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For the past 18 months, Mandy Cabot had worried that the shoe business she had built into a thriving operation with $90 million in annual revenue and over 110 employees might instead be a "house of cards." The management philosophy that had guided Dansko's growth, "home schooling"--taking young energetic employees with little business experience and mentoring them--seemed ill-suited for the next phase of growth. Equally as precarious was the fact that with few exceptions, none of the senior management team had any prior experience in the footwear industry. So when a well-respected industry leader asked to talk about a merger, Cabot had to admit that with her "crisis of confidence," it might just be time.

How do you facilitate changing a long-held mission into a new vision during an organizational restructuring? Ernesto Gomez, organizational development director for Lotz of Food, a leading grocery retailer headquartered in California, was asked to help the perishable team transition from a hierarchical and function-based business unit to one that would be more dynamic, versatile, and proactive. Expectations were high and came right from the top of the organization. The A case reveals the steps Gomez takes to understand the problems. Among the issues about team development, Gomez is conflicted over the lack of diversity among the organization's leadership and indeed on the entire team. More troubling is the organization's seeming lack of recognition of this fact--so much that Gomez wonders whether his own background has made this a bigger issue than it really is. In the B case, Gomez becomes more concerned about what extent he thinks his own biases and past experiences are shaping the way he sees this situation.

Cheri Mack, an African-American woman, has just arrived at Harvard Business School after working for three years at a major consulting firm where she learned to adopt the demeanor of her male colleagues in order to fit in. Some of her male classmates are critical of her masculine, aggressive style in the classroom. As she begins to plan for a new career in health care, their criticisms cause her to wonder whether having shed much of her femininity will compromise her effectiveness as a leader.

Learning Lab Denmark (LLD), a research and development institute, encountered many of the difficulties typically experienced by start-ups, especially obstacles that involve developing a set of routines for getting things done. In other respects, LLD faced several distinct challenges that are specific to its charter. Describes in detail the history behind the formation of Learning Lab Denmark: the goals and the organizing principles underlying LLD and its sub-components; and the various personnel roles and issues, including performance problems, criticism, and paradoxes that arose in the first couple of years.

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Describes and contrasts the roles and challenges of three high-performing finance heads at Novartis Consumer Health businesses in Australia, Japan, and Venezuela. All three faced tremendous pressures in terms of managing time and limited resources, but the particular circumstances of each business made for some specific challenges. Remi Escurel, CFO for Animal Health in Australia and New Zealand and regional CFO for Asia Pacific, juggled a demanding dual role. In Australia, Animal Health was a market leader, but dependence on climate-sensitive products made for uneven performance. Tanya Ferretto served as both finance head and general manager for Animal Health in Japan, where the business was a niche player struggling for survival. Jaime Maturana filled the business, planning, and analysis role for Over-the-Counter in Venezuela, a fast-growing business in a volatile political and economic environment. Describes and contracts the roles and challenges of three high-performing finance heads at Novartis Consumer Heath businesses in Australia, Japan, and Venezuela. Examines whether the skills that made these executives successful are portable from one country or region to another. Focuses on how an administrative function such as finance can play a strategic role.

Each profession has its own vocabulary. Knowing how to talk the talk is critical--in some fields more than others.

Ferrari depends on a creative workforce to build its gorgeous cars. Companies can take a lesson from its unique approach to inspiring employees.

What's the rationale for dividing the roles of chairman and CEO? Studies show that, usually, doing so has no effect on the company's performance.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Research and development projects fail more often than they succeed. In fact, of every 10 R&D projects, five are flops, three are abandoned, and only two ultimately become commercially successful. A principal problem is that many companies don't know how best to organize their labs to conduct R&D work. A classic hierarchical structure, for instance, tends to impede the rapid spread of knowledge. Matrix organizations, on the other hand, can lead to information logjams, confusion, and conflict among employees. To investigate how companies can best manage their efforts to innovate, the author conducted an in-depth study of six R&D projects at the laboratory of a Fortune 500 corporation. She found that highly successful R&D projects have four crucial factors that reinforce each other: strong and sustained corporate support; the presence of open communication patterns and a low degree of formal reporting (beyond this, R&D teams must be organized in specific ways so that informal social networks are reinforced--not thwarted--by the formal organizational structures); inclusion in R&D projects of a person who is central to the "technical-advice network"; and inclusion of someone key to the "organizational-advice network." An understanding of the interplay between informal social networks and formal organizational structures can help companies design and maintain learning organizations in which employees exchange pertinent knowledge efficiently and willingly, leading to more successful R&D efforts.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Traditionally, executives are expected to create the vision for the organization they lead; the leaders' vision is then disseminated throughout the ranks. However, such top-down vision creation may mean that not all employees wholeheartedly embrace the vision they are given. An alternative approach to vision creation is found in the concept of "meaning-making." A meaning-maker is a member of a group who articulates what the group is trying to accomplish in its work. Meaning-makers are typically deeply engaged in their work settings, are observant people who listen well, and are in tune with a group's or an organization's rhythm. Using techniques such as images, humor, or a new perspective on a situation, they are able to express a group's collective insight. For example, a pizza restaurant company was floundering until one of the senior managers articulated the idea that the company was not in a restaurant business so much as in a distribution business. This new model galvanized the organization, and local managers sought new outlets to distribute the company's pizza. Managers who are meaning-makers also may help others to articulate the meaning of the group's work, and such managers tend to embody a flexible style of leadership that recognizes that leadership is expressed in how people interact.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Robert A. Caro shares his insights about the nature of power, the complexity of ambition, and the role that the greater good can play in the making of a leader. Power doesn't always corrupt, he insists. But what it invariably does is reveal a leader's true nature. "Today, when CEOs have acquired more and more power to change our lives," Caro says, "they have become like presidents in their own right, and they, too, need to align themselves with something greater than themselves if they hope to become truly great leaders."

What could be harder than turning around a seemingly wildly successful company by imposing a centralized framework on a heretofore radically decentralized, antiestablishment, free-spirited organization? That was the challenge GE alumnus Robert Nardelli faced when he abruptly succeeded Home Depot's popular founders, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, as the top executive in December 2000. Talk about a shock: No one expected Marcus and Blank, both in their 50s, to leave. And, as Nardelli himself acknowledges, the last thing anyone wanted was an outsider who would "GE-ize their company and culture." But despite its glossy high-growth exterior, Home Depot was standing on shaky financial footings. Rapid expansion had stretched cash flow, inventory turns, profits, and store manager ranks thin. Each store's vaunted independence was making the company as a whole highly inflexible, unable to take advantage of economies of scale. What so effectively got Home Depot from zero to $50 billion in sales wasn't going to get it to the next $50 billion. The story of the vision, strategy, and leadership skills Nardelli used to move Home Depot to the next level has been told. But vision, strategy, and leadership alone--while necessary--are not enough. Typically, culture change is unsystematic and, when it works, is based on the charisma of the person leading the change, Ram Charan says. "But Home Depot shows--in perhaps the best example I have seen in my 30-year career--that a cultural transition can be achieved systematically." In this article, Charan lays out the panoply of tools that, wielded in a coordinated and systematic fashion, enabled Home Depot to get a grip on its freewheeling culture so that the company could reap--and sustain--the advantages inherent in its size. Many an up-and-coming company would do well to look to this model to gain similar advantage when the time comes to exchange the thrill of entrepreneurial spirit for the strength of established power.

When corporate leaders or the organizations they represent mess up, they face the difficult decision of whether to apologize publicly. A public apology is a risky move. It's highly political, and every word matters. Refusal to apologize can be smart, or it can be suicidal. Readiness to apologize can be seen as a sign of character or one of weakness. A successful apology can turn enmity into personal and organizational triumph--whereas an apology that's too little, too late, or too transparently tactical can open the floodgates to individual and institutional ruin. Because the stakes are so high, Barbara Kellerman says, leaders should not extend public apologies often or lightly. One or more of the following conditions should apply: The apology is likely to serve an important purpose; the offense is of serious consequence; it's appropriate that the leader assume responsibility for the offense; the leader is the only one who can get the job done; and the cost of saying something is likely lower than the cost of staying silent. The author draws her conclusions from hard data and abundant anecdotal evidence, examining notoriously bad apologizers as well as exceptionally good ones. While selectivity is key, good apologies usually do work. What constitutes a good apology? Acknowledgment of the mistake or wrongdoing, acceptance of responsibility, expression of regret, and assurance that the offense will not be repeated.

In late June 2005, UBS Group CEO Peter Wuffli--anointed "Master of Zurich" by the financial press--was returning to Zurich from the firm's latest three-day Senior Leadership Conference (SLC). Tapping 600 top managers, this SLC featured an outdoor event at a former military site in the Swiss mountains. Under the banner of "Understanding, Commitment, and Trust," teams of 100 executives engaged in a simulation of six worlds--metaphors for the various regions and parts of UBS business. Initial skepticism about the exercise was replaced with enthusiasm for the "mind-boggling" camaraderie that it created. Held above Montreux, Switzerland, home of the International Jazz Festival, the program opened with a taped interview of jazz great Wynton Marsalis asking the audience to equate the dynamics of jazz with the collaboration required to maintain a complex professional services firm. Marsalis contrasted Duke Ellington, who composed for the specific talents of his band members, with John Coltrane, a master of improvisation. "Coltrane played the themes," Wuffli mused. "That's what we do. We've got the vision. We've got all of our different musicians and we're playing to these themes in an integrated way. It does make beautiful music."

KingJewels, one of the leading jewelry manufacturing and trading companies in Hong Kong, was having another profitable year. With its operations director essentially running the company in Hong Kong while the owner and CEO focused his energies on expanding the business into international markets, an opportunity had arisen for foul play. Accounting records had been manipulated and some senior staff were found to have forged shipping documents and accepted bribes from suppliers in exchange for awarding contracts. To complicate matters further, the professional and personal relationships between some key players in the company were blurred, making it even more difficult for the eventual whistle blower to decide her course of action. Illustrates the importance of corporate governance and internal control, even for SMEs, and especially when senior management members of the company concerned had ties that extended beyond professional relationships.

AccuForm, a German-Hong Kong joint venture specializing in the production of chemical coatings for application to garments, is confronted with a situation where an unauthorized Chinese manufacturer had stolen one of AccuForm's experimental coatings, applied it to their own brand of clothing, and sold it to the public as an AccuForm product. The product had caused allergic reactions in some children, and the media had widely reported the incident. It was later discovered there was more to the situation than stolen coating, as some staff were found to have engaged in money laundering, misappropriation of company assets, acceptance of illegitimate rebates, and bribes. The general manager of AccuForm, in addition to having to deal with the media, also had to find a way to resolve the differences in business practices between the company's German and Hong Kong parents, which are thought to have been partially responsible for the incident, as well as rebuild staff morale and customers' confidence in AccuForm's products. Illustrates how differences in company cultures can create difficulty for management, and what are formulas for success in one country may be guarantees of failure in another.

Charles "Ed" Haldeman Jr. is promoted CEO of Putnam Investments after the firm was badly damaged by a series of improper trading practices. He is charged with the task of managing the crisis, repairing the company culture, and putting the firm back into a pattern of growth. Haldeman realizes that nothing less than a radical change in the culture of Putnam Investments would be enough to win back the trust of clients and employees who felt betrayed by the firm's apparent misconduct. He must confront some tough decisions about recently uncovered questions concerning the handling of certain accounting transactions three years earlier and about the continued lagging performance of Voyager, the firm's flagship equity fund.

As students watch the full length feature film Crash, written and directed by Paul Haggis, they may find the character guide helpful in keeping track of who's who and what the characters' main connections are.

Crisis as a source of opportunity and change? How does that happen? This case describes the difficult situation the new dean of the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana faced after Hurricane Katrina hit the city in the late summer of 2005. With a state of emergency declared statewide, in a city with only a shell of their former infrastructure intact, in a university that suffered water damage, and in a community of students and faculty scattered and separated throughout several different cities and states, how was Dean DeNisi supposed to lead-let alone implement his vision? The A case challenges students to think about how DeNisi should proceed in the immediate months to ensure both the return of current students and the survival of the business school. What would all this mean to attracting future Freeman students? The B case describes how DeNisi seized opportunity while in a time of great crisis. The material offers a rich discussion that should evolve into the recognition that leaders who are able to frame crises as potential opportunities will likely manage organizations in a way that will make them more resilient and sometimes better off after the crises.