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When George Mansfield was hired to run Segal Electric's quality operation, he was sure the company was serious about regaining its reputation for high-quality products. Now, only a month later, he's not so sure. While George was away at a seminar, Sharon Morse, the production supervisor, shipped some defective fans. George went to the general manager for support, but was told to work it out on the factory floor. Four business people--William A. Golomski, president of W.A. Golomski & Associates; Ray J. Rogal, director of quality for the Ford Motor Co.; Keith Larson, general manager of the Eastern Operation for Barry Controls; and Michael T. Cowhig, vice president of manufacturing at Gillette's Personal Care Group--offer observations about what went wrong in quality control at Segal.

An office lease can create financial difficulty if a tenant ignores provisions that landlords can use to gain extra income. The author points out some of the more arcane clauses and tells you how to protect yourself.

If government policies are important to an industry's competitive future, then political activism deserves as much executive time and energy as other business priorities. The challenge is to create and sustain political advantage - to develop a stable, ongoing relationship that makes Washington an ally in the battle for global competitiveness. The political effectiveness of the semiconductor industry during the past five years shows what it takes to succeed, even with limited political assets.

Long-lived companies adapt themselves to the business environment. They develop when times are good and switch to a survival mode when times are turbulent. And they are successful at it because they have senior executives who learn quickly and act effectively. Teaching is too often ineffective. Changing or suspending the corporate rules works a lot better. What-if scenarios, computer modeling, and interaction with consultants help managers stay in tune with an inconsistent world.

Mackay Envelope Corp. of Minneapolis has gained steadily in sales and market share by stressing salesmanship and focusing on the individual customers. Through building personal relationships and through research, Mackay develops elaborate files on customers and potential customers - not only business data but also information on each contact's education, family, particular interests, and life-style. The goal is to focus on the individual across the table. Such attention to detail requires well-trained, alert salespeople. Harvey Mackay himself spends evenings with candidates and their spouses and tests them with long telephone conversations. Once hired, they routinely take Dale Carnegie and Toastmasters courses. The company rewards top performers for collaborative work as well as for landing big contracts.

Companies must learn to recognize what makes a good manager and begin selecting for those qualities. Most managers are selected on the basis of business expertise or success in nonsupervisory positions. The styles they develop are inadequate. Here are sketches of seven of the most common breeds of inadequate managers, ranging from the Godfather to the Ostrich to the Eager Beaver. There is also the paragon of managers, the Wagon Master. Good supervisors understand that they have two jobs - reach the goal and maintain morale along the way.

Pension portfolio management focuses on the balance between risk and return on assets held. With a new ruling of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, pension fund managers and sponsors must also pay close attention to the surplus--the difference between assets and the present value of the fund's obligations to current and future retirees. FASB 87 mandates reporting of the fund surplus in terms of the net present value of the liabilities according to market interest rates on long-term bonds. Thus the sponsor must ask which assets best match the variability pattern of the liabilities. The low risk of bonds makes them attractive for meeting the predictable obligation toward today's work force and present retirees but unattractive for meeting the uncertain obligations toward tomorrow's work force. Stock and real estate are better investments for these obligations. The goal is to define the true pension fund risk, long term as well as short term. Then management can decide on the trade-off between risk and expected return.

An essential step in improving productivity is measuring it appropriately. But managers have trouble working with the experts who design and implement measurement systems. When they evaluate and use productivity indexes, managers should keep in mind certain guidelines: The most sophisticated measurement system is not always the best; there is more to manufacturing efficiency than how hard employees work; measurement systems should consider all relevant factors; when comparing the efficiency of plants or companies, comparisons must be fair; managers should be aware of the ambiguities and complexities that afflict all productivity data and, above all, when using systems, put relevance before technical precision or elegance.

U.S. trade policy is mired in obsolete assumptions about the practices and principles of global economics. It is stuck in a time when the United States could assume sole responsibility for the world trading order. Business and government leaders must acknowledge that there are five different economic systems operating in the world today--centrally planned, mixed, developing, plan-driven, and rule-driven--only one of which corresponds to the traditional U.S. model. The United States needs to embrace "tailored trade"--negotiating with different countries differently, according to their economic systems. The result would be a more practical and flexible approach to trade--one that would not only serve U.S. interests but also correspond to the world as it really is.

Twenty years from now, the typical large business will have half the levels of management and one third the managers of its counterpart today. Work will be done by specialists brought together in task forces that cut across traditional departments. Coordination and control will depend largely on employees' willingness to discipline themselves. Behind these changes lies information technology. Information-based organizations pose their own management challenges: motivating and rewarding specialists; creating a vision to unify an organization of specialists; devising a management structure that works with task forces; and ensuring the supply, preparation, and testing of top management people.

No one cost system gives managers all the information they need to promote operational efficiency and produce the highest quality product at the lowest cost. Cost systems must serve three functions--inventory valuation, operational control, and product cost measurement. This system for operations management performs three functions: it reports information according to production cycles, differentiates between fixed and variable costs, and allocates costs only to cost centers directly related to production activities. A more subjective system is advised for measuring product costs, starting with interviews with supervisors and including transaction measures as well as traditional volume-related measures.

A leadership change in a company is unsettling. Key players may act on unconscious feelings that can disrupt and possibly sabotage a sensible succession process. The CEO, board, and other top managers are most vulnerable to these forces when the CEO first recognizes the need to retire, when the successor is chosen, and when the new CEO takes charge.

When an employee is discovered indulging in unorthodox, immoral or criminal behavior while off duty, can the employer discipline or fire the person? What are the rights of the company, and what are the rights of the worker? The company may argue that its reputation has suffered but unless it can prove a clear link between the off-duty conduct and the job, it will lose its case. The worker's life away from the workplace is protected constitutionally by a right to privacy and a right to associate freely with others. An unorthodox, questionable, or even immoral private life is usually no grounds for disciplinary action.

Jim, an employee of the nuclear division of Fairway Electric, discovered a report written fifteen years ago about a flaw in the design of their Radon II nuclear reactor. The flaw did not present a safety hazard but was expensive to fix. The company had not told customers about the report. After getting no response from the CEO, Jim took the story to a local newspaper. Word soon got out that Jim was a whistle-blower. This created much negative feeling toward Jim within his department. The CEO asked the vice president of the nuclear division to talk with Jim, pressuring him either to transfer to another office or, preferably, to quit. Jim refused. How should the situation have been handled? Experts from human resource management, public relations, and industry tell what they would have done in this situation.

Leveraged buyouts are not just for the big guys. Money is available for buyers of smaller companies who know how to structure a deal. Borrowing against assets like equipment, inventory, and accounts receivable gives the entrepreneur the most freedom and thus remains the most popular LBO technique. If a deal is to succeed, the owner must have a compelling reason to sell.

Traditional programs of quality control in the United States have emphasized mainly defensive actions--preventing defects--and even these programs have been pursued halfheartedly. But high quality means pleasing consumers, not just protecting them from annoyances. Therefore, U.S. consumers have become skeptical about the quality of goods and services offered by U.S. corporations, while Japanese electronics, automobile, and semiconductor companies have come to dominate important U.S. markets. In order for a company to compete on quality deliberately and strategically, its managers must first divide the concept into manageable parts--the eight dimensions of quality by which consumers judge products: performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and perceived quality. Managers should research potential markets and the strengths of their competition to ascertain which of these dimensions they can emphasize.

Almost every company wants to develop its businesses over time and earn high profits immediately, to respond quickly to market changes and make careful decisions, to coordinate business units and make unit managers accountable. But these goals are contradictory. They cannot all be achieved, no matter what the strategy decisions. Senior managers can decide, however, which goals are most important and choose a management style that works toward them. Success depends on choosing an approach that maximizes one's strengths and goals.

The process quality management technique (PQM), used by IBM and its customers in intensive one- or two-day planning sessions, gets management teams to identify their mission, agree on what they must do to achieve it, and accept individual responsibility for the tasks deemed most important to success. The heart of PQM is a matrix that reflects the organization's unique goals and needs. To develop the matrix the team goes through four levels of consensus building that often spur new ideas to improve basic procedures.

What may be appropriate for managing the finances of large public corporations doesn't necessarily (or often) fit private companies. Standard financial statements are unreliable when money moves freely between the business and owner. And rules of thumb for investment decision making and growth aren't useful either. When a company is largely operated as a vehicle for a family--to provide jobs, security, flexibility, and access to opportunities that suit the family as much as the market--conventional financial protocols don't always matter.

Many U.S. corporations are shedding operations that are doing poorly, are superfluous because of mergers, or are obsolete because of a strategy of streamlining and returning to the "core" business. Often the human element is forgotten. The plight of white- and blue-collar employees who have lost jobs because of a management decision is not considered a top priority. When the Stroh Brewery closed a 70-year-old facility in Detroit after acquiring Schlitz and its five modern plants, 1,159 jobs were eliminated. The company set up an elaborate job-search and placement apparatus to help ease the trauma for employees who would be turned out.