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This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Many international business leaders consider a global mind-set desirable, but few know how to embed it companywide. A corporate global mind-set differs from having a few managers think globally. That comes first. But global thinking must be incorporated into an organization's processes so that everyone knows how to handle the tug-of-war between local responsiveness and corporate efficiency. Two Northeastern University professors studied global companies and found that inculcating a corporate global mind-set lagged behind the will to do so. IBM made the most progress. Having originally overemphasized global consistency, it learned to embrace a more flexible approach, adopting global policy development teams, worldwide knowledge networks, and appropriate performance measures. Unfortunately, many American executives regard globalization as pursuing standardized products through centralized decision making. In favoring global consistency, they often fail to secure local cooperation. Through a global mind-set, corporate decision-making processes become more permeable to influences from beyond the home country. The authors show how managers can determine when an issue calls for a locally adaptive response, when it calls for a globally consistent response, and when both elements are needed. The corporate global mind-set is a requirement for motivating a diverse and sprawling work force and giving it a common purpose.

Reviews Josie Esquivel's career history, detailing how, through her personal attributes, skills, experiences, and organizational practices she has developed into a star analyst. Should Esquivel accept an offer to leave Lehman Brothers for Morgan Stanley? To make this decision, Esquivel needs to reflect on what made her successful and to consider seriously what it would take to move her "franchise" to another company without compromising her performance as a star.

A shift in strategy from broadcasting standardized programs throughout its footprint to localized programming necessitates a review of STAR's organizational structure. Growing complexity and a need for local responsiveness point toward adoption of a country-based organizational structure. The question arises concerning the systems that must be in place if headquarters is truly to decentralize decision rights. The case also raises the issue of the need for senior executives at corporate to redefine their roles.

Keith Ferrazzi had certainly come a long way. The son of a steelworker and a cleaning lady, he attended an elite elementary school and then a top prep school in Pennsylvania, followed by undergraduate work at Yale and then Harvard Business School. He was wooed by top consulting firms and ended up on the partner track at Deloitte Consulting, where he built the company's marketing function. He left consulting to become the chief marketing officer of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, eventually leaving the company to become CEO of YaYa Media. In 1997, he was named by Crain's Chicago Business as a member of the "40 Under 40." In 1999, he was also named one of the "Power 10" by Business Marketing, and in 2002 was named among the most creative Americans in Who's Really Who. The World Economic Forum named him a "Global Leader of Tomorrow." In the summer of 2003, Ferrazzi was at a key crossroads in his life. He had sold YaYa Media to a company called American Vantage. He questioned the opportunities for growth within YaYa and was considering a transition from the company into a new role. Ferrazzi faced two questions: First, what should he do? Should he work for a large company in a senior management position, ultimately seeking to become the CEO? Should he seek out another CEO position at a smaller, entrepreneurial company? Should he do something entirely different, such as turn his skill at networking and his interest in teaching others how to build relationships into a business? Second, what other bases of influence besides networking and building social relationships should or could he develop?

In today's organizations, leaders need to be able to influence employees to be motivated and committed to high performance; no longer can managers simply get by dealing with employees only through a power relationship or by telling employees what to do. Leaders need to look beyond behavior (level one) to their employees' thinking (level two) and their VABEs (values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations--level three) about their lives, the world, their work, and so on. This note explains the differences between these three levels of human activity.

In 1998, 38-year-old Gary Loveman was perfectly content with his job as an untenured associate professor at the Harvard Business School. He was a popular teacher with standing room only classes in service management. He lived comfortably with his family in Massachusetts and had successful consulting engagements and executive education assignments with companies such as Harrah's Entertainment. His prospects for tenure review, coming up in the next year or two, looked good. Then his life dramatically changed when the then-CEO of Harrah's, Phil Satre, offered him a job as chief operating officer (COO) of the company. Commuting from his home in Massachusetts, Loveman took the job and never turned back. But hiring Loveman caused some internal and external rumblings. Loveman had never before managed anyone apart from his administrative assistant and some research assistants; he was now going to manage 15 casinos with more than 10,000 hotel rooms and over 35,000 employees. The company was also closing one of its largest acquisitions to date, Showboat. Moreover, the gaming industry was not, in 1998, a common destination for MBA graduates, let alone PhDs--it was an industry dominated by insiders who had spent their careers in gaming, working their way up from the bottom. The tasks facing Loveman as he joined Harrah's were daunting. He had somehow to gain credibility and respect inside Harrah's, as well as in the industry. He had to lead Harrah's through a transition to a more marketing-focused company and help the company break out of a financial performance plateau. And he had to build a set of relationships and a power base to potentially attain the CEO position when Satre stepped down in five years. What could he do to accomplish all this?

Leo Burnett Co. Ltd. is a global advertising agency. The company is working with one of its largest clients to launch a new line of hair care products into the Canadian and Taiwanese test markets in preparation for a global rollout. Normally, after a brand launching, the global brand center turns over the responsibility for the brand and future campaigns to the local market offices. In this case, however, the brand launch was not successful. Team communications and team dynamics broke down in recent months and the relationships are strained. Further complicating matters are a number of client and agency staffing changes that could jeopardize the stability of the team and the agency-client relationship. The global account director must decide whether to proceed with the expected decision to modify the global team structure to give one of the teams more autonomy or whether to maintain greater centralized control over the team. She must also recommend how to move forward with the brand and determine what changes in team structure or management are necessary.

Ignorance management is arguably a more important skill than knowledge management. Mastering nescience requires learning four basic principles.

Managers are told: Be global and be local. Collaborate and compete. Change perpetually, and maintain order. Make the numbers while nurturing your people. To be effective, managers need to consider the juxtapositions to arrive at a deep integration of these seemingly contradictory concerns. That means they must focus not only on what they have to accomplish but also on how they have to think. When the authors, respectively the director of the Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, set out to develop a master's program for practicing managers, they saw that they could not rely on the usual MBA educational structure, which divides the management world into discrete business functions such as marketing and accounting. They needed an educational structure that encouraged synthesis rather than separation. Managing, they determined, involves five tasks, each with its own mindset: managing the self (the reflective mindset); managing organizations (the analytic mindset); managing context (the worldly mindset); managing relationships (the collaborative mindset); and managing change (the action mindset). The program is built on the exploration and integration of those five aspects of the managerial mind.

Procter & Gamble has long been regarded as a major power of the marketing world and a prime training ground for marketers. But in the summer of 2000, with half of P&G's top 15 brands losing market share and employee morale in ruins, company executives realized that the marketing organization was in trouble. In an attempt to rebuild P&G's marketing strength, James Stengel, the heir apparent to the chief marketing officer position, began working with University of Cincinnati professors Chris Allen and Andrea Dixon on a new training program to fix the weaknesses in the marketing organization. But when the two professors began interviewing P&G senior executives, they discovered that the plans in motion for mapping out the marketing group's recovery were based not on data but on the intuition of a few individuals at corporate headquarters. So began the most comprehensive internal research endeavor in P&G marketing's history. Using the company's existing process for consumer research, Allen and Dixon shadowed employees, conducted one-on-one interviews, held focus-group sessions, and surveyed 3,500 members of the marketing staff to learn what the company was doing right--and wrong--and what mattered most to its people. The results led to the most sweeping redesign of P&G's marketing organization in 60 years.

Deutsche Post World Net, the German postal monopoly, faced significant challenges as it began the process of integrating three businesses: Deutsche Post Euro Express, its own ground-based parcel delivery service, and two companies it had acquired--DHL, the worldwide express delivery service, and Danzas, a worldwide air and ocean freight company. The cultural differences alone were imposing. Enter EuroCup. For 20 years, DHL employees had held a soccer tournament to strengthen company culture across national boundaries. Canceled the previous year due to budget constraints, the EuroCup tournament was revived in 2003--in part to help with the postmerger integration. But did the event really help? HBR senior editor Paul Hemp attended EuroCup 2003. He set out to answer a number of questions relevant to any company staging an ambitious off-site intended to encourage teamwork and boost morale. How does a company determine whether such a large-scale event, even one that generates goodwill, is worth the investment? Does the team building extend to those back home who don't get to attend? Can intense competition between teams begin to overshadow the spirit of cooperation that such an event is meant to engender?

Describes the Colorado fire tragedy that resulted in 12 deaths. Examines leadership, decision making, and team dynamics in a high-stress, crisis situation.

Within a short time frame, seven diverse team members assemble to write a business plan for a new company and struggle to define their roles, make decisions together, and resolve conflict. Henry Tam, a second-year Harvard MBA student, who joins an aspiring start-up company and a fellow classmate to enter the school's business plan contest. The founders of the company are two internationally accomplished musicians and a 1987 Harvard MBA, all Russian, who are trying to create, produce, and sell a unique computer-based music game. Conflict builds as the team generates a range of ideas about how to market their product, but has trouble agreeing on which ideas to pursue. Henry Tam wrestles with how to fix the problems that have hindered the team's progress.

This team-based exercise uses an educational tool called "The Electric Maze," developed by Interel Corp., to teach insights about the social and psychological challenges facing employees who must engage in collaborative learning. The tool is a grid-patterned rug with 54 squares implanted with electronic programmable sensors that beep when pressure is applied. The instructor programs the maze in advance to create a pathway of nonbeeping contiguous squares from one side to the other. Because students have no information about how to traverse the maze correctly, experimentation--a systematic iterative process of trial and failure--is needed to develop a solution. Provides instructions for students participating in the exercise and should be distributed only at the beginning of the simulation.

Describes the 1949 firefighting tragedy in Montana that led to the deaths of 12 smoke jumpers. Explores the myriad of poor decisions by the firefighting crew and their foreman.

People's tendency to hoard their information and release it only selectively is often a core problem in many corporate cultures. But some firms are finding that their employees are more eager to share when they perceive there's something in it for them--like appearing more valuable to their companies.

The past decade may well be remembered as the era of the high-flying, aggressive leader. Corner-office titans like Kenneth Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, and Bernard Ebbers graced the covers of business magazines. Then scandal set in, and the stars fell to earth. In this article, social psychologist Roderick M. Kramer asks an important question: Why do so many leaders--not just in business, but also in politics, religion, and the media--display remarkable adeptness and ability while courting power, only to engage in even more remarkable bouts of folly once that power has been secured? Kramer, who has spent most of his career researching how leaders get to the top, says that the systems through which we select our leaders force executives to sacrifice the attitudes and behaviors that are essential to their survival once they have reached the top. Society has learned to consider risk taking and rule breaking as markers of good leadership. As a result, leaders come to believe that normal limits don't apply to them and that they are entitled to any spoils they can seize. The leaders who do remain grounded exhibit five common psychological and behavioral habits: They simplify their lives, remaining humble and "awfully ordinary." They shine a light on their weaknesses instead of trying to cover them up. They float trial balloons to uncover the truth and prepare for the unexpected. They sweat the small stuff. And they reflect more, not less.

Laura Esserman, a surgeon and faculty member at the University of California at San Francisco as well as a graduate of Stanford Business School, is engaged in a major effort to change the delivery of breast cancer services and the information systems used to support both research and patient care. A true visionary with enormous personal charm and charisma, Esserman has run into obstacles and opposition as she tries to get support in a bureaucratic, complex, academic medical organization. Focuses on Esserman's accomplishments and various other actors and brings up the issue of how she should develop more power and influence to move along her vision.

Supplements the (A) case.

A new CEO, Steve Luczo, together with COO Bill Watkins, have led a turnaround of Seagate, raising productivity dramatically and increasing innovation through teamwork, cross-functional collaboration, and other transformations in the culture of this manufacturer of disk drives for computers. After going private as part of the turnaround, Seagate executed a successful public offering in 2002. Several months later, the CEO wonders how to convince investors that the capabilities built in Seagate's turnaround will help the company flourish and innovate in a demanding technology industry.