Businesses hoping to survive over the long term will have to remake themselves into better competitors at least once along the way. These efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, rightsizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnarounds, to name a few. In almost every case, the goal has been to cope with a new, more challenging market by changing the way business is conducted. In this article, John Kotter outlines the eight largest errors that can doom these efforts.

You'll hear why even the largest and most complex teams can work together effectively if the right conditions are in place. From the November 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review.

How dangerous assumptions can creep into every strategic proposal – and how you can avoid them....

The CEO and president of IDEO writes that when designers are involved from the very beginning of the innovation process, startling new ideas can result - as a U.S. health care provider, a Japanese bicycle components manufacturer, and a system of Indian eye hospitals learned.

Roger Martin looks beyond the actions of great leaders. He says the lessons we really need to learn come from what goes on in their heads - particularly the way they creatively build on the tensions among conflicting ideas.