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Increased use of digital collaboration tools are making employee contributions more visible within their organizations and connecting them with wider networks both of which can provide them with more options for career growth. The authors researched the effects of increased visibility into individual performance and found evidence that it leads to increased mobility. That means managers need to worry about retaining not only their stars, but also their A-/B+ talent.

Health care providers in much of the world are trying to respond to the tremendous pressure to reduce costs--but evidence suggests that many of their attempts are counterproductive, raising costs and sometimes decreasing the quality of care. Kaplan and Haas reached this conclusion after conducting field research with more than 50 health care provider organizations. Administrators looking for cuts typically work from the line-item expense categories on their P&Ls, they found. This may appear to generate immediate results, but it usually does not reflect the optimal mix of resources needed to efficiently deliver excellent care. The authors describe five common mistakes: (1) Reducing support staff. This often lowers the productivity of clinicians, whose time is far more expensive. (2) Underinvesting in space and equipment. The costs of these are consistently an order of magnitude smaller than personnel costs, so cuts here are short-sighted if they lower people's productivity. (3) Focusing narrowly on procurement prices and neglecting to examine how individual clinicians actually consume supplies. (4) Maximizing patient throughput. Physicians achieve greater overall productivity by spending more time with fewer patients. (5) Failing to benchmark and standardize. Administrators, in collaboration with clinicians, should examine all the costs of treating patients' conditions. This will uncover multiple opportunities to improve processes in ways that lower total costs and deliver better care.

In 1995, Institutional Investor magazine began selling a complete ranking of the best equity research analysts. This report allowed research firms to assess the relative quality of each analyst across the industry, and this enabled firms to know nearly as much about the quality of analysts at other firms as they knew about the quality of their own analysts. Ponders the impact that increased transparency of performance will have on the labor market for equity research analysts, and asks how the directors of three different research firms ought to respond given each firm's competitive situation.