Best-Practices Leadership

Get your people the tools they need

March 14, 2014
Rich Combs, executive chairman of Power Distribution Inc., a supplier of electrical switching equipment for data centers, says his experience working with Teamsters on a start-up at McDonnell Douglas taught him the value of tight interaction.

At Citigroup, creativity is a global game

March 13, 2014
In late 2011, Susan Andrews came up with a bold campaign to spur innovation across Citigroup, a global financial firm. As head of innovation for the company’s Citi Ventures unit, Andrews decided to use social media to turn 263,000 em­­ployees in 97 countries into innovators.

4 stages of scaling your organization

March 7, 2014
Bring your enterprise to scale in 4 stages.

Young McDonnell had a farm

February 28, 2014

After college, Stephen McDonnell worked as a financial analyst at Ford, got a master’s in organizational behavior from Harvard and began to understand small businesses. He decided he wanted to change the way America eats meat …

A Navy officer’s botched repair

February 27, 2014
U.S. Navy lieutenant Robert Wray was assigned to an important mission on the USS Omaha submarine. At sea, the crew discovered a leak in a complex piece of equipment. After 30 hours of stressful work in cramped surroundings, Wray and his team found it leaked worse than ever …

Rise above rival’s petty moves

February 26, 2014
Walt Disney’s optimism inoculated him from much of the scheming and betrayal that he faced as a young entrepreneur. When others tried to muscle him out of business, he sought creative solutions.

Leadership Tips: Vol. 214

February 25, 2014
Meet your future C-suite execs … A cautionary tale on change … A thumbs-down on meetings.

Fight off ‘feature creep’ to win fans

February 18, 2014
Innovation usually starts with the seed of a simple idea. The challenge is to nurture that seed and let it grow into a product or service—without over­­complicating its initial simplicity.

‘Idea man’ Nikola Tesla

February 17, 2014
Known as “the Wizard” for his showmanship, inventor Nikola Tesla, one of America’s first celebrity scientists at the turn of the 20th century, relied on rigorous thinking as well as imagination to perfect his inventions.

Rocket man: Always be prepared

February 13, 2014
Astronaut Chris Hadfield describes the careful planning he used to become the space station’s commander—the forward thinking summed up in this mantra for pilots: “What’s the next thing that’s going to kill me?”