Please answer the 8 highlighted questions below.

To Commute or Telecommute, That Is the Question. Imagine you are the management team for a video-game development company employing 200 people and based in California. Because of high gasoline prices and longer commutes, your team is thinking about drafting a telecommuting policy. Today, you are going to decide how involved the employees should be in creating the policy. 1.Using Exhibit 14.7, p. 323 and Exhibit 14.8, p. 324, decide the level of employee involvement in the decision (changing the telecommuting policy). Why did you select AI, AII, CI, CII or GII?

To Cell or Not To Cell Its a bright Tuesday morning, and youre sitting in a rather exciting meeting in which your companys marketing team will present the new fall campaign. Its been an exciting time since you took over as CEO of this small electronics firm, and everyone is anticipating that the new product lineup that the company has been working on will bring new levels of success.

Just as the team is about to start presenting their thoughts on how to market the new products, your phone rings; its Karen from distribution, asking whether you have five minutes to talk about truck maintenance. No, you tell her, Im in a meeting. As you apologize for the interruption, your phone rings again; its your assistant, and he wants to know when you can schedule a meeting with the president of a subcontractor. A few minutes after that, Gary from HR calls and asks when the new benefits package will be approved. After that you get calls from the mailroom, the president of the electricians union, your chief accountant, and your teenage son, asking whether he can drive the car to school. And in between all of those calls, your phone has been buzzing nonstop with emails.

With all of these interruptions, a presentation that should have taken 30 minutes took more than two hours, and this isnt the first time something like this has happened either. Day and night, it seems, youre getting bombarded by phone calls and text messages and emails, almost to the point that you cant get any real work done. As you trudge back to your office, you remark to your assistant, Maybe I should just get rid of this phone. And he says, Maybe you should.

He mentions that he just saw a magazine article about executives who dont use cell phones, even high-powered people like Warren Buffett, Mikhail Prokhorov (owner of the NBA team New Jersey Nets), and Tavis Smiley, a TV and radio host. One manager quoted in the article says that he got rid of his cell phone to increase his efficiency. With no cell phone, he could focus on one meeting at a time and give exclusive attention to whomever he was talking to. Tavis Smiley says that without a cell phone, employees of his company actually get more conversation time with him than before.

So maybe this is the solution to your problems: Without a cell phone, there would be no more interrupted meetings, no more urgent calls about stuff that isnt really urgent, no more 30-minute appointments that stretch to two hours. When you ask your managers and employees, however, theres a high level of anxiety. Will you be accessible at all? What if there is a real emergency?

Source: Americas Most Exclusive Club Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 6 Aug 2010.

Questions:

1. Do you believe that the CEO of a company can effectively do his or her job of leading without being always accessible?

1. If you, as the CEO, were to get rid of your phone, how would you ensure that lines of communication remain open?

The Role of Humility in Leadership

Everybody makes mistakes; todays media-saturated culture makes everyones mistakes everyone elses news. This is particularly true of leaders, who are less able (perhaps simply unable) to hide from the media microscope than in times past. We want our leaders to have an unshakable integrity, so when their mistakes turn into front-page news, it provides a unique look at the mettle of those who lead our governments, institutions, and businesses. One of the functions of leadership is to assume responsibility for company actions, even when those actions are dubious at best or downright shameful at worst. But how can leaderswho are supposed to always take the high roadwork through mistakes that they or their organizations have made?

The answer is simple: a sincere apology. Okay, so the answer is not so simple. Everyone knows that apologizing is not so easy, as proved by the associated lump in the throat and the awful feeling that comes from knowing that something you did caused someone else pain, embarrassment, loss, or hardship. But as you read in the chapter, a critical element of what leaders do and how leaders succeed is consideration, which is akin to empathy, the engine of a sincere apology.

How do you apologize for mistakes? Do you use sorry so often that it is devoid of meaning? Or do you apologize profusely, which comes to the same effect? Do you wait until you have time to think things over, or do you apologize immediately if briefly? The biggest mistake that leaders make when apologizing is passing the buck and using the word regret instead of apologize. Leaders take responsibility for actions and should assume blame even if it is not their own. Making an unqualified assumption of responsibility helps demonstrate that your apology is sincere, as does going beyond a basic Im sorry. According to Karen Friedman, a communication coach, Im sorry doesnt cut it. . . . Its empty, hollow, and quite frankly, pathetic: Im sorry I cooked the books. Im sorry I beat my wife. I wont do it again. You have to say, I made a terrible mistake. I offended people. I lied. I was stupid. So, one of the marks of a true leader is not hubris, but humility. In other words, the best way to appear sincere is to be sincere.

Source: J. Zaslow, Mistakes Were Made: What to Take Away from the High-Profile Blunders of 2006, The Wall Street Journal, 26 December 2006, D1; J. Brodkin, Corporate Apologies Dont Mean Much: Data Breaches Force Company Executives to Apologize, But a Bad Apology Can Make Things Worse, Network World, 14 March 2007, 1; L. Smith, How Your Corporate Clients Can and Sometimes Must Apologize for Their Mistakes, Of Counsel, October 2005, 1113.

Questions

Describe a time when something you did or said had a profound negative impact on a person, group, or situation.

Did you take responsibility for your actions, or did you try to blame circumstances or other people?

Did you apologize? How do you think the person who was receiving the apology took it?

What was the most difficult thing about apologizing?

Think about some high-profile blunders in recent news stories, whether in the world of sports, business, or entertainment. How do you think the company or individual involved did at delivering a public apology? Explain why you thought it wasor was notsincere.