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It stands to reason that sales, the most social of business activities, would make use of social media. But few organizations have figured out how to do so in a smart, productive way. The authors--veteran salespeople and now sales trainers--offer insights to help companies and reps get maximum value from sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Social media's greatest potential, they note, is at the start of the sales cycle, during prospecting, opportunity qualification, and pre-sales-call research. Short messages sent via social media produce a much greater response than cold calling--and, even better, reps don't always have to start the conversation. In addition to building prospecting networks, they can set up keyword alerts and use tools such as HootSuite to pick up signals of need. At the back end of the cycle, social media tools are invaluable for maintaining relationships, which are often neglected in the pursuit of new sales. Organizational support can help, not just with training on mechanics and etiquette but also by providing engaging content to share. Yes, there are risks to using social media. But with clear policies, those risks can be mitigated. And as your customers increasingly come to expect social network engagement, the biggest risk of all is to stay on the sidelines.

A well-staffed sales function is vital to business success, but most MBA programs fail to offer any sales-related courses at all. As selling becomes more sophisticated and solutions-oriented, and good sales jobs go unfilled for lack of qualified applicants, the value of university-based sales education programs rises. But such programs face substantial barriers in gaining funding and recruiting talent. This, in turn, leads to a frustrating lack of scholarly research relevant to improving sales capabilities. The authors, members of the marketing department at DePaul University, demonstrate that partnering with industry is the surest route to success in establishing sales programs and enhancing their effectiveness. They offer the experience of DePaul's Center for Sales Leadership to demonstrate that when businesses provide input to curricula and encourage their salespeople to contribute to classroom discussions, the benefits flow both ways. Furthermore, demand for sales courses is rapidly increasing: When the center was founded, in 2004, it hoped to enroll 90 students a year. Today about 700 per quarter enroll in its various sales courses.

In this collection of short essays, six executives describe their sales-related success. Jim Koch, of Boston Beer, remembers visiting bars with cold beer in his briefcase: If he could get the manager to taste Sam Adams Lager, he'd make a sale. James Farley, of Ford, sees car salespeople as a cross between problem-solvers and concierges: They help customers figure out complicated electronics, and in China they may even provide rudimentary driving lessons. Susan Silbermann, of Pfizer, describes selling in Latin America, where drugstores are small and independent, advertising directly to consumers isn't allowed, and physicians spend time building relationships with salespeople. Duncan Mac Naughton, of Walmart, gives advice to potential vendors--no matter how small--on how to get their products onto his company's shelves. Phil Guido, of IBM, relates the company's move into solution selling, using as an example the city operation center IBM created for Rio de Janeiro. Suresh Goklaney, of Eureka Forbes, emphasizes the personalized approach of his company's 8,000 door-to-door salespeople, who draw the entire family into their demonstrations.

When a major change initiative runs aground, leaders often blame their company's culture for pushing it off course. They try to forge ahead by overhauling the culture--a tactic that tends to fizzle, fail, or backfire. Most cultures are too well entrenched to be jettisoned. The secret is to stop fighting your culture--and to work with and within it, until it evolves in the right direction. Today's best-performing companies, such as Southwest Airlines, Apple, and the Four Seasons, understand this, say the authors, three consultants from Booz & Company. These organizations follow five principles for making the most of their cultures: 1) Match strategy to culture. Culture trumps strategy every time, no matter how brilliant the plan, so the two need to be in alignment. 2) Focus on a few critical shifts in behavior. Wholesale change is hard; choose your battles wisely. 3) Honor the strengths of the existing culture. Every culture is the product of good intentions and has strengths; put them to use. 4) Integrate formal and informal interventions. Don't just implement new rules and processes; identify "influencers" who can bring other employees along. 5) Measure and monitor cultural evolution. Otherwise you can't identify backsliding or correct course. When the leaders of Aetna applied these rules while implementing a new strategy in the early 2000s, they reinvigorated the company's ailing culture and restored employee pride. That shift was reflected in the business results, as Aetna went from a $300 million loss to a $1.7 billion gain.

The Association for Financial Professionals surveyed its members about the assumptions built into the financial models they use to evaluate investment opportunities. Remarkably, no survey question received the same answer from a majority of the more than 300 respondents. That's a big problem--because assumptions about the costs of equity and debt profoundly affect both the type and the value of the investments that companies make, as well as the health of those businesses and the broader economy. Citing the AFP survey results in detail, Jacobs and Shivdasani, of the University of North Carolina, argue that with trillions of dollars in cash sitting on corporate balance sheets, it's time to look honestly at precisely what affects the cost of capital. They offer specific examples of the consequences that misidentifying the cost of capital can have; a rigorous primer for how to calculate terminal value, the number ascribed to cash flows beyond a project's forecast horizon; and an online tool that allows you to input your own rates to see how terminal-value growth assumptions affect a project's overall value. With this knowledge, you'll be much better equipped to identify your true cost of capital.

The traditionally close relationship between corporate legal departments and big law firms is being disrupted--in part because the former are concerned about costs and lack of accountability. But executives now have many more choices about how to get their legal work done: They can use technology to do document search, bring in high-end temporary lawyers to manage major projects, or send routine processing work overseas. It's tempting for legal departments to react to these new options by asking, "How can we acquire the same services at a lower cost?" But aiming for relatively small, short-term savings could critically damage important relationships, the authors write. Instead, corporations should seize this chance to do four important things: assign legal work to the providers best suited to a particular task; lower legal costs without sacrificing quality; achieve greater transparency and accountability; and derive greater value from in-house counsel. The recent downturn has resulted in excess capacity at many law firms and heightened scrutiny of the billable-hours model. Technology has both created a problem--by generating oceans of data that must be collected, preserved, and reviewed in litigation--and offered solutions, in the form of "smart searching." And over the past few years, new types of legal-services providers have emerged. These three factors have led many companies to renegotiate terms with their law firms. They should beware, say the authors, of focusing on discounted rates rather than aligning incentives between client and counsel. And if legal services are unbundled, firms should be alert to the opportunity to reintegrate them for valued clients.

The U.S. corporate tax code is broken. High rates and perverse incentives drive capital away from the corporate sector and toward other uses and countries. This is bad news for U.S. workers, because corporations aren't making investments that would increase productivity and real wages. And while one might think higher rates lead to higher revenues, the U.S. actually collects less in taxes (as a percentage of GDP) than most other developed nations. Desai, a professor at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law, believes a handful of changes could fix all that. A significant rate reduction and an end to foreign-income tax would encourage U.S. multinationals to keep more money at home. Any revenue lost could be offset by a small tax on noncorporate business income, which is now exempted. Closing the chasm between how income is reported on taxes and earnings are reported to investors would also raise revenue--and end public perceptions of unfairness. These reforms could actually turn the U.S. tax system into an asset. But they won't be effective if managers don't change their mind-set. Rather than shirking their tax obligations, they need to start viewing them as an important social responsibility.

How will the logic of globalization change for corporations from countries such as India, China, Indonesia, Brazil, and Turkey if the growth opportunities in emerging markets continue to far outpace those in developed markets? Natura Cosmeticos, a Brazilian beauty giant, has considerable experience with that question. For some 30 years, the company has been attempting to move, with decidedly mixed results, into developed markets even as the opportunities of its region have grown stronger and stronger. Markets like the United States exert a strong pull on emerging-market multinationals, but Natura must contend with a changing economic equation: The U.S. beauty market grew by an anemic 1.1% in 2010, whereas demand in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru increased by 10.9%. Ultimately, Natura has moved beyond stereotypes of globalization, recognizing that winning in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico can be an entry onto the world stage every bit as effective as conquering Paris or New York.

Disruptive innovation has been a pioneering concept in business since 1995. Johnson, a founding partner at Clay Christensen's investment firm, explains how you can apply disruptive thinking--responsible for the success of many products, companies, and even countries--to your own career. Using the stories of highly successful personal innovators, including herself, she articulates four principles of self-disruption: 1) Target a need that can be met more effectively. Playing in a market where no one else is or wants to be might mean leaving your comfortable career perch for an amorphous role. But it will enable you to head off the competition and could generate rewards you'd never envisioned. 2) Identify your disruptive strengths. Think about what you do exceptionally well that most others can't. Then use that discovery to make an innovative transition. 3) Step back (or sideways) in order to grow. Personal growth can stall at the top of a classic S curve. Avoid that problem by jumping to a new plane and putting yourself on an entirely different growth trajectory. 4) Let your strategy emerge. Don't hesitate to be flexible and inductive in your approach to personal innovation. Disrupters take a step forward, gather feedback, and adapt accordingly.

The famed gymnastics coach on identifying Olympic-level aptitude, changing his style to suit different athletes, and working his way back up in the United States after defecting from Romania.

Many believe that charisma, the ability to captivate and inspire an audience, is innate. But through research in the laboratory and in the field, the authors, who all work at the University of Lausanne, have identified 12 tactics that help managers become more influential, trustworthy, and "leaderlike" in the eyes of others. Great orators and politicians employ these techniques instinctively, but anyone can learn how to use them. Nine of the tactics are verbal: metaphors, similes, and analogies; stories and anecdotes; contrasts; rhetorical questions; expressions of moral conviction; reflections of the group's sentiments; three-part lists; the setting of high goals; and conveying confidence that they can be achieved. Three are nonverbal: animated voice, facial expressions, and gestures. Though there are other tactics that leaders can use--repetition, humor, talking about sacrifice--the 12 singled out by the authors have the greatest effect and can work in almost any context. And the research shows that they also have a larger impact than strong presentation skills and speech structure. This article explores the 12 tactics in detail, providing examples from business and politics, and offers guidance on how to start implementing them. A manager's goal should be to incorporate them not only into public speaking but also into everyday interactions. They work because they help you create an emotional connection with your audience, even as they make you appear more powerful, competent, and worthy of respect. People who use them effectively will be able to unite their followers around a vision in a way that others can't. And in the authors' study, executives who practiced them saw the leadership scores that their audience gave them rise by about 60%.

Although the first ship he ever commanded crashed into a buoy, Mullen rose through the ranks to serve two presidents as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--a job he says was the hardest of his life.

When Carroll became the CEO of Anglo American, in 2007, the company had suffered 200 worker fatalities over the previous five years. Some company veterans insisted that deaths were inevitable at such a large mining company, given the dangerous nature of the business. Carroll fundamentally rejected that assumption. She undertook a tour of operations in Australia, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, and South Africa. The platinum business in South Africa had the worst track record in terms of safety, and Carroll was troubled by her conversations with its local managers. Immediately after her visit, another worker died. That was it. She ordered the world's largest platinum mine, which employed 30,000 people, to be shut down immediately. Intensive retraining began, and 3,000 leaders and 12,000 line managers, supervisors, and frontline employees have been through the program since 2008. Carroll also initiated the Tripartite Alliance, a collaboration with the South African Department of Mineral Resources and the National Union of Mineworkers, to study global best practices in safety and make recommendations. By 2011 she had reduced fatalities at Anglo American by 62% and had cut time lost owing to injuries by half.

Risk management is too often treated as a compliance issue that can be solved by drawing up lots of rules and making sure that all employees follow them. Many such rules, of course, are sensible and do reduce some risks that could severely damage a company. But rules-based risk management will not diminish either the likelihood or the impact of a disaster such as Deepwater Horizon, just as it did not prevent the failure of many financial institutions during the 2007-2008 credit crisis. In this article, Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes present a categorization of risk that allows executives to understand the qualitative distinctions between the types of risks that organizations face. Preventable risks, arising from within the organization, are controllable and ought to be eliminated or avoided. Examples are the risks from employees' and managers' unauthorized, unethical, or inappropriate actions and the risks from breakdowns in routine operational processes. Strategy risks are those a company voluntarily assumes in order to generate superior returns from its strategy. External risks arise from events outside the company and are beyond its influence or control. Sources of these risks include natural and political disasters and major macroeconomic shifts. Risk events from any category can be fatal to a company's strategy and even to its survival. Companies should tailor their risk management processes to these different risk categories. A rules-based approach is effective for managing preventable risks, whereas strategy risks require a fundamentally different approach based on open and explicit risk discussions. To anticipate and mitigate the impact of major external risks, companies can call on tools such as war-gaming and scenario analysis.

Few managerial transitions are more difficult than making the move from leading a function to leading an entire enterprise for the first time. The scope and complexity of the job increase dramatically, in ways that can leave executives feeling overwhelmed and uncertain. It truly is different at the top. But how, exactly? Career transition expert Michael Watkins set out to explore that question in an extensive series of interviews with leadership mentors, HR professionals, and newly minted unit heads. What he found was that at this turning point, executives must navigate a tricky set of changes in their leadership focus and skills. Watkins calls these the seven seismic shifts. New enterprise leaders must move from being a specialist to a generalist; from analyzing data to integrating knowledge from multiple sources; and from implementing tactics to developing strategies. They also need to transform themselves from bricklayers into organizational architects; from problem solvers into agenda setters; and from warriors intent on beating the competition into diplomats who engage with a full range of stakeholders. Finally, leaders must move out from the wings and get used to living on center stage in the full spotlight. To make the transition, managers have to acquire new capabilities quickly. And though what got them to the top may no longer be enough, there are steps that they and their organizations can take to prepare them to succeed.

Globalization and new technologies have sharply reduced the efficacy of command-and-control management and its accompanying forms of corporate communication. In the course of a recent research project, the authors concluded that by talking with employees, rather than simply issuing orders, leaders can promote operational flexibility, employee engagement, and tight strategic alignment. Groysberg and Slind have identified four elements of organizational conversation that reflect the essential attributes of interpersonal conversation: intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and intentionality. Intimacy shifts the focus from a top-down distribution of information to a bottom-up exchange of ideas. Organizational conversation is less corporate in tone and more casual. And it's less about issuing and taking orders than about asking and answering questions. Interactivity entails shunning the simplicity of monologue and embracing the unpredictable vitality of dialogue. Traditional one-way media--print and broadcast, in particular--give way to social media buttressed by social thinking. Inclusion turns employees into full-fledged conversation partners, entitling them to provide their own ideas, often on company channels. They can create content and act as brand ambassadors, thought leaders, and storytellers. Intentionality enables leaders and employees to derive strategically relevant action from the push and pull of discussion and debate.

By now we expect personalized content--it's routinely served up by online retailers and news services, for example. But the typical leadership development program still takes a formulaic, one-size-fits-all approach. And it rarely happens that an excellent technique can be effectively transferred from one leader to all others. Someone trying to adopt a practice from a leader with a different style usually seems stilted and off--a Franken-leader. Breakthrough work at Hilton Hotels and other organizations shows how companies can use an algorithmic model to deliver training tips uniquely suited to each individual's style. It's a five-step process: First, a company must choose a tool with which to identify each person's leadership type. Second, it should assess its best leaders, and third, it should interview them about their techniques. Fourth, it should use its algorithmic model to feed tips drawn from those techniques to developing leaders of the same type. And fifth, it should make the system dynamically intelligent, with user reactions sharpening the content and targeting of tips. The power of this kind of system--highly customized, based on peer-to-peer sharing, and continually evolving--will soon overturn the generic model of leadership development. And such systems will inevitably break through any one organization, until somewhere in the cloud the best leadership tips from all over are gathered, sorted, and distributed according to which ones suit which people best.

Many companies are in competition with their customers to extract as much value as possible from every transaction. Pricing is their weapon of choice, and consumers fight back by rooting out and disseminating pricing policies that seem unfair. The problem is that companies generally think of value as a pie that is rightfully theirs. But value is not fixed, and it neither originates with nor belongs solely to the firm. Without a willing customer, there is no value. Instead of using pricing in a way that turns customers into adversaries, companies can use it to enlarge the pie. That means viewing customers as partners in value creation--a collaboration that increases customers' engagement and taps their insights about the value they seek and how firms could deliver it. The result can be new revenue, increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, positive word of mouth, and cost savings. The multiyear process to price the 8 million tickets to the upcoming London 2012 Olympic Games suggests five principles for using pricing to create shared value: Focus on relationships, not on transactions, by using pricing to communicate that you value customers as people; set prices proactively to discourage detrimental behavior and to encourage behavior that is beneficial to both your firm and your customers; allow prices to change in response to shifting customer needs; promote transparency by providing the rationale for your pricing; and make sure that prices and the processes by which they are set meet consumers' expectations about what is fair.

Big banks have become too complex for boards to govern them effectively, writes a former top executive at Bank of America and Citigroup. Directors need simple tools to cut through that complexity, and Krawcheck suggests four: (1) Pay top executives with bank debt instead of just stock and stock options, to give them more incentive to worry about risk, (2) Pay dividends as a percentage of earnings instead of as a set amount, to preserve capital in downturns, (3) Ignore net interest income in judging bank performance, and pay much more attention to customer satisfaction metrics, and (4) Focus board attention not on the most troubled business segments, as is customary now, but on those that are using the most capital.

When Polman became CEO of the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever, in January 2009, it was his first time in the role of chief executive. That doesn't appear to have inhibited him: Since then he has transformed Unilever into one of the world's most innovative corporations. In addition to abolishing earnings guidance and quarterly reporting (on day one as CEO), he launched a plan to double corporate revenue by 2020 while simultaneously reducing the company's environmental impact by half. These are truly "audacious objectives," he acknowledges. "Nobody has ever made such a public commitment, and nobody has ever achieved anything like this." Polman believes that his initiatives build on the company's founding values: improving health and hygiene, and otherwise benefiting society. Though "a capitalist at heart," he thinks the system needs fine-tuning--in part through socially responsible investment. The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan not only sets ambitious targets but establishes detailed measures of progress toward them. Doing away with quarterly reporting has allowed the business to be more focused on the long term, and changes in the compensation system support that. In this edited interview with HBR's editor in chief, Polman talks about taking risks, attracting shareholders who support Unilever's strategy (hedge fund investors needn't apply), and why consumers are now in charge.