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Wouldn't Stack love to open a book and find a map of the new millennium. It doesn't have to be 100% right, but someone needs to take a stab at drawing one. We need a map, even if it's only a rough outline: Business boundaries are shifting, and the very definition of what it means to be a company is changing.

Direct marketing traditionally has been regarded as a powerful tool for attracting new customers. Today more and more companies are recognizing that it also can be extremely effective in retaining existing customers, winning their loyalty, and generating additional sales.

It is often more profitable for banks to focus direct marketing efforts on retaining existing customers and cultivating their loyalty than to attempt to attract new customers. A successful marketing programme aimed at customers has eight key components: research, segmentation, communication, consistent brand character, cross‐selling, relationship pricing, tracking and execution. In this article the author describes how these techniques work and offers examples of their successful application by financial institutions. He concludes by noting that a financial institution's existing customer base is one of its most valuable assets. Getting new customers usually involves winning them from a competitor, which requires superior salesmanship and superior products. Consequently, bank marketers are discovering that it often pays big dividends to use the above techniques to build a more profitable relationship with existing customers.

In this article the author considers the role of information in the development of marketing programmes. He highlights how leading financial service organisations have achieved success in this area by focusing on seven vital areas: advertising, the customer, an early warning system, service quality, sales performance, branch performance and pricing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between employees' motives for communicating with superiors and coworkers, their commitment to their organizations, satisfaction with jobs, and with superiors.

This article makes use of survey research, using quantitative research methodology investigating employees' motives for communicating with their superiors and co‐workers, their satisfaction and commitment towards their organization. The research identifies pleasure, escape, relaxation, control and inclusion as motives explaining why people communicate with each other and how they relate to each other.

The findings revealed a relationship between the motives along with satisfaction and commitment. Employees report a moderate commitment with their coworkers as well as superiors. Furthermore, the results showed strong relationships between the control, affection, inclusion, escape and relaxation motives.

The research showed strengthening communication ties from a need to encourage more healthy interpersonal relationships by using jointly constructed reality. This approach was more effective because it goes beyond information process and it involves the process of people together creating what will be the mission and vision of the organization and developing corporate values. In addition, the organization's commitment can be enhanced through job enrichment together with matching the individual's values to those of the organization besides, finding ways and means of improving job satisfaction through different strategies such as improving the quality of the supervision, decentralization of power and counselling. Finally, the investigation serves as a context for evaluating the applicability of previous studies to the manufacturing, oil and petrochemical industries in Bahrain, focusing on Bapco (Bahrain Petroleum Company), GPIC (Gulf Petrochemicals Industries) and ALBA (Aluminum Bahrain ).

The study is the first thorough study conducted in the three above‐mentioned organizations. Therefore, it would be of great value to understand their employees better and improving their communication ties as well as motivation.

The authors sought the answer to the question, “Why do so many developing leaders either fail to reach their full potential or cross the line into destructive or even unethical actions?”

To find out, they interviewed many successful leaders of major organizations and studied the case histories of failed top leaders. The study of unsuccessful leaders revealed a pattern: the failed leaders couldn't lead themselves. On their leadership journey these high potential managers adopted a set of personal behaviors that worked temporarily but were unsustainable in the long run.

The heroic model of leadership turns out to be merely an early stage – one with risks, temptations, misbehaviors – and one that needs to be outgrown. In contrast, successful leaders who move beyond the hero stage learn to focus on others, gain a sense of a larger purpose, foster multiple support networks, and develop mechanisms to keep perspective and stay grounded.

The authors interviewed 125 successful leaders of major organizations and studied the cases of top leaders who failed.

The five perils of the leadership journey, distinctive destructive behaviors that tend to occur in the hero stage of managers' early careers, are: being an imposter, rationalizing, glory seeking, playing the lone and being a shooting star. These behaviors can be overcome if they are addressed directly.

By identifying five distinctly destructive behaviors that need to be cured at an early stage of a potential leader's career the authors provide a valuable guide for executive development.

This article sets out to examine what is different about top leadership and what is required beyond proven professional competence to be highly effective at this level.

The article is a masterclass – essentially a thematic review and synthesis of some of the most influential ideas on the topic from research and practice over the last two decades.

The main conclusions are that: the top job is different, not just a step up, and has its own unique tasks that top leaders need to keep their focus on; effectiveness at this level requires more than generic professional competencies, it also requires finding an individual leadership voice and sense of higher ambition; and effectiveness at the top also requires the development of contextual awareness and sensitivity to find and rise to the right leadership challenge in the right institution at the right time.

The practical implications flow directly from the findings above.

This interview covers research published in three major books by Bill George. The first was in response to a massive governance crisis as high-flyers like Enron, WorldCom and Tyco crashed. George’s first book, offered an alternative to self-serving leadership, was “Authentic Leadership” in 2003. Having been a highly successful CEO, he watched with grave concern as the stock market and media mistakenly venerated CEOs like Bob Nardelli at Home Depot and Hewlett-Packard’s Carly Fiorina for their charisma, style and image rather than their character and substance.

In 2005-2006 he created a research team at Harvard Business School to determine how to develop authentic leaders. This project still stands as the largest, in-depth research of leaders ever undertaken. The result was his second book, True North, published in 2007.

A third book, Discover Your True North, the result of a second Harvard study displays the dramatic changes for the better in leadership in the past decade.

The best of today’s corporate leaders are less hierarchical and bureaucratic than their predecessors. They focus primarily on gaining alignment around their organization’s mission and values, and empowering their employees to step up and lead rather than merely following rules and processes. They operate less in their self-interest, and more in service to others and pursuit of greater societal good on a global scale. The new leaders are authentic and open, rather than focused on leadership style and charisma.

Bill George’s research has defined an effective alternative to self-serving leadership, one that can be a model for 21st Century leaders facing the demands of a rapid change, continuous innovation global marketplace. Authentic leaders make good strategists.