Prologue

1. Karen Harris, Andrew Schwedel, and Austin Kimson, “A World Awash in Money,” Bain Report, November 14, 2012, http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/a-world-awash-in-money.aspx.

2. Patty McCord, “How Netflix Reinvented HR,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr.

3. Bill Taylor, “How One Company’s Turnaround Came from the Heart,” Harvard Business Review, March 30, 2010, https://hbr.org/2010/03/how-one-copmanys-turnaround.

4. Christiane Correa, Dream Big: How the Brazilian Trio Behind 3G Capital—Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira—Acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz (Rio de Janeiro: Sextante, 2014).

Chapter 1

1. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Productivity and Costs by Industry: Selected Service-Providing Industries, 2015,” Long run labor productivity, unit labor costs, and related data, Table 2, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/prin2.nr0.htm.

2. Tom Monahan, “The Hard Evidence: Business Is Slowing Down,” Fortune, January 28, 2016, http://fortune.com/2016/01/28/business-decision-making-project-management.

3. Andrew Hill, “Business: How to Topple Bureaucracy,” Financial Times, April 14, 2016, http://on.ft.com/264hkWx.

Chapter 2

1. Andrew Grove, Computer Decisions 16 (1984): 126.

2. Michael C. Mankins, Chris Brahm, and Greg Caimi, “Your Scarcest Resource,” Harvard Business Review, May 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/05/your-scarcest-resource.

3. Michael C. Mankins, “This Weekly Meeting Took Up 300,000 Hours a Year,” Harvard Business Review, April 29, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/04/how-a-weekly-meeting-took-up-300000-hours-a-year.

4. Adele Peters, “Why Sweden Is Shifting to a 6-Hour Workday,” Fast Company Co.Exist, September 29, 2015, http://www.fastcoexist.com/3051448/why-sweden-is-shifting-to-a-6-hour-work-day.

5. Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

6. Ryan Fuller, “Quantify How Much Time Your Company Wastes,” Harvard Business Review, May 28, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/05/quantify-how-much-time-your-company-wastes.

7. Marcia W. Blenko, Paul Rogers, and Michael C. Mankins, Decide and Deliver: Five Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2010).

Chapter 3

1. Mark Gottfredson and Michael C. Mankins, “Four Paths to a Focused Organization,” Bain Brief, January 15, 2014, http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/four-paths-to-a-focused-organization.aspx.

2. See “Driving the Strategic Agenda in the New Work Environment,” CEB, 2015, https://www.cebglobal.com/content/dam/cebglobal/us/EN/talent-management/workforce-surveys/pdfs/CEB-Survey-Solutions.pdf. The quote from Brian Kropp appears in Rachel Feintzeig, “So Busy at Work, No Time to Do the Job,”Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/so-busy-at-work-no-time-to-do-the-job-1467130588.

3. Mike Myatt, “Span of Control—5 Things Every Leader Should Know,” Forbes, November 5, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012/11/05/span-of-control-5-things-every-leader-should-know.

4. Michael C. Mankins, “The True Cost of Hiring Yet Another Manager,” Harvard Business Review, June 2, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/06/the-true-cost-of-hiring-yet-another-manager.

5. Marcia W. Blenko, Eric Garton, and Ludovica Mottura, “Winning Operating Models That Convert Strategy to Results,” Bain Brief, December 10, 2014, http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/winning-operating-models-that-convert-strategy-to-results.aspx.

6. Torsten Lichtenau, John Smith, and Sophie Horrocks, “Tackling Complexity: How to Create Simple and Effective Organizations,” Bain Brief, June 17, 2015, http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/tackling-complexity-how-to-create-simple-and-effective-organizations.aspx.

7. Paul Rogers and Marcia W. Blenko, “Who Has the D?: How Clear Decision Roles Enhance Organizational Performance,” Harvard Business Review, January 2006, https://hbr.org/2006/01/who-has-the-d-how-clear-decision-roles-enhance-organizational-performance.

Chapter 4

1. Michael C. Mankins, Alan Bird, and James Root, “Making Star Teams Out of Star Players,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/01/making-star-teams-out-of-star-players.

2. Kip Tindell, interview by Adam Bryant, “Three Good Hires? He’ll Pay More for One Who’s Great,” New York Times, March 13, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/business/14corners.html?_r=0.

3. Steve Jobs, interview by Bob Cringely, “Steve Jobs The Lost Interview,” YouTube, February 24, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-rA-LWamoI.

4. R. I. M. Dunbar, “Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size, and Language in Humans,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16.4 (1993): 681–735.

5. Rachel Feintzeig, “Are Companies Good at Picking Stars?,”Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/are-companies-any-good-at-picking-stars-1434486106.

6. Walter Mischel and Yuichi Shoda, “A Cognitive-Affective System Theory of Personality: Reconceptualizing Situations, Dispositions, Dynamics, and Invariance in Personality Structure,” Psychology Today, April 1995.

7. Christiane Correa, Dream Big: How the Brazilian Trio Behind 3G Capital—Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira—Acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz (Rio de Janeiro: Sextante, 2014).

8. Kenneth P. De Meuse, Guangrong Dai, George S. Hallenbeck, and King Yii Tang, “Using Learning Agility to Identify High Potentials around the World,” Korn Ferry Institute Research Study, 2009.

9. O. G. Selfridge, “Pandemonium: A Paradigm for Learning,” National Physical Laboratory Symposium No. 10, November 1958.

10. Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh, The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014).

Chapter 5

1. Michael C. Mankins, Alan Bird, and James Root, “Making Star Teams Out of Star Players,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/01/making-star-teams-out-of-star-players.

2. NASA Associate Deputy Administrator for Policy, “Falcon 9 Launch Vehicle NAFCOM Cost Estimates,” August 2011, https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/586023main_8-3-11_NAFCOM.pdf.

3. Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

4. Julia Zorthian, “How Toy Story Changed Movie History,”Time, November 19, 2015, http://time.com/4118006/20-years-toy-story-pixar.

5. “NASCAR Pit Crew,” Sports Science, Season 4, Episode 33.

6. Matthew Yglesias, “Who’s the Boss?” Slate, October 12, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/business/small_business/2012/10/the_value_of_a_good_boss_stanford_researchers_show_the_economic_value_of.html.

7. Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw, and Christopher T. Stanton, “The Value of Bosses,” National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2012.

8. Ning Li, Helen H. Zhao, Sheryl L. Walter, Xin-An Zhang, and Jia Yu, “Achieving More with Less: Extra Milers’ Behavioral Influence in Teams,” Journal of Applied Psychology 100.4 (July 2015): 1025–1039.

9. Kurt Eichenwald, “Microsoft’s Lost Decade,” Vanity Fair, August 2012, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer.

10. Rob Cross, Reb Rebele, and Adam Grant, “Collaborative Overload,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2016, https://hbr.org/2016/01/collaborative-overload.

Chapter 6

1. Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

2. Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead Books, 2011).

3. Jennifer Robin, “The Path that Builds Trust,” Great Place to Work blog, August 29, 2013, http://www.greatplacetowork.com/events-and-insights/blogs-and-news/2245-one-rule#sthash.EorfKmNT.dpbs.

4. Humayun Khan, “How Nordstrom Made Its Brand Synonymous With Customer Service (and How You Can Too),” Shopify, May 2, 2016, https://www.shopify.com/retail/119531651-how-nordstrom-made-its-brand-synonymous-with-customer-service-and-how-you-can-too.

5. Christian Conte, “Nordstrom Customer Service Tales Not Just Legend,” Jacksonville Business Journal, September 7, 2012, http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/retail_radar/2012/09/nordstrom-tales-of-legendary-customer.html.

6. Henrik Kniberg, “Spotify Engineering Culture (parts 1 & 2),” Spotify Labs blog, March 27, 2014, https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1.

Chapter 7

1. Louis V. Gerstner Jr., Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround (New York: HarperBusiness, 2012), 181.

2. “Futurestep survey: organizational culture and employer brand are top competitive advantages when recruiting talent,” Korn Ferry Futurestep blog, June 16, 2015, http://www.futurestep.com/news/futurestep-survey-organizational-culture-and-employer-brand-are-top-competitive-advantages-when-recruiting-talent.

3. Founder’s Mentality is a registered trademark of Bain & Company, Inc.

4. Chris Zook and James Allen, The Founder’s Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2016).

5. Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (New York: Crown, 2015).

Epilogue

1. National Bureau of Economic Research, “US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions,” September 20, 2010, http://www.nber.org/cycles.html.

2. Darrell K. Rigby and Mark Gottfredson, “Winning in Turbulence: The Power of Managing Complexity,” Harvard Business Review, February 23, 2009, https://hbr.org/2009/02/winning-in-turbulence-the-powe.

3. Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

4. Karen Harris, Andrew Schwedel, and Austin Kimson, “A World Awash in Money,” Bain Report, November 14, 2012, http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/a-world-awash-in-money.aspx.

5. Dr. John Sullivan, “10 Compelling Numbers That Reveal the Power of Employee Referrals,” Eremedia, May 7, 2012, http://www.eremedia.com/ere/10-compelling-numbers-that-reveal-the-power-of-employee-referrals.

6. Lazlo Bock, Work Rules!: Insights from Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead (New York: Twelve, 2015).