Leaders & Managers

One reason that Polaroid went out of business, says former Polaroid CEO Gary T. DiCamillo, is that the revenue it earned from film sales served as a blockade, preventing experimentation with new business models. Eventually, all successful companies run across this problem.

In a new examination of twin studies, Scott Shane, management professor at Case Western Reserve University, reveals a growing consensus that genes really do account for many of the differences between individuals—in business as well as the rest of life.

You can’t be everywhere at once, but you can keep your hand on the rudder. First, make sure your vision is clear and that your people are following it.

True leaders inspire employees to reach their potential. That’s a tall order. More often, leaders fall into the trap of becoming passion killers. One practical way forward is asking your team to catalog “passion killers.”

Andy Grove’s story is so popular because he has the one quality all leaders need: He can turn on a dime. Grove—the genius behind Intel—did it in 1957, when Hungary’s Soviet-controlled border opened for a moment and he plunged through to escape to America. Grove set aside everything he knew and leapt into the unknown ...

R.A. Dickey’s career was failing. A pitcher in the major leagues, he struggled on the mound. To compensate for a ligament problem in his pitching arm, he was in the midst of reinventing his pitching style. Not only did he reinvent his pitch, he made it something unique—the knuckleball.

As chief of the New York City and Los Angeles police departments, William Bratton experienced firsthand how powerful a force collaboration could be. Bratton offers several principles for leaders to follow in building a collaborative organization:

One principle of commando business operations: Repeat your successes. Restaurant chains are good at replication.

Chief executive Dan Akerson is making progress in steering GM toward a common vision and chipping away at the old bureaucracy, though observers had expected the company to be further along by now. Here’s how Akerson is trying to turn things around:

Culture matters. It affects both performance and outcomes. A quick review of early American ­history shows a parallel between building a house then and building an organization now.