What's your story?

When you're in the midst of a major career change, telling stories about your professional self can inspire others' belief in your character and in your capacity to take a leap and land on your feet. It also can help you believe in yourself. A narrative thread will give meaning to your career history; it will assure you that, in moving on to something new, you are not discarding everything you've worked so hard to accomplish. Unfortunately, the authors explain in this article, most of us fail to use the power of storytelling in pursuit of our professional goals, or we do it badly. Tales of transition are especially challenging. Not knowing how to reconcile the built-in discontinuities in our work lives, we often relay just the facts. We present ourselves as safe--and dull and unremarkable. That's not a necessary compromise. A transition story has inherent dramatic appeal. The protagonist is you, of course, and what's at stake is your career. Perhaps you've come to an event or insight that represents a point of no return. It's this kind of break with the past that will force you to discover and reveal who you really are. Discontinuity and tension are part of the experience. If these elements are missing from your career story, the tale will fall flat. With all these twists and turns, how do you demonstrate stability and earn listeners' trust? By emphasizing continuity and causality--in other words, by showing that your past is related to the present and, from that trajectory, conveying that a solid future is in sight. If you can make your story of transition cohere, you will have gone far in convincing the listener--and reassuring yourself--that the change makes sense for you and is likely to bring success.     

Seven surprises for new CEOs

As a newly minted CEO, you may think you finally have the power to set strategy, the authority to make things happen, and full access to the finer points of your business. But if you expect the job to be as simple as that, you're in for an awakening. Even though you bear full responsibility for your company's well-being, you are a few steps removed from many of the factors that drive results. You have more power than anybody else in the corporation, but you need to use it with extreme caution. In their workshops for new CEOs, held at Harvard Business School in Boston, the authors have discovered that nothing--not even running a large business within the company--fully prepares a person to be the chief executive. The seven most common surprises are: You can't run the company. Giving orders is very costly. It is hard to know what is really going on. You are always sending a message. You are not the boss. Pleasing shareholders is not the goal. You are still only human. These surprises carry some important and subtle lessons. First, you must learn to manage organizational context rather than focus on daily operations. Second, you must recognize that your position does not confer the right to lead, nor does it guarantee the loyalty of the organization. Finally, you must remember that you are subject to a host of limitations, even though others might treat you as omnipotent. How well and how quickly you understand, accept, and confront the seven surprises will have a lot to do with your success or failure as a CEO.     

How industries change

It's fairly obvious: To make intelligent investments within your organization, you need to understand how your whole industry is changing. But such knowledge is not always easy to come by. Companies misread clues and arrive at false conclusions all the time. To truly understand where your industry is headed, you have to take a long-term, high-level look at the context in which you do business, says Boston University professor Anita McGahan. She studied a variety of businesses from a cross section of industries over a ten-year period, examining how industry structure affects business profitability and investor returns. Her research suggests that industries evolve along one of four distinct trajectories--radical, progressive, creative, and intermediating--that set boundaries on what will generate profits in a business. These four trajectories are defined by two types of threats. The first is when new, outside alternatives threaten to weaken or make obsolete core activities that have historically generated profits for an industry. The second is when an industry's core assets--its resources, knowledge, and brand capital--fail to generate value as they once did. Industries undergo radical change when core assets and core activities are both threatened with obsolescence; they experience progressive change when neither are jeopardized. Creative change occurs when core assets are under threat but core activities are stable, and intermediating change happens when core activities are threatened while core assets retain their capacity to create value. If your company's innovation strategy is not aligned with your industry's change trajectory, your plan for achieving returns on invested capital cannot succeed, McGahan says. But if you understand which path you're on, you can determine which strategies will succeed and which will backfire.     

An Instructional Case Comparing the Accounting Policies and Financial Results of Online Retailers

In the role of financial analyst for a venture capital firm, you are assigned the responsibility of evaluating two online retailers who have applied for financing to build a distribution center in western Canada. Based on your developing knowledge of Canadian accounting standards for private enterprises (ASPE), you evaluate the financial reporting policies and financial results of the two companies to identify the company that is best suited for your firm's support. Through this case, you will refine your understanding of ASPE and you will exercise your reasoning and analytical skills.     

Failing by design

It's hardly news that business leaders work in increasingly uncertain environments, where failures are bound to be more common than successes. Yet if you ask executives how well, on a scale of one to 10, their organizations learn from failure, you'll often get a sheepish "Two-or maybe three" in response. Such organizations are missing a big opportunity: Failure may be inevitable but, if managed well, can be very useful. A certain amount of failure can help you keep your options open, find out what doesn't work, create the conditions to attract resources and attention, make room for new leaders, and develop intuition and skill. The key to reaping these benefits is to foster "intelligent failure" throughout your organization. McGrath describes several principles that can help you put intelligent failure to work. You should decide what success and failure would look like before you start a project. Document your initial assumptions, test and revise them as you go, and convert them into knowledge. Fail fast-the longer something takes, the less you'll learn-and fail cheaply, to contain your downside risk. Limit the number of uncertainties in new projects, and build a culture that tolerates, and sometimes even celebrates, failure. Finally, codify and share what you learn. These principles won't give you a means of avoiding all failures down the road-that's simply not realistic. They will help you use small losses to attain bigger wins over time.     

Cognitive fitness

Recent neuroscientific research shows that the health of your brain isn't, as experts once thought, just the product of childhood experiences and genetics; it reflects your adult choices and experiences as well. Professors Gilkey and Kilts of Emory University's medical and business schools explain how you can strengthen your brain's anatomy, neural networks, and cognitive abilities, and prevent functions such as memory from deteriorating as you age. The brain's alertness is the result of what the authors call cognitive fitness -a state of optimized ability to reason, remember, learn, plan, and adapt. Certain attitudes, lifestyle choices, and exercises enhance cognitive fitness. Mental workouts are the key. Brain-imaging studies indicate that acquiring expertise in areas as diverse as playing a cello, juggling, speaking a foreign language, and driving a taxicab expands your neural systems and makes them more communicative. In other words, you can alter the physical makeup of your brain by learning new skills. The more cognitively fit you are, the better equipped you are to make decisions, solve problems, and deal with stress and change. Cognitive fitness will help you be more open to new ideas and alternative perspectives. It will give you the capacity to change your behavior and realize your goals. You can delay senescence for years and even enjoy a second career. Drawing from the rapidly expanding body of neuroscience research as well as from well-established research in psychology and other mental health fields, the authors have identified four steps you can take to become cognitively fit: understand how experience makes the brain grow, work hard at play, search for patterns, and seek novelty and innovation. Together these steps capture some of the key opportunities for maintaining an engaged, creative brain.     

Surviving your new CEO

Almost 50% of the largest American firms will have a new CEO within the next four years; your company could very well be next. Senior executives know that a CEO transition means they're in for a round of firings, organizational reshuffles, and other unwelcome career changes. When your career suddenly depends on the views of a person you may not know, how worried should you be? According to the authors--very. They investigated the 2002-2004 CEO turnover rates of the top 1,000 U.S. companies and interviewed more than a dozen CEOs, each of whom had taken over at least one very large organization. Their study reveals that when a new CEO takes charge, remaining top managers are more likely than not to be shown the door. Those who leave often land in a lower position at a new company, work in a much smaller firm, or retire altogether. The news is not all grim, however. The interviewees offer some pointers on how to create a good impression and maximize your chances of survival and success under the new regime. Some of that advice may surprise you. One CEO pointed out, for instance, that "managers do not realize how much the CEO is looking for teammates on day one. I am amazed at how few people come through the door and say, 'I want to help. I may not be perfect, but I buy into your vision:" Other recommendations are more intuitive, such as learning the new CEO's working style, understanding her agenda, and helping her look good in her new position by achieving positive operating results--and soon. Along with the inevitable stresses, the authors point out, CEO transitions can provide opportunities. Whether you reinvigorate your career within your company or find fulfillment elsewhere, the key lies in deciding what you want to do--and then doing it right.     

Master of the house: Why a company should take control of its building projects

When you head up a big construction project for your organization, coming in on time and on budget isn't enough. If you want to avoid squandering what is probably your company's largest capital investment, it's important to create a building that reflects your company's mission and produces a truly energizing work environment, says David Thurm, CIO of the New York Times Company and head of the team responsible for designing and building the Times' new corporate headquarters in Manhattan. The only way to get this kind of package-great design and innovative features that together further your business goals- is to take an active role. Assemble the right team, and then stay involved, asking hard questions about things that are generally taken as givens. Articulate a vision of your future work space, and drive the search for ways to realize this vision. In short, be a builder, not merely an owner. It's easy to understand why this approach is the exception rather than the rule. To most companies, design and construction seem foreign and forbidding, rife with pitfalls. Because of the murkiness of the field and a lack of experience and confidence, most companies play a relatively minor role in their construction projects. But it's a giant mistake to be a passive consumer when it comes to one of your most important assets. At best, you'll get well-intentioned guesses by others as to what you want; at worst, you'll end up with a building that's at odds with your identity. The author shares a series of lessons learned. Implicit in all of them: You have to push yourself as hard as you push your contractors.     

A survival guide for leaders

Let's face it, to lead is to live dangerously. While leadership is often viewed as an exciting and glamorous endeavor, one in which you inspire others to follow you through good times and bad, such a portrayal ignores leadership's dark side: the inevitable attempts to take you out of the game. This is particularly true when a leader must steer an organization through difficult change. When the status quo is upset, people feel a sense of profound loss and dashed expectations. They may need to undergo a period of feeling incompetent or disloyal. It's no wonder they resist the change and often try to eliminate its visible agent. This "survival guide" offers a number of techniques--relatively straightforward in concept but difficult to execute--for protecting yourself as you lead such a change initiative. Adapted from the book Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), the article has two main parts. The first looks outward, offering tactical advice about relating to your organization and the people in it. It is designed to protect you from those who would push you aside before you complete your initiatives. The second looks inward, focusing on your own needs and vulnerabilities. It is designed to keep you from bringing yourself down. The hard truth is that it is not possible to experience the rewards and joys of leadership without experiencing the pain as well. But staying in the game and bearing that pain is worth it, not only for the positive changes you can make in the lives of others but also for the meaning it gives your own.     

How (un) ethical are you?

Answer true or false: "I am an ethical manager." If you answered "true," here's an Uncomfortable fact: You're probably wrong. Most of us believe we can objectively size up a job candidate or a venture deal and reach a fair and rational conclusion that's in our, and our organization's, best interests. But more than two decades of psychological research indicates that most of us harbor unconscious biases that are often at odds with our consciously held beliefs. The flawed judgments arising from these biases are ethically problematic and undermine managers' fundamental work--to recruit and retain superior talent, boost individual and team performance, and collaborate effectively with partners. This article explores four related sources of unintentional unethical decision making. If you're surprised that a female colleague has poor people skills, you are displaying implicit bias--judging according to unconscious stereotypes rather than merit. Companies that give bonuses to employees who recommend their friends for open positions are encouraging ingroup bias--favoring people in their own circles. If you think you're better than the average worker in your company (and who doesn't?), you may be displaying the common tendency to overclaim credit. And although many conflicts of interest are overt, many more are subtle. Who knows, for instance, whether the promise of quick and certain payment figures into an attorney's recommendation to settle a winnable case rather than go to trial? How can you counter these biases if they're unconscious? Traditional ethics training is not enough. But by gathering better data, ridding the work environment of stereotypical cues, and broadening your mind-set when you make decisions, you can go a long way toward bringing your unconscious biases to light and submitting them to your conscious will.     

Is your company ready for one-to-one marketing?

One-to-one marketing, also known as relationship marketing, promises to increase the value of your customer base by establishing a learning relationship with each customer. The customer tells you of some need, and you customize your product or service to meet it. Every interaction and modification improves your ability to fit your product to the particular customer. Eventually, even if a competitor offers the same type of service, your customer won't be able to enjoy the same level of convenience without taking the time to teach your competitor the lessons your company has already learned. Although the theory behind one-to-one marketing is simple, implementation is complex. Too many companies have jumped on the one-to-one band-wagon without proper preparation--mistakenly understanding it as an excuse to badger customers with excessive telemarketing and direct mail campaigns. The authors offer practical advice for implementing a one-to-one marketing program correctly. They describe four key steps: identifying your customers, differentiating among them, interacting with them, and customizing your product or service to meet each customer's needs. And they provide activities and exercises, to be administered to employees and customers, that will help you identify your company's readiness to launch a one-to-one initiative. Although some managers dismiss the possibility of one-to-one marketing as an unattainable goal, even a modest program can produce substantial benefits. This tool kit will help you determine what type of program your company can implement now, what you need to do to position your company for a large-scale initiative, and how to set priorities.     

What's your personal social media strategy?

Social media are changing the way we do business and how leaders are perceived, from the shop floor to the CEO suite. But whereas the best businesses are creating comprehensive strategies in thi area, research suggests that few corporate Leaders have a social media presence--say, a Facebook or Linked in of page--and that those do don't use it strategically. Today's leaders must embrace social media for three reasons, First, they provide a low-cost, highly accessible platform on which to build your personal brand, communicating who you are both within and outside your company. Second, they allow you to engage rapidly and simultaneously with peers, employees, customers, and the broader public--in order to leverage relationships, show commitment to a cause, and demonstrate a capacity for reflection. Third, they give you an opportunity to learn from instant information and unvarnished feedback. To formulate your personal social media strategy, it helps to clarify your goals (personal, professional, or both), desired audience (private or public), and resources (can you justify using your company's?). You must also consider the risks of maintaining a large number of connections and of sharing content online. Active participation in social media can be a powerful tool--the difference between leading effectively and ineffectively, and between advancing and faltering in the pursuit of your goals.     

A smarter way to network

The adage "It's not what you know, it's who you know" is true. The right social network can have a huge impact on your success. But many people have misguided ideas about what makes a network strong: They believe the key is having a large circle filled with high-powered contacts. That's not the right approach, say Cross, of UVA's McIntire School of Commerce, and Thomas, of the Accenture Institute for High Performance. The authors, who have spent years researching how organizations can capitalize on employees' social networks, have seen that the happiest, highest-performing executives have a different kind of network: select but diverse, made up of high-quality relationships with people who come from varying spheres and from up and down the corporate ladder. Effective networks typically range in size from 12 to 18 people. They help managers learn, make decisions with less bias, and grow personally. Cross and Thomas have found that they include six critical kinds of connections: people who provide information, ideas, or expertise; formally and informally powerful people, who offer mentoring and political support; people who give developmental feedback; people who lend personal support; people who increase your sense of purpose or worth; and people who promote work/life balance. Moreover, the best kind of connections are "energizers"--positive, trustworthy individuals who enjoy other people and always see opportunities, even in challenging situations. If your network doesn't look like this, you can follow a four-step process to improve it. You'll need to identify who your connections are and what they offer you, back away from redundant and energy-draining connections, fill holes in your network with the right kind of people, and work to make the most of your contacts. Do this, and in due course, you'll have a network that steers the best opportunities, ideas, and talent your way.     

关于电子商务及员工管理一席谈

最近CA公司董事长兼首席执行官王嘉廉先生在清华大学就电子商务的发展及CA公司的人力资源管理等问题向清华师生发表了演讲,其中不乏较新颖的观点本刊整理如下,以供读者品评。     

Success that lasts

Pursuing success can feel like shooting in a landscape of moving targets: Every time you hit one, five more pop up from another direction. We are under constant pressure to do more, get more, be more. But is that really what success is all about? Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson interviewed and surveyed hundreds of professionals to study the assumptions behind the idea of success. They then built a practical framework for a new way of thinking about success--a way that leads to personal and professional fulfillment instead of feelings of anxiety and stress. The authors' research uncovered four irreducible components of success: happiness (feelings of pleasure or contentment about your life); achievement (accomplishments that compare favorably against similar goals others have strived for); significance (the sense that you've made a positive impact on people you care about); and legacy (a way to establish your values or accomplishments so as to help others find future success). Unless you hit on all four categories with regularity, any one win will fail to satisfy. People who achieve lasting success, the authors learned, tend to rely on a kaleidoscope strategy to structure their aspirations and activities. This article explains how to build your own kaleidoscope framework. The process can help you determine which tasks you should undertake to fulfill the different components of success and uncover areas where there are holes. It can also help you make better choices about what you spend your time on and the level of energy you put into each activity. According to Nash and Stevenson, successful people who experience real satisfaction achieve it through the deliberate imposition of limits. Cultivating your sense of "just enough" can help you set reachable goals, tally up more true wins, and enjoy lasting success.     

How valuable is word of mouth?

The customers who buy the most from you are probably not your best marketers. What's more, your best marketers may be worth far more to your company than your most enthusiastic consumers. Those are the conclusions of professors Kumar and Petersen at the University of Connecticut and professor Leone at Ohio State University, who analyzed thousands of customers in research focused on a telecommunications company and a financial services firm. In this article, the authors present a straightforward tool that can be used to calculate both customer lifetime value (CLV), the worth of your customers' purchases, and customer referral value (CRV), the value of their referrals. Knowing both enables you to segment your customers into four constituent parts: those that buy a lot but are poor marketers (which they term Affluents); those that don't buy much but are very strong salespeople for your firm (Advocates); those that do both well (Champions); and those that do neither well (Misers). In a series of one-year experiments, the authors demonstrated the effectiveness of this segmentation approach. Offering purchasing incentives to Advocates, referral incentives to Affluents, and both to Misers, they were able to move significant proportions of all three into the Champions category. Both companies reaped returns on their marketing investments greater than 12-fold--more than double the normal marketing ROI for their industries. The power of this tool is its ability to help marketers decide where to focus their efforts. Rather than waste funds encouraging big spenders to spend slightly more while overlooking the power of customer evangelists who don't buy enough to seem important, you can reap much higher rewards by nudging big spenders to make referrals and urging enthusiastic proponents of your wares to buy a bit more.     

Consumer strategy in the public sector: Are you being served?

If your consumers had a choice, would they still choose you? Looking at your service through their eyes is a useful first step in working towards a positive answer to that question. Public sector managers need market sensitivity, whether or not they are monopoly suppliers of services.     

Bill Gates： 10 rules of life

1.Life is not fair, get used to it. 2.The world won＇t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.     

How market smarts can protect property rights

Intellectual property comprises an ever-increasing fraction of corporate wealth, but what's the good of that if an ever-increasing fraction of the property is copied or stolen? Faced with developing countries' limited and inadequately enforced patent and copyright laws, some companies are resorting to market-based strategies to protect their intellectual property. These include preempting or threatening competitors, embedding intellectual property in environments that can be protected, bundling insecure intellectual property with its more secure cousins, and actually entering the businesses that pose a threat. The authors urge companies coping with weak property rights to follow a decision tree when choosing which strategies to use and when: Start by thinking of the strategies that will protect your business's core. If, for example, a first-mover advantage is within reach, making yourself more committed to intellectual property could be the answer. If you and your rivals are equally matched, ask yourself, "Can those that threaten me with copying be copied in turn?" The knowledge that each of you can hurt the other may dampen the competitive intensity or even lead to voluntary sharing of property. If these solutions fail or don't apply, try forging a connection with a product or business closely related to your own. Doing so may prevent a valued asset from falling into a rival's hands or make the asset harder to misappropriate. This approach can even help you expand your piece of the market pie or reduce the cost of making the threatened product, perhaps to the point where you can compete against pirated goods. Finally, if there still doesn't seem to be a way of making money from your threatened product, you may choose to move into the very business that has hurt your own. Such strategies are behind the economics of successful companies like Intel and NBC, say the authors.