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It is very difficult to be an effective leader if you don't know who you are and what you want. People in leadership positions are expected to clarify things for others--purpose, vision, values, strategy, and goals. This technical note describes several fundamentals of an effective organizational and work group charter including the important elements of a personal charter. Once leaders have a clear vision for themselves, they are prepared to make better career, lifestyle, and professional decisions.

Managers pay lip service to employees as "valuable assets." But when numbers are down, staffers are often seen merely as costs to be cut. Treating employees like the assets they are can do more for your company than build morale.

George Barker, the 40-year-old CEO of his family's commercial real estate design and development firm, must deal with the unsatisfactory performance of his brother Peter, who is also in the business. Although Peter's performance is upsetting to George, George feels that it will be difficult to navigate the family ownership and other business factors to deal with the problem.

Reckitt Benckiser plc has developed an executive compensation system. This case outlines the structure of the system, its emphasis on performance-based pay and a global outlook, and explains the role of the human resources department, the board of directors, and company shareholders in determining pay. It raises questions about how to balance incentive remuneration effectively in recruiting and retaining top managers, while addressing shareholder concerns about executive compensation.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is a large Fortune 500 retail chain. The distinction of being the top-ranked company comes with intense scrutiny from the public and, especially, critics. Wal-Mart, a company lauded for its rapid response capability and stated commitments to gender equality, is deficient in some glaring areas--the percentage of women compared to men at all levels of the company and the compensation paid to women vs. men at all levels of the company, to cite two examples. An executive vice-president must examine why these inequalities exist when the company seems to be doing everything else right. The company is the target of several gender discrimination lawsuits. The executive vice-president has the opportunity to obtain information that would be useful in the current situation and must determine what information is needed.

Supplements the (A) case.

Serves as a brief introduction to incentive design and implementation. The analysis first locates incentive strategy within the larger structure of organizations and markets and then helps to define the central components and difficulties of incentive design. Focuses on the principal difficulties in implementing incentive systems, including the tradeoff between objective and subjective performance metrics, how to design incentive systems in team environments, and the inherent problems with designing incentive systems in environments where workers are involved in multiple activities. A rewritten version of an earlier note.

Case B: This case picks up after the ousting of the former CEO of Bertelsmann, following his attempts to push the company forward in its exposure to the capital markets and the extent of corporate synergies. It shows how unforgiving the New Economy could be to dreams of internet driven synergies. It also shows how business unit profitability remains a key concern, and especially as economic conditions change, although ideas for greater cooperation are not lost but re-sized.

Two reasonable people, a boss and a subordinate, find each other 'impossible to handle'. Through their descriptions of each other's behavior we realize that they are in a self-perpetuating dynamic. An attempted intervention by the HR manager not only fails to resolve the situation; it actually makes it worse.

In 1992, Maureen Clarry and Kelly Gilmore quit their jobs to start CONNECT: The Knowledge Network, an Information Technology Consulting company. Maureen and Kelly did not take a salary for the first six months of operation, and expected to keep expenses down by working out of their homes. When both women became pregnant, they had to redefine their business model and find a suitable office space. They found an old Victorian house with a separate building to serve as an on-site daycare center and proceeded to create a family-friendly office environment. They focused their business strategy on building a network of consultant "partners" to provide data warehousing and information systems consulting to large companies in the Denver area. In 1998, as companies attempted to expand their workforce in an increasingly tight job market, CONNECT added permanent-placement to their temporary-placement services. This new service line required an increase in CONNECT's workforce, and within a year, CONNECT expanded from 8 to 20 employees. The economic downturn of 1999-2000 prompted CONNECT to refocus the business once again, forcing a layoff of some long-time staff as well as its recently hired recruiters. This case chronicles the process that Maureen and Kelly and the entire staff of CONNECT went through in making the difficult downsizing decisions.

Supplementary Material to Product # NA0119

Why do so many newly minted leaders fail so spectacularly? Part of the problem is that in many companies, succession planning is little more than creating a list of high-potential employees and the slots they might fill. It's a mechanical process that's too narrow and hidebound to uncover and correct skill gaps that can derail promising young executives. And it's completely divorced from organizational efforts to transform managers into leaders. Some companies, however, do succeed in building a steady, reliable pipeline of leadership talent by marrying succession planning with leadership development. Eli Lilly, Dow Chemical, Bank of America, and Sonoco Products have created long-term processes for managing the talent roster throughout their organizations--a process Conger and Fulmer call succession management. Drawing on the experiences of these best-practice organizations, the authors outline five rules for establishing a healthy succession management system: Focus on opportunities for development, identify linchpin positions, make the system transparent, measure progress regularly, and be flexible.

Jurgen Mehr, the European head of marketing for German software giant Typware, is irate about the salary demands of the American executive he wants to hire. Anne Prevost, the executive in question, is the marketing director at a U.S. software company that has been making forays into Typware's markets. She engineered a huge uptick in sales for her company, and now she is ready to jump ship--provided Typware makes her a good offer. She would be a brilliant catch. But the salary she wants is nearly as much as Mehr's. Since 1996, Typware has ventured aggressively into international markets. The consultants who helped negotiate compensation for overseas employees recommended variable standards depending on the employee's location. However, individual expatriate packages are becoming increasingly complicated. HBR senior editor Bronwyn Fryer explores the question of what kind of international compensation approach Typware should adopt. In R0311A and R0311Z, commentators George T. Milkovich, the Catherwood Professor at Cornell University; Jeffrey Alan Thinnes, the managing director of Manugistics Central Europe, a U.S. software subsidiary based in Germany; Joseph Yaffe, a partner with the global law firm Latham & Watkins; and Dietmar Kokott, the senior vice-president of global human resources, executive management, and development at BASF Group, offer expert advice on this fictional case study.

Jurgen Mehr, the European head of marketing for German software giant Typware, is irate about the salary demands of the American executive he wants to hire. Anne Prevost, the executive in question, is the marketing director at a U.S. software company that has been making forays into Typware's markets. She engineered a huge uptick in sales for her company, and now she is ready to jump ship--provided Typware makes her a good offer. She would be a brilliant catch. But the salary she wants is nearly as much as Mehr's. Since 1996, Typware has ventured aggressively into international markets. The consultants who helped negotiate compensation for overseas employees recommended variable standards depending on the employee's location. However, individual expatriate packages are becoming increasingly complicated. HBR senior editor Bronwyn Fryer explores the question of what kind of international compensation approach Typware should adopt. In R0311A and R0311Z, commentators George T. Milkovich, the Catherwood Professor at Cornell University; Jeffrey Alan Thinnes, the managing director of Manugistics Central Europe, a U.S. software subsidiary based in Germany; Joseph Yaffe, a partner with the global law firm Latham & Watkins; and Dietmar Kokott, the senior vice-president of global human resources, executive management, and development at BASF Group, offer expert advice on this fictional case study.

Jurgen Mehr, the European head of marketing for German software giant Typware, is irate about the salary demands of the American executive he wants to hire. Anne Prevost, the executive in question, is the marketing director at a U.S. software company that has been making forays into Typware's markets. She engineered a huge uptick in sales for her company, and now she is ready to jump ship--provided Typware makes her a good offer. She would be a brilliant catch. But the salary she wants is nearly as much as Mehr's. Since 1996, Typware has ventured aggressively into international markets. The consultants who helped negotiate compensation for overseas employees recommended variable standards depending on the employee's location. However, individual expatriate packages are becoming increasingly complicated. HBR senior editor Bronwyn Fryer explores the question of what kind of international compensation approach Typware should adopt. In R0311A and R0311Z, commentators George T. Milkovich, the Catherwood Professor at Cornell University; Jeffrey Alan Thinnes, the managing director of Manugistics Central Europe, a U.S. software subsidiary based in Germany; Joseph Yaffe, a partner with the global law firm Latham & Watkins; and Dietmar Kokott, the senior vice-president of global human resources, executive management, and development at BASF Group, offer expert advice on this fictional case study.

A homogeneous workforce can be a hindrance when it comes to innovation. In this interview, Chris Anderson--the chairman and host of the annual Technology, Entertainment, and Design brainfest--argues for more diversity in the workplace.

Managers who pride themselves on giving employees what they request may be shortchanging women, simply because men ask for a lot more than women do. This can be costly for companies, and it requires management intervention.

Case A: Mark Chan worked for a British multinational in Singapore and was posted on an international assignment to its corporate headquarters in London. He performed well at his job and enjoyed a successful international career. When he and his wife decided to return home, he was unable to find a position that was requisite with his experience and skills back at the company's Singapore subsidiary. The case ends with Mark Chan wondering what he should do.

Case B: Mark Chan decided to move back home to Singapore and accepted a lower rank position compared to the one he held overseas. He started to feel bored with his job after a few months. His attempts to find a new job that was requisite with his experience and skills within his company did not yield any results. His wife and children also experienced problems adjusting back to life in Singapore. The case ends with Mark Chan taking the first step to find a new job.

Examines the transition of an orthopedic surgical group at a premier teaching and research hospital from a system in which the surgeons are compensated with flat salaries to a system where they are compensated based on profitability. Allows for an examination of several critical issues in incentive strategy, including pay-to-performance in a not-for-profit environment, whether a compensation system is truly aligned with value creation (issues of quality of care and research time), and the difficulty in designing a compensation system in a competitive labor market when the objectives of the institution extend beyond pure profit maximization. This is a rewritten version of an earlier case.