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A study of 25 auto-parts salespeople comparing behavior with performance indicates that: top performers focus the conversation on the catalog and sample boards, weak performers allow customers to control the talk; strong performers waste little time waiting for the customer's attention, weak performers are willing to wait for the customer. Most important, strong performers do not take refuge in the notion that some days are good and some are bad and nothing can be done about the bad. They shrug off a string of unsuccessful calls and continue calling. Sales managers should not try to hire only those who will become top performers, rather they must nurture their salespeople with potential.

The old performance appraisal system at American Cyanamid Co. had so many detractors it became a target in the company's effort to find ways to improve employees' quality of life. An experiment in the Medical Research Division substituted three ratings for the ten in the old review procedure and called for no recommended distribution. The new plan assumed that almost all employees perform capably and conscientiously at their jobs, though in a few cases performance is so impressively good or egregiously bad that it should get special recognition. Supervisors were now encouraged to stress positive instead of negative aspects of each subordinate's work.

How can usually honest, intelligent, compassionate human beings act in ways that are callous, duplicitous, dishonest, and wrongheaded? Unethical behavior is found everywhere, and ambitious managers facing murky borderlands between right and wrong sometimes cross over the line. Their decisions ruin people's lives, destroy institutions, and give business as a whole a bad name. But executives can establish effective guidelines to ensure their corporations' survival. There are practical solutions to the rationalizations that give way to unethical behavior.