Green Dot was a charter management organization (CMO) based in Los Angeles, California (L.A.), a city that housed the second-largest school district in the country. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was known for its largely ethnic student population (75 percent Hispanic and 11 percent African American) and multiple challenges ranging from poor performance to violence to low graduation rates. High school graduation rates in the district were only 45 percent (compared to 68 percent nationally), with Hispanic students graduating at a rate of only 39 percent. Gary Orfield of the Harvard Civil Rights Project called the city's high schools "dropout factories." By 2008, Green Dot had opened 12 charter high schools in some of the highest-need areas of L.A., hoping to demonstrate "that public schools can do a far better job of educating students if schools are operated more effectively." Founder, Steve Barr and his team had their own ideas about the tipping point and its metrics, which were both quantitative (e.g., 10 percent market share of schools within LAUSD) and qualitative, in terms of gains in political influence. As Barr and his Green Dot team worked towards opening of new school, Locke in the fall of 2008, Barr was both nervous and optimistic. He knew the future of Los Angeles students, parents, and their communities depended on the success of his team. He wondered if his new transformation strategy was the optimal strategy. He also wondered if his thinking about the tipping point would give him and his team the best chance for success.

Living alongside the roughnecks and roustabouts on two offshore oil platforms, the authors learned that when the men abandoned their macho behavior, they maximized the safety of their coworkers and did their jobs more effectively.

Legal and cultural changes over the past 40 years ushered unprecedented numbers of women and people of color into companies' professional ranks. Laws now protect these traditionally underrepresented groups from blatant forms of discrimination in hiring and promotion. Meanwhile, political correctness has reset the standards for civility and respect in people's day-to-day interactions. Despite this obvious progress, the authors' research shows that political correctness is a double-edged sword. Although it has helped many employees feel unlimited by their race, gender, or religion, the PC rule book can hinder people's ability to develop effective relationships across race, gender, and religious lines. Companies need to equip workers with skills--not rules--for building these relationships. The authors offer the following five principles for healthy resolution of the tensions that commonly arise over differences: Pause to short-circuit the emotion and reflect; connect with others, affirming the importance of relationships; question yourself to identify blind spots and discover what makes you defensive; get genuine support that helps you gain a broader perspective; and shift your mind-set from one that says, "You need to change" to one that asks, "What can I change?" When people treat their cultural differences--and related conflicts and tensions--as opportunities to gain a more accurate view of themselves, one another, and the situation, trust builds and relationships become stronger. Leaders should put aside the PC rule book and instead model and encourage risk taking in the service of building the organization's relational capacity. The benefits will reverberate throughout every dimension of the company's work.

No matter how we rail against the status quo, most of us are reluctant to take action in the workplace. Faced with choosing between our values and jobs, most of us either resign ourselves to the situation or leave. Yet, society's tempered radicals--individuals who create large-scale change in subtle, incremental ways--have learned that you can rock the boat without falling out of it. Award-winning director Robert Redford has been described as the quintessential tempered radical. His Sundance Institute, tucked away in the Utah mountains, was conceived as a haven for writers and directors with promising ideas but little more than lint in their pockets. Sundance has proven such a successful incubator of independent films that, perhaps ironically, it has become one of the most influential forces in Hollywood. In this article, Redford talks about how to change an industry--specifically, how he and Sundance have influenced the movie business. Based on his sometimes harsh experiences as an environmental activist and a film actor--he was burned in effigy by demonstrators and figuratively by film distributors who deemed Downhill Racer too uncommercial--Redford concluded that "if you want to crack the system, you can't hit it directly; you have to work behind the scenes." Over the past 20 years, he has experimented again and again with grassroots projects--pieces of which he incorporated into Sundance. Redford's multifaceted approach to change includes earning credibility and then leveraging his successes; practicing the arts of compromise and persuasion to get projects completed; gathering support along the way; and, most important, persisting--tactics that a patient manager in any industry can apply.

At some point, many managers yearn to confront assumptions, practices, or values in their organizations that they feel are counterproductive or even downright wrong. Yet, they can face an uncomfortable dilemma: If they speak out too loudly, resentment may build toward them; if they remain silent, resentment will build inside them. Is there any way, then, to rock the boat without falling out of it? In 15 years of research, professor Debra Meyerson has observed hundreds of professionals who have dealt with this problem by working behind the scenes, engaging in a subtle form of grassroots leadership. She calls them "tempered radicals" because they effect significant changes in moderate ways. Meyerson has identified four incremental approaches that managers can quietly use to create lasting cultural change. Most subtle is "disruptive self-expression" in dress, office decor, or behavior, which can slowly change an unproductive atmosphere as people increasingly notice and emulate it. By using "verbal jujitsu," an individual can redirect the force of an insensitive statement or action to improve the situation. "Variable-term opportunists" spot, create, and capitalize on short- and long-term chances for change. And through "strategic alliance building," an individual can join with others to promote change with more force. By adjusting these approaches to time and circumstance, tempered radicals work subtly but effectively to alter the status quo. In so doing, they exercise a form of leadership that is more modest and less visible than traditional forms--yet no less significant. Top managers who want to create cultural or organizational change--perhaps they're moving tradition-bound businesses down new roads--should seek out these tempered radicals, for they are masters at transforming organizations from the grass roots.

Although women have made enormous gains in the business world--they hold seats on corporate boards and run major companies--they still comprise only 10% of senior managers in Fortune 500 companies. What will it take to shatter the glass ceiling? According to Debra Meyerson and Joyce Fletcher, it's not a revolution but a strategy of small wins--a series of incremental changes aimed at the subtle discriminatory forces that still reside in organizations. It used to be easy to spot gender discrimination in the corporate world, but today overt displays are rare. Instead, discrimination against women lingers in common work practices and cultural norms that appear unbiased. Consider how managers have tried to rout gender discrimination in the past. Some tried to assimilate women into the workplace by teaching them to act like men. Others accommodated women through special policies and benefits. Still others celebrated women's differences by giving them tasks for which they are "well suited." But each of those approaches proffers solutions for the symptoms, not the sources, of gender inequity. Gender bias, the authors say, will be undone only by a persistent campaign of incremental changes that discover and destroy the deeply embedded roots of discrimination. Because each organization is unique, its expressions of gender inequity are, too. Drawing on examples from companies that have used the small-wins approach, the authors advise readers on how they can make small wins at their own organizations. They explain why small wins will be driven by men and women together, because both will ultimately benefit from a world where gender is irrelevant to the way work is designed and distributed.

Consists of eight separate parts. These parts can be used separately, a few at a time, or all eight at once. Link.Com: A Silicon Valley Legend is a short introduction that provides a brief overview of the company. Link.Com is a large, multinational computer company, with a spectacular growth and profitability record. Organizational charts show the structure of the firm and the positions of the eight top-ranking women in the company (seven of whom contributed to this series of cases). This material can be used to introduce any of the seven individual stories that follow: Natalie Kramer's Story, Ana Ibarra's Story, Denise Brousseau's Story, Patricia Sullivan's Story, Kathleen Casey's Story, Mariana Torcelli's Story, and Masako Hirada's Story.