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A personal coach to help your most promising executives reach their potential--sounds good, doesn't it? According to Steven Berglas, executive coaches can make a bad situation worse. Because of their backgrounds and biases, they ignore psychological problems they don't understand. Companies need to consider psychotherapeutic intervention when the symptoms plaguing an executive are stubborn or severe. Executives with issues that require more than coaching come in many shapes and sizes. Consider Rob Bernstein, an executive vice president of sales at an automotive parts distributor. According to the CEO, Bernstein had just the right touch with clients but caused personnel problems inside the company. The last straw came when Bernstein publicly humiliated a mail clerk who had interrupted a meeting to ask someone to sign for a package. At that point, the CEO assigned Tom Davis to coach Bernstein. Davis, a former corporate lawyer, worked with Bernstein for four years. But Davis only exacerbated the problem by teaching Bernstein techniques for "handling" employees--methods that were condescending at best. Although Bernstein appeared to be improving, he was in fact getting worse. Bernstein's real problems went undetected, and when his boss left the company, he was picked as the successor. Soon enough, Bernstein was again in trouble, suspected of embezzlement. This time, the CEO didn't call Davis; instead, he turned to the author, a trained psychotherapist, for help. Berglas soon realized that Bernstein had a serious narcissistic personality disorder and executive coaching could not help him. As that tale and others in the article teach us, executives to be coached should at the very least first receive a psychological evaluation. And company leaders should beware that executive coaches given free rein can end up wreaking personnel havoc.

Managers invariably use their personal contacts when they need to, say, meet an impossible deadline or learn the truth about a new boss. Increasingly, it's through these informal networks--not just through traditional organizational hierarchies--that information is found and work gets done. But to many senior executives, informal networks are unobservable and ungovernable--and, therefore, not amenable to the tools of management. As a result, executives tend to work around informal networks or, worse, try to ignore them. When they do acknowledge the networks' existence, executives fall back on intuition--scarcely a dependable tool--to guide them in nurturing this social capital. It doesn't have to be that way. It is entirely possible to develop and manage informal networks systematically, say management experts Cross and Prusak. Specifically, senior executives need to focus their attention on four key role-players in informal networks: Central connectors link most employees in an informal network with one another; they provide the critical information or expertise that the entire network draws on to get work done. Boundary spanners connect an informal network with other parts of the company or with similar networks in other organizations. Information brokers link different subgroups in an informal network; if they didn't, the network would splinter into smaller, less effective segments. And finally, there are peripheral specialists, who anyone in an informal network can turn to for specialized expertise but who work apart from most people in the network. The authors describe the four roles in detail, discuss the use of a well-established tool called social network analysis for determining who these role-players are in the network, and suggest ways that executives can transform ineffective informal networks into productive ones.

Preparations for GPC's 75th anniversary are in full swing when the company archivist, David Fisher, uncovers a stash of letters from the founder to a wartime sweetheart. Amid Hud Parker's declarations of devotion is a page featuring formulas for GPC's first product, Parkelite. But it seems clear from the document that Hud Parker was not the miracle plastic's true inventor. David recalls that a lawsuit was brought against the company in 1938 by the father of Karl Gintz, claiming that his son, by then deceased, had been the sole inventor of Parkelite. Hud and Karl had been fellow chemistry students at Princeton, close friends, and army buddies. The lawsuit was decided in favor of GPC, but, David believes, this newly unearthed document would have allowed the Gintz family to prevail. Now Hap Parker, grandson of the founder and GPC's current CEO, must decide what to do. His grandfather's name doesn't deserve to be impugned: Even if Hud hadn't invented Parkelite, he built the company that brought it, and many innovations since, to market. Newland Lowell, GPC's lawyer, counsels Hap that it may not be necessary to divulge the discovery. He lays out a convincing argument that this evidence might not have changed the trial's outcome and he states that no heirs to Karl Gintz have been located. He speculates, plausibly, that the two fellow chemists might have been collaborating on the innovation all along. Still, concealment makes Hap uncomfortable: GPC's corporate culture has always embraced integrity. He's just decided to make the finding public when a chance encounter with three managers gives him pause again. Is it fair to GPC's 8,000 employees to destroy a myth--even if it is a myth--that informs a vibrant and fair-dealing culture? In R0206A and R0206Z, four commentators weigh in on this fictional case.

Preparations for GPC's 75th anniversary are in full swing when the company archivist, David Fisher, uncovers a stash of letters from the founder to a wartime sweetheart. Amid Hud Parker's declarations of devotion is a page featuring formulas for GPC's first product, Parkelite. But it seems clear from the document that Hud Parker was not the miracle plastic's true inventor. David recalls that a lawsuit was brought against the company in 1938 by the father of Karl Gintz, claiming that his son, by then deceased, had been the sole inventor of Parkelite. Hud and Karl had been fellow chemistry students at Princeton, close friends, and army buddies. The lawsuit was decided in favor of GPC, but, David believes, this newly unearthed document would have allowed the Gintz family to prevail. Now Hap Parker, grandson of the founder and GPC's current CEO, must decide what to do. His grandfather's name doesn't deserve to be impugned: Even if Hud hadn't invented Parkelite, he built the company that brought it, and many innovations since, to market. Newland Lowell, GPC's lawyer, counsels Hap that it may not be necessary to divulge the discovery. He lays out a convincing argument that this evidence might not have changed the trial's outcome and he states that no heirs to Karl Gintz have been located. He speculates, plausibly, that the two fellow chemists might have been collaborating on the innovation all along. Still, concealment makes Hap uncomfortable: GPC's corporate culture has always embraced integrity. He's just decided to make the finding public when a chance encounter with three managers gives him pause again. Is it fair to GPC's 8,000 employees to destroy a myth--even if it is a myth--that informs a vibrant and fair-dealing culture? In R0206A and R0206Z, four commentators weigh in on this fictional case.

Tim Blanchard struggles to balance all the demands facing him as a partner of a consulting firm. He must decide how to serve clients, mentor his people, provide strategy and direction to the high-tech group, and spend time with family. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

James Aramanda, head of Mellon Investor Services, must decide how to change the focus of his business. He works with consultants to create a change strategy to enhance a business that is already doing well. Will he be able to interest his professionals in changing the nature of the way they meet customer expectations and demands while simultaneously motivating and including his professionals in the process?

NASA chief Daniel Goldin made enemies during his controversial tenure, but even critics agree that his aggressive, no-nonsense tactics transformed the moribund agency into a lean and innovative operation. He talks candidly about what he learned and what he would have done differently.

Why do some people bounce back from life's hardships while others despair? HBR senior editor Diane Coutu looks at the nature of individual and organizational resilience, issues that have gained special urgency in light of the recent terrorist attacks, war, and recession. In the business arena, resilience has found its way onto the list of qualities sought in employees. As one of Coutu's interviewees puts it, "More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person's level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails." Theories abound about what produces resilience, but three fundamental characteristics seem to set resilient people and companies apart from others. The first characteristic is the capacity to accept and face down reality. In looking hard at reality, we prepare ourselves to act in ways that allow us to endure and survive hardships. Second, resilient people and organizations possess an ability to find meaning in some aspects of life. And values are just as important as meaning; value systems at resilient companies change very little over the long haul and are used as scaffolding in times of trouble. The third building block of resilience is the ability to improvise. Within an arena of personal capabilities or company rules, the ability to solve problems without the usual or obvious tools is a great strength.

No matter how we rail against the status quo, most of us are reluctant to take action in the workplace. Faced with choosing between our values and jobs, most of us either resign ourselves to the situation or leave. Yet, society's tempered radicals--individuals who create large-scale change in subtle, incremental ways--have learned that you can rock the boat without falling out of it. Award-winning director Robert Redford has been described as the quintessential tempered radical. His Sundance Institute, tucked away in the Utah mountains, was conceived as a haven for writers and directors with promising ideas but little more than lint in their pockets. Sundance has proven such a successful incubator of independent films that, perhaps ironically, it has become one of the most influential forces in Hollywood. In this article, Redford talks about how to change an industry--specifically, how he and Sundance have influenced the movie business. Based on his sometimes harsh experiences as an environmental activist and a film actor--he was burned in effigy by demonstrators and figuratively by film distributors who deemed Downhill Racer too uncommercial--Redford concluded that "if you want to crack the system, you can't hit it directly; you have to work behind the scenes." Over the past 20 years, he has experimented again and again with grassroots projects--pieces of which he incorporated into Sundance. Redford's multifaceted approach to change includes earning credibility and then leveraging his successes; practicing the arts of compromise and persuasion to get projects completed; gathering support along the way; and, most important, persisting--tactics that a patient manager in any industry can apply.

Flight SQ006, operated by Singapore Airlines, crashed on 31 October 2000. The accident was the first with fatalities in the 28-year history of the airline. More accustomed to favourable reports associated with its successes, the airline had to confront the challenges of managing a fatal accident and subsequent adverse publicity, which proved potentially damaging to its image and reputation.

Describes a major organizational transformation process at John Hancock Financial Services in which CEO Stephen Brown takes a series of measured steps to turn the old-line mutual insurance company into a competitive, performance-oriented financial services firm. At the end of the case, Brown is considering whether to take the company public. Raises question of leadership, alignment, and culture change.

Details the rationale for and design of a unique organizational response by Motorola to the challenges of contingent staffing at its semiconductor facility in Austin, Texas. The new outsourcing strategy is built on principles of supply chain management and business webbing to deliver flexibility in staffing, cost controls, and high-quality workers. Through a detailed description of the company's existing methods for hiring contingent workers, it brings to light the organizational costs borne by firms that fail to develop an integrated strategic approach and provides an opportunity to examine the incentives of the different players (both internal and external) to participate in a new staffing model based on interfirm alliances with staffing companies. Also, sets up a discussion of the potential difficulties the company is likely to run into in implementing the new staffing model and broader issues, such as the evolving nature of the employment contract, employee trust and loyalty, and strategic issues that arise when multiple firms compete for the same workforce.

The director of development at a large law firm and two other members of a selection committee will be interviewing three candidates for an articling position at the firm. The director must decide what questions to ask of the three law students applying, keeping in mind what questions she could not ask of the candidates. Through role play, students are given the opportunity to develop interview questions and interview the candidates.

In the wake of corporate acquisitions, mergers, and spin-offs, considerable senior management attention has been devoted to corporate identity and its communication to key stakeholder groups. This article provides a framework to help management achieve a clearer understanding and better management of their corporation's identities. Many firms operate with a belief in a single monolithic corporate identity. Our research leads to a different view: Organizations have multiple identities. We delineate five kinds of identity within a framework termed the AC2ID TestTM (ACCID), namely, the actual, communicated, conceived, ideal, and desired identities. These reflect respectively: the current, distinct attributes of the organization; what the organization communicates about itself; the perceptions of the corporation by stakeholders; the optimum positioning for the organization; and the corporate vision from the perspective of the CEO or management board. Not only should management understand its multiple identities, it also should be alert to critical misalignments among them, as these can seriously weaken a company.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Over the past couple of decades, management innovations have pushed companies toward the ideal of the "boundaryless" organization. As a result of these changes, formal reporting structures and detailed work processes have a much diminished role in the way important work is accomplished. Instead, informal networks of employees are increasingly at the forefront, and the general health and "connectivity" of these groups can have a significant impact on strategy execution and organizational effectiveness. Many corporate leaders intuitively understand this, but few spend any real time assessing or supporting informal networks. And because they do not receive adequate resources or executive attention, these groups are often fragmented, and their efforts are often disrupted by management practices or organizational design principles that are biased in favor of task specialization and individual rather than collaborative endeavors. The authors initiated a research program two years ago to determine how organizations can better support work occurring in and through informal networks of employees; they assessed more than 40 networks in 23 organizations. They discovered in all cases that the networks provided strategic and operational benefits by enabling members to collaborate effectively; they also found that managers truly wanting to assist these groups had to overcome six myths about how networks operate. Explains the six myths and why they are harmful; in place of these assumptions, the authors offer reality checks that can be implemented to help networks become more effective.

We've all heard, or perhaps even told, the "organizational lie": We're customer centric; everyone's performance is above average; we're the darling of our industry, coming up with one innovation after another. That last one was true of Advanced Cardiovascular Systems (ACS) in the past, but not when Ginger Graham took over as CEO. From that first moment in 1993, Graham chose to tell the truth about ACS's situation--that R&D was practically at war with product development, yields were down, and customers were disgruntled. And ever since, she's seen the benefits of exploding organizational lies. Truth telling is something that's hard to argue with but difficult to do. And, indeed, ACS instituted some radical practices to create its culture of honesty. Every senior manager was assigned a coach from the ranks who regularly solicited feedback from everyone, high and low, about the executive's performance. To get the truth, though, ACS executives learned that they had to offer it up themselves--the whole truth about the company's financial state, its problems, and its triumphs. In return, they could ask their employees for help in solving the problems; passive complainers became active partners in the company's fortunes. ACS management spreads the word about the virtues of honesty through vivid stories of corporate history and quirky rituals. Every quarter, it holds companywide meetings in which the faults of top managers are examined--to keep them honest and tough enough to go on telling the truth. In fact, in the process of openly owning up to problems and jointly fixing them with employees, the entire company grew more powerful, nimble, and tough-minded, able to respond quickly to change, both internal and external.

All of us struggle from time to time with the question of personal meaning: "Am I living the way I want to live?" This type of questioning is healthy; business leaders need to go through it every few years to replenish their energy, creativity, and commitment--and their passion for work. In this article, the authors describe the signals that it's time to reevaluate your choices and illuminate strategies for responding to those signals. Such wake-up calls come in various forms. Some people feel trapped or bored and may realize that they have adjusted to the frustrations of their work to such an extent that they barely recognize themselves. For others, the signal comes when they are faced with an ethical challenge or suddenly discover their true calling. Once you have realized that it's time to take stock of your life, there are strategies to help you consider where you are, where you're headed, and where you want to be. Many people find that calling a time-out--either in the form of an intense, soul-searching exercise or a break from corporate life--is the best way to reconnect with their dreams. People no longer expect their leaders to have all the answers, but they do expect them to try to keep their own passion alive and to support employees through that process.

Supplements the (A) case.

In 1997, the American Heart Association (AHA) Western States Affiliate reorganized to increase fundraising revenues for the nonprofit. Rather than having a wide range of fundraising and programmatic duties, all staff now had key fundraising and programmatic activities. Some staff had been dissatisfied with the new scope and reporting structure of their positions. Roman Bowser, the executive vice president and CEO of the affiliate, made several adjustments to the organizational structure to deal with problems that arose with the organization and had other issues to consider in 2002 related to staff and local community volunteers--the lifeblood of the organization. Furthermore, a national AHS task force was recommending a reorganization of the AHA along the same lines that Bowser had used for his Western States Affiliate. Bowser was not certain that the national center and other affiliates could learn and benefit from his model, which he had tailored for a particular staff and geographical territory. He wondered how and if the AHA could leverage his organizational model across disparate communities nationally and what the impact might be on the long-term viability of the AHA.

Examines the possible reasons for unsatisfactory performance and proposes ways of dealing with it.