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Designed to help students identify patterns in their approaches to developing networks of relationships. A "network" refers to the set of relationships that help people to advance professionally, get things done, and more generally, develop personally and professionally. A rewritten version of an earlier exercise.

Designed to help executives identify patterns in their approaches to developing networks of relationships. A "network" refers to the set of relationships that help people to advance professionally, get things done, and more generally, develop professionally and personally. A rewritten version of an earlier exercise.

Craig Parks is a 1992 HBS graduate who, without much deliberation, returns to work for his former employer, Taylor Burton on Wall Street. The choice proves to be a poor fit for Craig. The case documents his decision-making process, personal history, and the dilemma he confronts once he realizes returning to Taylor Burton was the wrong decision.

In 1993, the firm began to move from a traditional hierarchical structure to client-focused teams. The case describes the process and some consequences of this restructuring. Performance seems to be improving, but some employees preferred the structure certainty and client variety of the old days. How does management deal with these issues?

"In my role, I'm the guy who catches it all. I can't seem to get people to stand still and listen, and I can't continue to take all the hostility. I don't know how much longer I can last in this job." The executive who speaks these words is one of several who describe their feelings of burnout in this article, first published in May/June 1981. Anyone can feel overwhelmed by the challenges posed by complex organizations and the need to deal with conflicting personalities, says psychologist Harry Levinson. In this article, he suggests ways in which top management can help prevent burnout. In his retrospective commentary, Levinson notes that although burnout is as prevalent today as it was 15 years ago, the assumption underlying his article--that top management can play a role in preventing burnout--now feels outdated. Why? Because we are living in an age of self-reliance.

CEOs inspire sentiments from awe to wrath, but there is little debate over their importance in the business world. Their decisions change companies and lives. But what do CEOs do all day? Where do they go? Charles Farkas and Suzy Wetlaufer analyzed interviews with 160 chief executives around the world and examined the attitudes, activities, and behaviors that shape the answers to these questions. At the outset, the authors thought they might find 160 approaches to leadership. Instead, they identified only five, each with a singular focus: strategy, people, expertise, controls, or change.

Planning a major change in your organization? If so, chances are you have arranged a huge rally, rousing speeches, videos, and special editions of the company paper. Stop. This sort of communication is not working. If you want people to change the way they do their jobs, you must change the way you communicate with them. Drawing on their own research and the research of other communication experts from the past two decades, the authors argue that senior managers--and most communication consultants--have refused to hear what frontline workers have been trying to tell them: When you need to communicate a major change, stop communicating values, communicate face-to-face, and spend most of your time, money, and effort on frontline supervisors.

Despite the best efforts of senior executives, major change initiatives often fail. Those failures have at least one common root: Executives and employees see change differently. For senior managers, change means opportunity--both for the business and for themselves. But for many employees, change is seen as disruptive and intrusive. To close this gap, says Paul Strebel, managers must reconsider their employees' "personal compacts"--the mutual obligations and commitments that exist between employees and the company. Personal compacts in all companies have three dimensions: formal, psychological, and social. Employees determine their responsibilities, their level of commitment to their work, and the company's values by asking questions along these dimensions. How a company answers them is the key to successful change.

Increasingly, work in today's corporations unfolds in small, temporary groups where the stakes are high, turnover is chronic, foul-ups can spread, and the unexpected is common. Karl E. Weick finds lessons for senior managers watching over such groups in an unusual source: Norman Maclean's 1992 book, Young Men and Fire, which reconstructs the circumstances of a deadly fire in Montana's Mann Gulch that claimed the lives of 13 young men. The author believes that corporate leaders can learn from this example by developing groups capable of improvisation, wise behavior, respectful interaction, and communication.

People from different national cultures often operate under different assumptions about what is appropriate behavior. In organizational settings, these cultural differences in underlying assumptions can significantly affect interactions when individuals from various nationalities meet. This note describes a landmark study by Geert Hofstede of the impact of national culture on the work-related attitudes and values of IBM employees in 40 countries.

Describes a manager's role in developing a staff group responsible for enhancing the efficiency of Xerox's worldwide logistics and inventory management systems. Illustrates a range of management strategies for upward and lateral influence in a complex organizational context, as well as the use of a number of innovative human resource management techniques. If used with John A. Clendenin it allows for the discussion of career development issues.

In this double-barreled review, two leading authors present different but complementary theories of leadership. Warren Bennis reviews Howard Gardner's Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership, predicting that it will become a classic text on leadership. Harry Levinson presents us with "The Leader as Analyst," a review of Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries's Life and Death in the Executive Fast Lane.

This case describes a community-based healthcare clinic and the issues facing the management and board of directors. The issues raised are common problems faced by all types of nonprofit organizations: insufficient fundraising and marketing policies to guide board decision making, confusion over staff and board roles in decision making, poorly thought-out bylaws that contribute to the confusion over board and staff roles, the challenge of harnessing the diverse backgrounds and opinions of a community-based board of directors, and lack of sound financial planning.

City Year, a successful nonprofit organization, is studying how, when, and where to expand to new sites. This case provides the opportunity to understand the strategy and structure of a successful delivery system for human services. That analysis raises the question of how best to expand to new sites, highlighting classic challenges faced by entrepreneurial enterprises seeking to grow.

Maureen Frye, assistant product manager at Quaker Steel and Alloy Corp., is asked to implement an action plan for changing the call pattern of the salesforce. Currently the salesforce is spending too much time on small accounts. Earlier Frye attempted to change their call patterns without success. Now with the express call mandate of top management she has to present a plan that will work.

New reports announcing that yet another business has stumbled into a crisis--often without warning and through no direct fault of its management--seem as regular as the tide. And the spectrum of business crises is so wide that it is impossible to list each type. On a single day this year, the Washington Post reported a series of crashes suffered by American Eagle Airlines, the bankruptcy of Orange County, and Intel's travails with its Pentium microprocessor. Fortunately, almost every crisis contains within itself the seeds of success as well as the roots of failure. Finding, cultivating, and harvesting that potential success is the essence of crisis management.

A decade of process improvements has transformed the way most corporations operate and, at the same time, the job of the senior executive. Top-down autocrats are out and bottom-up teams are in. The message seems to be: Get the processes right, and the company will manage itself. But this message belies a simple truth: Managers, not processes, run companies. In fact, process-focused companies need more top-down management, not less. However, given the complexities of modern business competition, no single individual can do all that it takes to achieve success for a company. Success depends on the willingness and ability of the entire senior executive group to address not just their individual functional or divisional responsibilities but also their collective responsibility for the company as a whole.

Describes the situation facing the head of a rapidly growing industry-focused group within a consulting company. Highlights the dilemmas of being a "producing manager" (i.e., a professional who has both individual production as well as management responsibilities). Issues raised include: delegation, developing subordinates, developing an agenda, and building an organization.

Encourages managers to think critically about how to prepare for and give a performance appraisal interview. Presents frameworks for evaluating subordinates' work and suggestions for coaching them.

Presents the background information to watching the video reenactment of the Cranfield-Kearney Performance Appraisal Interview.