Great Leaders Know When to Forgive

Great Leaders Know When to Forgive

by Rosabeth Moss Kanter  |   8:00 AM February 26, 2013

Leaders must be firm and foster accountability, but they also must know when to forgive past wrongs in the service of building a brighter future. One of the most courageous acts of leadership is to forgo the temptation to take revenge on those on the other side of an issue or those who opposed the leader’s rise to power.

Instead of settling scores, great leaders make gestures of reconciliation that heal wounds and get on with business. This is essential for turnarounds or to prevent mergers from turning into rebellions against acquirers who act like conquering armies.

Nelson Mandela famously forgave his oppressors. After the end of apartheid, which had fostered racial separation and kept blacks impoverished, Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected President. Some in his political party clamored for revenge against members of the previous regime or perhaps even all privileged white people. Instead, to avoid violence, stabilize and unite the nation, and attract investment in the economy, Mandela appointed a racially integrated cabinet, visited the widow of one of the top apartheid leaders, and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that would clear the air and permit moving forward. Read more of this post

The trust crisis in the workplace

The trust crisis in the workplace

Ray Williams | Feb 25, 2013 5:16 PM ET
Recent polls would seem to indicate that people are becoming increasingly cynical about organizations and leaders.

A DDI International study of 57 organizations on the issue of trust in the workplace indicated respondents trusted their co-workers, but a majority mistrusted their leaders, and particularly senior leaders.  The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer reported that the majority of people distrusted government, financial institutions and business leaders — particularly CEOs. Read more of this post

Deviant Leaders: Falling Hard; Can top bosses be rude, abusive, egocentric and fiscally irresponsible, as long as the bottom line looks good?

Deviant Leaders: Falling Hard

by Jane Williams | Feb 25, 2013

Can top bosses be rude, abusive, egocentric and fiscally irresponsible, as long as the bottom line looks good?

When it comes to infringements around the office, business leaders seem to get away with a lot: A blind eye may be turned when a manager swipes his company credit card to cover a US$200 private lunch, but a worker caught stuffing a coffee tin from the tea room into his backpack could expect to face great condemnation and possibly the loss of his job.

But there’s a limit, even at the very top, as former CEOs Bernie Ebbers (WorldCom), Dennis Kozlowski (Tyco International), and Kenneth Lay (Enron) discovered. When leaders fall, they fall hard.

New INSEAD research has found leaders in general receive greater leniency for their perceived anti-social or “deviant” behaviour, but when a line is crossed – when their deviant actions are perceived to be “most severe” – they face harsher punishment than would an underling.

“Research shows that because of their power and status leaders are perceived as deserving of certain privileges,” Natalia Karelaia, INSEAD Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences and co-author of the paper When Deviant Leaders are Punished more than Non-leaders: The Role of Deviance Severity told INSEAD Knowledge. “But prototypical leaders are also expected to act in a responsible and just manner, so when severe deviances – those that inflict significant harm on others – are committed by leaders, they are likely to be seen as significant acts of betrayal of leadership expectations.” Read more of this post

Shocking Aerial Views Of Hong Kong’s Tiny ‘Cage’ Apartments

Shocking Aerial Views Of Hong Kong’s Tiny ‘Cage’ Apartments

Adam Taylor | Feb. 25, 2013, 3:00 PM | 94,004 | 27

Over the past few decades, Hong Kong has become one of the world’s most important cities and a global financial hub.

However, increased prosperity hasn’t trickled down to everyone. According to the Gini co-efficiency, which measures inequality, Hong Kong is the least equal city in the developed world.

Local advocacy group Society for Community Organization says that hundreds of thousands of people are still living in caged homes and wood-partitioned cubicles. What’s worse, the number of people living this way appears to be increasing, as economic migrants arrive in the city from mainland China.

To highlight the struggle, SoCO took shots of the homes to show just how tight these living quarters are.

The apartments were so small that they had to be photographed from the ceiling to capture them.

Lee Kuan Yew, A Wise Man for the World: Singapore’s philosopher-king on an ascendant China, the threat of Islamism and America’s entitlements crisis

February 25, 2013, 4:19 p.m. ET

A Wise Man for the World

Singapore’s philosopher-king on an ascendant China, the threat of Islamism and America’s entitlements crisis.

By KAREN ELLIOTT HOUSE

China already dominates Asia and intends to become the world’s leading power. The United States is not yet a “second rate power,” but the inability of its political leaders to make unpopular decisions bodes poorly. Russia, Japan, Western Europe and India are, for the most part, tired bureaucracies. If Iran gets the bomb, a nuclear war in the Middle East is almost inevitable.

These are among the many frank forecasts laid out in a slim volume based on the experiences and insights of Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, and Asia’s ranking philosopher-king for much of the past half-century. Tiny Singapore has always been too small a stage for a leader of Mr. Lee’s intellect and ego. His interests have extended across the globe, as has his influence. For decades, world leaders, corporate CEOs, scholars and journalists have made the pilgrimage to Singapore to seek his views.

“Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World” forms a kind of last testament of the ailing, 89-year-old Mr. Lee. It is based on interviews with Mr. Lee by the authors—Graham Allison, a professor of government at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and Robert Blackwill, a former U.S. diplomat—to which the authors add a distillation of Mr. Lee’s speeches, writings and interviews with others over many years. Read more of this post

Stress-Busting Smiles: A Genuine Grin Can Help the Heart; Is Polite Faking Enough to See Benefits?

Updated February 25, 2013, 9:29 p.m. ET

Stress-Busting Smiles

A Genuine Grin Can Help the Heart; Is Polite Faking Enough to See Benefits?

By SUMATHI REDDY

Smiling could be good for your health.

Researchers are finding that wearing a smile brings certain benefits, like slowing down the heart and reducing stress. This may even happen when people aren’t aware they are forming a smile, according to a recent study. The work follows research that established that the act of smiling can make you feel happier.

Some research suggests only a full and genuine smile affects the body in positive ways. Other studies, though, indicate even a polite smile may be beneficial. Frowning also may have a health effect: Preventing people from frowning, such as with the use of Botox, can help alleviate depression, a recent study found.

“You can influence mental health by what you do with your face, whether you smile more or frown less,” says Eric Finzi, a dermatologic surgeon and co-author of the study on frowning. Read more of this post

How to Best Protect Your Brand From a Coup d’Etat; Soon, a Singapore court will decide a lawsuit involving one of Indonesia’s most well-known brands, with not only millions of dollars at stake but also ownership of the brand itself

How to Best Protect Your Brand From a Coup d’Etat
Commentary | Prudence Jahja & Andrew Diamond | February 25, 2013

Soon, a Singapore court will decide a lawsuit involving one of Indonesia’s most well-known brands, with not only millions of dollars at stake but also ownership of the brand itself.

How Ku De Ta, the long-standing Bali beach club and an establishment known for its chic and laid-back demeanor, became embroiled in a hotly contentious, multiparty lawsuit 1,600 kilometers away from its sublime beachfront location in Seminyak is a story that every Indonesian brand owner should learn by heart.

It is a story that has important implications for doing business in this increasingly globalized world. And while this decision is eagerly anticipated by the parties and intellectual property lawyers who focus on trademarks and brand protection, for everyone else the decision itself does not matter, as the lessons to be learned from this case have been clear for quite some time, however the court rules.  Read more of this post

Wombs for rent: Indian surrogate mothers tell their tales

Published: Monday February 25, 2013 MYT 1:51:00 PM

Wombs for rent: Indian surrogate mothers tell their tales

NEW DELHI: As baby Lili celebrates her first birthday in Australia, far away in India her surrogate mother recalls the day the child was born – and on whom she never laid eyes.

“I averted my gaze,” says Seita Thapa, recounting her experience of giving birth at the Surrogacy Centre India clinic in New Delhi last February on behalf of a gay male couple who used an egg donated from another woman.

“Why would I want to see the child? – I have my own children,” said the mother of two teenagers aged 16 and 18, adding that the clinic gives courses that “prepare us mentally for the fact it’s not our baby”.

Commercial surrogacy is a booming industry in India with legions of childless foreign couples looking for a low-cost, legally simple route to parenthood.

While the Indian government has been pushing the country as a medical tourism destination, the issue of wealthy foreigners paying poor Indians to have babies has raised ethical concerns in many Indian minds about “baby factories”.

The Confederation of Indian Industry, a leading business association, estimates the industry now generates more than $2 billion in revenues annually. Read more of this post

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw – review; Tash Aw’s tale of five migrant workers carving out lives in a modernising Shanghai is the stuff of a hit TV miniseries

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw – review

Tash Aw’s tale of five migrant workers carving out lives in a modernising Shanghai is the stuff of a hit TV miniseries

Adam Mars-Jones

The Observer, Sunday 24 February 2013

Shanghai, a city ‘with a heart as deep and unknown as the forests of the Amazon’. Photograph: Alamy

At one point in Tash Aw’s fine new novel about what people call “the newChina” a young woman is trying to photograph herself on her mobile phone in a park in Guangzhou, hoping to enliven her internet dating profile with an image that doesn’t make her look like an immigrant factory worker (which she is). An old man who sells tickets for the rowing boats on the lake offers to take the picture for her. He looks uncertainly at her phone. She wonders if he understands how to work it. Then he says: “This phone is so old. My grandson had one just like this three years ago when he was still in middle school.” This is the world of the book, where traditional societies seem to have leapfrogged their way into a modernity without signposts, where the past isn’t solid enough to build on but too substantial to be ignored.

The five main characters, three men and two women, all come to Shanghai (by some definitions the world’s largest city) from Malaysia, though their backgrounds range from old money to rural deprivation. As a title, Five Star Billionaire is close to brash, and the book’s storyline could persuasively be pitched to a producer in search of a blockbuster miniseries, but the reading experience it offers is coolly engrossing – with elements of frustrating evasion – rather than propulsive. Tash Aw doesn’t exactly kill plot momentum or the emotional impact of the situations he creates, but he certainly keeps them in check. Narrative hints are often indirect, like clues in a detective story, as when a passing reference to a character having written an article deploring the architecture of Gaudí suggests that a conversation almost a hundred pages earlier wasn’t in fact spontaneous. Read more of this post

Schools think too narrowly on entrepreneurship; Identifying new business opportunities should be core to management education

February 24, 2013 11:46 pm

Schools think too narrowly on entrepreneurship

By Tim Faley and Peter Adriaens

Identifying new business opportunities should be core to management education

Growth is the top concern of corporate executives, economic developers and government officials desperately trying to reduce unemployment. That growth will be driven by entrepreneurs creating new businesses and new lines of business within existing companies.

Institutes of higher learning are responding with courses and dedicated entrepreneurial centres. In the US alone, the number of schools offering courses in entrepreneurship has grown from fewer than 100 in 1977 to more than 2,000 today. These institutions hold the promise of teaching those skills necessary to forge a new generation of successful serial entrepreneurs. But that dream has been derailed.

In fact, the promise of entrepreneurship is being corrupted by false mythologies. A false mythology about entrepreneurship, particularly prevalent at today’s universities and business schools, is stifling entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurs need more than an idea, a pitch and some cash to build great companies. Graduate management schools, which should be the beacon of sanity in this debate, while consistently communicating that it takes two years to learn how to manage an ongoing concern, often treat the creation of such a concern as trivial – a topic that can be mastered in a weekend exercise or week-long immersion class. What is the message in that?

Many business schools think about entrepreneurship far too narrowly. They believe that it is only about students creating cute little businesses and lump the subject in with other student services and club activities.

In fact the very opposite is true; identifying new business opportunities and managing their growth should be core to what business schools teach in the 21st century. Entrepreneurial skills – the ability to identify opportunities and threats, to formulate and assess businesses around those opportunities, to put them into operation, to fund them and grow those nascent ventures – are critical for any organisation concerned with growth. Business schools have a very different role to that of incubators. Business schools have a knowledge and skill-building mission. The focus should be on the fishing, not the fish. Read more of this post

Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India

February 24, 2013, 4:07 p.m. ET

India’s Founding Fathers

By SUDHA KOUL

Britain dominated India for almost two centuries—initially through the East India Co. and later directly as the Raj—finally granting it independence in 1947. The Indian anti-colonial struggle was unique in that it reached its goal without violent overthrow. This was one of the great achievements of the nationalist movement’s enlightened leadership.

In “Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India,” the historian Ananya Vajpeyi shows how these leaders looked to ancient Indian texts and traditions as they led the nation toward swaraj, or self-rule. The author profiles five prominent anti-colonial leaders and examines how each of them contributed to the nation’s successful “search for the self”: Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who need no introduction; the Bengali poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore; his nephew, the artist Abanindranath Tagore; and B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian constitution.

India had a glorious past, with millennia of learning, literature, science and art, culture and tradition. Yet by the time the country became the jewel in the crown of Queen Victoria, who was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877, knowledge of the ancient Indic political tradition—the ideas and practices by which “the precolonial kingdoms of the Mughals, the Deccani Sultans, the Nayakas, the Marathas, the Rajputs, and the Sikhs” ruled the subcontinent—had been all but erased thanks to a combination of colonial rule and internal decay. When Indians were told that democracy was a gift of the West, for example, very few questioned the assumption, even though panchayats, or self-governing village bodies, had existed for thousands of years on the subcontinent. Read more of this post

INSIDE JCPENNEY: Widespread Fear, Anxiety, And Distrust Of Ron Johnson And His New Management Team

INSIDE JCPENNEY: Widespread Fear, Anxiety, And Distrust Of Ron Johnson And His New Management Team

Kim Bhasin | Feb. 22, 2013, 10:29 AM | 9,676 | 17

JCPenney may have a glossy new exterior, but inside the 111-year-old retailer, there is a major culture clash.

There’s widespread anxiety, fear, distrust, and resistance to CEO Ron Johnson within the company, according to several JCPenney executives.

Rumors have spun out of control, even among the executives at headquarters, and they have trickled down to the front line workers in stores, the execs told us.

We’ve corresponded with dozens of JCPenney employees throughout its transformation over the past year.

Some are executives at the company’s headquarters in Plano, TX. Others are regional coordinators and managers. We’ve also heard from store managers, associates, and stylists who deal directly with customers and receive their marching orders from far above.

The latest numbers also reveal that the company is in a tailspin.

The stock price is down a whopping 54 percent in the last year. Same-store sales have been abysmal every quarter. Some analysts are even worried that the company may be approaching a cash crisis. Read more of this post