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Green Freight Asia (GFA) is a three-part case. Part A chronicles the formation of GFA, a private sector initiative that grew out of a network of companies that came together in 2011 to reduce air pollution and CO2 from road freight emissions in the Asia Pacific region. GFA's primary goal is to incentivise the adoption of green freight practices by creating a label that recognises and rewards companies for their commitment to improving fuel efficiency and reducing vehicle emissions. GFA's label programme, finalised in March 2014, establishes four levels of recognition, each represented by a logo with a corresponding number of 'Green Leaf(s)'. However, GFA lacks the necessary data management systems and processes to run the programme. This means that GFA needed a mechanism to collect, verify and incorporate company reported data into the labelling programme. To address this issue, in May 2014, Stephan Schablinski, the chief executive officer of GFA, seeks potential partners to collaborate with GFA on a comprehensive IT solution for the programme. He is not interested in a typical IT services arrangement but also because he believes that working with GFA could provide ample business opportunities for an entrepreneurial partner. Part B of the case series explores how a collaborative partnership between GFA and an IT solution partner could work. A workable partnership must consider alternative models for financing, since GFA lacks the financial resources to pay for the development, implementation, operation and maintenance of the data management system. The partner must provide a feasible, innovative and creative means to commercialise at least some aspect of the GFA partnership. Part C of the case series takes a look at the capabilities of what a successful data collection, analytics and reporting platform could do. And how the platform could potentially influence policy and expand collaboration into more wide-reaching spheres to mitigate global climate change.

In the early morning of Saturday, July 6, 2013, the chairman of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Limited faced a catastrophic situation when a company train carrying crude oil derailed in the small town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada, causing a series of explosions that decimated the downtown core. Emergency crews fought to put out fires and search for survivors; residents were relocated to a local school to escape the noxious fumes, but the death toll and number of missing continued to rise. In the days that followed, as the provincial police and federal agencies began to investigate and suggested they might lay charges of criminal negligence, the company, which had no permanent public relations staff, needed to devise a communication strategy to reassure various stakeholders who were looking for answers as to why the derailment occurred, who would be held accountable and ultimately what action would be taken in the aftermath of such a deadly event. Also available is the supplement case <a ref=https://www.iveycases.com/ProductView.aspx?id=62139>9B13M136</a>.

Supplement to 9B13M135.

Supplement to case PH1020.

Alaix began his career in finance and then spent years running businesses within large pharmaceutical companies. He was heading the animal health division at Pfizer when the company decided to spin off the division in an IPO and make him the CEO. Alaix knew that sophisticated external communication skills would be especially important in the months leading up to the IPO: He would be telling the company's story to analysts and potential investors, and their opinion of its strategy would have a direct impact on the value of the stock offering. He had about two years in which to pursue an aggressive training program and gain the skills he hadn't previously developed. Working with the HR department, he defined a development plan and then identified a mentor--the former CEO of a big European company. He used two communications trainers to help him hone his message and sharpen his delivery--and then practiced for interviews and road show pitches over and over again. Finally he met monthly with Pfizer executives and internal board members to learn the art of dealing with directors.

How can a person who seems so qualified for a position fail miserably in it? How can someone who clearly lacks relevant skills and experience succeed? The answer is potential, the ability to adapt and grow into increasingly complex roles and environments. For the past several decades, organizations have based their hiring decisions on competencies. But we have entered a new era of talent spotting. Geopolitics, business, industries, and jobs are changing so rapidly that it's impossible to predict the capabilities employees and leaders will need even a few years out. The question now is not whether people have the right skills; it's whether they have the potential to learn new ones. Research points to five markers of potential: a strong motivation to excel in the pursuit of challenging goals combined with the humility to put the group ahead of individual needs; an insatiable curiosity to explore new ideas and avenues; keen insight into connections that others don't see; a strong engagement with work and people; and the determination to overcome obstacles. Once organizations have hired true high potentials--a challenge, given the increasing scarcity of senior talent--and identified the ones they already have, it's crucial to focus on retaining them and on helping them live up to their potential by offering development opportunities that push them out of their comfort zones.

Managers and academics often lament that Wall Street's short-term focus makes it impossible for corporations to plan for the long run. Palmisano disagrees. Yes, there are some on Wall Street, such as the sell-side analysts who dominate quarterly earnings conference calls, who can't see more than a few months out. But CEOs shouldn't participate in those calls anyway, he believes. They should instead focus their energies on the institutional investors who will embrace the long view if they are given ways to judge a company's progress. In this edited interview with one of HBR's executive editors, Palmisano describes how IBM's top management made significant changes to how the firm set goals and communicated them to investors. "The model," a rolling multiyear road map for earnings growth and cash generation, included an emphasis on R&D investment even during downturns, a plan for execution that involved every unit in the organization, and a shift toward long-term compensation. Transparency and open dialogues with large shareholders were also key. The CEO is a steward, Palmisano argues, charged with protecting a company and its returns for decades to come. But that vision need not clash with success on the visible horizon; during Palmisano's tenure, IBM's stock price soared.

How can leaders build an organization that is capable of innovating continually over time? By creating a community that is both willing and able to innovate. To be willing, the community must share a sense of purpose, values, and rules of engagement. When Luca de Meo was Volkswagen's head of marketing communication, he fostered a sense of purpose in his team by asking its members to reflect on what being part of VW meant to them; strengthened their shared values by encouraging them to use the brand's three components--innovation, responsibility, and value--to guide their work; and built significant responsibility and autonomy into their rules of engagement. To be able, companies must generate ideas through discourse and debate; experiment quickly, reflect, and adjust; and make decisions that combine disparate and even opposing ideas. Bill Coughran, an SVP of engineering at Google, employed these capabilities both to solve the company's near-term data storage needs and to make progress toward a next-generation solution.

Even at the highest levels of organizations, many otherwise dynamic women struggle in meetings. Some say their voices are drowned out; others can't find a way into the conversation at all. Their male counterparts perceive a problem, but they tend to dismiss it as resulting from timidity, defensiveness, lack of focus, or excessive emotion. Drawing on interviews, surveys, and decades of work as leadership coaches, the authors suggest steps women can take to feel more comfortable and become more effective. Women should master the "pre-meeting," connecting with colleagues to test ideas and gather support; come to meetings armed with cogent comments and questions that can move the conversation forward; keep an even keel, speaking in measured tones and being careful not to signal frustration through sarcasm or curtness; and move past confrontation without taking it personally. Bosses can also help ensure that women's voices are heard, by providing direct feedback about meeting behavior, inviting more women to the table, and proactively pulling women into the conversation. These changes can have profound results, enabling all team members, male and female, to contribute to their full potential.

An up-and-coming entrepreneur, Gil Lehner is looking ahead and deciding on his next move. But Gil's situation is unusual: He was just diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer and his prognosis is not good. His chance of surviving longer than five years is only 18%. So what should he do with his last few years? Should he return to his home country of Israel and spend the time he has left with his family? Should he continue to work at the promising and possibly lucrative tech start-up that he joined last year? Or should he join two of his former classmates in establishing a nonprofit initiative to award prizes for innovative research on the illness he was just diagnosed with? Expert commentary for this fictional case study is provided by Ben Munoz and Avichai "Avi" Kremer.

The cook, critic, and fiction writer discusses her years as the last editor of "Gourmet": how she handled being a manager, modernized the magazine, and dealt with its closing.

An up-and-coming entrepreneur, Gil Lehner is looking ahead and deciding on his next move. But Gil's situation is unusual: He was just diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer and his prognosis is not good. His chance of surviving longer than five years is only 18%. So what should he do with his last few years? Should he return to his home country of Israel and spend the time he has left with his family? Should he continue to work at the promising and possibly lucrative tech start-up that he joined last year? Or should he join two of his former classmates in establishing a nonprofit initiative to award prizes for innovative research on the illness he was just diagnosed with? Expert commentary for this fictional case study is provided by Ben Munoz and Avichai "Avi" Kremer.

An up-and-coming entrepreneur, Gil Lehner is looking ahead and deciding on his next move. But Gil's situation is unusual: He was just diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer and his prognosis is not good. His chance of surviving longer than five years is only 18%. So what should he do with his last few years? Should he return to his home country of Israel and spend the time he has left with his family? Should he continue to work at the promising and possibly lucrative tech start-up that he joined last year? Or should he join two of his former classmates in establishing a nonprofit initiative to award prizes for innovative research on the illness he was just diagnosed with? Expert commentary for this fictional case study is provided by Ben Munoz and Avichai "Avi" Kremer.

The 75th secretary of the U.S. Navy writes about how to lead a large, complex organization that is interdependent with other large and complex entities. His approach begins with a narrow focus on the organization's unique strength and role. In the navy's case, that means presence.

The global CEO of the accounting firm Grant Thornton describes how as a boy he watched his father deal with customers and guide them toward the right tools for a project. The lessons he learned in his dad's hardware store are still pertinent today.

A Scottish engineer and economist named William Playfair pioneered line graphs, bar charts, and pie charts, making an inestimable contribution to what we now call data visualization. Here are three examples of his work, courtesy of the Baker Library Historical Collections.

Traditional sources of sustainable competitive advantage are very rare in today's heterogeneous and hypercompetitive global business environment. This article identifies and illustrates three dynamic capabilities-sensing local opportunities, enacting global complementarities, and appropriating local value-by which MNEs are able to operate successfully across emerging and established markets. For MNEs in these markets, strategic agility is a meta-capability that enables them to create and deploy these three capabilities in a dynamic balance over time. Doing so demands embracing the tensions between these capabilities effectively.

Firms struggle to create an agile organizational system since it requires the development of three enabling capacities: to make sense quickly, make decisions nimbly, and redeploy resources rapidly. While the study of strategic agility is of growing interest as a prime means of organizational growth, the ways by which key mechanisms of growth such as mergers and acquisitions (M&As) help in building this capability remain elusive. This article highlights the differences between platform acquisitions and bolt-on acquisitions (most bolt-on acquisitions in high technology industries can further be separated into product acquisitions on the one hand, and educational, technological and/or talent acquisitions on the other hand). These different forms of acquisitions can enhance strategic agility in distinct ways along different time horizons. When properly managed, acquisitions can enhance the gradual accumulation of the capabilities underlying strategic agility. This article presents a more complex picture of a non-linear reinforcing dual path between M&As and strategic agility.

Strategic agility evokes contradictions, such as stability-flexibility, commitment-change, and established routines-novel approaches. These competing demands pose challenges that require paradoxical leadership-practices seeking creative, both/and solutions that can enable fast- paced, adaptable decision making. Why is managing paradox critical to strategic agility? And which practices enable leaders to effectively manage tensions? This article describes the paradoxical nature of strategic agility. Drawing from data from five firms, Astro Studios, Digital Divide Data, IBM Global Services Canada, Lego, and Unilever, it proposes leadership practices to effectively respond to these challenges.

How can one tell which decisions are strategic? This article proposes a framework that helps distinguish strategic decisions from non-strategic ones. Whether a decision is strategic or non- strategic depends on how a decision ranks along two dimensions: its influence on the degree of commitment and its influence on the scope of the firm. Four distinct types of decisions emerge: strategic, neo-strategic, tactical, and operational. This categorization of decisions can help the firm prioritize decisions, allocate resources, and develop capabilities.