Do something--he's about to snap

Lynne Tabor, an IT manager at manufacturing giant MMI, has a great team. Everyone works hard and gets along. Everyone, that is, except Max Dyer. Max is a talented programmer, but he's terrible in the interpersonal skills department. So terrible, in fact, that three years ago Lynne reworked his job after employees complained that he was unengaged and even belligerent. Since then, he's been a solid worker, putting in extra hours and meriting good performance evaluations. But recently, Max's coworkers have noticed a change for the worse in him. True, everyone at MMI is on edge after a round of layoffs, but Max's behavior seems like more than a case of the jitters. To make matters worse, reports of a workplace shooting in Seattle are all over the news. Paige overhears Max shouting at someone on the phone. George finds Max pinning up a certificate from a shooting range in his cubicle, and Nicole, who worries they will all end up as statistics of office violence, wants to know how Lynne plans to ensure their safety. When Lynne tries to talk to Max, it's clear he thinks his coworkers are out to get him. And the truth is, they believe he fits the profile of a man on the edge. But what can Lynne do about an employee who has never made so much as a veiled threat to anyone? Commentators James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University; Steve Kaufer, a cofounder of the Workplace Violence Research Institute; Christine Pearson, a management professor at Thunderbird; Christine Porath, a professor of management and organizational behavior at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business; and Ronald Schouten, the director of the Law and Psychiatry Service at Massachusetts General Hospital, offer advice in this fictional case study.     

盖特纳财技之美

这个问题,不太好说。电话那头,马向伍想婉拒记者的约访,因为财政人有自己的考虑,新闻界有自己的要求。这个不好说的问题,即财政的宣传,财政的说法儿。事实上,跨界人士马向伍既曾任     

Financial accounting: In communicating reality, we construct reality

At first I saw Don Juan simply as a rather peculiar man who knew a great deal…but the people…believed that he had some sort of “secret knowledge”, that he was a “brujo”. The Spanish word brujo means, in English…sorcerer. It connotes essentially a person who has extraordinary…powers.I had known Don Juan for a whole year before he took me into his confidence. One day he explained that he possessed a certain knowledge that he had learned from a teacher, a “benefactor” as he called him, who had directed him in a kind of apprenticeship. Don Juan had, in turn, chosen me to serve as his apprentice, but he warned me that I would have to make a very deep commitment and that the training was long and arduous…My field notes disclose the subjective version of what I perceived while undergoing the experience. That version is presented here…My field notes also reveal the content of Don Juan's system of beliefs. I have condensed long pages of questions and answers between Don Juan and myself in order to avoid reproducing the repetitiveness of conversation…(The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Carlos Castaneda, 1970, pp. 14, 24, 25).     

Ideas as art. Interview by Dane Cutu

Three years ago, consultants Laurence Prusak and Thomas H. Davenport asked prominent management thinkers to name their gurus and reported the results in HBR. James G. March appeared on more lists than any other person except Peter Drucker. A professor emeritus in management, sociology, political science, and education at Stanford University, March has taught courses in subjects as diverse as organizational psychology, behavioral economics, leadership, rules for killing people, friendship, computer simulation, and statistics. He is perhaps best known for his pioneering contributions to organization and management theory. March's accomplishments in that field, and in many others, have conferred on him an almost unprecedented reputation as a rigorous scholar and a deep source of wisdom. As University of Chicago professor John Padgett wrote in the journal Contemporary Sociology, "March's influence, unlike that of any of his peers, is not limited to any possible subset of the social science disciplines; it is pervasive." March approaches thought aesthetically; he cares that ideas have "some form of elegance or grace or surprise." His poetic sensibility can be felt in the metaphors he has created over the years--the "garbage can theory" of organizational choice, for instance, and the "hot-stove effect" in learning. In this edited interview with HBR senior editor Diane Coutu, March shares his thinking on aesthetics, leadership, the role of folly, and the irrelevance of relevance when it comes to the pursuit of ideas. He also comments on the fundamental differences between academic and experiential knowledge, underscoring the need for both.     

The case of the hidden harassment

The past year has seen a growing public awareness of sexual harassment in the workplace. The question of what constitutes sexual harassment and how to recognize it has been debated in the news, the courts, and Congress. This HBR case study is less concerned with defining it than with examining what a manager should do about it. When Filmore Trust manager Jerry Tarkwell found out one of his employees was being sexually harassed on the job, he thought he knew exactly what to do. Following company policy, he immediately notified the bank's equal employment office. Then he called Jill McNair, the employee being harassed. Her response dumbfounded him. "You had no right to call EEO before talking to me," McNair said angrily. Do you have any idea what could happen to me and to my career if people find out about this?" Tarkwell didn't understand; McNair wasn't to blame. He believed the only person who should be worried was the harasser. Tarkwell tried to spell out the procedure for her. "All you have to do is write a letter and ..." McNair cut him off. "If this gets investigated by EEO, everyone in the building could be questioned. I'll probably get transferred, and then I won't have a chance at promotion. And who'd want to work with me? Every man in the company would be afraid I'd report him if he so much as opened a door for me."(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

The seven ages of the leader

Leaders go through many transitions in their careers. Each brings new crises and challenges--from taking over a damaged organization to having to fire somebody to passing the baton to the next generation. These moments can be wrenching--and can threaten your confidence--but they're also predictable. Knowing what to expect can help you get through and perhaps emerge stronger. In this engaging article, Warren G. Bennis, professor and founding chairman of the University of Southern California's Leadership Institute, reflects on leadership, recounting his own experiences as a young lieutenant in the infantry in World War II, as the new president of a university, and as the mentor to a unique nursing student. Bennis also describes the experiences of other leaders he has known throughout his career. Drawing on more than 50 years of academic research and business expertise--and borrowing from Shakespeare's seven ages of man--Bennis says the leader's life unfolds in seven stages. "The infant executive" seeks to recruit a mentor for guidance. "The schoolboy" must learn how to do the job in public, subjected to unsettling scrutiny of every word and act. "The lover with a woeful ballad" struggles with the tsunami of problems every organization presents. "The bearded soldier" must be willing--even eager--to hire people better than he is, because he knows that talented underlings can help him shine. "The general" must become adept at not simply allowing people to speak the truth but at actually being able to hear what they are saying. "The statesman" is hard at work preparing to pass on wisdom in the interests of the organization. And, finally, "the sage" embraces the role of mentor to young executives.     

Timeless leadership

The historian David McCullough, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and well-known public television host, has spent his career thinking about the qualities that make a leader great. His books, including Truman, John Adams, and 1776, illustrate his conviction that even in America's darkest moments the old-fashioned virtues of optimism, hard work, and strength of character endure. In this edited conversation with HBR senior editor Bronwyn Fryer, McCullough analyzes the strengths of American leaders past and present. Of Harry Truman he says, "He wasn't afraid to have people around him who were more accomplished than he, and that's one reason why he had the best cabinet of any president since George Washington....He knew who he was." George Washington--"a natural born leader and a man of absolute integrity"--was unusually skilled at spotting talent. Washington Roebling, who built the Brooklyn Bridge, led by example: He never asked his people to do anything he wouldn't do himself, no matter how dangerous. Franklin Roosevelt had the power of persuasion in abundance. If McCullough were teaching a business school leadership course, he says, he would emphasize the importance of listening--of asking good questions but also noticing what people don't say; he would warn against "the insidious disease of greed"; he would encourage an ambition to excel; and he would urge young MBAs to have a sense that their work maters and to make their good conduct a standard for others.     

It wasn't about race. Or was it?

Hope Barrows, a partner at the national accounting firm Fuller Fenton, drove to the office on Sunday and swiped her access card to enter the parking garage. She noticed that another car followed her in--without using an access card. Hope could see that the driver was a man, but she didn't recognize him. Concerned for her safety, she got out and asked to see his ID. Dillon Johnson, an associate at the same firm, was rushing to meet a colleague to review a client's file. Seeing the garage door was open, he drove straight through. He was puzzled when the car in front of him stopped. The female driver got out of her car, walked over to him, and asked for his ID. He felt he was being unfairly questioned because he was black. Hope was white. Now it's Monday, and managing partner Jack Parsons is being deluged with calls. The company seems to be splitting into two angry camps. Some charge that the organization is racist; others are outraged that a woman was made to feel unsafe. One thing is clear: this incident is just the tip of the iceberg. Jack would like to think that Fuller Fenton embraces diversity, but the experiences of Dillon and other African-Americans at the firm tell a very different story. In fact, Jack knows that Dillon was taken off a team for fear that the client--an old-line company in Texas--might object. Jack is trying to calm people down, but he doesn't know what his next step should be. Four commentators offer advice in this fictional case study.     

Losing it

"It's worse than I thought.... She's completely lost her mind," says Harry Beecham, the CEO of blue chip management consultancy Pierce and Company. The perplexed executive was in a hotel suite with his wife in Amsterdam, the latest stop on his regular trek to dozens of Pierce offices worldwide. In his hand was a sheaf of paper--the same message sent over and over again by his star employee and protégée Katharina Waldburg. The end of the world is coming, she warned. "Someone is going to die." Harry wouldn't have expected this sort of behavior from Katharina. After graduating with distinction from Oxford, she made a name for herself by single-handedly building Pierce's organizational behavior practice. At 27, she's poised to become the youngest partner ever elected at the firm. But Harry can't ignore the faxes in his hand. Or the stream-of-consciousness e-mails Katharina's been sending to one of the directors in Pierce's Berlin office--mostly gibberish but potentially disastrous to Katharina's reputation if they ever got out. Harry also can't dismiss reports from Roland Fuoroli, manager of the Berlin office, of a vicious verbal exchange Katharina had with him, or of an "over the top" lunch date Katharina had with one of Pierce's clients in which she was explaining the alphabet's role in the creation of the universe. Harry is planning to talk to Katharina when he gets to Berlin. What should he say? And will it be too late? Four commentators offer their advice in this fictional case study. They are Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry and a coauthor of Manic-Depressive Illness; David E. Meen, a former director at McKinsey & Company; Norman Pearlstine, the editor in chief at Time Incorporated; and Richard Primus, an assistant law professor at the University of Michigan.     

The shakedown

Customer Strategy Solutions, a California-based developer of order-fulfillment systems, is facing a shakedown. Six months after the firm's CEO, Pavlo Zhuk, set up a software development center in Kiev, local bureaucrats say the company hasn't filed all the tax schedules it should have. Moreover, Ukrainian tax officials claim that the company owes the government tax arrears. Zhuk is shocked; he and his colleagues have done everything by the book. This isn't the first time Zhuk has encountered trouble in Ukraine. In the process of getting the development center up and running, a state-owned telecommunications utility had made it difficult for Zhuk to get the phone lines his company needed. Senior telecom manager Vasyl Feodorovych Mylofienko had told Zhuk it would take three years to install the lines in his office-but for a certain price, Mylofienko had added, the lines could be functioning the following week. Even as the picture of rampant bribery and corruption in Ukraine becomes clear, Zhuk still doesn't want to pull out of the country. Of Ukrainian descent, he has dreams of helping to modernize the country. By paying his programmers more than they could make at any local company, he hopes to raise their standard of living so they can afford three meals a day without having to barter, stand in queues for hours, or moonlight. And yet, he isn't sure he can keep compromising his principles for the sake of the greater good. Should Customer Strategy Solutions pay off the Ukrainian tax officials? Commenting on this fictional case study are Alan L. Boeckmann, the chairman and CEO of Fluor Corporation; Rafael Di Tella, a professor at Harvard Business School; Thomas W. Dunfee, the Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility and a professor of legal studies at Wharton; and Bozidar Djelic, the former finance and economy minister of Serbia.     

The turnaround value of values

John Thorbeck is an executive with a ten-year career history of successes--and a sense of repeated failure. Just out of business school, he was marketing director at the Aspen Skiing Company for three years and helped to reverse thirteen seasons of decline. At the Timberland shoe company in the mid-1980s, he led a marketing strategy that tripled sales. At the Bass shoe company, where he was CEO from 1987 to 1990, he took the company from big losses to big profits. Now he is president, CEO, and part owner of a third shoe company--Geo. E. Keith--that is surely the oldest, perhaps the smallest, and arguably the finest shoemaker in the United States. But the high points of Thorbeck's résumé conceal a leadership education that led him only slowly to abandon confrontational management in favor of management by history, values, competence, and what he calls organizational coherence. In his first two marketing jobs, he fought wars with his opponents and won. Then at Bass, he tried to recapture the company's proud past. He revived company folklore and history, gave workers back their pride in workmanship, and used this rejuvenated company spirit to meet and win new markets. Yet he was trying to take Bass someplace its owners simply wouldn't let it go, and he left the company profitable but divided, the work force eager to go one way, owenership another. In each of his jobs, Thorbeck overlooked some vital part of the organizational community.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

萧宇成“非诚勿扰”的投资哲学

几经考验的私募股权投资行业,正是精英辈出之时。在短短不到五个月的时间内,募集到近25亿美元的基金,有些出乎霸菱亚洲投资基金董事总经理萧宇成的意料。之所以能够门庭若市地接受如此众多的全球LP的青睐,霸菱亚洲投资董事总经理萧宇成认为,其最主要的"秘笈"就是真诚,真诚待人,真诚做事。     

Motivating Management to Reveal Inside Information

This paper develops incentive schemes which motivate a manager to release private information that he has concerning the probabilities of occurrence of the various output levels of his firm. It is shown that, in the context of a pure-exchange economy, a complete prohibition on the manager's trading in his firm's stock is sufficient to motivate him to truthfully release his private information. When the setting is extended to that of a production-exchange economy, the manager must also be allowed to choose the production plan that he most prefers in order for him to be motivated to release his information truthfully. In fact, no incentive scheme in a general production-exchange economy can be guaranteed to motivate the manager to release his information truthfully if he is not allowed to choose the production plan freely. However, when more structure is placed on the economy, such an incentive scheme can be developed as described in the latter part of this paper.     

Statistical study of waivers of premiums on disablement

Abstract

At the request of the author, the Managing Director of Livförsäkringsbolaget Framtiden, ömsesidigt (the Swedish Mutual Life Insurance Co. ? Future?), gave him an opportunity to make an investigation into the waivers of premiums on disablement. This investigation which at first was suggested by the Chief Mathematician of the Company, K. G. Hagstroem D. Sc., was meant to contain a study of the experience of a single year, 1932. With regard to view points put forward by the author, the original scheme was essentially widened to give a complete study of the whole experience ever since the foundation of the Company. The author wishes to express his gratitude to the Managing Director for placing a working staff at his disposal for carrying out this plan. He also wants to thank Dr. Hagstroem for his appreciation of the views advanced. The author, furthermore, has pleasure to express his thanks to the entire staff of the Company, for aiding him in his work in many ways, and in this connection he wants especially to mention Mr. Erik Grune, the manager of the actuarial department. Finally, he wishes to thank his many collaborators, especially Miss Elsa Fredricsson and Stig Cronvali, M. Bc. for their assistance.     

Succession and failure

Norman Windom, the chairman of Tiverton Media, may not know much about the world of popular music, but he does fancy himself a careful planner and a superb judge of managerial talent. That's why he's been grooming COO Sean Kinnane, a Wharton-minted numbers man, to take over an important division, Aleph Records, and one day Tiverton itself. But Derek Solomon, Aleph's 68-year-old CEO and founder, remains a creative force and a father figure to the label's artists. What's more, he's touchy about anything that might slow down Aleph's responses to the market's ever-shifting preferences--or that might call into question his indispensability. Though Sean dutifully participates in Tiverton's broad-based and elaborate executive development plan, he senses that Aleph's future leadership structure is uncertain. As impatient as he is ambitious, he announces that he's leaving Tiverton for more suitable pastures. Several of his associates, also unsure about their fate within Aleph, are following him out the door. In one fell swoop, they've torn Norman's proud succession plan apart. What kind of plan should the board adopt going forward? Commenting on this fictional case study are Francis N. Bonsignore, a senior vice president at Marsh & McLennan; Michelle L. Buck, a clinical associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management; Jon Younger, who heads leadership development at National City Corporation, a financial holding company in Cleveland; and Thomas Leppert, the chairman and CEO of the Turner Corporation, a large construction company in Dallas.     

Does Option Compensation Increase Managerial Risk Appetite?

This paper solves the dynamic investment problem of a risk averse manager compensated with a call option on the assets he controls. Under the manager's optimal policy, the option ends up either deep in or deep out of the money. As the asset value goes to zero, volatility goes to infinity. However, the option compensation does not strictly lead to greater risk seeking. Sometimes, the manager's optimal volatility is less with the option than it would be if he were trading his own account. Furthermore, giving the manager more options causes him to reduce volatility.     

How I learned to let my workers lead

In 1980, Ralph Stayer owned a successful, growing sausage company that had him badly worried. Commitment was poor, motivation was lousy, the gap between performance and potential was enormous. Over the next five years, Stayer turned the company upside down, but only by turning himself upside down first. For years he had insisted on his own control, made all decisions, delegated nothing. But when he tried to picture what the company would have to look like to sell the most expensive sausage and still enjoy the biggest market share, he saw an organization whose employees took responsibility for their own work. After several false starts, he finally began in earnest by making himself give up much of his own authority. Stayer turned quality control over to the workers on the production line. Workers also began answering letters of complaint from customers. Rejects went from 5% to 0.5%. Employees thrived on their new responsibility and asked for more. Gradually, people on the shop floor took over personnel functions as well, followed by scheduling, budgeting, and capital improvements. Managers came to function more as coaches than as bosses. Stayer--a little to his own dismay--began to find himself superfluous. In mid-1985, the company faced a watershed decision--whether or not to accept a massive new order that would make huge demands on every employee and strain the company's capacities. Stayer asked the employees to make the decision. They accepted the challenge, and productivity, profits, and quality all rose dramatically. By the late 1980s, Stayer had reached his goal of working himself out of a job.     

The first law of futures

An editor can never be satisfied with the book review section. Publishers do not adjust their output to the number of reviewers, and there are at times those books that call for a more extended discussion than is usually possible in the space available. So, when I.F. Clarke finished his recent series on American anticipations, it was an opportunity to ask him to start a new venture for Futures. For the rest of this year he will review and reflect at length upon several books at a time, so that they can be placed in their contexts and we can have the benefit of his long researches into the past of future-thinking. We hope this will become a regular series in which other experts will take part.     

New Leadership at the Federal Reserve*

As Chairman of the Federal Reserve for the past 18 years, Alan Greenspan deserves praise for his stewardship of monetary policy. He has guided the Fed and monetary policy in a way that has led to low and stable inflation. But if Greenspan's record clearly deserves praise, he could have done more to move monetary policy into the 21st century and prepare the institution for the future. Greenspan has relied heavily on his personal judgment and has argued repeatedly that the Fed must have extensive flexibility to respond to the economic environment. But if Greenspan's judgment, skill, and luck have served him and the country well, it is dangerous to rely so heavily on the judgment of a single individual. When he departed, he took with him his skill and judgment, as well as his credibility and his personal commitment to low inflation. The Fed he leaves behind has no explicit institutional commitment to long‐run price stability. This article argues that by operating with a set of rules and guidelines, or at a minimum clearly stated institutional objectives, the Fed would eliminate much of the second guessing about what it is doing and why, and the associated volatility in markets. More generally, the benefits of more explicit guidelines for monetary policy include:

• ? Increasing public understanding of monetary policy, including what it can and cannot do.
• ? Increasing transparency and accountability. Most organizations have clear goals and we hold their leaders accountable. The Fed is different. The Fed seems to be held accountable for all things economic and thus it is truly accountable for nothing. It never has to explain its actions and what went right or wrong.
• ? Establishing a clear focus for the Fed regarding its goals and objectives.
• ? Creating increased confidence that sound monetary policy will be followed in the future.