ilija, the project leader for a major Initiative aimed at encouraging sharing of best practices across Gefilzone divi- sions, was preparing to meet for the second time with her core project team, consisting of Mary from Marketing, Andreas from Research, Toshi from Manufacturing, and Thomas from a consulting organization. During the first meeting, Anja read the initial draft of a comprehensive project charter to ensure align- ment of the team around deliverables and processes. Nobody raised concerns, so she planned to use the second project meeting to develop the risk management plan, develop the overall work breakdown structure, and assign specific responsibilities. Genizome Genizome, a fully integrated global pharmaceutical company, was a product of several merged or acquired companies. These mergers, occurring in the early 1990s, left the German company with the challenge of stan- dardizing many IT systems and business processes across its three divisions: Pharmaceuticals, Diagnostics, and Research & Development. The company had recently switched from a country head structure to a global functional structure with over 80,000 employees spread across 120 countries reporting through division lines to corporate division heads ather than country heads. The corporate division heads quickly concluded that there were too many different ways of doing things across geographies. The Best Sharing Project During an executive committee (ExCom) meeting, Alex Gordesky, the corporate CIO, argued for more harmo- ization of processes on a global basis based on sharing of best practices within and across divisions. Excellent