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The case details the challenges faced by Lisa Thomas of LaMont Engineering after the company is acquired by Munday Consultants, Inc. Thomas, who supported the acquisition, was asked to chair a team charged with implementing the changes necessary to make the acquisition a success. This case illustrates the ever-present challenge of finding professionals who can serve in more strategic roles, and provides an opportunity to diagnose, analyze, and suggest an action plan to address Thomas's situation. This case also illustrates the challenges of post-acquisition integration in the acquired firm while retaining the elements that made the firm a desirable target.

In this fictional case, the CEO of a sports apparel manufacturer must figure out how to handle an ongoing conflict between two of his top executives. His head of sales and CFO are constantly at each other's throats, and the tension is having a bad ripple effect on their teams and the rest of the organization. Should he change the company's compensation scheme to encourage better collaboration, get the executives coaching, or do more team-building activities? Or should he fire one or both of the warring executives? This fictional case study by Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden features expert commentary by Scott Salmirs and Dale Winston.

In this fictional case, the CEO of a sports apparel manufacturer must figure out how to handle an ongoing conflict between two of his top executives. His head of sales and CFO are constantly at each other's throats, and the tension is having a bad ripple effect on their teams and the rest of the organization. Should he change the company's compensation scheme to encourage better collaboration, get the executives coaching, or do more team-building activities? Or should he fire one or both of the warring executives? This fictional case study by Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden features expert commentary by Scott Salmirs and Dale Winston.

In this fictional case, the CEO of a sports apparel manufacturer must figure out how to handle an ongoing conflict between two of his top executives. His head of sales and CFO are constantly at each other's throats, and the tension is having a bad ripple effect on their teams and the rest of the organization. Should he change the company's compensation scheme to encourage better collaboration, get the executives coaching, or do more team-building activities? Or should he fire one or both of the warring executives? This fictional case study by Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden features expert commentary by Scott Salmirs and Dale Winston.

Chef Wolfgang Puck oversees a disparate business empire that includes fine dining restaurants, a catering business, and various licensed products that run from cookware, to soup, to fast-casual restaurants. His businesses activities are divided between three separate entities-Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, Wolfgang Puck Catering, and Wolfgang Puck Worldwide-that share some formal and informal linkages. But the key person holding this all together is Wolfgang Puck himself. Now in his late 60s, Puck wonders what he needs to formalize-in terms of systems, processes, and management-to ensure that his different businesses will endure long after he is no longer involved in the day-to-day management of these three businesses.

California Closets had used robust net promoter score (NPS) data, surveyed across its locations, to create a more consistent and satisfying customer experience. CEO Bill Barton wanted to further optimize the customer experience around best practices. He also wanted to attract newer customers, members of the millennial generation. How could Barton and California Closets leverage NPS to achieve these goals?

Spreadsheet supplement for case 419007.

In the spring of 2018, Kinya Seto, president and CEO of LIXIL Group Corporation, a major housing and building products and services company, called a meeting at the company's head office in central Tokyo to discuss how to implement the new three-year strategic plan. LIXIL had been established in 2011 through a merger of five of Japan's major companies across a broad spectrum of building materials and other housing-related businesses. The company had subsequently acquired established international brands such as American Standard and GROHE and had become a global company of over 70,000 employees operating in more than 150 countries. Its business lines included manufacturing and marketing construction materials and products for both commercial buildings and private houses, with subsidiary home-building and renovation franchises. The predecessor companies that formed LIXIL had each had a long history of business success, some dating back a hundred years. To accelerate the implementation of LIXIL's global strategy, Seto and his senior management team had expressed ideas about creativity and innovation centered around differentiated products, services and business models. How could Seto position LIXIL for success? How much integration was needed at LIXIL? How could Seto build one LIXIL brand that would be recognized globally? Could design, new products, and a shift in business model from B2B to B2C be the drivers of growth? How should Seto execute LIXIL's three-year plan? What is or are LIXIL's source(s) of competitive advantage?

Hironobu Tsujiguchi, a Japanese chocolatier, had chosen an unusual path to success as a pastry chef. Instead of spending most of his time in his kitchen and focusing on one or two confectionery categories like most pastry chefs, he chose to work on diverse projects and leverage his reputation as a winning competitive chef to experiment with tastes and achieve business success. While Tsujiguchi enjoyed popularity and success in a broad array of projects, such as managing 10 brands and 26 shops across different categories, he also felt the need to reinvent his core confectionery business since not all stores of all his brands were thriving as he had wished. Equally central to the mission was the need to restructure the brand portfolio and operational model. Tsujiguchi asked himself: How can I orchestrate these efforts? Can I continue to rely on the diversification model that has led me to success so far, or should I be more focused? What should I continue, start, or stop doing to stay relevant?

Since its founding eight years earlier, Hidrovias do Brasil ("Hidrovias"), an integrated logistics provider serving corporate customers exporting products from South America via the Atlantic Ocean, had grown to 900 employees and $253 million in annual revenues. Hidrovias was founded by the Brazilian private equity firm, Pátria Investments, who had built the business from the ground up, forging and nurturing relationships with customers, investors, government entities, and suppliers. As Bruno Serapiao, Hidrovias's CEO pondered next steps for the company, he considered: What had been the key drivers of Hidrovias's success to date? What were the major challenges? And, what was the best path for the company going forward?

Cowen Inc.'s broker-dealer, Cowen and Company, LLC, boasted a number of analysts who had made prescient stock calls on the basis of creative data analysis. Now Cowen Inc. had opened a new subsidiary, Kyber, which would attempt to monetize new data science products. Robert Fagin, head of research, had to consider what Kyber's risks were, even as the unit opened the possibility up for new revenue streams. How could Cowen continue to exploit its competitive advantage with data?

Manish Goel was the CEO of TrustSphere, a seven-year-old company in the data analytics industry that focused squarely on relationship analytics, a space in which TrustSphere was pioneering a unique technology and solutions in the areas of sales, risk, and people analytics. Essentially, TrustSphere's technology allowed its customers to view the patterns of digital communication captured on the organization's communication infrastructure among internal and external players. With this information, TrustSphere could help customers infer where relationships existed and the strength of those relationships, information that could be leveraged to address a number of business challenges and opportunities. Based in Singapore, but operating globally, TrustSphere was trying to get its footing and establish its technology and solutions as a "must-have" for prospective customers, all the while trying to navigate the relatively unchartered waters of relationship analytics.

In April 2017, Victoria Sopik and Jennifer Nashmi, CEO and CFO (respectively) of Kids & Company, a Canadian childcare provider that they had co-founded in the early 2000s and developed into a nearly 100-unit enterprise, are discussing how the company should proceed with its planned U.S. expansion. Kids & Company already has five U.S. childcare centers in and around Chicago, Illinois, and one under construction in Boston, Massachusetts, but before going any further, the two leaders plan to discuss what they have learned so far from their U.S. experience, and how that should inform their strategic growth decisions moving forward. Unlike Canada, the U.S. already has other large, for-profit childcare providers, so Kids & Co. will have to grow in a more mature market, albeit one where Kids & Company's leaders still see substantial opportunity. Company leaders also believe that the company's "boutique" childcare centers, which maintain a strict focus on customer service and flexible childcare options, would be well-received by U.S. consumers, and help it stand out from the existing, more-standardized options. The question now is how, and how fast, to grow. Should it just replicate the exact model it has developed in Canada-which has proven somewhat challenging thus far in the few years it has operated in the U.S.-or adjust elements of its model? Should it look to acquire established providers, or possibly even franchise the brand?

In a career that spanned over 30 years, Maggie Wilderotter served as CEO of two publicly traded companies and served on 32 corporate and nine association and non-profit boards of directors. As CEO of Frontier Communications, a U.S. telecom company with over $25 billion in assets, Wilderotter executed three major acquisitions, transforming the company's business mix and more than doubling its size. This case explores Wilderotter's career, examining the personal characteristics that made her such a successful executive and board member. The case also looks at the turning points in Wilderotter's career; the decisions she made and the way in which she built her skills.

This case provides a brief update to Boris Groysberg's, John D. Vaughan's, and Matthew G. Preble's, "MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe?" HBS No. 416004 (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2015). "MOD Pizza in 2017" describes how MOD Pizza has grown between May 2015 (when the first case ends) and early 2017.

"Womenomics in Japan" profiles Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's vigorous attempts to revive Japan's economy, specifically by advocating for a larger role for women in the economy--not as a matter of social policy or gender equity per se, but as an essential element of any solution to Japan's persistent low economic growth. Several decades of economic stagnation led Abe to spearhead a multi-faceted reform effort to shake off deflation and come to grips with Japan's large national debt and rapidly aging society. "Womenomics"--the promotion of economic empowerment for women--has been a key element of this effort. Since taking office in late 2012, Abe has advocated for women in myriad ways: through sustained rhetoric at home and abroad, by naming women to key cabinet and party positions, and by setting ambitious numerical targets for expanding their professional ranks. To support these efforts at effecting institutional change, Abe also has overseen rapid growth in daycare facilities for the children of working mothers, and has worked intensively to encourage Japan's business associations to increase hiring, promotion, and empowerment of women among member firms. At issue is how effective such measures have been, and whether they can successfully be sustained.

BrightStar Care was a rapidly growing franchise of home health care agencies. Founded by husband and wife team JD and Shelly Sun as a single agency near Chicago in 2002, by 2016 nearly 300 BrightStar franchises were open across the United States, generating over $300 million in revenue. BrightStar was now a very different company from the one Shelly and JD had started up during their first year of marriage. Shelly Sun, CEO, had decided to franchise the business in 2004, believing that the franchise model presented a relatively low-risk and high-return approach to growing BrightStar. As franchises began to sell, Sun quickly set about building scalable operations and infrastructure, including a centralized technology function and custom software for franchisees. As more and more locations opened around the United States, she focused on growing BrightStar's national marketing profile and putting measures in place to distinguish BrightStar's services as higher-quality than that of its competitors. A shifting regulatory landscape and labor shortages posed challenge, but BrightStar continued to grow swiftly. As the company evolved and Sun attempted to spend more time away from headquarters, surveying the field and building relationships, she knew she needed a strong senior management team. Some members of her senior team had been with BrightStar for years, expanding their responsibilities as the company expanded, while others she recruited from outside. In the early 2010s, Sun was close to filling all BrightStar's crucial executive roles, but had to consider whether some longtime leaders were the right fit for the company's current needs. As she thought through the composition of her senior team, she also revamped her board of advisors and pursued international franchising opportunities and a debt recapitalization. By early 2016, Shelly was looking to the company's next phase of growth while handing management of her executive team to BrightStar's President and COO.

Evan Siddall, newly appointed CEO of Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation, a governmental organization focused on the residential housing market, is charged with leading change at the organization. The case follows this process of change step by step and looks at the challenges Siddall faces. After two years of leading change Siddall questions: should he continue to push forward with a change agenda? Or should the organization pause and catch its breath?

When Tony Tan Caktiong had stepped down as president and CEO of Jollibee Foods Corporation in mid-2014, he had been succeeded by his younger brother, Ernesto Tanmantiong. In 2016, the brothers were working together to realize the company's vision of making JFC a truly international organization with a significant global presence. As they positioned the company for expansion, they thought perhaps the company's eight values should become more succinct, memorable, and aligned with the company's vision. Tan Caktiong was aware, however, that some company executives would view pausing to contemplate values a waste of time; they would argue that values are essentially identical at every company and irrelevant to performance. Others would assert that values should not change. Was it the right time to reassess the company's values? How could Tan Caktiong persuade skeptics that values make a difference? And as the company grew, should values be articulated at the corporate level, or should they vary among JFC's brands?

Cameron (Cam) Barker, founder and CEO of Blake Sports Apparel and Switch Activewear, manufacturers and distributers of sports apparel and accessories, was facing a challenge with his executive team. Their inability to work together on seemingly simple issues was a chronic problem. Although they were a competent group of executives, most of whom had been with Barker for a number of years and had played an integral role in the growth of his company, the team's dynamics were dysfunctional. Lack of communication, mistrust, and refusal to collaborate were some of their biggest challenges. Barker had had enough and was ready to take action, but what action should he take? How could he teach the executive team to work together? Did he have the right people in the right roles? Was the team appropriately structured and managed? How could Barker bring his executive team together in order to maximize performance and face the challenges and opportunities that would be presenting themselves to his young company in the months and years ahead?