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Moo Cluck Moo owners Harry Moorhouse and Brian Parker never really thought about a living wage when they opened their fast food restaurant. It was never a question - they just thought it was the right thing to do. Providing a living wage would mean happier employees, which would lead to better retention and better service. Now that they are considering franchising the business they are wondering if employee wages will be a contract provision. If so, all of their best intentions may be for naught.

In 2016, the executive vice-president of commercial services for Sibanye Gold, Westonaria (Sibanye), the largest gold producer in South Africa, faced a challenge. The company's latest acquisition had been particularly difficult, with much resistance from the acquired management team. Although the executive vice-president tried to empathize with the management team who had done things a certain way for decades, he was frustrated with their lack of co-operation and lists of concerns. The management team needed to internalize and learn to live by Sibanye's values, encapsulated in the acronym CARE-commitment, accountability, respect, and enabling. How could the executive vice-president help the management team to change their traditional mindset so they could effectively manage mining operations under the new company?

In October 2015, a low-level staff accountant was suddenly ecstatic about his career prospects. The Chartered Professional Accountant recruitment process had been gruelling, but the end result made it all the more satisfying. After nearly two years of networking and getting to know firms while they closely evaluated him-and which concluded with seemingly endless interviews-the staff accountant had finally received job offers from his top choices. However, thrilled as he was with the result, he now faced a whole new challenge: what approach would he take to deliver the news to his current employer, where he planned to remain employed with for the next 11 months? Should he tell his employer immediately and risk termination and/or a tense work environment? Or should he keep it a secret as long as possible?

In June 2013, the senior vice-president of talent management of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), recognized an organizational need at the bank. He realized that, to build a strong workforce, CIBC needed to move from simply filling diversity targets through recruitment to a focus on the development and advancement of a leadership talent pool. Towards that goal, he appointed the vice-president of executive talent management to lead a new diversity and inclusion department. CIBC had an even representation of women at an aggregate level, but the company wanted to improve the level of representation at the executive level. The vice-president of executive talent management conducted an internal and external analysis of gender diversity and inclusion in the financial sector. She then wondered how to continue the momentum by leveraging CIBC's strong track record as a company committed to diversity, hoping to evolve the strategic focus on gender. She also wanted to determine which key leaders to engage and how best to secure their sponsorship.

The author visited Afghanistan in 2003 as part of a U.S. delegation focused on improving the lives of women. Her idea was to start a business that would employ the women of that country to make a product she could sell in the United States. Some locally woven rugs caught her eye; she carried them back home and started looking for initial funding. She set up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and began working to construct an entirely new and socially responsible supply chain. ARZU's goal was to create a sustainable business model linking well-paying jobs to behaviors that over time would shift the cultural norm. The company negotiated a "social contract" with male heads of household that set conditions for women in the home to become its weavers: All children (including girls) must attend government school full-time, and all adult women must be "released" from the family compound to attend ARZU's literacy classes or for transport to medical clinics when pregnant. Once the business model was in place, recruiting weavers required an intensive, house-to-house outreach. But as word spread that the company would pay the local rate as a salary (rather than piecework) and that women could earn a bonus for highest-quality work, families sought to join the program. Today ARZU has a waiting list. All the company's weavers are now literate (whereas 90% of Afghan women remain illiterate), and 20% are putting a child through university. Working and earning money has developed their dignity and self-esteem, and the men of their villages have come to view them as capable human beings.

The toughest calls managers have to make come in situations when they have worked hard to gather the facts and have done the best analysis they can, but they still don't know what to do. Then judgment--a fusion of thinking, feelings, experience, imagination, and character--becomes critical. The author offers five practical questions to improve your odds of making sound judgments: (1) What are the net, net consequences of all my options? (2) What are my core obligations? (3) What will work in the world as it is? (4) Who are we? (5) What can I live with? All five questions must be answered, according to the author: "Each question is an important voice in the centuries-long conversation about what counts as a sound decision regarding a hard problem with high stakes for other people." If you work through these questions, you'll know that you've approached the problem in the right way--not just as a good manager but as a thoughtful human being.

In early November 2014, Chris Green, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Family Care Canada (Family Care), was preparing for the upcoming board meeting, where Chris would consult with the board about a difficult operating decision. For the past 24 years, Family Care had run a national awareness campaign to reduce violence in Canadian communities. In 2014, the advertising agency hired by Family Care proposed a new approach to the campaign to broaden its reach to young men and women. However, the largest local chapter of Family Care was uncomfortable with this new approach. As a leader, Chris felt torn. It was essential to respond to the beliefs and opinions of the chapters, but at the same time, it was necessary to ensure relevance of the organization with the next generation of men and women. How should Chris lead the volunteers, staff, chapters, and board through this decision? Many students struggle with the concept that they may hold unconscious beliefs inconsistent with their conscious, rational beliefs or assume that implicit bias is something that is experienced by other people, but not themselves. Using a written case and video content, this case is designed to reveal these contradictions to students, encouraging them to reflect on their own beliefs and behaviours. The written case provides information about the organization and the decision to be made, providing context for students to assess Chris Green's leadership. The video provides a closer look at Chris' personal approach to leadership, to allow each student to evaluate Chris as a leader.

The Robert A. Toigo Foundation was created in 1990 "to change the face of finance" by increasing the number of talented underrepresented minorities at the highest executive levels of leadership within the industry. With support from several donors from the financial services industry, the Toigo Foundation offered a comprehensive mentoring program and financial support for Toigo Fellows, minorities who were pursuing finance-related careers at selective graduate business schools. Nancy Sims, a woman of color with extensive leadership experience in the financial services industry, became involved with the Toigo Foundation during its early years: first as a volunteer mentor to several Toigo Fellows, then as a member of the Foundation's Board of Directors, then ultimately as the Foundation's President & CEO in 1998. Over the next ten years, Sims led the nonprofit Foundation through periods of reorganization and growth, applying her business acumen to balance deftly the roles she played in leading the Foundation's efforts while simultaneously justifying the merits and the imperative of underrepresented racioethnic minorities to industry leaders and educational partners. Sims now faced a new challenge: how would the ongoing financial crisis of 2008 affect the Foundation's ability to fulfill its mission? What should Sims do?

This case focuses on succession planning for Southcentral Foundation's (SCF) long-time president and CEO, Katherine Gottlieb. The case opens with Gottlieb reflecting on a succession planning meeting with SCF's Board of Directors and on her twenty year leadership trajectory. It then transitions to provide information about the American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAIN) health care system and outlines SCF's mission, vision, and key tenants of the organization's culture: customer-ownership, core concepts and continuous improvement. After a subsequent section on SCF's approach to governance and workforce development, the case concludes with Gottlieb's main considerations in selecting the next CEO. Gottlieb is an extraordinary leader who has defined SCF's vision, mission and unique organizational culture for over two decades. Students will consider the challenges a new leader may face in sustaining the existing culture when Gottlieb retires, evaluate the benefits and pitfalls of choosing a homegrown versus external successor for the CEO position, and consider qualities that SCF's next leader must embody.

Rapid progress in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has pro¬voked intense debate about the implications of this trend for the modern workplace. Some see a driver of economic growth and boundless opportunities to improve living standards; while others see existential threats ranging from killer robots to widespread unemployment. The authors argue that employers face four choices when it comes to the automation of jobs: replace, automate, relieve or empower. They discuss the pros and cons of each, and the skills that will be most valuable in an increasingly automated work environment.

If you prepare for failure, failure may be more likely. New research suggests that formulating a plan B in the event that plan A does not work out has a negative effect on performance.

This Reading provides a user guide for leading and participating in teams; it is designed to give a clear sense of how to design, launch, and manage effective teams. The Introduction notes that teams are the basic building blocks of organizations but they often underperform or even fail, illustrated by a video detailing a fatal plane crash attributed to poor teamwork. The Essential Reading (31 pages in length) discusses the evolution of teams, noting the recent trend from stable bounded teams ("traditional teams") to more fluid and unbounded ones ("4D teams" or "teaming"). It then discusses team effectiveness, common reasons teams fail, and the concept of team process gains and losses. Next, it provides a guide to leading effective teams focused on three levers: 1) team design (setting team purpose, composition, structure, timeline, reward structure, and resources); 2) team launch (establishing productive norms and a shared mindset); and 3) team process management (monitoring processes and dynamics, intervening when appropriate). The section ends with a brief discussion of team culture and a graphic of the three-lever model. The optional Supplemental Reading (9 pages in length) examines the relationship between an organization's structure and the success of teams, bridging material on teams and organization design. This Reading has four videos: "United Airlines Flight 173" shows how poor teamwork can lead to failure; "The Evolution of Teams" provides a quick summary of the evolution of teams; "Tune In to the Skills Your Team Offers" shows how a team adjusted member roles to improve performance; and "Create Norms to Unify Your Team" covers a successful team launch. The Reading has one Interactive Illustration: a test of social sensitivity used in recent research on team effectiveness.

How can organizations put dynamic capabilities into practice? This article focuses on the power of organizational design, showing how managers can harness new organizational forms to build a capacity for sensing, shaping and seizing opportunities. Fast-moving environments favor open organization and self-organizing processes that quickly convert individual capabilities into actionable collective intellect. However, such self-organizing processes require managers to design and execute them. Using Valve Corporation as a case example, this article shows how new design principles-such as polyarchy, social proofs, and new forms of open organization-allow organizations to build dynamic capabilities for sustained innovation in dynamic environments.

After 18 months of attempting to transition the company to holacracy, Tony Hsieh, Zappos' celebrity CEO, decided it was time to make the change happen. In March 2015, he sent an email to all Zappos employees offering them 3 months' severance pay if they felt that self-management was not for them. One month later, 14% of the workforce had quit, including 20% of the tech department, potentially putting at risk a complex transition to a new online platform mandated by parent company Amazon. The case recounts how Tony Hsieh financed, championed, and ultimately became CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos. A passionate entrepreneur who made millions at a young age, Hsieh was known for his penthouse parties, for what he referred to as his "tribe". He brought the same sense of community to Zappos, which he moved from San Francisco to Las Vegas where employees could "be like family". Despite the company's unabashedly weird culture, it had the lowest employee turnover rate in the industry. Widely admired for its outstanding customer service, Zappos was repeatedly listed among Fortune's "Best Places To Work." When in 2009 Amazon acquired Zappos for $1.2 billion, it promised to preserve its management and culture. But Hsieh's decision to implement holacracy - a form of organizational self-management that replaces job titles and hierarchy with "circles" that employees step in and out of according to their preferences and skills - was less popular than hoped. Hence his "rip the Band-Aid" approach, to ensure that only employees committed to the change remained at the company.

This case explores the role of Tom Kalil as Deputy Director for Technology & Innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. With the end of President Obama's Administration drawing near, Kalil and his team of "policy entrepreneurs" must work to build an ecosystem of individuals and organizations both inside and outside the Federal government, if they hope to see their science & technology initiatves continue into the next Administration. The case allows for discussion of: leading innovation ecosystems; building public-private and public-public collaborations; leading system innovation; talent management and development; and public sector innovation.

This negotiation exercise simulates the 2015 negotiation between senior leadership at iQmetrix, a Regina-based point of sale software firm, and Humanity, a San Francisco-based provider of a human resources module that iQmetrix seeks to bundle into its software product. The exercise is unique in that it occurs in a mediated environment where both parties only interact over email. There is no face-to-face interaction, leaving both sides to negotiate an effective agreement while communicating solely through email.

Supplement to case W16482.

In 2015, Arnoud De Meyer, President of Singapore Management University initiated SMU-X. This unique programme made experiential learning accessible to undergraduate students, allowing them to gain exposure to real life work experience that could help improve their critical thinking, analytical and problem-solving skills. The key strength of the SMU-X initiative was that it had been thought through in great detail and was closely linked to the university's existing pedagogy to create a cohesive learning chain within the university. The pilot phase of the initiative was run for a year, and a lot of the hurdles that had initially seemed difficult to resolve were overcome during this phase. The general feedback from the pilot phase was quite positive and it was observed that this form of learning enhanced the learning value for students, faculty and other industry stakeholders. It was planned to roll out SMU-X across the entire SMU undergraduate cohort in 2016, and De Meyer was considering what would be the most effective mechanism to do so. This case provides the students with an opportunity to reflect on the elements that support the practice of innovation in an organisation, particularly in a service environment. It also enables students to learn about how an urban city university can create an environment for living and learning without the large campus living facilities of suburban universities. Finally, it allows students to visualise the considerations associated with scaling up a project operationally for an organisation-wide rollout.

Terrance Robinson is a young associate at Cascade Engineering and he has an idea for a new product that will bring clean water to the developing world. Still, he lacks authority. He must navigate the waters of Cascade Engineering and its Triple Quest unit to make his dream a reality. The question is: Where should he start?

Spreadsheet supplement for case W04C87.