Bender Consulting

An interview with Rita McGrath, Professor, Columbia Business School. How can companies plan and pursue an aggressive growth agenda with confidence? By framing their strategic growth opportunities, testing assumptions, and creating a culture that acts on evidence and learning.

Cisco CEO John Chambers explains how abandoning command-and-control leadership has enabled the company to innovate more quickly, using collaboration and teamwork.

An interview with Stewart Friedman, Professor, University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Traditional thinking pits work and the rest of our lives against each other. But taking smart steps to integrate work, home, community, and self will make you a more productive leader and a more fulfilled person.

Alpha personalities present unique challenges for those who work with them. You need a different set of strategies for getting along with an alpha boss than for managing an alpha employee.

An interview with Joseph L. Bower, Professor, Harvard Business School. To become an effective CEO, work for companies committed to leadership development, and take responsibility for your own development on the job.

An interview with Boris Groysberg, Professor, Harvard Business School. Many star performers hired from outside don't perform as expected at their new company. So, develop stars within your company; for example, through strong training and mentoring programs.

An interview with Gerald Zaltman, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School. Learn how to create more effective marketing campaigns based on your customers' unconscious thoughts and feelings.

An interview with Tom DeLong, Professor, Harvard Business School. Executives can get more value from their workforce if they recognize and motivate their B players. These solid, steady performers form the bulk of a workforce--and bring crucial forms of value to companies.

An interview with Maggie Brenneke, Director, Skoll Social Enterprise Program - which developed the concept of the "the Triple Bottom Line" - which is balancing economic, social and environmental bottom lines. When businesses consider their social and environmental bottom lines, they identify new opportunities to innovate. Some of those opportunities can be surprisingly counterintuitive.

An interview with Josh Bernoff, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. Over the past thirteen years, Mr. Bernoff has become one of America's most frequently quoted research analysts. His analysis, which aims at a deeper understanding of people and how they use technology, has been cited by sources from The Wall St. Journal to "60 Minutes."

He is the co-author of the book "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies," which offers myriad data-based strategies for

An interview with Tammy Erickson, President of The Concours Institute. Tammy has co-authored four Harvard Business Review articles and the books "Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation" and "Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent."

An Interview with Linda A. Hill, Professor, Harvard Business School. We won't find new global leaders by looking in conventional places for people who act in conventional take-charge ways. Instead, look for people who can lead from behind to promote the collective genius of their teams.

An Interview with Michael E. Porter, Professor, Harvard University. Porter's five competitive forces is the basis for much of modern business strategy. Understand the framework and how to put it into practice.

An interview with John Boudreau, Professor, University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. The key to staying competitive? Invest in your strategic pivot points--roles where improved performance would make the biggest difference to executing your strategy.

An Interview with Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Professor, Harvard Business School. Some multinationals, despite their size, manage to be nimble, innovative, and connected with local communities. How? By placing greater emphasis on shared values and making a positive impact on the world.

An interview with John Kotter, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School. Without a true sense of urgency, any change effort is doomed. Watch John Kotter discuss the need for urgency and how managers create and sustain it in their organizations.

Dick Beatty, professor of Human Resource Management at Rutgers University, explains how to identify your most important positions -- and get your best people into them.

How do you innovate during times of cost reduction? Is now the time to stop/reduce innovation? How do you start doing new things without stopping old?

How long do you have to work at something before you get good? 10,000 hours -- it's called "The 10,000 Hour Rule". The jobs we do today are sufficiently complex, so we need to give people time to learn and apprentice. How do we build institutions, process and "space" to enable this development and learning?

Eric Schmidt discusses ethos, values and culture. Ethics will become increasingly important in years to come.