Executive Profiles

Corporate leaders' short-sighted focus on EPS and analyst expectations leaves the US workforce far behind its international counterparts when it comes to cultivating innovation. It's time we stepped up to the plate.

Leaders who are new on the job should get out of their nice offices and go sit with their direct reports. Sit with them in their spaces, over lunch or coffee-anyplace but your space. You want them to be completely comfortable.

In an article for the New York Times, reporter Damien Cave pointed out how few heroes have been publicly recognized by the Administration in the current war. Despite the fact that there have been incredible acts of heroism and gutsy leadership on the ground of this Iraq war, the powers that be, for the most part, are calling no attention to it-at least no prime-time attention. Damien's most damning example came from Major Bruce Norton, a military historian and author of Encyclopedia of American Military Heroes, who recounted how a Marine recently received his Navy Cross, the second-highest military honor-not with ceremony and honor, but in the mail.

There comes a point when people have enough stuff in their lives, but they can never have enough meaning. Leaders have to find opportunities for their eams to do more than turn the machine of profit.

Eyes in the Back of Your Head

We all remember the Greek myth about old King Sisyphus. In life, he was a trickster, but the gods got the last laugh in the afterlife by making it his fate to push a huge boulder up a mountain only to see it roll down just before reaching the summit-again and again for all eternity.