integration before they can embed the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions into their transportation strategies: establishing a foundation (acknowledging the problem), changing internal company practices (building an environmentally aware culture) and impacting supply chain practices (such as better vehicle utilization or more efficient routing). Within these categories, the tactics need to be measured by carefully calibrated metrics that can track both environmental and financial progress. As employees begin adapting their own decision making to the new priority -by, for instance, choosing videoconferencing instead of traveling -executives should spread such success stories, reinforcing the institutional preference.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The joint venture between Toyota and GM known as NUMMI yielded some surprising success stories, including the transformation of GM's worst plant into a world-class manufacturing model. Examining how this transformation took place provides insight into corporate-culture change and lean manufacturing. The most important and difficult "cultural shift"that has to occur in a lean-manufacturing transformation revolves around the entire concept of problems. What is our attitude toward them? What do we do when someone finds and exposes one? Making it easy to learn from mistakes means changing our attitude toward them. That is the lean cultural shift. The way to change culture is not first to change how people think, but instead to start by changing how people behave. Integrating quality, support and ownership into the job is vital. Those of us trying to change our organizations'culture need to define the things we want to do, establish the ways we want to behave and want others to behave, provide training and then do what is necessary to reinforce those behaviors.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Many suppliers serving business markets believe that practicing value-based pricing means finding out what the value of their offerings is relative to alternatives for their customers and then charging as high a price as they can. But the authors suggest that "charging what the market will bear" isn't always the right strategy. Instead, they argue that an organization should tailor its pricing to a more robust market strategy. "Unfortunately," the authors say, "when stripped of jargon and word-speak the ' 'market strategy' for many businesses is simply' 'Sell more!'" To counter this problem the authors suggest several questions that an organization should ask to improve its pricing strategy, including: What is the marketing strategy in this segment? What is the differential value that is transparent to target customers? What is the price of the next best alternative offering? What is the customer's expectation of a "fair" price? By asking these questions and others, an organization can choose a price point that provides the largest long-term value to the supplier. The benefits of this approach include improved relations with customers that often lead to longer-term, more profitable relationships. Using this approach, customers are also more willing to collaborate with suppliers, which can lead to shared data and improved products. According to the authors, suppliers that practice this kind of value-based pricing boost profits not only in the present, but they also set themselves up to profit over the long term.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In 2006 the world economy was booming, partly on the back of triple-A investment innovations. Then, suddenly, the boom ended. What fascinates the authors is the fact that almost no one saw the 2008 economic crisis coming. In this article, the authors come to terms with the reality that, in economics and business, accurate forecasts aren't possible. Therefore, they say, managers need to develop a different attitude about the future. The key is not to develop precise plans based on predictions but to have emergency plans for a variety of possibilities. The main thing is to stop believing your predictions about the future and to develop plans that are sensitive to surprises, whether they are future credit crunches or other unexpected events. The authors acknowledge that forecasters have produced excellent work over the years -both practical and academic. But forecasting models are not set up to cope with what they call the "big hairy coconuts"-the unexpected occurrences that are a fact of life in the real world of business. To compensate, they propose what they call "the three A's": Accept, assess and augment. First, managers have to accept that they're operating in an uncertain world; second, they need to assess their level of uncertainty; and third, they need to augment the range of uncertainty to compensate for risk.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Managers are increasingly recognizing that the benefits of traditional supply chains - reduced cost, faster delivery and improved quality - are no longer sufficient by themselves for the modern marketplace. A new paradigm is emerging of a more sophisticated supply chain, one that also serves as a vehicle for developing and sustaining competitive advantage by delivering specific outcomes. So concluded participants in the Supply Chain Management 2010 and Beyond research initiative - a four-year set of surveys and workshops on which this article is based. The authors report that the "supply chains of tomorrow" should achieve varying degrees of six basic outcomes, depending on their specific customer base and its set of needs. The first of these outcomes is "cost" (a composite of the heretofore sole objectives relating to monetary cost, delivery and quality). The others are responsiveness (the ability to change quickly in terms of volume, mix or location as a function of changing conditions), security (assurance that the supply chain's products will not be contaminated or otherwise unsafe), sustainability ("greenness," or environmental responsibility), resilience (the ability to recover quickly and cost-effectively from disruptions) and innovation (the supply chain as a source of new products and processes or improvements in existing ones).

The chain would be the latest addition to Grenadier's portfolio. Rohan hoped it would not be plagued by the occupancy problems that Larsens Camp was experiencing - one of the three properties that made up Wilderness Lodges, the company's other luxury hospitality business. The tourist trade in Kenya had been hit by the double whammy of political violence followed by the credit crunch and global recession, both of which had been nothing short of disastrous for the hospitality business. The tourism crisis, in turn, led to a renewal of public debate around the sustainable management of Kenya's natural resources. Some operators saw an opportunity to push for a relaxation of existing rules for establishing hotels and resorts in and around nature reserves, which would create new jobs and increase tax revenues for the state and local councils. However, nature preservationists and environmental NGOs wanted to protect the animal sanctuaries and the local communities that often lost their ancestors' lands to the nature reserves without getting much in return. In addition to getting the new venture off the ground and taking the risk of stepping on the toes of established players, Rohan needed to tackle these other challenges: How could the group rebuild a value proposition for tourists and restore occupancy rates at Larsens Camp? What was the best way to restructure the company to ensure financial stability? How could it find the proper balance between its business and the environment, thus ensuring the future of its resorts?