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Josef Felder, CEO of Zurich Airport, faces several crises as he tries to transform the Airport from a slow-moving, conflict-ridden, government-owned entity into a privatized, world-class airport.

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Following the sudden resignation of Sir John Browne, Tony Hayward, BP CEO, must decide how global climate change management will figure into BP's corporate strategy. Climate change management was a major part of BP's strategy under Browne: In 1997 Browne broke from his colleagues, publicly declaring that global climate change was a serious problem and pledging BP to play a significant role in the search for solutions. BP successfully reduced its own carbon emissions, and championed cap-and-trade style regulation over taxation or command-and-control. Despite this progress, as the climate issue gains in political prominence and the Kyoto Protocol nears expiration, Hayward must consider what actions to take in BP's business strategy and in the political arena to manage ongoing climate risk.

Once considered a candidate for divesture, Dow Chemical Polyolefins and Elastomers has had 12 successful years in a row. The company has set the standard of excellence for new-product innovation, having launched an average of one new-product line each year with 10 of the 11 launches being a success. After winning awards and receiving recognition for his speed in developing and launching chemical products, the company's COO now had a new concern to address: how will the company sustain its high performance over the long haul?

What are the differences between being a good tactical leader and being a good strategic leader? As he nears retirement, Robert Lincoln muses about his successor at Lincoln Industries. The case describes the backgrounds of four potential successors, all of whom are tactically astute and very competent general managers. Lincoln realizes that the company is at a crossroads and wonders what it would take for his potential successors to graduate from being good tactical leaders to effective strategic leaders.

When new CEO Cheryl Tobin arrives at Hammond Aerospace, she picks up a faint scent of corruption. But if her predecessor broke the rules, her executive team isn't talking. Cautious about damaging reputations over nothing, she hesitates to make her concerns public. Is a private investigation warranted? Four experts comment on this fictional case study written by Joseph Finder, a best-selling author of corporate thrillers. Harry Brandon, an international business-intelligence specialist, helps firms get to the bottom of affairs like this one. Meticulous evaluation of documents and tactful tapping of insiders are crucial, he says, for determining whether laws have been violated. In a quarter of cases, there's no fire behind the smoke; in the rest, he finds flames. Christopher E. Kubasik and James B. Comey, of Lockheed Martin, offer Cheryl advice from the real-world aerospace industry: Go first to the vice president of ethics or, absent one, the folks who run the internal audit organization. Wherever that leads her, Cheryl's top goal should be to send a clear message that hints of wrongdoing will not be ignored. Eric A. Klein, a lawyer at Katten Muchin Rosenman who advises corporations and their boards, has a cardinal rule: Manage the process, not the crisis. He says Cheryl should find out how previous matters of ethics were handled at Hammond. She must also assess her legal responsibilities, weighing the potential costs and benefits of an inquiry. William J. Teuber, Jr., of EMC, says Cheryl should tap the wisdom of the board chairman, who has just recruited her. If an investigation is warranted, Teuber argues that external lawyers are best equipped for the job and that Cheryl should not keep digging for dirt on her own.

As the demands of the workplace keep rising, many people respond by putting in ever longer hours, which inevitably leads to burnout that costs both the organization and the employee. Meanwhile, people take for granted what fuels their capacity to work--their energy. Increasing that capacity is the best way to get more done faster and better. Time is a finite resource, but energy is different. It has four wellsprings--the body, emotions, mind, and spirit--and in each, it can be systematically expanded and renewed. In this article, Schwartz and McCarthy of the Energy Project describe how to establish rituals that will build energy in the four key dimensions. For instance, harnessing the body's ultradian rhythms by taking intermittent breaks restores physical energy. Rejecting the role of a victim and instead viewing events through three hopeful lenses defuses energy-draining negative emotions. Avoiding the constant distractions that technology has introduced increases mental energy. And participating in activities that give you a sense of meaning and purpose boosts the energy of the spirit. The new workday rituals succeed only if leaders support their adoption, but when that happens, the results can be powerful. A group of Wachovia Bank employees who went through an energy management program outperformed a control group on important financial metrics like loans generated, and they reported substantially improved customer relationships, productivity, and personal satisfaction. These findings corroborated anecdotal evidence gathered about the effectiveness of this approach at other companies, including Ernst & Young, Sony, and Deutsche Bank. When organizations invest in all dimensions of their employees' lives, individuals respond by bringing all their energy wholeheartedly to work--and both companies and their people grow in value.

Since its founding, in 1995, Amazon.com's bold moves have often left observers scratching their heads, if not predicting the company's demise. Why open up an effective proprietary retail platform to competition from third-party sellers? Why make tools that Amazon developed for its own use available to other website developers? (Why, for that matter, post negative reviews of your products?) Two HBR editors interviewed Bezos, the founder and CEO, to learn what's different about strategy formulation at Amazon. They came away with the sense that the company's strategy and culture are rooted in a sturdy entrepreneurial optimism and rest on the single question of what's better for the customer. Bezos describes himself as "congenitally customer focused." He knows that the buyers in Amazon's consumer-facing business want selection, low prices, and fast delivery--and he's confident that won't change. "I can't imagine," he says, "that 10 years from now [our customers] are going to say, 'I love Amazon, but if only they could deliver my products a little more slowly.'" Competitor-focused companies risk complacency when they become industry leaders, he maintains, but customer-focused companies must always keep improving. "Years from now," Bezos says, "when people look back at Amazon, I want them to say that we uplifted customer-centricity across the entire business world." If Amazon has made strategic mistakes, he says, they have been errors of omission. So when something seems like an opportunity, Bezos asks the question, "Why not?" which leads to maximizing the number of experiments companywide: "People say, 'We're going to do this. We're going to figure out a way.'" That's the institutional yes.

They're nominally and ultimately responsible for strategy, but today's CEOs have less and less time to devote to it. As a result, CEOs are appointing "chief strategy officers" (CSOs)--executives specifically tasked with creating, communicating, executing, and sustaining a company's strategic initiatives. In this article, three authors from Accenture share the results of their research on this emerging organizational role. The typical CSO or top strategy executive is not a pure strategist, conducting long-range planning in relative isolation. Most CSOs consider themselves doers first, with the mandate, credentials, and desire to act as well as advise. They are seasoned executives with a strong strategy orientation who have usually worn many operations hats before taking on the role. Strategy executives are charged with three critical jobs that together form the very definition of strategy execution. First, they must clarify the company's strategy for themselves and for every business unit and function, ensuring that all employees understand the details of the strategic plan and how their work connects to corporate goals. Second, CSOs must drive immediate change. The focus of the job almost always quickly evolves from creating shared alignment around a vision to riding herd on the ensuing change effort. Finally, a CSO must drive decision making that sustains organizational change. He or she must be that person who, in the CEO's stead, can walk into any office and test whether the decisions being made are aligned with the strategy and are creating the desired results. When decisions below the executive suite aren't being made in accordance with strategy, much of the CSO's job involves learning why and quickly determining whether to stay the course or change tack.

According to the traditional view, judgment is an event: You make a decision and then move on. Yet Tichy, of the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, and Bennis, of the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, found that good leadership judgment occurs not in a single moment but throughout a process. From their research into the complex phenomenon of leadership judgment, the authors also found that most important judgment calls reside in one of three domains: people, strategy, and crisis. Understanding the essence of leadership judgment is crucial. A leader's calls determine an organization's success or failure and deliver the verdict on his or her career. The first phase of the judgment process is preparation--identifying and framing the issue that demands a decision and aligning and mobilizing key stakeholders. Second is the call itself. And third is acting on the call, learning and adjusting along the way. Good leaders use a "story line"--an articulation of a company's identity, direction, and values--to inform their actions throughout the judgment process. Boeing CEO Jim McNerney, for instance, focused on a story line of Boeing as a world-class competitor and ethical leader to make a judgment call that launched the company's recovery from a string of ethical crises. Good leaders also take advantage of "redo loops" throughout the process, reconsidering the parameters of the decision, relabeling the problem, and redefining the goal in a way that more and more people can accept. Procter & Gamble's A.G. Lafley and Best Buy's Brad Anderson have both used redo loops--in preparation and execution, respectively--to strengthen not only support for their calls but also the outcomes.

Scientific advances have begun to give doctors the power to customize therapy for individuals. However, adoption of this approach has progressed slowly and unevenly because the trial-and-error treatment model still governs how the health care system develops, regulates, pays for, and delivers therapies. Aspinall, the president of Genzyme Genetics, and Hamermesh, chair of a Harvard Business School initiative to improve leadership in health care organizations, discuss the barriers to personalized medicine and suggest ways to overcome them. The blockbuster model for developing drugs, the authors point out, is still what most major pharmaceutical companies follow, even though its days are numbered. What the industry must embrace in its place is a business model based on a larger portfolio of targeted--and therefore more effective and profitable--treatments, not a limited palette of one-size-fits-all drugs. The current regulatory environment overemphasizes large-scale clinical trials of broad-based therapies. Instead, the focus should be on enrolling subpopulations, based on diagnostic testing, in trials of targeted drug treatments and on monitoring and assessing effectiveness after drugs are approved. A dysfunctional payment system complicates matters by rewarding providers for performance of procedures rather than for accurate diagnosis and effective prevention. Aspinall and Hamermesh call for coordinating regulation and reimbursement so that incentives are provided for the right outcomes. Finally, the authors urge changing physicians' habits through education about genomics, diagnostic testing, and targeted therapies. They say that medical schools and physician organizations must become committed advocates of personalized medicine so that patients and the medical industry can get all the benefits it offers.

Traditionally, markets have been viewed as simply the confluence of supply and demand. But to function properly, they must be able to attract a sufficient number of buyers and sellers, induce participants to make their preferences clear, and overcome congestion by providing both enough time to make choices and a speedy means of registering them. Solutions to these challenges are the province of market design--a blend of game theory and experimental economics. Roth, a professor of both business and economics at Harvard, is a leading market designer. He and his colleagues have rescued failing markets by, for example, designing labor clearinghouses through which U.S. doctors get their first jobs and auctions through which the Federal Communications Commission sells licenses for parts of the radio broadcast spectrum. They have also created market-like allocation procedures that involve neither prices nor an exchange of money; these include systems for assigning children to schools in Boston and New York and for facilitating exchanges of kidneys. Computers enable the design of "smart markets" that combine the inputs of users in complex ways: In kidney exchange, they run through every possible match of donors and recipients to arrange the greatest possible number of transplants. In the future, computers may make it possible to auction bundled goods, such as airport takeoff and landing slots. As online markets--like those for jobs and dating--proliferate, a growing understanding of markets in general will provide virtually limitless opportunities for market design.

Rory Stewart, a Scot in his 30s, left his career in the British Foreign Office to walk 6,000 miles across central Asia and then spent a year with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which temporarily ran Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion. In this edited conversation with HBR senior editor Lew McCreary, Stewart describes his stint as deputy governor of the Maysan and Dhi Qar provinces and other experiences that taught him to balance principled commitment with canny pragmatism. Without much direction from Baghdad, Stewart and the other CPA delegates tried to create conditions of relative stability, prepare the way for democratic institutions, and orchestrate a modicum of cooperation among tribal and ethnic factions. But Iraqi distrust, compounded by security conditions that went from bad to worse, made progress extremely difficult. As he faced these challenges, Stewart drew heavily on lessons from his trek, particularly from his time in Afghanistan. The nature of that journey had sharpened his senses. He'd learned to quickly size up people and situations, so when he joined the CPA, he showed ingenuity, flexibility, and uncommon insight into Arab cultures. Now back in Kabul, Stewart is the CEO of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a nongovernmental organization devoted to preserving the city's old commercial district, teaching vanishing artisan skills to young Afghans, and developing markets for Afghan crafts. Stewart's foundation aims to reclaim some of the glory of Kabul's heritage while giving purpose to lives that might otherwise drift toward anarchy or nihilism.

The customers who buy the most from you are probably not your best marketers. What's more, your best marketers may be worth far more to your company than your most enthusiastic consumers. Those are the conclusions of professors Kumar and Petersen at the University of Connecticut and professor Leone at Ohio State University, who analyzed thousands of customers in research focused on a telecommunications company and a financial services firm. In this article, the authors present a straightforward tool that can be used to calculate both customer lifetime value (CLV), the worth of your customers' purchases, and customer referral value (CRV), the value of their referrals. Knowing both enables you to segment your customers into four constituent parts: those that buy a lot but are poor marketers (which they term Affluents); those that don't buy much but are very strong salespeople for your firm (Advocates); those that do both well (Champions); and those that do neither well (Misers). In a series of one-year experiments, the authors demonstrated the effectiveness of this segmentation approach. Offering purchasing incentives to Advocates, referral incentives to Affluents, and both to Misers, they were able to move significant proportions of all three into the Champions category. Both companies reaped returns on their marketing investments greater than 12-fold--more than double the normal marketing ROI for their industries. The power of this tool is its ability to help marketers decide where to focus their efforts. Rather than waste funds encouraging big spenders to spend slightly more while overlooking the power of customer evangelists who don't buy enough to seem important, you can reap much higher rewards by nudging big spenders to make referrals and urging enthusiastic proponents of your wares to buy a bit more.

When new CEO Cheryl Tobin arrives at Hammond Aerospace, she picks up a faint scent of corruption. But if her predecessor broke the rules, her executive team isn't talking. Cautious about damaging reputations over nothing, she hesitates to make her concerns public. Is a private investigation warranted? Four experts comment on this fictional case study written by Joseph Finder, a best-selling author of corporate thrillers. Harry Brandon, an international business-intelligence specialist, helps firms get to the bottom of affairs like this one. Meticulous evaluation of documents and tactful tapping of insiders are crucial, he says, for determining whether laws have been violated. In a quarter of cases, there's no fire behind the smoke; in the rest, he finds flames. Christopher E. Kubasik and James B. Comey, of Lockheed Martin, offer Cheryl advice from the real-world aerospace industry: Go first to the vice president of ethics or, absent one, the folks who run the internal audit organization. Wherever that leads her, Cheryl's top goal should be to send a clear message that hints of wrongdoing will not be ignored. Eric A. Klein, a lawyer at Katten Muchin Rosenman who advises corporations and their boards, has a cardinal rule: Manage the process, not the crisis. He says Cheryl should find out how previous matters of ethics were handled at Hammond. She must also assess her legal responsibilities, weighing the potential costs and benefits of an inquiry. William J. Teuber, Jr., of EMC, says Cheryl should tap the wisdom of the board chairman, who has just recruited her. If an investigation is warranted, Teuber argues that external lawyers are best equipped for the job and that Cheryl should not keep digging for dirt on her own.

When new CEO Cheryl Tobin arrives at Hammond Aerospace, she picks up a faint scent of corruption. But if her predecessor broke the rules, her executive team isn't talking. Cautious about damaging reputations over nothing, she hesitates to make her concerns public. Is a private investigation warranted? Four experts comment on this fictional case study written by Joseph Finder, a best-selling author of corporate thrillers. Harry Brandon, an international business-intelligence specialist, helps firms get to the bottom of affairs like this one. Meticulous evaluation of documents and tactful tapping of insiders are crucial, he says, for determining whether laws have been violated. In a quarter of cases, there's no fire behind the smoke; in the rest, he finds flames. Christopher E. Kubasik and James B. Comey, of Lockheed Martin, offer Cheryl advice from the real-world aerospace industry: Go first to the vice president of ethics or, absent one, the folks who run the internal audit organization. Wherever that leads her, Cheryl's top goal should be to send a clear message that hints of wrongdoing will not be ignored. Eric A. Klein, a lawyer at Katten Muchin Rosenman who advises corporations and their boards, has a cardinal rule: Manage the process, not the crisis. He says Cheryl should find out how previous matters of ethics were handled at Hammond. She must also assess her legal responsibilities, weighing the potential costs and benefits of an inquiry. William J. Teuber, Jr., of EMC, says Cheryl should tap the wisdom of the board chairman, who has just recruited her. If an investigation is warranted, Teuber argues that external lawyers are best equipped for the job and that Cheryl should not keep digging for dirt on her own.

Case (A) describes how a major player in the agricultural chemicals industry struggles to transform a fragmented group of newly acquired businesses into an integrated supply chain. The case highlights the firm's operational and organizational problems from the perspective of the European supply chain manager, whose primary objective is to streamline operations and cut costs.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Drawing upon a wealth of data, informed experience, and expert opinion--from Thomas Friedman to Bjarne Stroustrup, from David Gelernter to Nicholas Carr -- the author builds a case that enterprise software in large organizations has not delivered on its promise to fully integrate and intelligently control complex business processes while remaining flexible enough to adapt to changing business needs. Instead, ERP systems--including both software applications and the data they process--are variegated patchworks, containing 50 or more databases and hundreds of separate software programs installed over decades and interconnected by idiosyncratic, Byzantine, and poorly documented customized processes. To manage this growing complexity, IT departments have grown substantially: Today's IT departments spend 70% to 80% of their budgets just trying to keep existing systems running. The research shows, says the author, that the typical IT structure is so dense and extensive that it's often a miracle that it works at all. Enterprise systems that were supposed to streamline and simplify business processes instead have brought high risks, uncertainty, and a deeply worrying level of complexity. Rather than agility, they have produced rigidity and unexpected barriers to change, a veritable glut of information containing myriad hidden errors, and a cloud of questions regarding their overall benefits. How did this happen? Rettig points to the inherent limitations in the nature of software, the costs of implementation, and the vagaries of data. Indeed, she offers, enterprise software may be just too complex to deliver on its promises. She also suggests that the next new thing--service-oriented architecture (SOA)--is not likely to fare much better, for many of the same reasons. There are no easy fixes, cautions Rettig, save a large dose of sobriety, clear-eyed analysis, and emphasis on simplicity and efficiency.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For many years now, companies seeking to deliver higher business performance by harnessing IT have focused on alignment--the degree to which the IT group understands the priorities of the business. In practical terms, that means there must be shared ownership and shared governance of IT projects. However, the authors contend that their research reveals a troubling pattern: Even at companies that were focused on alignment, business performance dependent on IT sometimes went sideways, or even declined. That's because underperforming capabilities are often rooted not just in misalignment but in the complexity of systems, applications, and other infrastructure. The complexity doesn't magically disappear just because an IT organization learns to focus on aligned projects rather than less aligned ones. On the contrary, the authors say, in some situations it can actually get worse. Costs rise, delays mount, and the fragmentation makes it difficult for managers to coordinate across business units. The research also showed that almost three-quarters of respondents are mired in the "maintenance zone." IT at these companies is generally underperforming, undervalued, and kept largely separate from a company's core business functions. Corporate management budgets the amounts necessary to keep the systems running, but IT doesn't offer enough added value to the business and often isn't expected to. Drawing on the experiences of Charles Schwab & Co., Selective Insurance Group, De Beers, First Data Corp. and National City, among others, the authors identify a group of best practices that constitute "IT-enabled growth."

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Most of the economy is made up of firms that were created well before the advent of e-business. Yet most e-business research has focused on "pure-play" companies that were created specifically to take advantage of the Web. The authors created an e-business planning process that can be used both to examine an established company's existing operations and to identify promising new business opportunities. The planning process has four steps. The first is to identify potential e-business initiatives according to whether they create business value or reduce costs. The second step is to analyze the functional scope of each project using an architecture of e-business processes. The third step, analyzing the sustainability of each initiative's benefits, is particularly important in the e-business context because Internet interactions are susceptible to being copied by competitors. Finally, prioritizing among e-business projects depends on how they fit with other information technology elements. The authors explore ways in which e-business can create opportunities for completely new products and markets, including adding information features, selling information as a product, and finding new markets. The authors detail how their e-business planning process was used at a mature global company. A company task force considered two major projects. The e-business planning process sharpened the definition of the projects, outlined the technical requirements and other resource needs, and confirmed the sustainability of both projects.