I think that people still naturally want to be part of a team and participate in the success and achievement of a group effort. So we tend to be enthusiastic and productive - and even loyal. I believe that there are very few people who purposefully try to undermine the efforts of their organization. When people do act against the objectives of a change initiative, it's often because they genuinely believe it's not the right thing for the company to do. You could argue that it's a form of misguided loyalty.

Very soon, most companies will need to have a global operating model - even if you only sell locally. Even mid-sized companies will source globally. Knowing how to operate in this environment will be critical. We need to train managers and leaders to become citizens of the world.

People get caught up in formulaic answers. When one doesn't work, they just go on to the next.

Most business leaders don't consider their own causality in the creation of problems. They fail to see that their company could have avoided breakdowns if they had acted differently. We tend to see problems as having been created by someone else or by the "economy". It's good to be a little introspective from time to time. Think about how your own behavior might have gotten your company into a problem, and how it may help to get you out.

When a change initiative is focused on changing a company's culture directly, it can take five to ten years to accomplish its objective. Company cultures don't change easily. My friend Peter Drucker used to argue that company cultures don't change at all.

My engineering training taught me to be a systems thinker. I looked at companies as "systems" and saw work as a system of tasks - that needed to be reengineered. I was also focused on operations, getting things done and built. My engineering training taught me to be a pragmatist.

I think that we can all learn from what smart companies are doing. My objective is to demonstrate what's possible, even during tough economic times. This is a period of great business dislocation, but that means it's also the time to try new things. This will be a challenge for existing companies. But the behaviors of smart companies can be learned.